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.
The polygraph doesn't have to emit any useful data at all to be very useful in interrogations. Like a bomb doesn't have to have any explosive in it to clear a building. Interrogation is a head game and a complicated box with knobs and buttons and maybe even blinking lights makes a fine prop.
And there's enough ambiguity in it that it's easy for the operator to believe it helps. Like a dowser with their rods, a clergyman with a holy book or an astrologist with a horoscope. That gives them the power boost of sincerity.
If you ever get the opportunity to read what people admit, unprompted, during these "conversations" then you'll know why they'll never go away. Stuff like, "yeah i stepped on a kitten's head once, but i was young... No i don't see why anyone would have a problem with that."
No one wants that guy working at the cia.
Are you sure? Post 9/11 the CIA decided they needed to be in the business of kidnapping and torturing. They didn't seem to have any trouble finding employees to do it.
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.
> General Brown: So they started doing psy-research because they thought we were doing psy-research, when in fact we weren't doing psy-research?
> Brigadier General Dean Hopgood: Yes sir. But now that they are doing psy-research, we're gonna have to do psy-research, sir. We can't afford to have the Russian's leading the field in the paranormal.
Source: The Men Who Stare at Goats
Plenty of things we could be wasting money on if the only criteria is "how do you know it's not real?", why stop at killing goats with mind bullets? We could be looking for yetis or Atlantis or lunar nazi spaceships.
It was a giant waste of time and money and, this being the CIA, it likely harmed many people.
I always wonder when I see one of those hypnosis shows, where someone from the audience makes themselves a docile fool in front of a large crowd, whether they are stooges or it is the real deal. But I wouldn't volunteer to get hypnotised to figure that out, in fear of being the next person who stands imitating a dog in heat on such a stage.
There’s a good book about this called Reality is Plastic. It may give you a new perspective.
Was drugging random Americans with LSD also a valid experiment? Parts of the CIA was just insane back then, maybe still is.
Yeah absolutely. Figuring out which, if any, drugs can be used to control people is extremely valuable for defence, not to mention offence. Same with the fascist Japanese frostbite experiments.
Let me be clear: these were all wrong and unethical, and I would not have approved or conducted them. But if you're a government agency tasked with doing wrong and unethical things in the name of national security, they were all good ideas to at least try.