LIES, LIES, LIES

 The storm over the validity of polygraphs has raged for years. Reviewing the history of the instrument, you can see why. There is a lotta deception in the deception business.
  As one story goes, interrogators in WWII made alterations to their polygraphs to squeeze the truth out of Japanese prisoners of war. They altered the ink well, that fed the chart pens, so that the examiner could, on the sly, switch from black ink to red ink during the exam.

  During the preliminaries, the examiner would caution that as long as the subject told the truth, the track would be written in black ink. If, however, the subject lied the tracing would be written in blood--sucked from the attachment on their arm. (The cardio cuff like the one used to check blood pressure)

  Then, when the examiner suspected the prisoner was lying, he'd switch to the hidden red ink reservoir and the "blood" tracing would appear. The customer was warned that if he continued to prevaricate the polygraph would suck him dry.

  No one's stupid enough to fall for that gag you say? It worked with such effectiveness that it was used throughout the war. 

 Chester Keene reminds us that you didn't have to go to the Orient to encounter "lie-detector" shenanigans. There were some--in candor I must plead guilty to this--that would seat a prisoner in the front seat of the patrol car and tell them a field lie-detector test was going to be conducted. Then, the cop would wrap the mike cord from the police radio around the subject's arm.

  The testee was told that if he lied, the red light on the lie-detector would come on. This light was the transmit indicator, that came on anytime the radio was in talk mode. In this case, the cop would hide the mike in his palm and key the transmit button when he suspected his subject was lying. And more times than not, it worked. And on folks that should know better.

 Next, some of the shady techniques used that caused Teddy Kennedy to get a law passed put a stop to it.