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POLYGRAPH, HYPNOSIS, BEHAVIORAL MODIFICATION, "CONDITIONING," & OTHER SICK C.I.A. STUFF:  INTRODUCTION


   Starting with the CIA Employment Seminar and running through the subsequent interviews, the Directorate of Operations folk had been hyping the polygraph as this amazingly accurate process that should make anybody shiver in their boots.  I guess the goal was to psychologically prep applicants to be scared witless of the polygrapher.  Unfortunately, this was right around the time when studies came out, concluding that polygraphy was accurate only 52% percent of the time.  Odds like that, you might as well flip a coin after each question to figure out whether the answer was truthful or not. 

   Long and short of it was that the pre-polygraph hype was effective only on ill-informed applicants who didn't follow the news. If you were moderately informed on the other hand, you went into the polygraph session knowing that you're about to spend a few hours with a modern day shaman or quack putting on an exhibit of junk science. 

   I mean, even CIA traitor Aldrich Ames had passed his polygraphs. 

   Anyhow, the day finally comes for the polygraph, and that's when I found out a whole lot more about the quack aspects of Directorate of Operations psyhcology than I had wanted to know. 

   The first session is scheduled for the afternoon. During the morning, we do a few additional medical exams, have another session with a shrink, then head into the first polygraph session with a polygrapher/ shrink.  Putting aside the stuff in the news about how the polygraph test was basically junk science, I decided within a few minutes that I didn't really dig my polygraph examiner/ shrink.  Started off with something as petty as his butchering the pronunciation of my name - happens all the time, but I got the distinct impression that he was doing it deliberately.  It paled in comparison to other iffy things that followed during the polygraph interview, but still, it kind of set the tone. 

   Anyhow, the first session, I get escorted to this bare little stark white room, with a large one-way mirror on a wall, a desk, and a suitably intimidating chair that looks like Old Sparky - mine had a bit more padding though.  

   A bunch of wires are run out of a computer to a box, and from there attached to my chest, head, arms, fingers - at some point I wondered if he was going to try to hook up my genitals, but he didn't.  Once that's done, some of the most boring hours of my life kick off - a series of repetitive questions are asked over, and over, and over, and ... you get the picture.  For hours and hours on end. Not discomfitting questions, mind, but just repetitive and boring ones.  After 5 or 6 hours of that, the first polygraph interview comes to an end. 

   While the first day was boring, the second day was flat out creepy.  Same routine in the morning - medical exams, chat with a shrink, then back to the polygraph interview.  Now, when was the last time you heard of a formal and professional job interview that entailed lulling ajob applicant into a daze, cutting off his circulation so he’d black out, and then hypnotizing him?  That is what happened during the second day of my interviews with the polygrapher/ shrink - after hours of staring at a stark white wall in a small office in one of the CIA’s satellite buildings, answering monotonous and repetitive questions while hooked up to a bunch of wires, the interviewer starts fidgeting with a strap on my arm, tightens it to constrict my circulation, asks me to relax, start counting back..., and then blackcness. Next thing I know he is waking me up and mumbling some post-hypnotic suggestions such as “you fell asleep” and “don’t tell anybody about this.” 

   I'm not a shrink so I do not know what happened while I was under hypnosis, what the good people of the CIA did while prying into my subconscious, or what they tried to rearrange inside my head during that or subsequent hypnoses.  A few months after that polygraph session, a CIA recruiter I was sleeping with at the time told me that it that it was more or less normal in the Directorate of Operations, and had something to do with getting into one's subconscious (Complaint, para. 22-23, 51, and 99-100).  I do know that it completely creeped me out - can't say I've felt the same since. Not to mention it made me feel sullied - like I’d been molested or something.

   Put it like this - people get ticked off about the idea of Big Brother snooping in their bank accounts or library records. Believe me, it's a lot worse to have a complete stranger prying into your most private and innermost thoughts, without your consent. 

   What I didn't know at the time was that the CIA had been running a pretty creepy program called MKULTRA.  They got busted in the 1970's, so they apologized to Congress and swore that they were through with that kind of sick stuff.  They lied.

   Later on, the good folk of the Directorate of Operations tried to assuage my concerns by telling me that it's routine in their line of business, that everybody has to go through it, that it's part of some complex conditioning and behavioral modification, etc.  Whether that's true or not, it doesn't change the fact that I had certainly not consented to any such conditioning. 

   Also made me wonder, if it's true that it's done routinely to Directorate of Operations employees, just what caliber of person works in the DO anyway?  You'd have to have pretty low self esteem and very little self respect to put up with anybody prying into your privacy to such an extent. 

   Turns out it's not something done to everybody.  Directorate of Operations officials historicaly reserved the more dubious tactics for those whom they viewed as "others" less worthy than themselves - you know, minorities, foreigners, etc.  Basically, "marginal" people that Directorate of Operations folk viewed as powerless, and thus easy marks least likely to seek or secure redress if wronged.  Well, I'm both Black and a first generation American born in Africa, so that made me a two-fer. 

   As to the mechanics of how the CIA goes about such things, turns out the first hypnosis session is a prerequisite for subsequent hypnoses - it is during that initial session that a subject is “programmed,”so to speak, to be receptive to something called “rapid hypnotic induction” and “hypnotic suggestion” in the future, followed by something called “induced amnesia” (regarding whatever took place during hypnosis). 

   Works on some people, but not on others.  In this case, the hypnosis and accompanying conditioning or behavior modification or control did not pan out as well as had been hoped for - you are reading about it after all, notwithstanding post hypnotic suggestions such as "you fell asleep" or "don't tell anybody about this."  Still, that complicated matters when things went bad and I started looking for somebody to hold accountable - one of the last things the Directorate of Operations wanted to come out was that its employees were running around hypnotizing unwilling subjects.
 
   Particularly so since back in the 1970's, the CIA had gotten into trouble with Congress when it came out that Agency operatives and doctors had been running around hypnotizing folk without their consent - some creepy Manchurian Candidate type stuff. The CIA basically said "mea culpa," and swore that they were out of that line of business for good. They lied to Congress, to put it mildly. 

   Hypontizing people without their consent probably also violates a ton of AMA ethics regulations, or the regs of whichever body governs psychologists or psychiatrists.

   And that Manchurian Candidate type stuff wasn't the worst of it - compared to other stuff by DO officials like brazenly soliciting bribes, extortion, asking for kickbacks, etc, hypnotism probably wasn't that bad. 

   Still, that hypnotism incident got me to wonder for the first time just how messed up the CIA's Directorate of Operations actually was.  Not that I had thought the CIA was pure as the driven snow or anything when I applied - anybody who bothers reading up on the CIA comes across a lot of negative information, but I kind of thought "no way can they be that bad - they probably just can't talk about all the times when things go right" - which is a line that the Agency's PR people frequently pitch. 

   Turns out they're actually worse than bad - which in hindsight is intuitive. Take any large group of people, entrust them with a lot of power, cloak them and their conduct with secrecy that eliminates or greatly diminshes the prospect of accountability, and it should come as no surprise that the combination of great power with little accountability would quickly produce a culture of breathtaking corruption and abuse. 

   Government 101, the Founding Fathers might say: "duh - that's why we had all those checks and balances between and within the branches - we just assumed officials would be tempted to abuse their power, so instead of hoping that our officials might turn out to be angels, we set things up to reduce the chances of them getting away with any funny stuff." 

   Well, maybe James Madison and Co. wouldn't have said "duh," but you get the picture. 

   And now is as good a place as any to take a short break. When I come back, I'll go into the the "funny stuf" - not "ha ha" funny for the most part, but pretty funny.  It's worth the wait.  In the meantime, the "Facts" section of the Complaint has a good summary of some of that funny stuff.  



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