Following hard on the heels of NBC Dateline’s shameful use of the lie detector as a ratings gimmick, syndicated television news program Inside Edition will today feature a polygraph “test” of Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband, Frederic von Anhalt, regarding his claim that he might be the father of the late Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter, Dannielynn.

A video preview shows von Anhalt sitting connected to the polygraph instrument of the infamous Edward I. Gelb, whom AntiPolygraph.org some four years ago exposed as a phony Ph.D. Gelb is a business associate of fellow polygraph operator Jack Trimarco, whom in February 2007 was hired by Fox News to conduct a polygraph examination of von Anhalt for The O’Reilly Factor. Von Anhalt ultimately did not proceed with that examination.

[Updated Monday, 9 April 2007] In a journalistic nadir, NBC Dateline on Sunday, 8 April 2007 presented a story, “Diane Zamora: ‘I’m Not a Killer,’” prominently featuring the results of a polygraph “test” that Dateline arranged for Zamora, a former U.S. Naval Academy midshipman who is serving a life sentence for murder in a Texas prison. Dateline’s producers should have known — had they done their homework — that polygraph “testing” is not only “not foolproof,” as reporter Stone Philips allows, but in fact has no scientific basis at all. Additional information on the broadcast is available in “Diane Zamora and the Lie Detector Test Results” on the Inside Dateline blog.

The following is an excerpt from the program transcript:

After hearing her story and taking a closer look at the evidence, do you believe Diane Zamora? Did she go along that night to question Adrianne Jones, or to kill her? Before you make up your mind, there’s one more piece of the puzzle you might want to consider: Having lost her appeal in the Texas courts, Zamora did something this past February she’s wanted to do for years. With the approval of her lawyer, she took a lie detector test arranged by ‘Dateline.’

Exactly one week after she had taken the polygraph examination, we saw Zamora again. From the expression on her face, it was clear she had no idea what the results were. She was about to find out.

Stone Phillips, Dateline correspondent: So, you took the polygraph. How did it go? What was it like?

Diane Zamora: I was very nervous.

Phillips: You spoke with the examiner at length before the test began. He went over every question with you in advance.

Zamora: Yeah, he–well, he told me all the questions. And went over what my answers would be to each question.

Phillips: And then he hooked you up for the examination.

Zamora: Uh-huh. Yes, sir.

Phillips: The examiner reported that you altered your breathing at certain points. What’s called a “counter measure” to try to influence the outcome of the test.

Zamora: No, I was so nervous. I hadn’t even slept the night before.

Phillips: The examiner says he repeatedly asked you to breathe normally.

Zamora: No, he asked me–

Phillips: To stop with the exaggerated hyperventilating–

Zamora: No, it–

Phillips: And that you did not do that. You continued to do it throughout the exam.

Zamora: I didn’t hyperventilate. I was trying to breathe deep to calm myself. Cause, I was really very nervous. And I remember at one point he told me I was breathing to breathe. So, I tried not to breathe as deeply as I was.

Phillips: Despite the unusual breathing, here’s what the examiner found. We’ll–we’ll go through ‘em.

(1) Did you tell David to kill Adrian Jones? Your answer?

Zamora: No.

Phillips: Deception.

(2) Did you strike Adrian Jones?

Zamora: No.

Phillips: Deception

3) Were you truthful when you stated that the detective read and showed you David’s statement before you prepared your own? Deception.

4) On the questions about, “Did you plan with David Graham to cause the death of Adrianne Jones.” Your answer….

Zamora: No.

Phillips: Significant physiological responses indicating deception. Deception was indicated on every one of the relevant questions in the case.

Zamora: Then that should tell you something, cause you know I didn’t strike her. I proved that already.

Phillips: So, why would a polygraph test indicate that you were being deceptive, when you answered that you hadn’t struck her?

Zamora: I don’t know. Like I said, I was nervous. I guess what made me so nervous is hope. Something I previously didn’t have. And that’s what was so scary–hope–and not wanting it snatched away from me. That made me very nervous.

We shared the results with two independent experts. They told us that because of Zamora’s altered breathing they would have ruled the exam inconclusive–no opinion due to probable countermeasures….

But one agreed Zamora’s responses to all of the key questions indicated deception. And the examiner who administered the test said, in spite of the counter measures, in his opinion, Zamora failed.

Phillips: Many examiners, if they felt that you were altering your breathing and ignoring their warnings not to, would stop the test right there. I’m just gonna ask you very directly Diane, did you try to influence the outcome of this examination?

Zamora: No, I tried to keep myself calm.

Phillips: It’s not admissible in court. It is not foolproof. It is just another piece of the puzzle.

Zamora: To me it just doesn’t make sense. And I know it doesn’t hold in the court. I know that. But it was important to me. Important to my family. And that’s what really mattered to me. I went in with good intentions and high hopes.

Phillips: Well, it took some bravery to take this test. It would also show some bravery to accept the results. Do you accept the results?

Zamora: I don’t believe them. I know that they’re not true. But like I said, I’m not giving up.

Dateline offers these lie detector results as a “piece of the puzzle.” But they are, in fact, evidence of nothing except perhaps a lack of competence (or journalistic integrity) on the part of Dateline’s producers. As mentioned earlier, polygraph testing has no scientific basis to begin with. Moreover, neither hyperventilation nor deep breathing are genuine polygraph countermeasures because they cannot in any way help a person to pass a polygraph test. Polygraph operators are taught that examinees should breathe at a rate of about 15-30 breaths (in and out) per minute, and that anything outside that range is evidence of purposeful manipulation. But it is not at all unusual for people to breath more slowly and deeply in a stressful situation, just as it appears Diane Zamora did.

Had Zamora been trying to beat the polygraph, the way to do it would have been to ensure that her breathing remained within the 15-30 breaths per minute range and to covertly augment her reactions to the so-called “control” questions using techniques that polygraph operators have no demonstrated ability to detect. For details on how this can be accomplished, see AntiPolygraph.org’s free e-book, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector (1 mb PDF).

Zamora’s polygraph results yielded no evidence that could help Dateline’s viewers to reach an informed opinion regarding the facts of her case, and it is deplorable that an ostensibly serious news program resorted to such a blatant ratings gimmick.

Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists’ Secrecy in Government Project reports in his Secrecy News electronic newsletter and blog:

A former polygrapher for the Central Intelligence Agency has filed a lawsuit (pdf) alleging that the Agency unlawfully retaliated against him for publishing a critical account of CIA polygraph programs.

John Sullivan, author of the forthcoming book “Gatekeeper: Memoirs of a CIA Polygraph Examiner,” argued that his security clearance was improperly revoked in the course of a lengthy pre-publication review dispute, though it was ultimately restored.

“The CIA’s treatment of John Sullivan, a former employee who dared speak out, is indicative of a pattern and practice by the CIA of unlawful and disgraceful retaliation through the abuse of the security clearance process,” said Mark S. Zaid, the attorney who is representing Mr. Sullivan.

The allegations were described in an April 5 press release.

The CIA response to the lawsuit will be posted when it is filed.

See the message board thread, Gatekeer: Memoirs of a CIA Polygraph Examiner to discuss the book that cost John Sullivan his security clearance. (Perhaps in recognition that the revocation of his clearance was baseless, the CIA has already restored it.)

David Wallace-Wells, writing for Washington Monthly, reviews Ken Alder’s new book, The Lie Detectors in an article titled, “The Big Lie: How America became obsessed with the polygraph—even though it has never really worked”:

In May 1922, a wealthy family of four was driving home to San Francisco from a day trip in the Santa Cruz mountains when a second car forced them off the road. A gunman stuck a revolver through the driver’s window and demanded money. The father, Henry Wilkins, handed him three $100 bills, but the bandit lunged for Anna Wilkins’s diamond rings. Enraged, Henry reached for a gun stowed in his glove compartment, his two young children bunkered in the backseat, but the robber shot first, killing Anna Wilkins and disappearing before Henry could respond. “My daddy loved my mother,” the Wilkinses’ eight-year-old son testified. “She died to save the bandit’s bullet from hitting him.”
The police were not so sure. A few days after the murder, two brothers, local ex-convicts, tried to buy gas with a conspicuous $100 bill, and were picked up. Wilkins claimed he didn’t know the men, but police later discovered Wilkins had previously employed one of them himself, in his auto shop. They told Wilkins that the best chance of clearing his name was to submit to examination on an oracular device that had come to be known in the tabloid press as “the lie detector.”

The machine, a Rube Goldberg contraption of tubes, pumps, wires, and meters designed to monitor the subject’s vital signs and record on smoke-blackened paper telltale jumps in blood pressure and breathing rate, was then chiefly known for finding thieves among honest sorority sisters in a series of breathlessly reported penny-ante Berkeley capers. Wilkins submitted and, as the city watched, passed the test; the police dropped the investigation, and Wilkins was invited to leave the courthouse unmolested. From there he went to meet one of the convicts he had earlier failed to identify. Money changed hands, and Wilkins was heard boasting about his performance on the polygraph. A month later, the other brother, already in jail on other charges, admitted that Wilkins had indeed paid the men to kill his wife and orchestrated the incident on the road. Furious and humiliated, San Francisco police vowed never to employ the lie detector again; at the next meeting of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, their captain declared that future use of the polygraph could not be countenanced.

Continue reading ‘Writer David Wallace-Wells Reviews The Lie Detectors’ »

Chicago Tribune staff reporter Jason George reports:

A polygraph showdown
`Detector of Deception’ vs. The Skeptical Professor

By Jason George
Tribune staff reporter
March 15, 2007

Fred Hunter’s Hinsdale office sits far from the concrete courthouses where you imagine most polygraphers ply their trade. A Ferrari dealership is stationed around the corner, and a McDonalds that could be mistaken for Williams-Sonoma gleams from across the street.

Yet walk inside Hunter’s office, and you will come upon the same iconic machine made famous in film scenes of sweaty interrogations and double-agent double-crosses.

The polygraph — literally “many writings” — reflects the age-old belief that telltale signs in the body betray a liar. And despite what people commonly call it, the polygraph is no lie detector — 1920s newspapermen, not polygraph examiners, first affixed that title.

In truth, the machine merely creates charts from physiological data it collects in four typical ways: rubber tubes across the chest and across the stomach both measure respiratory activity; metal plates on the fingers record sweating ; and a blood-pressure cuff monitors cardiovascular activity. It is up to the person operating the machine — the “detector of deception,” as the 103 licensed Illinois polygraph examiners are called — to interpret the charts and declare signs of deceit.

To skeptics, that interpretation is nothing more than educated, inaccurate guesswork. But to Hunter, the technology does what it’s supposed to. He has been reading polygraph charts for 42 years and is past president of the Illinois Polygraph Society. And he estimates that he has administered 30,000 polygraph exams during his career, on everyone from bank employees to sex offenders.

“Whoever punches my dance card,” he says. “I’ve done everything but looking for spies.”

So as a believer in the polygraph, Hunter was delighted one recent morning at the chance to hook up Ken Alder, a skeptic and author of the new book “The Lie Detectors, The History of an American Obsession” (Free Press, 352 pages, $27).

“This is like coming over to the dark side for you, isn’t it?” Hunter chuckled as he tightened the blood-pressure cuff on Alder’s arm. Continue reading ‘A Polygraph Showdown’ »

Attorney Norm Pattis provides a review of professor Ken Alder’s new book, The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession on the blog, Crime & Federalism, recounting also his own experience with a CIA polygraph examiner in the 1980s.

Guest host Julie Burstein interviewed Northwestern University professor Ken Alder today about his new book, The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession for WNYC Radio’s Leonard Lopate Show. The interview may be downloaded as an MP3 audio file here.

William Grimes reviews Ken Alders’ newly released book, The Lie Detectors, (which has previously been mentioned on this blog):

March 2, 2007
Books of The Times
The Tangled Web of the Truth Machine
By WILLIAM GRIMES

Its inventor called it the cardio-pneumo-psychograph. To a clutch of coeds in Berkeley, Calif., in 1921, it was a newfangled magic box that was somehow going to look into their minds and find out who was pilfering cash and jewelry at their college boardinghouse. To the newspaper-reading public and future generations, it was the lie detector, a contraption with dubious scientific credentials, a shady ethical aura and, as it turned out, amazing longevity.

In “The Measure of All Things” Ken Alder, a professor of history and the humanities at Northwestern University, chronicled the quest of two French scientists to calibrate the meter. In “The Lie Detectors” he tells a similar tale of obsession and self-delusion, this time with a purely American setting.

In an era that gave birth to scientific industrial management, time-motion studies and the I.Q. test, a small group of American scientists, inventors and social reformers pursued the dream of a mechanical device that would separate truth from deception by recording involuntary bodily responses like blood pressure and pulse rate.

The lie detector, billed as “a mechanical instrument of the future” by one of its earliest proponents, would in theory replace traditional police interrogations (heavily dependent on the third degree) and jury deliberations. It would allow private companies and the government to weed out thieves and spies. It would shine a high-intensity beam into the deepest recesses of the psyche, advancing the work of psychologists and psychiatrists. That was the promise. But toward the end of his life John Larson, inventor of the machine, despaired. He called his work “a Frankenstein’s monster, which I have spent over 40 years in combating.”

Continue reading ‘New York Times Book Review of Ken Alder’s The Lie Detectors’ »