02/24/10 – George Maschke – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio on Chaos 95.9 in Austin, Texas, streaming live worldwide on the internet at ChaosRadioAustin.org and at Antiwar.com slash radio.
And our first guest on the show today is George Matschke from AntiPolygraph.org.
And the article I'm looking at here says DOJ rationalizes away Polygraph's failure to catch alleged anthrax killer Bruce Ivins.
Welcome back to the show, George.
How are you doing?
Very well.
Thanks, Scott.
Good to be with you.
Well, I'm glad to have you here.
So let's talk about this Ivins case here.
Obviously, you're focused on a very narrow segment of it.
The FBI recently officially closed the case and released their final report.
And they had some things in there to say about anthrax accusee Bruce Ivins and how he did on his so-called lie detector tests.
So what do you know here?
What happened?
Yeah, well, you know, as the FBI was investigating the anthrax mailings of 2001, they asked scientists at the U.S. Army Infectious Diseases Research Institute at Fort Detrick, Maryland, to take lie detector tests to screen them before they could participate in the investigation.
And there was some concern, you know, that it might have been someone, you know, with access to a U.S. strain of, I think it's called the Ames strain of the anthrax bacterium.
So, yeah, they polygraphed Ivins, among the others, and he passed and he cooperated with the investigation.
And now, after he became a suspect, they say, oh, well, yeah, he passed because he used countermeasures to fool the polygraph.
But somehow the fact that or the the allegation that he used countermeasures to pass only came to light after he became the sole suspect.
So it's funny how that works.
Yeah.
And it's a I think Monday morning quarterbacking sort of going back and coming to the conclusion that supports the investigative theory.
Well, you know, this has often been my problem with the FBI is that, you know, when they're not just, you know, framing up Richard Jewell for Eric Rudolph's bombing at the Olympic Park or some other, you know, letting the Unabomber get away with it for, you know, half a generation or more or whatever, when they actually are building a case, rather than chiseling away at a block of marble until only the truth is left, they grab their clay and they start building a case.
And so if they want to accuse you, George Maskey, of something, they will find a way to build a case to say that you're the guy that they're looking for.
It's the difference between induction and deduction on the most basic level of logical thinking.
You know, like we were here in the dark ages or something.
Well, there are indeed other aspects of the anthrax investigation that, you know, as a lay person, I find troubling.
And while there are others who could speak to those concerns better than than me.
But yeah, you'll find it.
Well, I mean, the example you used right there, here he passed his polygraph test and then they decided he's the one who did it.
So they went back and looked at his polygraph test and they said, what, oh, look, he was deceiving us.
Yes.
And in fact, they assert that he showed classic signs of polygraph countermeasures use.
But there's a problem with that assertion, which is that there are no such classic signs of countermeasure use.
There is not a single book chapter or journal article that explains how to reliably detect polygraph countermeasures.
Okay.
Now, there are classic countermeasures, right?
Because I saw you actually on Penn and Teller's BS there and and they had this other guy on there who was a former polygrapher and who now goes around telling people how to beat him.
Sure.
So there are certain things that are well-known techniques, for example, doing mental arithmetic while the control questions are being asked or slowly biting down on the side of your tongue.
But no polygraph operator has ever demonstrated the ability to reliably detect such countermeasures and they don't create telltale charts, you know, that where it's obvious that countermeasures are being used.
So I think that the FBI's assertions in this case really demand scrutiny and that those polygraph charts and the review ought to be publicly released so they can be independently scrutinized.
Well, how suspicious is that?
I mean, these guys just, I guess, have no problem whatsoever in going back and just revising whatever their conclusions are to fit whatever they want their conclusions to be.
It's about as simple as that.
I mean, you're telling me there's no such thing.
You cannot define what is a classic countermeasure for a polygraph machine.
And yet someone in the FBI made up such a term just so he could say that this guy used them.
Yeah, it sure looks like they're, you know, reached pretty far to dismiss his original polygraph results.
And, of course, that's important for their investigative theory and for their continued use of calligraphy.
You know, it raises the question, hey, if the guy who they say mailed the anthrax letters, if he could beat the polygraph, well, why are we relying on polygraphs at all?
And so their explanation seems to be, oh, back then polygraph operators weren't trained how to detect these classic signs.
But now they are.
So everything's cool.
Don't don't worry about it.
Trust us.
Well, you mentioned in your article here, too, that they did the exact same thing with Aldrich Ames, the Russian spy or Soviet spy, I forget exactly, or maybe both, who repeatedly passed his polygraphs.
And then after he was actually busted for other reasons, I guess they caught him on camera stealing or maybe that was Robert Hansen anyway, after they decided this guy really was a Soviet spy.
Then they went back and looked at his polygraphs and decided that he was being deceived.
Oh, there were clear signs of deception in the chart, just the polygraph examiner failed to to see them.
Yeah.
Well, now there are a couple other holes in the FBI's theory that you've pointed out here in your article again.
It's DOJ rationalizes the way polygraphs failure to catch alleged alleged anthrax killer Bruce Ivins at Antipolygraph.org.
And let's see, one of these was that they said, oh, well, you know, he was under the influence of psych psychotropic drugs.
That was in the recent report and that maybe that was the reason that they had failed so-called the first time.
Yeah.
They suggested that that may have been the case.
I mean, they didn't explicitly say so, but they they raise it at.
Oh, he was under, you know, the influence of the drugs.
But their own reports contradict that.
Right.
Right.
I looked I looked through all of the FBI reports looking for any references to the polygraph.
A whole slew of documents were released on last Friday afternoon, you know, to bury it in the news cycle.
But I looked through them and it turns out that, yeah, Ivins was questioned about his polygraph.
And he said, one, that he didn't do any research on calligraphy or look up anything on how to fool the test.
And he had stopped taking his anti-depression, anti-anxiety medication 48 to 72 hours before the polygraph.
And he offered to provide blood and or urine specimens at the time of the test to prove he was not medicated.
So the medications he had been prescribed, that that's a non-issue with regard to his polygraph results.
Well, and then you say that there was further evidence that he, in fact, had not researched how to pass a polygraph test.
Now, how do you prove that negative there?
OK, well, it's not conclusive proof, but it strongly suggests that a someone who knows him whose name was rejected from the report was questioned about Ivins.
And the FBI agent summary of the interview says that Ivins spoke about the polygraph he took for the investigation and that he passed some questions, but failed the one about taking stuff from work.
Now, that's the thing.
The question about taking stuff from work is a what's called a control question.
It's used.
It's not something they're really concerned about, but they try to make you think they're concerned about what they want to do is they assume everyone's taking stuff from work.
Right.
But they want to make you think, you know, if you take stuff from work, you're the sort of person who might take anthrax from work and mail it to Senator Daschle.
So they try to tell you that this control question is as important to convince you that it's as important as the the main questions.
But they really assume everyone's lying.
So when you say, no, you never took stuff from work, they assume you're not telling the truth about that.
So if you react more strongly to the question about, you know, sending the anthrax letter than the question about taking stuff from work, then you fail the test and, you know, you'd be subjected to a post-test interrogation.
But if your strongest reaction is to the question about taking stuff from work, it suggested it suggests to them that, well, you're more concerned about taking stuff from work than you are about, you know, having mailed the anthrax letters.
So you must not have sent the anthrax letters.
That's the way it works.
And sometimes they'll accuse a person of deception regarding the control question just to let them think that, you know, they didn't quite get off because, you know, they secretly assume everyone has taken something.
So it's a fairly safe thing to accuse someone of some deception when they say no to having done that.
So the point is, if Bruce Ivins had researched polygraphy at all, he would understand that the question about taking stuff from work was a control question, that it's not really what they're concerned about.
And, you know, so it seems to me odd that someone who really understands polygraphy would think that he had, you know, had some trouble with that question.
Wow.
You know, one thing that is really apparent after spending some time at antipolygraph.org, or if you just spend an hour watching that episode of Penn and Teller BS, and anybody can download from the Pirate Bay there, is that this thing really is just a racket, isn't it?
This is, it's like phrenology or something.
It's one of these pseudosciences where, you know, we'll tie a rock to her chest and we'll throw her in the river, and if she drowns, then she wasn't a witch.
She'll go to a good Christian death, but if she is a witch, then we'll know because she gets away.
Yeah.
And then we'll tie her up and burn her.
Yeah.
Pseudoscience is really where it's at.
It's like phrenology, you know, measuring bumps on the head, thinking that it will give insights into a person's personality or graphology, examining someone's handwriting and thinking that will, you know, tell you whether they're telling the truth or not, or give you thoughts about their inner psyche.
It's like intuition masquerading as quantitative analysis, right?
Yeah.
I mean, it's basically just a prop for an interrogation.
The problem is, a lot of the people who are giving these tests, they sincerely believe that it works, but they're subject to confirmation bias because, you know, if they accuse someone of deception and they confess, that gives them positive reinforcement.
But when they falsely accuse someone of deception and they don't confess, well, oftentimes they never really know if the person was guilty or not.
So the great majority of the feedback they get tends to reinforce their belief in what they're doing.
So we've got this government-sponsored pseudoscience, and that's how the FBI, you know, in 2002, the same year that Ivins was polygraphed and all these other scientists who worked with anthrax were also polygraphed, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report saying that, you know, polygraphy doesn't have a scientific basis, that polygraph screening is not to be relied upon.
And yet, our government has doubled down in its use on polygraphs.
They're relying more heavily on them today than they were in 2002, when Ivins, as the FBI would have us believe now, beat the polygraph.
You know, it reminds me of this story about this British company that sold these, you know, little copper wires to the Iraqi police, and they were supposed to be bomb detectors.
And the Iraqi police really believed in them, and even after they were completely debunked, they still believed in them.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like the story of the emperor's new clothes, you know, what did the emperor do when the little boy pointed out that the emperor was naked?
He didn't, you know, put clothes on, he held his head up all the higher and continued crating down the street.
And that's what our government is doing, that's what the Iraqi government is doing with the handheld bomb detector that is really a dowsing rod.
Yeah, well, and it's all about the consequences, right?
Because if you believe in your dowsing rod to detect bombs, then bombs are going to get through.
Your dowsing rod isn't going to do you any good.
And if the FBI is relying on these polygraph tests, that means that good people like you are going to be excluded.
And it also means that Aldrich Ames is going to continue being trusted years and years and years after he's a damn Soviet spy, because he keeps passing the stupid polygraph test.
Right.
These are the dangers, you know, the false negatives when the liars pass.
I should say with regard to Ivan's case, I'm a bit troubled with the case as a lay person.
The case that has been presented doesn't seem very persuasive.
I remember how they went after another scientist named Steve Hatfield.
For years they hounded him, and they actually ended up paying him a large settlement for the harm they caused to his reputation and career.
And of course, Ivan has conveniently committed suicide, so he's not here to defend himself.
But another thing, not polygraph related, maybe worth mentioning and you might want to follow up on is why did the FBI and Department of Justice close this investigation before the National Academy of Sciences has submitted its report on the scientific methods used by the FBI in this investigation?
Because they might have to start it all over again and frame up somebody else, I guess.
Well, I'm sorry, George, I got to go.
We're out of time.
I got to get Matt Horwood on the phone here.
But you bring up a good point.
And you know, this is a story that I really, I want to know the whole story, or at least as much as I can about it.
And I think it's really time to get going on solving this thing.
If the FBI ain't going to do it, it's going to have to be antiwar.com, right?
Indeed.
All right.
Thanks very much, George.
I really appreciate your time.
Okay.
Bye bye.
All right, y'all.
That's George Maschke from antipolygraph.org.
And it's really great stuff.
In fact, there's a, this is what you should go read.
The Lie Behind the Lie Detector by George W. Maschke and Gino J. Scalabrini.
It's at antipolygraph.org and then slash lie behind the lie detector dot PDF.
And then there's dashes in between all them words there, if that makes sense for you.