Cia pol

[William Paul]

Is anyone familiar with the Cia polygraph examination administered to new applicants? I have heard that multiple tests are actually given over a relatively short period of time (a weekend) when the perspective employee goes to the "farm" for the last stage in the selection process. If this is true, could they  be trying to employ a strategy based upon sleep deprivation that would curtail one's use of countermeasures (e.g. spotting the control questions)?
Thank you

[George Maschke (Guest)]

The anecdotal evidence I've reviewed includes no mention of sleep deprivation. It seems unlikely that the CIA would routinely employ such a measure against applicants for employment as a polygraph anti-counteremeasure: the "control" questions are quite simple to spot in pre-employment screening "tests," and if one were so sleep deprived as to not be able to spot them, then it is hard to imagine how even a polygraph true believer could reasonably expect valid results.

It's worth noting that the CIA's July 1963 KUBARK counterintelligence interrogation document, in its discussion of polygraphy, states:

...As a general rule, the polygraph should not be employed as a measure of last resort. More reliable readings will be obtained if the instrument is used before the subject has been placed under intense pressure, whether such pressure is coercive or not....

(For the rest of the subchapter on polygraphy see https://antipolygraph.org/forum/index.php?topic=24.msg65#msg65)

The above-stated philosophy would not support routine use of sleep deprivation prior to polygraph screening interrogations.

[Just passing through]

I took a CIA polygraph test several months back and I though that the whole thing was poorly done. I was telling the truth about everything and the operator kept telling me that I was pinging on the questions about foreigners. I was nervous about that question because I have been all over the world so we had to talk about it. So far, everything sounds normal, right? But, as we talked about he places that I had been and the people that I knew it was clear to me that the operator did not know much about the world beyond just operating the machine. I had to go back and the second operator was no better. You would think that these people working at CIA would have more knowledge about international affairs and geography, but I guess that they don't bother with that in the polygraph area. A few months later they wanted me to come back for a third time, but I did not have the patience for dealing with poorly trained people. I ended my application at that point.

[John Dobbs]

You think it's because because YOU'RE A LIAR!

[FP (Guest)]

The CIA has been using the polycrap (I mean polygraph) for a long time now. So their polygraphers have years of experience and are well into their routine of "interrogation". My personal belief is that they genuinely get off on on crushing people during these sessions, and aren't so interested in truth.

Their pretext is that some signal spiked somewhere so the subject must be lying, so goody goody, Mr. Polygrapher gets to go into high gear. Given their bent for abuse, any sort of discussion on international contact will fuel them. A former professor in graduate school went through a poly (probaby CIA) and the examiner chewed him out for having foreign graduate students. Anyone having set foot on a college campus knows of the very significant foreign student penetration on the US, especially at the graduate level.

So yes, these examiners do have small minds, and do keep beating on you until you say something different than your original statement. During my poly, the SOB kept leaning on me for 5 hours, but as I was telling the truth, I never gave in to his machinations. Ergo, he probably feels I beat him (not that he gives a raths ass if I was truthful or not).

How does the CIA successfully recruit language specialists (e.g translators) if it frowns on overseas travel and shuns people who have associated with foreign nationals? What universe do these polygraphers live in?

[FP (Guest)]

I'm sure they successfully recruit language specialists. But that's not to imply that once these specialists are in, that they don't live with some sort of mist of suspicion around them, particularly when it comes to poly time.

[George Maschke (Guest)]

Somebody wrote:

How does the CIA successfully recruit language specialists (e.g translators) if it frowns on overseas travel and shuns people who have associated with foreign nationals?

While I suspect a lot of qualified people are being eliminated from employment with the CIA based solely on the divinations of the Agency's polygraph chartgazers, who may well be more suspicious of people with extensive travel abroad and foreign contacts, the CIA does have many language specialists in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which falls under CIA's aegis.

Larry Wu-Tai Chin, who was arrested in 1985 on charges of spying for China (and who passed his CIA polygraph screening "tests"), had worked with FBIS. A message posted to the Intel Forum discussion list notes that FBIS "seemed to be a reinvestigation favorite of the Security guys -- maybe it was a legacy of Larry Chin":

http://lists.his.com/intelforum/msg03463.html

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Last modification: George Maschke - 03/16/01 at 10:20:15

[Covert_1]

The "Farm?"  Now they're sending new apps all the way down there?