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Personal Statement of a CIA Analyst

antipolygraph.org

61–70 of 183 posts

Re: Personal Statement of a CIA Analyst

#61

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.

The polygraph doesn't have to emit any useful data at all to be very useful in interrogations. Like a bomb doesn't have to have any explosive in it to clear a building. Interrogation is a head game and a complicated box with knobs and buttons and maybe even blinking lights makes a fine prop.

And there's enough ambiguity in it that it's easy for the operator to believe it helps. Like a dowser with their rods, a clergyman with a holy book or an astrologist with a horoscope. That gives them the power boost of sincerity.

Re: Personal Statement of a CIA Analyst

#62
post #31

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 was put through the mill of getting higher level security clearances so I could be assigned to classified projects. Fortunately, I never was. Sure was lucky you didn’t work on any of those classified projects -

The company had decided to move networking R&D to Colorado Springs, where they supported USAF facilities, and I didn't want to leave Silicon Valley for that.

Re: Personal Statement of a CIA Analyst

#63
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.

Re: Personal Statement of a CIA Analyst

#64
post #56

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 research was oriented towards making sure it wasn't possible though. You're saying "of course it isn't" - but how do you know that? At the time the Soviets had the same sort of projects. So until you're sure it's not possible, the potential capability is an enormous threat if it is. How they went about that research is where the waste creeps in.

> General Brown: So they started doing psy-research because they thought we were doing psy-research, when in fact we weren't doing psy-research?

> Brigadier General Dean Hopgood: Yes sir. But now that they are doing psy-research, we're gonna have to do psy-research, sir. We can't afford to have the Russian's leading the field in the paranormal.

Source: The Men Who Stare at Goats

Re: Personal Statement of a CIA Analyst

#65

> but I wondered why a petty thief thought she could get into the Agency. It’s reassuring to know no one at the CIA has ever done anything wrong, like stealing fifty dollars.

Knowing someone had committed petty theft is at least a red flag. I can't blame an employer for considering it disqualifying when they have many equally qualified candidates without it. Even for a burger flipper, let alone a secret agent.

> Knowing someone had committed petty theft is at least a red flag.

Not really, since everyone has done so. Even you.

Not getting caught for it on the other hand could be a positive.

Re: Personal Statement of a CIA Analyst

#66

> but I wondered why a petty thief thought she could get into the Agency. It’s reassuring to know no one at the CIA has ever done anything wrong, like stealing fifty dollars.

Knowing someone had committed petty theft is at least a red flag. I can't blame an employer for considering it disqualifying when they have many equally qualified candidates without it. Even for a burger flipper, let alone a secret agent.

We know nothing about the situation. It's entirely possible that the person took $50 from their parent's purse as a child.

My parents used to love to tease me about the time I stole candy from the grocery store as a child. Is that a red flag?

Re: Personal Statement of a CIA Analyst

#67
"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 =:-)

Re: Personal Statement of a CIA Analyst

#68

I don't get it, I thought it's settled science that polygraphs don't work. Why are these agencies still using them?

They do work. Their purpose is intimidation. They’re not truth machines, they’re pressure cookers.

They have only filter out the morons, though.

Re: Personal Statement of a CIA Analyst

#70
post #63

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.

It isn't really much better, but is a lot more expensive:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FMRI_lie_detection

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