[HN Gopher] Personal Statement of a CIA Analyst
___________________________________________________________________
Personal Statement of a CIA Analyst
Author : grubbs
Score : 198 points
Date : 2026-02-21 17:49 UTC (11 hours ago)
HTML web link (antipolygraph.org)
TEXT w3m dump (antipolygraph.org)
| zenon_paradox wrote:
| The most troubling aspect of these accounts is the
| "unfalsifiable" nature of the countermeasure accusation. Once an
| examiner decides you're manipulating your physiological response,
| there is no empirical way to prove you weren't. It essentially
| turns a high-stakes job interview into a test of how well you can
| suppress natural stress reactions. It's a shame to see how many
| talented individuals are sidelined by a process that prizes a
| specific physiological profile over a demonstrated record of
| integrity.
| Paracompact wrote:
| 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?
| eru wrote:
| It's a bureaucracy like any other.
| airstrike wrote:
| Not a bad person, just lacking in wisdom.
| marxisttemp wrote:
| Not really
| SpaceL10n wrote:
| I would use this information to reflect.
| Paracompact wrote:
| How do you mean? I don't look down on anyone.
| bitwize wrote:
| The movie _Spy_ (2015) is probably the most accurate, realistic
| version of the CIA in cinema, replete with celebratory cakes
| for supervisors ' birthdays and crumbling infrastructure due to
| insufficient funding.
| Paracompact wrote:
| How do you know it's realistic?
| mzajc wrote:
| (2018)
| ifh-hn wrote:
| I've no idea why I read to the end of that, seems like a long
| ramble, I kept expecting something to happen and it never did.
| alansaber wrote:
| This was how I felt about reading War and Peace
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| tl;dr: polygraphs aren't reliable and can be misused?
| breve wrote:
| It's not that they're unreliable, they simply don't work in
| the first place.
|
| The misuse is that they're used at all.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's a prop to conduct an adversarial interrogation without
| the same stigma.
| tokenless wrote:
| And they are performed interrogation style but cannot be
| refused without risking your career.
|
| OTOH, someone arrested can (probably should?) refuse.
| Drupon wrote:
| "One of the most evil organizations in the world responsible
| for untold human misery treats its employees and applicants
| badly :( :( :("
|
| That was all that was in there. Just complaining from someone
| that was salty they might have missed their chance at playing
| with the infant annihilator gun in South America.
| tokenless wrote:
| He is a good writer. I also read to end and my attention span
| isn't good! I think the switching between what happened, what
| he felt and just the plain "daily WTF" rediculousness of the
| situations is what kept me locked in.
| BlueMacaw wrote:
| >He is a good writer.
|
| I assumed the author was a she...
| itishappy wrote:
| The title is "A CIA Analyst Shares Her Polygraph
| Experience" so it appears you are correct. I'd assumed
| incorrectly, so appreciate the discussion!
| BlobberSnobber wrote:
| It made me cringe at how boot-licking the author, and
| apparently a lot of people at the CIA, are (like defending the
| "petty thief" not getting the job).
|
| People will work for one of the most evil organizations in the
| world and expect pity for being interrogated, while that same
| organization has torture sites.
| ElProlactin wrote:
| And they were the happiest years of her life!
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| I don't get it, I thought it's settled science that polygraphs
| don't work. Why are these agencies still using them?
| sonofhans wrote:
| They do work. Their purpose is intimidation. They're not truth
| machines, they're pressure cookers.
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| There's an old interview on C-SPAN's BookTV with a CIA
| polygrapher. He seems to genuinely believe in the validity of
| the polygraph, but watching the interview, I was convinced
| that the only value comes from intimidation and stress.
|
| (all-caps bad transcription)
|
| > THE ESSENCE OF A POLYGRAPH TEST IS IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO
| LOSE BY FAILING A POLYGRAPH TEST IF YOU WILL, OR SOMETHING TO
| GAIN BY PASSING IT, THAT IS WHAT MAKES THE POLYGRAPH
| EFFECTIVE. WITHOUT THE FEAR OF DETECTION IT IN A SIMPLE WAY
| AS I CAN PUT IT THAT IS WHAT MAKES IT WORK. YOU HAVE TO BE
| AFRAID. IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BY TAKING THE POLYGRAPH
| TEST THAN THE PRESSURE IS NOT ON YOU. BUT AS I SAID THAT IS
| WHAT MAKES YOU WORK. IT HAS TO BE PROTECTION MORE THAN GILTS.
| NOW YOU MAY FEEL GUILTY, BUT FEAR OF DETECTION IS THE
| OVERRIDING CONCERN IN IN A POLYGRAPH TEST
|
| https://www.c-span.org/program/book-tv/gatekeeper/180053
| Stevvo wrote:
| It sounds like religion; it only works if people believe in
| it.
| influx wrote:
| Exactly, the whole point is to put someone into an
| interrogation scenario for hours or days, where you control
| whether nor not they "passed". Unfortunately, it probably has
| zero effect on psychopaths.
| spatley wrote:
| Unfortunately psychopathy may be the most desirable trait.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| They have only filter out the morons, though.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Right. And I don't think the abuse of the vetting people is
| by accident. I think it's a vulnerability, where people in
| positions of "collecting dirt" on others, often end up
| fabricating the dirt, and doing other very bad things because
| the power imbalance of asymmetric information corrupts.
|
| COme to think of it, maybe that's why priests who take
| confessions are also correlated with abuse. Something about
| having this assymetry over many others maybe scrambles their
| moral circuitry...The Catholic conneciton is just a theory
| that surfaced now tho, haven't thought it more than that. But
| the badness of the vetting people is certain. Sad that
| governments have to tarnish their good names employing such
| miscreants.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >I thought it's settled science that polygraphs don't work
|
| Of course they do. And if you read the article in the OP you
| also realize why.
|
| Polygraphs are an interrogation tactic, you can force a subject
| into a somewhat ridiculous procedure and ask them threatening
| questions, creating an disorientating situation. Afterwards you
| can accuse them of having "proven" that they are a liar.
| Polygraphs work, it just does not matter whether the machine is
| on or off.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/0gJFG
| Cider9986 wrote:
| It is not paywalled....
| joecool1029 wrote:
| I posted it because the site was overloaded and would not
| load at the time...
| shevy-java wrote:
| > countermeasures such as butt-clenching
|
| 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).
| BoredPositron wrote:
| It's not butt clenching it's Kegels you just say butt clenching
| because it's funny.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| I got yelled at for inadvertently "closing my sphincter" (the
| examiner's exact words) the one time I tried to take a
| polygraph at the CIA, they do actually care about that.
| keepamovin wrote:
| This is because the vagus nerve interfaces with the
| parasympathetic nervous system, the responses of which are what
| the instrument measures. And the vagus nerve terminates in
| the...you know. And so that's one way that you can get control
| over the metrics.
| marxisttemp wrote:
| The guy trying to work for the psychological torture club got
| psychologically tortured a little? My heart bleeds for him
| tptacek wrote:
| What do the people writing these kinds of comments think the
| CIA is? There are mustache-twirling villains there, in greater
| proportion than in other government organizations, but the
| median CIA employee sits at a desk and translates cables from
| Farsi to English and back again, or keeps track of the rainfall
| in Azerbaijan. A very small fraction of the agency does
| anything more "interesting" than that, and the majority of
| people there perform functions that every government in the
| world also performs.
| wedog6 wrote:
| It's not about mustache twirling villains though is it. There
| are also a large number of people there who sit at desks and
| handle the logistics of moving people who are entitled either
| to be treated as PoWs or to a fair trial, into countries
| where they can be tortured while preserving a facade of it
| not being done by the agency itself.
| tptacek wrote:
| Just have the courage of your convictions and extend this
| logic of culpability to everybody who works for the United
| States Government. Otherwise, it just sounds like you don't
| understand that a _huge_ fraction of the work of
| intelligence is _preventing wars_.
|
| I don't think the CIA is broadly a force for good. I think
| that the presumption that most people working there are
| evil is unfounded, though. It's a huge organization with a
| big portfolio, most of which isn't telegenic or activating.
| the_af wrote:
| It's very hard to understand what you're arguing though.
|
| You agree the CIA is not "broadly a force for good"
| (which I consider a big understatement). You also don't
| seem to disagree it's an organization whose activities
| involve, among others, torture, assassinations,
| extraordinary renditions, psyops, etc. Yes, sometimes to
| "prevent wars", other times to incite wars or to topple
| governments they don't like, or to help crush down
| rebellions they don't like, or to help rebellions they do
| like.
|
| So why this fixation on pointing out that the majority of
| CIA analysts are pencil pushers and not directly involved
| in unsavory activities? They still enable them. And they
| willingly work for this organization, why make excuses
| for them just because some of them are nerds who wear a
| suit and don't personally torture anybody, and instead
| translate Farsi or Chinese?
|
| As a reminder, this is the comment to which you're
| reacting:
|
| > _The guy trying to work for the psychological torture
| club got psychologically tortured a little? My heart
| bleeds for him_
|
| I mean, the comment is right. This guy in TFA did
| willingly belong to a psychological torture group, even
| if he's not directly involved in this particular
| activity. It's ok for us to react at the irony of the
| situation, that he feels tortured by the polygraph, given
| the organization he belongs to. They didn't even
| physically touch him, yet he felt "abused".
|
| I'm sure you understand the slippery slope of comparing
| the CIA to all of the US government is just not right.
| Herring wrote:
| That's true of every criminal org. Enforcers are usually
| a small percentage of the population, because they are
| fundamentally businesses. Violence is "expensive" in
| terms of heat from law enforcement, lost revenue, lower
| internal stability, etc.
|
| You don't need to defend it with weak arguments. If you
| feel like you do, that is a bigger issue, maybe talk to
| your local therapist or priest.
| Animats wrote:
| 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.
| jMyles wrote:
| I'm curious about how "residence" is defined for this purpose
| (and for many purposes). Often it's just presumed that people
| will know what a "residence" is, but I've lived many years of
| my life houseless, including on a skoolie.
|
| I never know what to say about my residence. Even now, I own a
| house, but I don't consider it my home, at least not all the
| time. Have a specific "residence" presumes that there's one set
| of coordinates on earth that is canonical for each human, but
| many people don't live this way.
|
| Is there a definition that cuts through this?
| relaxing wrote:
| 90 days living there is the threshold.
|
| You wouldn't make a good candidate for a national security
| job, not that it sounds like you want to be. Investigators
| would want to know who you'd been associating with at all
| those different places, and tracking it all down would take a
| long time ( the wait for the investigation can be years, the
| period during which you'd be unhireable for the job you were
| going after.)
| jMyles wrote:
| ...I think I'd make a great candidate for a national
| security job, if the job meant the security of the nation
| rather than the security of the state.
|
| But I take your point of course. :-)
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The paradigm of a residence is much more fluid than many
| people think.
|
| I used to work on boats. For income tax purposes I was a
| BVI resident, for immigration purposes I was a US resident
| since I didn't have a residence permit in the BVI (not
| necessary for boat crew), for the purpose of immigration
| establishing a relationship with my future wife we did not
| - by their judgment - live together, or even in the same
| country (despite sharing a cabin with ~10 sq. ft. of floor
| space), for the purposes of voter registration I was a
| Colorado resident.
|
| Depending on which government and agency within that
| government you ask, I could be a US resident (Colorado sec.
| of state), while not being a US resident (IRS), while being
| a US resident (US CBP), while not being a resident of the
| country I was physically living and working in (BVI), while
| living in a different country than my wife who I was never
| more than 100 ft. from (CBSA).
|
| The actual foreign address accepted by the IRS, and
| Canadian immigration authorities (slightly anonymized):
| [BOAT_NAME],Bob's dock, East End, Tortola, BVI.
|
| Residence is far more complicated for many people than the
| standard government mold assumes.
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| > 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 - <wink>
| Animats wrote:
| 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.
| kirubakaran wrote:
| Sure <wink>
| ddtaylor wrote:
| 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.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't know what that means, because a polygraph by design
| tells the polygrapher whatever they want it to.
| c22 wrote:
| If the demonstration was performed in some blinded protocol
| then perhaps there was more room for ambiguity in the results
| than usual.
| wedog6 wrote:
| I believe it was the subject of the test who could make the
| polygraph reading show whatever they wanted, even though it
| was being administered by an experienced operator.
| the_af wrote:
| I think the point is that, since polygraph readings are
| pseudoscience, it's always the interrogator who picks what
| they "mean". If this is true, a smart test subject cannot
| mislead them, since there's nothing to mislead, as the
| polygraph is just a pressure technique and it means
| whatever the interrogator needs it to mean.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| > 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.
| delichon wrote:
| 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.
| JCattheATM wrote:
| > 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.
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| 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?
| Aeolun wrote:
| If you don't at least mention that damning fact on your
| polygraph, of course it is!
| xgulfie wrote:
| I remember hearing you can't even get government clearance if
| you admit you have ever smoked weed. Incredible
| snickerbockers wrote:
| The problem from the CIA's perspective isn't petty theft, it's
| getting caught.
| delichon wrote:
| 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.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| 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.
| XorNot wrote:
| 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.
| endominus wrote:
| > 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
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| Plenty of things we could be wasting money on if the only
| criteria is "how do you know it's not real?", why stop at
| killing goats with mind bullets? We could be looking for
| yetis or Atlantis or lunar nazi spaceships.
|
| It was a giant waste of time and money and, this being the
| CIA, it likely harmed many people.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Was drugging random Americans with LSD also a valid
| experiment? Parts of the CIA was just insane back then, maybe
| still is.
| post-it wrote:
| Yeah absolutely. Figuring out which, if any, drugs can be
| used to control people is extremely valuable for defence,
| not to mention offence. Same with the fascist Japanese
| frostbite experiments.
|
| Let me be clear: these were all _wrong_ and _unethical_ ,
| and I would not have approved or conducted them. But if
| you're a government agency tasked with doing wrong and
| unethical things in the name of national security, they
| were all good ideas to at least try.
| rapnie wrote:
| I always wonder when I see one of those hypnosis shows, where
| someone from the audience makes themselves a docile fool in
| front of a large crowd, whether they are stooges or it is the
| real deal. But I wouldn't volunteer to get hypnotised to
| figure that out, in fear of being the next person who stands
| imitating a dog in heat on such a stage.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| There's a good book about this called Reality is Plastic.
| It may give you a new perspective.
| gigatree wrote:
| The few people I've asked who've been hypnotized said it
| was true and had no reason to lie or trick me, and it seems
| true. But if the lens is "we already figured out all
| biology and physics so we can ignore the possibility of
| actual hypnosis (putting someone in a trance stage) being
| possible" then it's hard to see things that there's
| actually immense evidence for (eg the telepathy tapes).
| driverdan wrote:
| You don't waste resources researching something with no
| plausibility or explanation as to how it could exist.
| bigiain wrote:
| <looks sideways at the entire AI industry and it's AGI
| claims>
| delichon wrote:
| 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.
| awakeasleep wrote:
| Everyone repeats this old canard but no one has any evidence
| even anecdotes to show that a polygraph machine is better
| than any other way to head fake someone in an interrogation
| bigiain wrote:
| I'd like to say "I'm always surprised to hear that a
| government agency administers institutionalized mental
| abuse". But I'm not surprised at all.
|
| ACAB, Including being B to other C.
| halJordan wrote:
| If you ever get the opportunity to read what people admit,
| unprompted, during these "conversations" then you'll know why
| they'll never go away. Stuff like, "yeah i stepped on a
| kitten's head once, but i was young... No i don't see why
| anyone would have a problem with that."
|
| No one wants that guy working at the cia.
| masfuerte wrote:
| Are you sure? Post 9/11 the CIA decided they needed to be in
| the business of kidnapping and torturing. They didn't seem to
| have any trouble finding employees to do it.
| ElProlactin wrote:
| Yeah, they need people who will do the most inhumane things
| to other human beings, not animals.
| mmooss wrote:
| Soldiers need to kill people, but you don't want
| sociopathic soldiers - you want the opposite: Someone who
| can handle their emotions, not someone who hides from them,
| runs from them, or tries to bury or ignore them. The latter
| are not stable or reliable under stress.
| 13415 wrote:
| 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.
| Arainach wrote:
| 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.
| keepamovin wrote:
| At lesat now the IC has dirt on you should you ever step out of
| line.
| coreyburnsdev wrote:
| really? working with the nsa would probably be very interesting
| work!
| bigiain wrote:
| There are probably interesting jobs at drug cartels and in
| organised crime.
| fmajid wrote:
| 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.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| It isn't really much better, but is a lot more expensive:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FMRI_lie_detection
| keepamovin wrote:
| Perhaps the point is it's "confession theatre". You're put in a
| stress position, worried that the "magical machine" can read
| your darkest secrets, and told that everything will go easier
| if you're just honest, and so that's why you're inclined to
| spill them. Which is what they are trying to get you to do.
| gbcfghhjj wrote:
| Yes and also consider they want to assess how well you stand
| up to interrogation generally
| keepamovin wrote:
| Hm, what's the relevance for people who don't leave office?
| mrb wrote:
| _" 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 =:-)
| greedo wrote:
| Didn't RMS do this with his emails?
| yesbabyyes wrote:
| No, Stallman uses Emacs:
|
| > I spend most of my time editing in Emacs. I read and send
| mail with Emacs using M-x rmail and C-x m. I have no
| experience with any other email client programs.
|
| You may have confused this with his somewhat idiosyncratic
| way of browsing the web:
|
| > I generally do not connect to web sites from my own
| machine, aside from a few sites I have some special
| relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites
| by sending mail to a program (see
| https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/womb/hacks.git) that fetches
| them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me. Then I
| look at them using a web browser, unless it is easy to see
| the text in the HTML page directly. I usually try lynx first,
| then a graphical browser if the page needs it.
|
| https://stallman.org/cgi-bin/showpage.cgi?path=/stallman-
| com...
|
| Donald Knuth, on the other hand, quit email in 1990, after
| using it for 15 years:
|
| > I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I
| no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about
| 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for
| one lifetime.
|
| Since then, he prefers snail mail but has a secretary who
| will print out his emails:
|
| > My secretary also prints out all nonspam email messages
| addressed to taocp@cs.stanford.edu or knuth-
| bug@cs.stanford.edu, so that I can reply with written
| comments when I have a chance. If I run across such a message
| that was misaddressed --- I mean, if the message asks a
| question instead of reporting an error --- I try not to get
| angry.
|
| https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html
| andrewflnr wrote:
| If someone has that level of opsec, the CIA should be trying to
| recruit and turn them even if they're guilty.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| 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.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > 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.
| BlueMacaw wrote:
| I'm under the impression this was written by a woman. Obviously
| could be either gender, but it "fits better" if you read it
| from a female perspective.
|
| > I left only because I got married and had a baby.
|
| > I was so frustrated, I started to cry.
|
| > As we walked across the lobby, I thought I was going to
| faint.
| antonvs wrote:
| Has the United States of America ever actually been a serious
| country?
| lisper wrote:
| Parts of it once were, yes.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| 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.
|
| >"Admit it, you're deeply in debt. Creditors are pounding on your
| door!" I said. "You've just revealed to me that you haven't
| bothered to pull my credit report. Are you lazy, or are you
| cheap?"
|
| this is another thing they look for that doesn't necessarily
| indicate you are compromised but could be used to compromise you
| in the future. Unlike the above example of petty theft this is
| actually something that can disqualify you since obviously the
| agency isn't going to pay off your credit card.
|
| >I was so frustrated, I started to cry.
|
| Working for the government is extremely unhealthy because these
| people only surround themselves with other government employees
| and somehow they get this idea in their head that they have to
| work for the federal government or work indirectly for the
| federal government via a defense contractor (they call this
| "private sector" even though no sane person would ever think that
| adding a middleman between you and the people who tell you what
| to do changes anything). In some cases this is justified because
| there are many career paths which are impossible or illegal to
| make profit off of and the only people who will pay you to do
| them are the government. There are literally people whose entire
| adult lives are spent looking at high-altitude aerial photography
| and circling things with a sharpie so i can kind of understand
| how they might be devastated if they lose their clearance, but at
| least 75% of all glowies have some skill which would be in demand
| by actual private industry if they didn't suffer from this weird
| "battered housewife syndrome" that compels them to keep working
| for the government even though it subjects them to annual
| mandatory bullying sessions.
|
| >I'd just refused a polygraph. I felt like Neville Longbottom
| when he drew the sword of Gryffindor and advanced on Lord
| Voldemort. I was filled with righteous indignation, and it gave
| me courage.
|
| Again, glowies are _so fucking lame_. This person just
| unironically compared failing a polygraph exam to the climactic
| scene from a seven-volume series of childrens ' books about an 11
| year-old boy in england who goes to a special high school for
| wizards.
| lysace wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Eh, all the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway and Sweden)
| definitely have extradition treaties with the U.S.
| enneff wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Why would you subject yourself to this?
| ineedasername wrote:
| 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?
| SteveNuts wrote:
| Go watch the JCS episode with the Chris Watts interrogation
| including his polygraph, you'll see it's actually extremely
| effective.
|
| As a scientific tool to literally detect lies it's completely
| bunk, but all the interrogator has to say is "the machine said
| you weren't 100% truthful" and humans will 9 times out of 10
| start blabbing.
|
| It absolutely works as an interrogation tool.
|
| https://youtu.be/nVZhV7M3mNE
| themafia wrote:
| > but I wondered why a petty thief thought she could get into the
| Agency.
|
| ....do you not understand what "the Agency" actually does?
|
| It's no wonder they create this giant wall of existential dread
| to the applicants. It prevents them from seeing the scope of what
| they're about to get themselves into.
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