SEPTEMBER 08, 2013

THOU SHALL NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS

by Joe Bruns

Chances are, you don’t know who Chad Dixon is. He was sentenced to jail on Friday for teaching others how to trick lie detectors. Depending upon your perspective, Mr. Davis is a petty criminal, an entrepreneur, a threat to our national security or, in the words of a federal prosecutor, an individual who has admitted a “career of criminal deceit.” Or, maybe he’s just a con-artist.

Cajun Joe

It seems Mr. Dixon was an unemployed electrical contractor, with a pregnant fiancé in school, and unpaid bills on his desk. He had remembered seeing a television program about the flaws in polygraph examinations, and that trained individuals could easily ‘fool’ the polygraph into accepting lies as truthful answers. After some on-line research, Mr. Dixon purchased, for $49.95, a training manual from another polygraph countermeasure trainer, and, supplementing that with manuals published by, among others, the Department of Defense, again openly available on the Internet, soon set up shop as Polygraph Consultants of America, advertising on his Web site that, for a fee of $1000 and up, he could teach people to “Always Pass your Polygraph Test – Nervous or Not – Lying or not –No Matter What.”

At this point, it is probably important to note, as Mr. Dixon’s defense attorney did, that providing polygraph countermeasure training to anyone is not a crime. And, advertising that individuals can be taught to give apparently truthful polygraph results even if they are “flat out lying,” is protected speech. Many of the techniques taught by countermeasure trainers are pretty obvious: controlled breathing, counting by threes backward, contracting your muscles at certain points, and so on.

The number of Mr. Dixon’s clients was a matter of dispute, but it was between 50 and 100. It was a mixed bag. His defense contended that most of his clientele were people preparing for marital infidelity screenings. Others were registered sex offenders, including one J.O. of Fairfax, VA, who was a peeping-tom. After having failed all but one of eight court-ordered polygraphs, J.O. availed himself of Mr. Dixon’s training and managed to pass three tests in a row.

See Sentencing Filings: Prosecution / Defense

Mr. Dixon also worked with individuals on pre-employment polygraph screening. He admitted to training seven clients with four federal agencies. He also trained several undercover investigators, which led to his demise.

Interestingly, again as pointed out by his defense team, Mr. Dixon was not prosecuted for training “adulterers or convicted sex offenders.” His mistake was in advising four of his clients to deny that they had received countermeasure training. And, by doing so, he interfered with federal agencies pre-hiring security screening. Furthermore, by using the Internet to assist in this crime, he committed wire-fraud.

Now, I’m not defending Mr. Dixon’s actions. He apparently did help some nasty people beat the system, and seemed to be without scruples in assisting real and undercover people conceal deleterious information about themselves in applying for jobs of trust with the government.

But, then again, how is it that we have come to rely on a device that the National Academy of Science says is only better than chance in favorable conditions at detecting lies to protect our nation’s most important secrets? And is it a coincidence that the widespread use of polygraph coincides with what appears to be a proliferation of secret-spilling?”

In the annals of spies and traitors there’s a whole gallery of individuals who passed polygraph exams repeatedly, perhaps most notoriously Aldrich H. Ames, who was passed by the CIA polygraph interpreters, but later, only after he was caught spying, the FBI re-examined the charts and said they figured he was lying.

Dr. Wen Ho Lee

Then there was Dr. Wen Ho Lee who worked for the Department of Energy weapons program in Los Alamos, NM. Dr. Lee was accused of spying and subjected to three polygraph examinations. He passed all three, according to the DOE. However, the FBI concluded, from the same test, that he was lying. Dr. Lee was ultimately convicted only of mishandling classified documents, one of 59 original charges against him. The federal judge apologized to Dr. Lee for his treatment and ridiculed the government’s handling of the case.

How can any device that is so easily fooled, and so randomly subject to interpretation have any value in safe-guarding our national security? There is no reputable scientific body that has found the polygraph to be effective in detecting lies. In using this flim-flam as a means of protecting our national security we are only lying to ourselves.

Mr. Dixon pleaded guilty, and on Friday (9/6) he was sentenced to 8 months in prison for wire fraud and obstructing a government proceeding.

– Cajun Joe is a Trail Mix Contributor