Am I a bad person if the picture of someone in the CIA crying is funny to me? Not out of malice or anything. It's just something I didn't know they did.
Do they also have little "Hang in there!" posters on the wall, too?
Adding my POV from a former National Security perspective:
Author is 100% on point. The point of a polygraph is three-fold: weeding out the dipshits; exerting power over the powerless; and identifying the valuable assets (typically sociopaths). It does not - cannot - identify liars, deceit, or bad actors on its face (that comes from the manual the author linked). It's not scientific assessment, it's psychological torture.
Would I take a polygraph to reactivate my clearance? Yeah, if I had to. Would I pass? That's up to the examiner, because much like the author I won't tolerate being called a liar, nor will I capitulate to power games. I'll be honest, forthcoming, and cooperative - and if that's not enough to pass, then I don't want to work for you.
This is so interesting. I guess I was a dipshit in this scenario? Because I just accepted that the reviewer thought I was lying. Began to question my own memory. And just gave up on the idea of working at that place. In hindsight, I should have protested and not given up. But I was a meek 21 year old and didn't know anything. Seems like a strange filter to apply.
I am actually not that convinced of that, largely because
e. g. the KGB operated quite differently. And it seems
very strange to me that the CIA would train an army of
wanna-be's as ... butt-clenching recruits. The more sensible
option is to have a poker face; and totally believe in any
lie no matter how and what. That's kind of what Sergey Lavrov
does. He babbles about how Ukraine invaded Russia. Kind of
similar to a certain guy with a moustache claiming Poland
invaded Germany (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident).
I went through national-security polygraph exams twice, and they were no big deal. Filling out SF-86 (which used to start "List all residences from birth"), now that's a hassle.
In my aerospace company days, almost everything I did was unclassified, but I was put through the mill of getting higher level security clearances so I could be assigned to classified projects. Fortunately, I never was.
I watched at Derbycon multiple times someone that could make a polygraph test do whatever he wanted, otherwise he was a murderer that murdered himself and it all happened before he was born. The test was being administered by a long time veteran polygraph operator who had recently retired.
I was a security guard at a big ritzy condo with access to all of the keys when one of the apartments was burgled. Two local detectives showed up and questioned me with a polygraph. I failed to suspend my disbelief. It seemed like bullshit from the start. I lied about smoking weed.
Then they told me to wait. An hour later one of them came back and told me I had passed. I had the impression he was watching me very carefully for some kind of relief, and that moment was the actual test. I laughed at him, which seems to have been the right answer.
I still think it's an interrogation manipulation prop, and the courts that don't admit polygraph results have it right.
I'm always surprised to hear that a government agency administers polygraph tests in something as serious as hiring but then I remember the CIA also spent millions of dollars trying to develop telekinetic assassins and train clairvoyants to spy on the Kremlin.
That's an old classic, should have 2018 in the headline but the site is much older. Some people hate it because they're afraid that knowing the site might count as preparation and might make them fail their polygraph exam.
I applied for an internship with the NSA. My understanding of the process (years ago, pre-Snowden) was that they did a pass on your resume (I can't recall if there was even a phone screen), then they started background checks and if there were N internships the first N people to pass the security clearance were selected.
They went through the standard stuff, interviewing my neighbors, etc. Then they flew me to Fort Meade for a polygraph. This article matches my experiences well - the interviewers latched on to arbitrary accusations and threw them at you over and over. I walked out feeling absolutely miserable and the examiner still claiming I was hiding past crimes and drug use (nope, I confessed to everything all the way down to grabbing coins out of the fountain at the mall when I was quite young). My interviewer said some large percentage of people fail their first and most pass the second.
...except there was no second, because shortly after I passed an interview and got an internship at a large tech company that paid significantly more and didn't require me to take a polygraph. No regrets on that decision.
Polygraphs are junk science. I wonder why they haven’t graduated to fMRI. Can’t be for lack of funds. My guess is the polygraph bureaucracy is what’s known in Washington as a self-licking ice cream cone.
"Someone who hated computers so much that she had the secretary print out her emails so she could read them was interrogated for hours about hacking into Agency networks [...] there was often a gross mismatch between a person and the accusations made against them."
Well, isn't it expected? If I were a double agent, faking that I was so computer illiterate that I ask my emails to be printed out would be the perfect cover for my hacking =:-)
Been there, done that. It's a good account, but I'm pretty surprised that the author felt that he could get away with "butt clinching", which is a form of deception, even when you're using it because you know the polygraph process is flawed. So he had to have lied to the investigator about whether or not he was being deceptive, and he never should have been cleared in the first place.
My last few polygraphs (I've had well over a dozen of them) were abusive. Before one of the later tests, the investigator tried to establish rapport, and told me that he had interrogated terrorists in the middle east, who had threatened to kill him. Before the test, I sympathized with him on this and thought that those terrorists must have been really bad people. After the test, I completely understood why those subjects had threatened to kill him.
The polygraph is basically a mind fuck. They try to guilt you into admitting some wrong that you've done by pretending that they already know about it. People with a conscience will break down and admit something, but different personality types react differently.
A senior security officer that I knew always passed his polygraphs on the first sitting, and never had any trouble. The reason was because he was a pathological liar. One of the requirements for his job was to come up with "cover stories", which are lies that you must convincingly tell others, to protect the security of a program.
Two co-worker engineers I know failed, because they refused to go back for more abuse. They were not bad or deceptive people -- They were "Type A" personalities, and it was just too stressful for them.
Refusing to take (or re-take) a polygraph is a red flag, and gets a lot of high level attention. The government will assume that you are refusing because you've done something wrong, and may go after you, and could ruin you life, even if you are innocent.
> As we walked across the lobby, I thought I was going to faint.
I sort of detest people who always ask if things are ai slop, but... is this real? This guy has been working with a clearance for years - i think decades - and taken multiple polygraph, including failures, and is gonna pass out on his way to an interview regarding somewhere he no longer works?
Maybe hes just on the spectrum, but this article is weird.
Oh boy, something on the HN front page i have direct personal experience with (CIA polygraph exams in general not this specific one).
>Then she asked if I'd read about polygraphs. I said I'd just finished A Tremor in the Blood. She claimed she'd never heard of it. I was surprised. It's an important book about her field, I would have thought all polygraphers knew of it.
They'll also ask you about antipolygraph.org which is the site OP is hosted on. CIA is well aware that it is one of the top search results for polygraph. My examiner actually had the whole expanded universe backstory behind the site memorized and went on a rant about george maschke, the site's owner who lost his job at a major defense contractor then ran away to some place in scandanavia from which they are unable to extradite him.
BTW by reading this comment you may have already failed your polygraph exam at the CIA.
>My hand turned purple, which hurt terribly.
OP should have included more context here; part of the polygraph test involves a blood pressure cuff which is put on EXTREMELY tight, far more so than any doctor or nurse would ever put it on. It is left on for the entire duration of the test (approximately 8 hours). My entire arm turned purple and i remember feeling tremors.
>The examiner wired me up. He began with what he called a calibration test. He took a piece of paper and wrote the numbers one through five in a vertical column. He asked me to pick a number. I picked three. He drew a square around the number three, then taped the paper to the back of a chair where I could see it. I was supposed to lie about having selected the number three.
This is almost certainly theatrical. It is true that they need to establish a "baseline of truth" by comparing definite falsehoods with definite truth but the way they get that is by asking highly personal questions where they can reasonably expect at least one of them will be answered untruthfully. They'll ask about drugs, extramarital affairs, crimes you got away with, etc. Regarding the one about crimes, supposedly your answer will not be given to law enforcement but if you actually trust the CIA on this you're probably too retarded to work there anyways. I'm not confident that lying to somebody who has specifically directed you to lie to him would produce the same sort of physical response as genuine lies.
>On the bus back to the hotel, a woman was sobbing, "Do they count something less than $50 as theft?" I felt bad for her because she was crying, but I wondered why a petty thief thought she could get into the Agency.
If she failed this isn't why. You're supposed to lie at least once or else they have no baseline for truth (see above). In addition, the point of the Polygraph isn't just to evaluate your loyalty to the United States but also to make the agency aware of anything that could be used by an adversary to compromise you in the future. Somebody who shoplifted 50$ worth of merchandise isn't a liability but somebody who shoplifted 50$ worth of merchandise and believes that it would damage their career if their employer found out is a huge liability even if they are wrong and their employer does not actually care. Putting employees under interrogation until they break down and confess to things like this so that they know it has not endangered their employment is one of the primary objectives of the polygraph.
>A pattern emerged. In a normal polygraph, there was often a gross mismatch between a person and the accusations made against them. I don't think the officials at Polygraph had any idea how unintentionally humorous this was. Not to the person it happened to, of course, but the rest of us found it hysterically funny.
As said above, the whole point is to make you break down and confess to something embarrassing. If you don't confess to anything it is assumed that you are still hiding something from them and you could fail.
What’s the organizational rationale behind using the polygraph? Its reliability at detecting deception doesn’t on the face of things seem correct, with “bureaucratic inertia” not really enough to explain its persistence either. Is it something different then? Perhaps when someone’s response patterns simply don’t match known types or some other reason?
35 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 54.0 ms ] threadDo they also have little "Hang in there!" posters on the wall, too?
Author is 100% on point. The point of a polygraph is three-fold: weeding out the dipshits; exerting power over the powerless; and identifying the valuable assets (typically sociopaths). It does not - cannot - identify liars, deceit, or bad actors on its face (that comes from the manual the author linked). It's not scientific assessment, it's psychological torture.
Would I take a polygraph to reactivate my clearance? Yeah, if I had to. Would I pass? That's up to the examiner, because much like the author I won't tolerate being called a liar, nor will I capitulate to power games. I'll be honest, forthcoming, and cooperative - and if that's not enough to pass, then I don't want to work for you.
Ehm ...
I am actually not that convinced of that, largely because e. g. the KGB operated quite differently. And it seems very strange to me that the CIA would train an army of wanna-be's as ... butt-clenching recruits. The more sensible option is to have a poker face; and totally believe in any lie no matter how and what. That's kind of what Sergey Lavrov does. He babbles about how Ukraine invaded Russia. Kind of similar to a certain guy with a moustache claiming Poland invaded Germany (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident).
In my aerospace company days, almost everything I did was unclassified, but I was put through the mill of getting higher level security clearances so I could be assigned to classified projects. Fortunately, I never was.
It’s reassuring to know no one at the CIA has ever done anything wrong, like stealing fifty dollars.
Then they told me to wait. An hour later one of them came back and told me I had passed. I had the impression he was watching me very carefully for some kind of relief, and that moment was the actual test. I laughed at him, which seems to have been the right answer.
I still think it's an interrogation manipulation prop, and the courts that don't admit polygraph results have it right.
Hey a goat actually died you know
They went through the standard stuff, interviewing my neighbors, etc. Then they flew me to Fort Meade for a polygraph. This article matches my experiences well - the interviewers latched on to arbitrary accusations and threw them at you over and over. I walked out feeling absolutely miserable and the examiner still claiming I was hiding past crimes and drug use (nope, I confessed to everything all the way down to grabbing coins out of the fountain at the mall when I was quite young). My interviewer said some large percentage of people fail their first and most pass the second.
...except there was no second, because shortly after I passed an interview and got an internship at a large tech company that paid significantly more and didn't require me to take a polygraph. No regrets on that decision.
Well, isn't it expected? If I were a double agent, faking that I was so computer illiterate that I ask my emails to be printed out would be the perfect cover for my hacking =:-)
My last few polygraphs (I've had well over a dozen of them) were abusive. Before one of the later tests, the investigator tried to establish rapport, and told me that he had interrogated terrorists in the middle east, who had threatened to kill him. Before the test, I sympathized with him on this and thought that those terrorists must have been really bad people. After the test, I completely understood why those subjects had threatened to kill him.
The polygraph is basically a mind fuck. They try to guilt you into admitting some wrong that you've done by pretending that they already know about it. People with a conscience will break down and admit something, but different personality types react differently.
A senior security officer that I knew always passed his polygraphs on the first sitting, and never had any trouble. The reason was because he was a pathological liar. One of the requirements for his job was to come up with "cover stories", which are lies that you must convincingly tell others, to protect the security of a program.
Two co-worker engineers I know failed, because they refused to go back for more abuse. They were not bad or deceptive people -- They were "Type A" personalities, and it was just too stressful for them.
Refusing to take (or re-take) a polygraph is a red flag, and gets a lot of high level attention. The government will assume that you are refusing because you've done something wrong, and may go after you, and could ruin you life, even if you are innocent.
I sort of detest people who always ask if things are ai slop, but... is this real? This guy has been working with a clearance for years - i think decades - and taken multiple polygraph, including failures, and is gonna pass out on his way to an interview regarding somewhere he no longer works?
Maybe hes just on the spectrum, but this article is weird.
>Then she asked if I'd read about polygraphs. I said I'd just finished A Tremor in the Blood. She claimed she'd never heard of it. I was surprised. It's an important book about her field, I would have thought all polygraphers knew of it.
They'll also ask you about antipolygraph.org which is the site OP is hosted on. CIA is well aware that it is one of the top search results for polygraph. My examiner actually had the whole expanded universe backstory behind the site memorized and went on a rant about george maschke, the site's owner who lost his job at a major defense contractor then ran away to some place in scandanavia from which they are unable to extradite him.
BTW by reading this comment you may have already failed your polygraph exam at the CIA.
>My hand turned purple, which hurt terribly.
OP should have included more context here; part of the polygraph test involves a blood pressure cuff which is put on EXTREMELY tight, far more so than any doctor or nurse would ever put it on. It is left on for the entire duration of the test (approximately 8 hours). My entire arm turned purple and i remember feeling tremors.
>The examiner wired me up. He began with what he called a calibration test. He took a piece of paper and wrote the numbers one through five in a vertical column. He asked me to pick a number. I picked three. He drew a square around the number three, then taped the paper to the back of a chair where I could see it. I was supposed to lie about having selected the number three.
This is almost certainly theatrical. It is true that they need to establish a "baseline of truth" by comparing definite falsehoods with definite truth but the way they get that is by asking highly personal questions where they can reasonably expect at least one of them will be answered untruthfully. They'll ask about drugs, extramarital affairs, crimes you got away with, etc. Regarding the one about crimes, supposedly your answer will not be given to law enforcement but if you actually trust the CIA on this you're probably too retarded to work there anyways. I'm not confident that lying to somebody who has specifically directed you to lie to him would produce the same sort of physical response as genuine lies.
>On the bus back to the hotel, a woman was sobbing, "Do they count something less than $50 as theft?" I felt bad for her because she was crying, but I wondered why a petty thief thought she could get into the Agency.
If she failed this isn't why. You're supposed to lie at least once or else they have no baseline for truth (see above). In addition, the point of the Polygraph isn't just to evaluate your loyalty to the United States but also to make the agency aware of anything that could be used by an adversary to compromise you in the future. Somebody who shoplifted 50$ worth of merchandise isn't a liability but somebody who shoplifted 50$ worth of merchandise and believes that it would damage their career if their employer found out is a huge liability even if they are wrong and their employer does not actually care. Putting employees under interrogation until they break down and confess to things like this so that they know it has not endangered their employment is one of the primary objectives of the polygraph.
>A pattern emerged. In a normal polygraph, there was often a gross mismatch between a person and the accusations made against them. I don't think the officials at Polygraph had any idea how unintentionally humorous this was. Not to the person it happened to, of course, but the rest of us found it hysterically funny.
As said above, the whole point is to make you break down and confess to something embarrassing. If you don't confess to anything it is assumed that you are still hiding something from them and you could fail.
>"Admit it, you...