Guest Post - Lie detectors REALLY work

Another gift from Jay Yurth (Amazon.com)
Them lie detectors REALLY work.


In 1989 I got orders to Fleet Intelligence Center Pacific or FICPAC at Pearl Harbor Hawaii. I had been flown off my 2nd Aircraft Carrier, the U.S.S. Ranger, 3 days from pulling into Perth, Australia. I had a choice to fly off after the port visit but I was married to my Really Crazy 2nd wife (when I can tell stories of my 2nd wife without my butt puckering I will) and I thought it would be better to not visit a country where the women ask the men out, pay for the dates, hold the doors for the men and the toilet and sink water flows backwards. Transferring off a carrier in the south Indian Ocean will be another story to be told later as well. But I digress.

When you get to a duty station that has Intelligence in the title you can be assured that you will need a security clearance. I had to get a Top Secret/ SCI. The SCI means Secret Compartmentalized Information. Top Secret is the highest clearance that the Navy gives out (no matter what you see in the movies) But the SCI means that there may be various levels or compartments that you may or may not be briefed into. So for each compartment you were allowed to “know about”, you got a different colored stripe on your badge. I was pre-screened by a NCIS guy who asked me about all of my …um nefarious activities, if any. You know arrests, speeding tickets, and drug use. Well, I was up front and told him everything. He was amazed that I was still alive but asked if I still did any of those things and I said, “Of course not”. Check! You’re good to go.

Quickly my day came to go get the lie detector test for “morality”. This is different from the “life style” test. A morality test is given to see if you can be trusted to keep government secrets. I get to the office and I am told that they will ask 3 questions to get base line answers to work off of. They tell me exactly what the questions are going to be. They hook me up with something on my index finger and a tube around my chest. I am facing a wall, told not to turn my head, say anything without being asked, don’t move, just relax. Yeah, right.

First, is a positive-positive question, which means they asked, “Is your name Gerald?” I say, “Yes.” Now that is a positive-positive answer. Then they asked, “Is your name Jay?” “No.” I said that because it is a nick name. That was the negative-negative. Then you notice that there is a piece of paper on the wall right in front of you and it has the numbers 1-5 and 7-10 written in a vertical line. There is a space where the 6 should be. They have you physically write in the number 6, but they tell you to answer “No” to all the next ten questions. And they proceed to ask you if you wrote the numbers. They go from 1 to 10 and of course when you get to the 6 you have been told to lie, since you DID write the 6 there. This is how they can get a measurement as to when you lie. Seems your heart and or breathing will change a bit, this would be a negative-positive answer. Then after that they when through a bunch of questions and you again know exactly what they are going to ask and you get hooked up and they ask them. To give some other insight on the prep questions, they asked me if I had ever flown an airplane and I kind of said well, not really and they guy said explain please. Well, I worked at an airport and I have taxied a plane and flown one in the air, but never taken off or landed one.

He said, “Good, now you see how we must weed out that question. You were not really sure of you own answer”. OK then. I take the test and go sit in the waiting room.

The other 4 guys I went in with all sat and waited and they all got called back in and they all left before I did. The tester guy finally calls me back in and says there was a little discrepancy on one of my answers. He wanted to know if I thought I could tell him which one I may have been fuzzy about during the test. Sure I said, “The one where you asked if I had ever betrayed anyone’s trust that had given me their full trust”. He asked what caused my confusion and I said, that I had been married to my 1st wife and got a divorce and for a millionth of a second during the test, I had a little thought that flashed though my head that that may have been a betrayal of trust. He said, yes that was the question that you “Pinged” on. He then went back and discussed it for another 10 minutes or so and came back and let me know that they all agreed that I didn’t have to take it all over again. I will be getting my clearance. I had my TS/SCI for 8 years in the Navy.

Wow, I mean really, I remember just barely thinking about that for just a moment and it registered on the machine. I think all polygraph tests should be admissible in court. It would save a whole bunch of time and money. They are RIGHT on!!