by Virgil Vaduva

In what is turning out to be a huge and ironic blow to the Defense Intelligence Agency’s continued support for using polygraphs (lie-detectors) machines to catch spies and intelligence leakers, a series of documents were leaked this weekend indicating that beating polygraphs can easily be accomplished using techniques outlined in several documents made available by AntiPolygraph.org

The U.S. Government is so concerned about the effectiveness of such techniques that it has targeted Doug Williams for criminal prosecution and may have attempted to entrap AntiPolygraph.org co-founder George Maschke.

It may not come as a surprise to anyone, but the Defense Intelligence Agency’s polygraph screening program has never once caught a spy. In 2001, the DIA’s senior analyst for Cuban affairs, Ana Belen Montes, was arrested, charged, and ultimately convicted of spying for Cuba. She had in fact been acting as a Cuban agent from the very beginning of her DIA employment: she had been trained by Cuban intelligence how to fool the polygraph, and she succeeded in doing precisely that throughout her DIA career.

The documents leaked contain 18 example cases where “confirmed countermeasure” were being used by 17 examinees (one was polygraphed twice) since 2013. According to AntiPolygraph.org,

“Confirmed countermeasure cases are those in which the examinee has admitted to doing something in an attempt to manipulate the outcome. Federal agencies routinely forward such case files, stripped of the examinee’s identity, to the federal polygraph school, the National Center for Credibility Assessment (NCCA), at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for study purposes.”

In addition,

“Countermeasure admissions, when they occur, typically result from an accusation by the examiner followed by interrogation in an attempt to elicit an admission. Countermeasure admissions are rare and are a feather in the cap for polygraph examiners, who are typically rated based on the admission rates they obtain. By examining the polygraph charts from these representative cases, we can infer what activity by an examinee is likely to arouse the examiner’s suspicions, leading to an accusation of countermeasure use (and ultimately, perhaps, an admission).”

Below is a list of all the countermeasure files provided to the public by antipolygraph.org. This information has been closely held by the polygraph community and has not previously been published in any public forum. These documents reveal that while polygraph operators publicly claim that countermeasures are ineffective and that they can easily detect them, they are less sanguine when behind closed doors speaking amongst themselves. AntiPolygraph.org features prominently in their discussions.

1.  134-slide Stoelting Co. presentation on polygraph countermeasures, based on National Center for Credibility Assessment (NCCA) documentation.

2. This chapter from the handbook of the American Association of Police Polygraphists is marked “Law Enforcement Sensitive” on each page. It offers approaches to dealing with a variety of countermeasures, many of which would not likely be used by a person who understands polygraph procedure (e.g. dissociation, rationalization, meditation, hypnosis, biofeedback). It offers approaches to dealing with a variety of countermeasures, many of which would not likely be used by a person who understands polygraph procedure (e.g. dissociation, rationalization, meditation, hypnosis, biofeedback). While the chapter mentions AntiPolygraph.org among other sources of information, it doesn’t provide any clear methodology for detecting the kinds of countermeasures described in our widely-read and freely-available book, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector.

3. Presentation delivered at the American Polygraph Association’s 2010 annual seminar. Suggests “setting the stage” by using diplomas and certificates to establish credibility and dressing like a professional. Emphasizes interrogational stratagems while providing no actual information on countermeasure detection.

4. Presentation by Charles R. Honts. See especially the “Current Trends” portion beginning with slide 49. Honts discounts the notion that polygraph operators can reliably detect countermeasures. See especially slide 51: “No published scientific study shows that [sic] any person to be better than chance at detecting countermeasures, either from watching the subject or from analyzing the charts.”

5. Presentation by Paul Menges, Department of Defense Polygraph Institute, in 2005 before an intergovernmental conference in Rome on the use of polygraphs in counterterrorism. Honts discounts the notion that polygraph operators can reliably detect countermeasures. See especially slide 51: “No published scientific study shows that [sic] any person to be better than chance at detecting countermeasures, either from watching the subject or from analyzing the charts.”

6. A 2005 presentation by James Wygant. Discusses AntiPolygraph.org beginning at slide 48 (misidentifying it as “AntiPolygraph.Com”) with excerpts from The Lie Behind the Lie Detector. Suggested remedies include “claim we no longer use the procedure described on the internet & we now use a procedure in which all of the questions must be answered truthfully.” Does not provide any coherent methodology for detecting the countermeasures explained in The Lie Behind the Lie Detector.

7. Defense Intelligence Agency documents (40 MB .zip archive) obtained by AntiPolygraph.org suggest that the agency lacks the ability to detect sophisticated polygraph countermeasures¹ and that spies, saboteurs, and terrorists will have little difficulty deceiving its polygraph operators using techniques such as those described in AntiPolygraph.org’s free book, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector (1 MB PDF) or in Doug Williams‘ manual, How to Sting the Polygraph. The U.S. Government is so concerned about the effectiveness of such techniques that it has targeted Doug Williams for criminal prosecution and may have attempted to entrap AntiPolygraph.org co-founder George Maschke.

Virgil Vaduva is a Libertarian security professional, journalist, photographer and overall liberty freak.  He spent most of his life in Communist Romania and participated in the 1989 street protests which led to the collapse of the Ceausescu regime. He can be reached at vvaduva at truthvoice.com.