Twice. I failed it twice. The band that went around my middle was too tight the first time, which prompted me to take really huge breaths. The polygrapher yelled at me. So I started to really try not to take those big breaths, and he yelled at me for using countermeasures. Then I was so flustered from his telling me that I was lying that I started twitching in the chair which apparently looked like MORE countermeasures. Needless to say, I failed that one. He said I was unresolved on everything. They gave me another chance - and I also screwed that one up because I was dreading it so much and of course the band is still too tight. He loosened it once but that did not really help. Then they each grilled me for about two hours about what I was hiding. 

FYI: I have done NOTHING wrong. I am a really good kid. I declared minor (5 times) marijuana usage and minor instances of illegal downloading on my form. Everything I reported is true (and I omitted nothing). For what it is worth, the polygraphers seemed to believe me that I wasn't doing it on purpose and that I was telling the truth when I said that I was hiding nothing - but they were still awful to me. I cried a lot in the first one and a little bit in the second one.

I just want to ask everyone - what are my chances that they will still grant my clearance? The rest of my processing has been stellar (to the best of my knowledge). 

Also, this is for a job with an intelligence agency. I will be so miserable if I don't get it. I'm extremely qualified and I just feel so cheated that the polygraph is doing me in when it's apparently pseudoscience.

I remember when I used to be a polygraph operator/interrogator/inquisitor/terrorist, I would use the prop of the polygraph machine to great advantage during my interrogations.

After running a chart, I would tear the paper from the machine and jam it right in their face, a couple of inches away from their nose, and scream at them, "Just look at this shit, you told such a big lie on that on that question that you actually slung ink all over my tie!"I would point at their increased reaction on the cardio tracing and jam my finger into the still wet red ink smearing it around like a blood stain as I traced their "reaction" with my finger.This little drama was very effective in getting a confession.Another advantage of the old analog was that even if there was no reaction to any question, you could twist the little cardio tracing centering knob and make it look like they had a gigantic reaction even when they hadn't!