My CIA Experience

[anon.]

I'll probably put together a real "write-up" of my CIA polygraph experience at some point and hopefully remember to post it in this forum, in case anyone wants to care. In the spirit of full-disclosure, I just got the thin-envelope treatment today and am pretty confident that the "lie detector" (or some revelation, lack-of-revelation, attitude, etc. that came about during the polygraph circumstance) is what did me in.  Before this last trip to NoVA I had a "conditional offer" in hand, then today I got the news that because of information I had provided, I was unsuitable. Interesting. (And why the ---- did they have the background investigator interview every single friend and co-worker I could name *before* I went out and "revealed" my unsuitability? Asinine. Really excited about all the questions I'll be getting from my friends and co-workers about a job whose true nature I concealed from them.)

Obeying what I had been told, I did not do any research on the polygraph process -- but after the experience it was clear to me that our friends in Langley merely use the polygraph as a prop to aid in interrogation. While the experience sucked massively and I would do everything in my power to keep anyone I care about from having to go through anything similar, some aspects of it were humorous.  It was like the guys were trying to do a good cop/bad cop routine with only one cop.

Just a few lines of dialogue that transpired on the second day of the exam, after he told me that I was controlling my breathing (and trying to manipulate the test), and which I thought were kind of funny (although, in retrospect, the first-day guy who kept telling me how normal it was to have sex with your step-children and sell drugs to teenagers, might have been funnier):

Interrogator: If you keep doing that (controlling breathing), I'm going to have to bring my supervisor in here and, if it happens again, we're going to have to write you down for PNC, that's "purposeful non-compliance". That doesn't sound good, does it? And if we put you down for PNC, where do you think that leaves you?

Me: With a good job somewhere else.

***

After leaving the room for about a half an hour ("sorry, I got a phone call, didn't mean to keep you waiting" -- nah, of course not, and you weren't on the other side of that one-way mirror over there either... ), he asked me what I was thinking about while he was gone.

Interrogator: Why did you think you were going to fail the test?

Me: Because you said that if I didn't stop controlling my breathing, then I'd be put down for willfully subverting the test.

Interrogator: I didn't say that.

Me: <shrug>

***

After "restarting the test" and supposedly beginning again with the "practice" questions, he then stopped before asking the first question.

Interrogator: Okay, I'm going to have to stop now.

Me: <heavy sigh>

Interrogator: You need to stop controlling your breathing.

Me: If I don't have anything else to think about, then I'm going to think about my breathing. There's nothing I can do about it.

Interrogator: I told you what you had to do, you have to concentrate on the question.

Me: It's hard to concentrate on the question when you haven't asked one yet.

***

Anyway, with the exception of these two trips to the Ministry of Truth, all my experiences in interviewing with the CIA were extremely positive. Given this, the polygraph exam seemed bizarre and out of place.  I should have taken my (surprisingly large) per diem and spent the second day at the Smithsonian.

Thanks.

[anon.]

Crap -- I meant Ministry of Love. My bad.

[Mr. Truth]

And they think it catches spies?

[George W. Maschke]

anon,

Thank you for sharing your CIA polygraph experience. Your account is the first I've heard of a CIA applicant being instructed not to do any research on the polygraph process. Could you elaborate?

As you put together a more detailed write-up of your polygraph experience, you might want to review the CIA-related accounts on the Personal Statements page for comparison purposes. To the extent that your experience was similar to or different from that of others, it might be worth mentioning.

[puresmoke]

Sorry for the handle change.

As for the warning against "learning about the polygraph" prior to screening, I can't remember when that was told to me -- it was either during the orientation meeting when they came to my area or when they called to set up the polygraph interrogation dates. The warning was to the effect of, "if you haven't already looked up anything about the polygraph test -- don't! A lot of what you'll find 'out there' isn't true. And if you try to use any of the counter-measures, we can identify them and they will cause you to fail your examination."

My other favorite part of the show was when the pre-interrogation video explains that the polygraph is a non-threatening experience, unlike the portrayal of "lie detectors" on TV and in movies, where the subject is strapped into a chair and there's a hostile questioner. (Hopefully needless to say at this point, I *was* strapped to a chair -- three hours on each of two days -- and the questioners were at times very adversarial.)

-ps

[George W. Maschke]

puresmoke,

Very interesting. If you'd like to see what it is the CIA didn't want you to know about the polygraph, download The Lie Behind the Lie Detector. The information in it is well-researched, and no polygrapher has ever demonstrated any ability to reliably detect the kinds of countermeasures described therein.

[Raymond J. Latimer]

Puresmoke,

Why were you "strapped" to a chair?

Are you a violent person?

Ray L.

[Mr. Truth]

Raymond, Raymond, Raymond,

Let's not look at the lack of efficacy regarding the polygraph, but instead, attack figures of speech.

Oh, for anyone who doesn't know Raymond J. Latimer, this should help establish his bona fides:
http://www.nyspolygraphists.com/web/pages/pl1.asp?pageid=6335&website=www.nyspolygraphists.com

[puresmoke]

Good point -- they were more like bungie cords than straps. Thus:

"I was bungie-corded to a chair."

(These cords were across my chest and I was told that they were intended to measure my breathing. They were left on during the entirety of both three-hour sessions, including the 10-to-30-minute intervals when the interrogator left the room. While I suppose I could have taken them off -- I kind of wanted to get the job, you know? While the cords allowed some range of motion (I could lean over), they also kept me tethered to the chair.)

[Mr. Truth]

Those would be the pneumo tubes, part of the measuring instrument suite, probably just hooked to the back of the chair for storage purposes and convenience for the polygrapher when hooking up a "client."

A good practice technique, to simulate the feeling of contraction around your chest so as to minimize your awareness of the pressure, is to sit around the house with a couple of belts around your chest. You can also buy a blood pressure cuff from Walgreens and a mood detector electronic toy and play "Let's Take a Polygraph" in the comfort of your own home. The mood detector toy has lights that change color and a tone that changes in pitch as your GSR changes (you place two fingers on grooves cut into the toy, covering two sensors that act just like the GSR sensors on the polygraph). You can drive the lights/pitch with thoughts alone, just the same way you can affect the polygraph with thoughts (and your body's reaction to them).

Even with just the toy, you can see how your body reacts when you think "I'm on fire." About ten minutes worth of practice using that, you've got the polygraph whipped, just like that, that easy.

[Raymond J. Latimer]

Mr. Truth, Mr. Truth. Mr. Truth

Thank you for the link  to the NYS Polygraph page.

Did you notice that I use my full name in my posts, I do not hide behind a pseudonym.  Oh I am sorry, your not hiding it's just that your position would be jeopardized if your real name was used.  I do wish that I had the luxury of hiding and sniping, I guess that I am just not that important. ta ta

Ray L.

[George W. Maschke]

Mr. Truth,

You wrote in part:

Those would be the pneumo tubes, part of the measuring instrument suite, probably just hooked to the back of the chair for storage purposes and convenience for the polygrapher when hooking up a "client."

I'm not aware of any practice of connecting the pneumo tubes to the polygraph chair. But they are connected to the polygraph instrument. Had purewind attempted to get up from the chair during his/her polygrapher's absence, he/she would have risked yanking the attachments out of the polygraph instrument.

[puresmoke]

First off, George, thanks very much for putting together this site and making this information available. It's good to get some support for the STRONG suspicions I had regarding the process. As for the cord situation:

Had the interrogator been so semantically adept, it probably would have been a better experience.

So then, while the cords may indeed have been attached to a machine, with the chair being in between me and the machine, I was effectively also attached to the chair. Therefore:

I was bungie-corded to a machine, which resulted in my also being bound to a chair.

BTW -- one of the personal experiences on the site talked about "lifestyle questions" with the CIA interrogation. These are no longer part of the interrogation as such. However, because I wasn't that bright, when the interrogator repeatedly told me that I was probably committing sodomy of some sort, I started telling him about my (rather boring) sex life (which, btw, does not involve sodomy). He took this and launched into a line of questions delving further into my sex life and drew some pretty wild conclusions ("so I would say that you're probably the type of person who would want to do [anti-social sexual behavior x]"). So, while technically the "lifestyle" questions no longer seem to be part of the interrogation, this is clearly still a subject of interest to our friends in the MiniLuv.

***

Interrogator: I talked to a man last week who was sleeping with his 14-year-old step-daughter. It's fine. The CIA has no problem with someone doing that, it's not a security risk.

Me: I'm tired of you implying that I'm some sort of pediphile.

Interrogator: (suspiciously) Who said anything about pediphilia?

-ps(moke)

(BTW, I still maintain that I was accurate, even in a literal sense, in stating that I was strapped to a chair. There were cords/straps, there was a chair, the straps saw to it that I remained on the chair. I was strapped to a chair.)

[AngryinNY]

Hi Puresmoke,

Sounds a lot like my CIA polygraph interrogation. It was such a frightening experience to realize how incompetent and irrational  this high-powered U.S. government agency can be. After learning about the polygraph, it seems like a practice that you would only expect to find in third world dictatorships! Anyway, it's too bad they're losing a lot of strong applicants this way... and scary to think what else they may be messing up. It's horrible enough to lose a job offer (especially in this economy), but I'm sure in other situations, the stakes are a lot higher! Yikes.  

[John J. Furedy]

I'm in Sydney Australia, with unreliable email, but on the concept that the polygraph is just an interrogatory prop, see my cv on my web page, paper with G. Ben Shakhar in Contemporary Psychology, in the early nineties.

See also more recent use of polygraph by Toronto police where the examiner decides during the pre-test interview whether the examinee is guilty, and if this is what examiner decides, he goes straight onto post-test interview wihtout doing any physiological recording, i.e., using its purported detection function.  I don't know how commjon this practice is, but I was involved in one case where it was used (case was videotaped).  All the best,  John Furedy