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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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 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'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.
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.)
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.
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 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).
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.
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.
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
>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.
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?
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.
Not bad, just as misinformed as most folks out there about the process and requirements.
National Security is a PITA, full of cutthroat sociopaths who would eat the SV VC-types for breakfast. That is a compliment, because the work they do is broadly dark and grimly necessary, at least at the levels of global geopolitics a lot of them are expected to operate at. I washed out in contracting for much the same reason this person kept "failing" polygraphs: honesty to the point of external perceptions of naivety. The types who excel in these sectors see folks like us as doormats or tissues, and react poorly when we catch them in the act and demand anything resembling respect because they know we're a threat to the entire establishment if we're allowed to succeed.
The point of polygraphs has always been about control, and folks who resist that sort of control are incidentally highlighting themselves as being uncontrollable to power alone. The books the author links are excellent starting points for understanding the true function of a polygraph, and why more places are outlawing them as a means of trying to diversify a deeply broken and hostile security apparatus by preventing it from being a "blind fools and sociopaths-only" club.
It would seem there's a spectrum of beliefs regarding the people in the CIA, the FBI, in politics, etc. ranging from "They're just like us!" to "They're lizard people (for better or for worse)." In other words, is it the situation or is it the person/self-selection? I self-identify as uninformed about the bigger picture, but my experience working in a federally adjacent sector where all my colleagues are perfectly normal, and yet there is always above us the stench of lizardry in the decisions being made, has me believing in the hypothesis that every bureaucracy is largely staffed with normal people doing the legwork (sometimes very high level, high paying, and highly consequential legwork), and lizards controlling the brain at the management and director levels.
> I washed out in contracting for much the same reason this person kept "failing" polygraphs: honesty to the point of external perceptions of naivety.
I'm curious if you're willing to elaborate on this story. So far in my career I've yet been forced to bend my knee to a lizard, nor become one, but it sounds like you have some experience.
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 was all so weird to read about. I guess I just assumed the polygraph was of marginal utility, and you either passed, or you didn't. I didn't realize it was part of a combative interrogation process, even for regular employees.
This comment or something like it should be at the top, because it's the main point about polygraphing. It's the process, not the answers that matter.
I knew a guy who did security clearance checking for the Three Letter Agencies for many years. He told be that if I ever had to do these interviews, I just need to pick good sounding lies and stick to them. He said it's the ones who try to be honest and introspective who get failed out.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
This was how I felt about reading War and Peace
tl;dr: polygraphs aren't reliable and can be misused?
And they are performed interrogation style but cannot be refused without risking your career.
OTOH, someone arrested can (probably should?) refuse.
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.
"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.
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 don't know what that means, because a polygraph by design tells the polygrapher whatever they want it to.
If the demonstration was performed in some blinded protocol then perhaps there was more room for ambiguity in the results than usual.
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 - <wink>
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?
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.)
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.
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.
> 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).
It's not butt clenching it's Kegels you just say butt clenching because it's funny.
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 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.
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.
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
It sounds like religion; it only works if people believe in it.
>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.
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?
Not a bad person, just lacking in wisdom.
Not really
It's a bureaucracy like any other.
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.
How do you know it's realistic?
I would use this information to reflect.
How do you mean? I don't look down on anyone.
Not bad, just as misinformed as most folks out there about the process and requirements.
National Security is a PITA, full of cutthroat sociopaths who would eat the SV VC-types for breakfast. That is a compliment, because the work they do is broadly dark and grimly necessary, at least at the levels of global geopolitics a lot of them are expected to operate at. I washed out in contracting for much the same reason this person kept "failing" polygraphs: honesty to the point of external perceptions of naivety. The types who excel in these sectors see folks like us as doormats or tissues, and react poorly when we catch them in the act and demand anything resembling respect because they know we're a threat to the entire establishment if we're allowed to succeed.
The point of polygraphs has always been about control, and folks who resist that sort of control are incidentally highlighting themselves as being uncontrollable to power alone. The books the author links are excellent starting points for understanding the true function of a polygraph, and why more places are outlawing them as a means of trying to diversify a deeply broken and hostile security apparatus by preventing it from being a "blind fools and sociopaths-only" club.
It would seem there's a spectrum of beliefs regarding the people in the CIA, the FBI, in politics, etc. ranging from "They're just like us!" to "They're lizard people (for better or for worse)." In other words, is it the situation or is it the person/self-selection? I self-identify as uninformed about the bigger picture, but my experience working in a federally adjacent sector where all my colleagues are perfectly normal, and yet there is always above us the stench of lizardry in the decisions being made, has me believing in the hypothesis that every bureaucracy is largely staffed with normal people doing the legwork (sometimes very high level, high paying, and highly consequential legwork), and lizards controlling the brain at the management and director levels.
> I washed out in contracting for much the same reason this person kept "failing" polygraphs: honesty to the point of external perceptions of naivety.
I'm curious if you're willing to elaborate on this story. So far in my career I've yet been forced to bend my knee to a lizard, nor become one, but it sounds like you have some experience.
https://archive.ph/0gJFG
It is not paywalled....
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 was all so weird to read about. I guess I just assumed the polygraph was of marginal utility, and you either passed, or you didn't. I didn't realize it was part of a combative interrogation process, even for regular employees.
This comment or something like it should be at the top, because it's the main point about polygraphing. It's the process, not the answers that matter.
I knew a guy who did security clearance checking for the Three Letter Agencies for many years. He told be that if I ever had to do these interviews, I just need to pick good sounding lies and stick to them. He said it's the ones who try to be honest and introspective who get failed out.
There's two kinds of sociopaths, the uncontrollable ones and the controllable ones. The CIA only wants the latter.
(2018)
The guy trying to work for the psychological torture club got psychologically tortured a little? My heart bleeds for him
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.