04/30/15 – Doug Williams – The Scott Horton Show

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My email address is scott at scotthorton.org Alright you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
Our next guest is Doug Williams.
He's the author of the book From Cop to Crusader.
And he was a polygraph examiner in Oklahoma City.
So first of all, welcome to the show Doug, how are you?
Great Scott, good to be with you.
Good, happy to have you here.
So now, I have this right that the federal government is putting you on trial here just within a couple of weeks?
Yes, the Orwellian Ministry of Truth has decided that my information constitutes a font crime.
And so they're going to try to throw me in prison for a hundred years and bankrupt me.
And this is a direct quote from the man John R. Schwartz, Customs and Border Patrol agent who was behind all this investigation called Operation Linebusters.
This is a direct quote from him as to why they are going after me.
He said, quote, we are going to go after the man who has protested the loudest and the longest against the polygraph.
Unquote.
That is exactly what they're doing to me.
And why they're doing it is because I have the audacity to protest the use of the polygraph as a lie detector.
All right.
So, well, let's talk about that for a second.
You're saying that the polygraph is not a lie detector?
Not only am I saying that, every scientist with any integrity or intelligence has said that.
The United States Supreme Court has said that.
The Office of Technology Assessment has said that.
As a matter of fact, it's against the federal law for anybody in private industry to even run one of these damn things.
In other words, for a boss to require their employee to answer.
Yeah, the Employee Polygraph Protection Act was passed in 1988.
I testified in Congress in support of that legislation.
And the Employee Polygraph Protection Act makes it illegal for employers to require.
As a matter of fact, here just a couple of weeks ago, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the translators that work in a civilian capacity for the Drug Enforcement Agency were forced to take polygraph examinations.
Some of them were fired for either, quote unquote, failing it or refusing to take it.
And they sued under the Employee Polygraph Protection Act.
And just a few days ago, a federal jury awarded them $4 million for this.
All right.
Now, how long has it been since this was your job and you decided to turn around and expose this industry rather than participate in it?
From 1972 to 1979, I was a police detective sergeant with the Oklahoma City Police Department in charge of the polygraph section of the Internal Affairs Department.
So it was from 72 to 79 that I ran them.
And then ever since from 79 to the present day, some 36 years soon to be, I have been fighting the use of this Orwellian instrument of torture.
All right.
Well, so a couple of things.
First of all, you believed in it the whole time or you were a fraud all along before you turned around?
And then secondly, it's still been a long time, quite a long time since you did turn around on it.
How come they're only prosecuting you now?
I guess I'm almost 70.
I guess they figured if they're going to get their revenge, they better do it pretty damn quick or I froze.
But no, yeah, I knew from the get-go, I knew in polygraph school that polygraph wasn't valid or reliable as a lie detector.
And so did everybody in the school, including the instructors in the school.
As a matter of fact, polygraph school, which by the way, lasts about 12 weeks, which of course is about seven weeks shorter than the school to get you a barber's license, if that tells you anything.
But 95% of the time in that school, they didn't talk about the polygraph being used as a lie detector or chart analysis or any of that.
They taught interrogation techniques.
And I'll give them that.
They've got one hell of a good psychological billy club.
And I got a lot of confessions scaring the hell out of people with this damn thing.
And that's why you call it a torture device, because it's basically it's a prop that puts tremendous fear into people.
Absolutely, and rightly so.
The fear is well-grounded, because a polygraph operator can call you a liar.
He doesn't have to offer any evidence whatsoever to back up his accusation, and there's no appeal from his decision.
That would cause me to be fearful.
If I go in there, no one, anybody who spends even 10 minutes on the Internet knows a polygraph is a fraud, knows that it does not detect deception, knows that it's no more accurate than the toss of a coin.
So, yeah, they're fearful, but it's a real – but it's a ruse.
It's a ruse to get you into the hands of a trained interrogator to interrogate you as long as he wants to interrogate you.
Polygraph tests, the actual test itself, when you're actually hooked up to the machine, is about 10 minutes long.
They ask about six or seven questions, three times each.
The rest of the time – by the way, polygraph examination lasts anywhere from two to four hours and can be three or four different examinations over a period of days.
So you could be having numerous hours of interrogation.
So you're hooked up to the machine for the test for about 10 minutes.
The other two or three hours, you're in an intense interrogation.
All right.
Now, so your charges come from the fact that you were entrapped.
Is that right?
They sent undercover informants to come and trick you into crossing what line?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I still don't see how they can jam these little – as a matter of fact, there was just a recent case – I wish I had a citation here in front of me – where one of the higher appellate courts really chastised the government for taking statutes and twisting them around to try to make them fit in order to prosecute someone criminally.
And that's what they've done here.
Their main charges are – I don't know how many counts – four or five counts of obstruction of an official process.
Now, they didn't have the stupidity or the temerity to call it obstruction of justice because they knew damn well polygraph hadn't got anything to do with justice.
But they thought, well, we'll change this around.
We'll use this nebulous term, official process, because that's what I'm charged with, obstruction of an official process.
Now, in the first place, I don't see how the polygraph can be described as an official process when it's outlawed in the private sector, cannot be admitted into evidence, and should never be used as a sole determinant of guilt or innocence by their own rule.
So how can it be an official process, something that's illegal in most cases?
Secondly, how can teaching someone how to relax when they're taking it be construed as an obstruction of that process?
Well, I mean, they would say you're teaching them to get away with lying, right?
That's what they're alleging, but the only one that was lying in there was them.
They were lying about lying.
But now, so if they say, well, look, you're knowingly teaching these people how to get away with lying, your answer is no, I'm teaching them how to protect themselves from a polygraph and a story?
I'm teaching them how not to be in there and be totally intimidated and interrogated and threatened by this, so that they make some admissions against their own interests that may or may not even be true, because the pressure is so great.
Many times people say things that, I mean, there are a number of false confessions.
In fact, there was a guy named Zimmerman that just was awarded $40 million because a false confession was derived from him under the pressure of a multi-hour polygraph examination.
The polygraph operator lied.
What they'll do is they'll come in there and they'll say, okay, well, now, here you go.
Okay, now, Charlie.
And now, okay, now, Scott, we got you.
Now, let me look at this chart here, Scott.
And they sit there and act like they're looking at their chart.
And they say, okay, well, I'm seeing a problem here.
You're not telling me the truth on this question.
Now, hold it right there, Doug, because that was going to be my next question anyway, to tell us about how this works exactly.
Give us an example.
But we've got to take this break.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Doug Williams, from cop to crusader.
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All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Talking with Doug Williams from polygraph.com.
Polygraph.com.
And his book is From Cop to Crusader.
Shades of what we're talking about there, Neil Postman's book, Technopoly.
He talks a lot about the polygraph and the substitution of this technology.
I mean, on the face of it, even though it's just basically a hoax device.
But how it substitutes for human processes of discernment and understanding.
And instead, geez, the squiggly line is ratting you out.
Says what you say isn't true.
And now, so, Doug, the way you portray it, the whole thing is entirely a scam.
Every polygraph expert, a con artist, and all he's doing is playing you and trying to make you fear that he knows something that he doesn't know.
So that he can trip you up, basically.
Is that right?
Absolutely.
The polygraph, the whole concept of the so-called lie detector, is the longest running fraud and con game in the history of the world.
All right, so tell us more about how it works, then.
Somebody comes to...
Well, that's the whole point, Scott.
It doesn't work.
I can't imagine how we've gotten to this point.
The inventor of the polygraph, Dr. John A. Larson, who invented it in 1921, was very remorseful that he had been involved in this invention whatsoever.
Matter of fact, he referred to it as Frankenstein's monster and spent the last 40 years of his life trying to stop its use.
He referred to it as nothing but a psychological third degree.
That's what it is.
And that's why it continues to be used.
It's just like Nixon said once.
Everybody asks, well, if this thing doesn't work, why do they keep using it?
And the best reason I ever heard was what Nixon said once.
He said, I don't know anything about the polygraph.
I don't even know if it works.
But I know it scares the hell out of people, and that's why I like to use it.
And that's why the government likes to use it.
And that's why it's so successful in getting confessions.
And that's how they justify their existence, by getting confessions and admissions through means of this polygraph examination.
But let's dissect this thing.
Let's see what the polygraph actually records.
What does the polygraph record?
Well, there's two pneumograph tubes, one around your chest and one around your stomach, that record your breathing.
Bear in mind, this polygraph has not changed one iota since it was invented almost 100 years ago.
So you've got these tubes around your chest to record your breathing.
And then they've got these electrodes on your fingers that record the sweat activity in your hand, also referred to as a galvanic skin response.
And then they have a cardio cuff like the doctor uses around your left arm to record your blood pressure, record your blood pressure and your pulse rate.
So basically what we have here is a machine that can watch you breathe, watch two fingers on your right hand sweat, and watch your heartbeat.
Now, they have the audacity, the temerity, the outright arrogance to say that they can detect exception by monitoring what is basically known as the fight or flight response.
What the polygraph records is your reaction to stimulus.
Now, what triggers this fight or flight response?
In order for the polygraph to be accurate, as polygraph operators claim, 95 to 100 percent of the time, it's valid and reliable as a lie detector.
95 to 100 percent of the time, that's what they claim.
Which, of course, is bravo Sierra, because all the scientific evidence proves that while – and I'll grant you this.
We'll just grant you.
Fifty percent of the time, when your breathing becomes erratic, your blood pressure increases, your sweat activity goes up, that's because you have lied.
And the stress of this line has induced this reaction.
The problem is, 50 percent of the time, it has nothing to do with lying.
It's misplaced guilt.
It's embarrassment.
It's rage at having been asked a question in the first place.
Even the tone of the examiner's voice can elicit a reaction that would brand you as a liar.
So, we have a machine that, when they say this reaction indicates deception, in order for it to be a valid and reliable lie detector, this – every time your heart starts to beat fast, your breathing gets erratic, and your blood pressure goes up, and your sweat activity goes up, every single time that happens, it must be because you've lied.
You know, this must – this reaction must always, only indicate deception.
And the fact of the matter is, that simply is not the case.
It all indicates nervousness or any other thing.
Okay, so what we've got here, one of the primary problems with polygraph is that it doesn't detect deception.
It detects nervousness.
There's no equation between nervousness and deception.
The second problem with the polygraph is, in a way, it's scored.
You have two types of questions.
You have relevant questions, and you have control questions.
Relevant questions are obviously those that pertain to the pointed issue.
Did you rape Susie?
Did you molest Susie?
Did you whatever?
Then they're going to intersperse in there control questions.
And the most common control questions are, have you lied to anyone in authority to keep from getting in trouble?
Have you ever lied to anyone that trusted you?
That kind of thing.
So let's just say, Scott, that you're accused of molesting a little 12-year-old girl next door named Susie.
And they come along, and they hook you up to this polygraph, and they say, okay, Scott, did you rape Susie?
Did you molest Susie?
Did you do all this stuff to Susie?
And then they're going to intersperse there, have you lied to someone that trusted you?
Have you ever lied to anyone in authority to keep from getting in trouble?
There's no way that you can compose a control question that has the same emotional impact as a relevant question.
And to compare those two is the very essence of apples and oranges.
Well, and then it still all comes down to the B.S. artist who's claiming to interpret the squiggles and what they mean anyway.
It's not like science is going to be able to go back and check and say, oh, yeah, now that heart rate right there is certainly a deceptive heart rate.
Absolutely.
Nervousness is nervousness, and there's no way you can, with any degree of accuracy, pinpoint the source that prompted you to have that fight or flight response.
Well, I mean, but what I'm saying is there's no way, there's no real accountability on the polygraph artist for saying what looks to him like an increase, a decrease, deception or anything else either.
It's still all just his word.
It's the art of polygraph reading.
Or the con of polygraph.
Yeah.
Well, I was trying to be polite.
Yeah, well, to be polite to this insidious Orwellian industry.
All right.
Now, but wait a minute.
Now, let's get back to your case here, because they sent some guys to get trained by you.
And now you're going on trial.
I guess you're pretty confident in your innocence if you're willing to do a radio show right before you go on trial instead of, you know, after your great victory here.
So, but, I mean, I guess what you're saying is your only card to play is the truth, that all you're doing was teaching people how to pass a polygraph and there ain't no crime in that.
Is it as simple as that?
Basically, it is as simple as that.
I didn't think then and I don't think now that what I did was a crime.
Nor does the Justice Department.
They changed their mind about three or four times as to what the hell they were going to charge me with even.
Well, now we know, especially from McClatchy reporting about the massive increase in insider threat training and deployment of resources inside the federal bureaucracy, especially to try to get everybody watching each other.
And in national security, no talking even about unclassified material, no talking outside of official channels, all this kind of stuff.
So, I don't know exactly, but I think I remember that an increase in polygraph testing is going along with that.
So, I can see why politically they consider you to be a big pain regardless of how honest you are.
Well, it's not even have anything to do with the security.
Let's just talk about national security here for a little bit.
Clapper, James Clapper, the guy that's in charge of all that intelligence business.
The Director of National Intelligence, yeah.
He says that a while back that they must not only use the polygraph but expand its use so that they can stop the next Edward Snowden.
Well, I would simply ask if the polygraph is so damn good, why didn't it stop the first Edward Snowden?
He passed three polygraph examinations with the full intent in his mind.
His stated intent was to go in there and get that decision so that he could have access to that information so that he could divulge it in the manner in which he did.
So, if they're going to use it to stop the next Edward Snowden, it is the most absurd statement in the world simply because it didn't stop the first Edward Snowden.
As a matter of fact, in the entire history of the polygraph in the government, they have never caught even one spy.
So, let me ask you, who's the most patriotic?
Who's the most concerned about the integrity of our national security and the safety of our national security and our secrets?
Who's more concerned about that?
One, the polygraph operator who falsely claims, fraudulently claims that you can trust your national security to his screening process because it is so valid and it's so trustworthy and he is so good at what he does that you can trust the national security to use the polygraph examination as the basic and most influential screening device.
Or, who is more patriotic?
That person or me?
Who says to you, look, it is foolish and dangerous to rely on the results of a polygraph examination for the integrity of the national security because it is a joke.
It is an absolute joke.
It has never caught even one spy and it has let many, many active spies pass the polygraph with no problem whatsoever.
So, who's more patriotic?
One who falsely claims that it's a reliable tool to use to protect our national security or one who says it is foolish and dangerous to use it because it is far from reliable and very dangerous to rely on it.
Yeah, they're crowding out real police work when they're basically, for intensive purposes, they've hired psychics or guys with divining rods or something to come in and make sure everything.
In fact, there's a thing in Iraq, right, where they have these ridiculous little bomb detector sticks that they use to detect truck bombs.
It's that they don't detect anything and the truck bombs still kill them anyway, but they've come to rely on the damn things no matter what.
It's just a superstition, basically.
But meanwhile, nobody's getting down on their knees and looking under the truck to see if maybe there's some explosives down there, you know?
Yeah.
Same kind of thing, exactly.
All you've got to do, Scott, is follow the money.
Polygraph operators have a vested interest in keeping this scam going because it profits them greatly to do so.
Federal polygraph operators are paid in excess of between $100,000 and $150,000 a year.
Most of them have outside businesses where they run private security polygraph examinations for people who have to get a clearance in private contractors.
All have to take these things if they have a government contract that requires a security clearance.
One company that's founded exclusively by active and retired federal polygraph examiners just last year was brought up on charges for money laundering and everything else because they were overcharging for all these polygraph examinations.
They charge in the millions.
It's like $30, $40 million a year to the government to run these damn things.
I mean, it's the most – it's a very, very lucrative scam.
Oh, man, can you make some money on these things?
Yep.
All right.
Well, listen, I've already kept you away over time, but good luck with your trial.
I think it's important work that you're doing, and I sure hope they don't get away with getting you here, Doug.
Well, if they do, maybe I can get you to do an interview with me at the federal penitentiary.
Well, sure.
I would rather not have to do it that way, but I'll tell you what.
Let's make a deal to go ahead and talk after your victory in court here.
Great.
Well, from your lips to God's ears.
All right, Doug.
Well, take care, everybody.
That's Doug Williams.
He's at polygraph.com.
Wrote the book on it, From Cop to Crusader, polygraph.com.
Hey, I'm Scott Horton here.
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