« A Bit Confused | Main | The Yoo Coverup » Leaks Needed02 Apr 2008 01:12 pm It seems that the Bush administration is refusing to produce a declassified version of their latest Iraq National Intelligence Estimate because they're Journalism! Comments (17)
Hmmm. It just occurred to me that I could post a comment, but use SLC's name instead. Now if Matthew would just post SLC's email, so I would know where to point the Dobermans. 
Doesn't the strikethrough gag work the opposite direction? APS
Re Don Williams "We need to know that when the DIA applies electrodes to your testicles and cranks up the juice, that you won't give them our name and email address. And verbal assurances don't quite cut it." Although I think that this is a good interrogation technique if one is after false confessions, the current administration seems to prefer waterboarding.
Shades of Nixon's "secret strategy". (Marx was wrong. History doesn't repeat as farce. It repeats like DNA transcription gone horribly awry.)
Re SLC's comment "Although I think that this is a good interrogation technique if one is after false confessions" Where subject knows that if the waveforms on the laptop wave too much, the small electrode around the finger is replaced by different electrodes --placed somewhere else. Even hardened psychopaths can sweat under that choice. At that point, most people discover a strong urge to become friends with the polygraph operator. Which is where the fun begins. Even if the display is flat, the operator can say " Hmmm. I'm getting indications of deception." Which often produces a torrent of explanations and clarifications. Later, even a glance at the display and a faint expression of regret can trigger a rush of information. It's actually hard to tell a complex lie under stress and avoid inconsistencies. The good ones, of course, will have a complex, cover lie already well-rehearsed. Unfortunately, it won't do them any good.
Plus, of course, there's always that question: hee hee hee
And Don Williams could become the new Spartacus.
Re "And Don Williams could become the new Spartacus." Nah. I know my limitations. To have a massive fuckup like that, you need to have Bill Clinton leading the procession. Remember Democrats' landslide victory in 1992? When we controlled the White House and the Congress? Anyone remember the huge rise in working class incomes and how the power of the rich was sharply curtailed? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:United_States_Income_Distribution_1967-2003.svg Remember how Mexican plutocrats came in and created millions of jobs after Bill Passed NAFTA? Remember How campaign finance was reformed and right wing propagandists put out of work by reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine? Me neither.
Re Don Williams Mr. Williams obviously has a reading comprehension problem. As I have stated previously, torture is good for extracting false confessions. Not so hot for extracting information, unless corroborated independently. Lie detectors are pseudoscience. Aldrich Ames passed several. See the report of the National Academy of Sciences on the subject.
Don't waste your time, Matt. The NIE is only disinformation made more effective by the eagerness of folks like you to find some amazing, game-changing "fact" from a mountain of hedged and caveated bureaucratic double talk.
Don: "Plus, of course, there's always that question: "Is there anything else you haven't told me"??" Heh, heh, that worked on the Terminator show. This high school girl was being harassed by somebody who appeared to know that she was having an affair with a school staff member. She committed suicide. So the school counselor held "grief counseling" sessions. So Cameron the Terminator gets invited in, apparently because she was the last person to talk to the girl before the girl killed herself. (That whole scene was hilarious since Cameron had no clue how to deal with a distraught high school girl.) So the counselor is asking Cameron if the girl mentioned any names (first hint). Cameron said the girl mentioned her parents. He asked again. Cameron said the girl was pissed at the hall monitors for not preventing the graffiti. The counselor asked again. At this point Cameron used her ability to discern truth from human voices and said, "You ask that question a lot. Is there something else you want to tell me?" The counselor got flustered and said, "I don't think I told you anything." She nailed him - he's the one that had the affair, although the plot hasn't established that yet. Gotta wait for next season to find out whether he's the same one harassing John's would-be girl friend, since she has a mysterious past and graffiti in her locker that John saw. I foresee a school counselor ending up stuffed in the trunk of a car - along with Morris, the nitwit kid who asked a Terminator to the prom. See the whole exchange here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2Y-w2b3s0s
Re SLC's comment "Lie detectors are pseudoscience. Aldrich Ames passed several. See the report of the National Academy of Sciences on the subject "
Don, I'm inclined to agree with SLC (wash out my brain, quick!) about lie detectors. While you may have confidence in the operator more than the device, from what I've read, most of the operators are pretty bad. Competence is not a big thing with lie detector operators, apparently. Quite a few defense attorneys have had field days by putting the operator on the stand, then ripping him a new one. And the science is iffy, apparently, although probably not entirely without merit. The Wikipedia article covers the controversy and the admissibility of polygraph evidence for several countries. Most either don't regard it as admissible or only under certain circumstances. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#2003_National_Academy_of_Sciences_report And this site is definitely against it! https://antipolygraph.org/index.shtml And there are apparently a number of ways to beat the poly. They even played that up in "Basic Instinct." All in all, while it might work on occasion, one wouldn't want to trust it in your defense. They also spent a lot of effort on a voice stress analysis device, which ended up being dumped on by the scientists as well.
1) Ah, I don't think you and SLC understand, Richard. 2) Whether the poly works in reality is a philosophical issue -- question is whether it works in PRACTICE. Of course, an operator skilled in the con games could probably get many of the same results with a "magical compass" from a camping store and a magnet. 3) People can lie easily when they don't fear the interrogator or the consequences -- the white lies of social intercourse. It's much harder to lie under strong stress. For enemy noncombatants, the stress -- the penalties for lying are obvious. For employees, the stress is the fear of being fired, of not finding subsequent employment because of the cloud associated with being dismissed under suspicion, and of poverty for their families. Ames, by comparison, had a lot of concealed money from the Russians, had the protection and support of the Russians, thought that good tradecraft had secured all the evidence, and would have been in comfortable shape even if dismissed. When he was caught with evidence, he crumbled quickly. 4) The poly doesn't measure truth -- it measures fear. With an amplifier. Of course, that means you get a percentage of false positives -- innocent people who show indications of lying simply because they're scared of the situation. But omelets, broken eggs,etc. 5) Ames wasn't subjected to hostile interrogation until the evidence was in. Because if you treated employees to hostile interrogation as standard procedure, you would increase the false positives, you would greatly increase employee turnover and you would soon have a lot of really pissed off former employees --with deep knowledge of national secrets --wandering around trying to figure out how to get even. 6) Note, of course, that if someone shows signs of deception, the smart thing to do is tell him that he's PASSED the poly -- and to then to put intense surveillance on him until you know what's going on and have enough evidence against him to really squeeze.
Re Don Williams After all his obfuscation, Mr. Williams admits that polygraphs are pseudoscience. He admits that it really doesn't matter whether they are scientifically valid, only that they act as a form of intimidation, much like the application of waterboarding. He even admits that using them as a form of intimidation will produce numerous false positives, just as techniques such as waterboarding produces false confessions. However, Mr. Williams does raise a good question as to why, if polygraphs are considered by the NAS to be pseudoscience, they are still used by the CIA and now the FBI, after the Hansson case. The answer is that these agencies use polygraphs because they don't have the resources to conduct ongoing investigations of all their employees and polygraphs provide a way of conducting such investigations on the cheap. I do get a laugh out of Mr. Williams' claim that the National Academy of Sciences is full of shit. Sounds like Senator Imhoff claiming that Al Gore is full of shit relative to his claims of global warming.
Re SLC's comment "However, Mr. Williams does raise a good question as to why, if polygraphs are considered by the NAS to be pseudoscience, they are still used by the CIA and now the FBI" What is "pseudoscience" --bad reasoning really -- is SLC's argument that an art form should be measured by the same criteria used in hard sciences like physics. By that criteria, much of psychology is "pseudoscience". Much of politics , law enforcement, and business marketing as well. While I can see the intellectual argument for SLC's position, I also think it misses the point. In 1977, the CIA turned down a job applicant. Some sources I've seen say it was due to polygraph results. The applicant was Jonathan Pollard. (hee hee hee). There's also the deterrent effect. That is, the argument that polygraph tests deter existing employees from considering spying and deters --to some extent -- hostile services from trying widespread infiltration of areas in which the poly is required. Yes, a few bad apples slip through but the US intelligence community is not lying down with its legs spread the way it was in the late 1940s and 1950s. By the way, any guess as to why the Bush Administration did not polygraph Curveball and the Chalabi "intelligence" sources used to justify the Iraq invasion? Fox TV has a reality show "Moment of Truth" in which participants are asked increasing personal questions under a polygraph. Any guess as to Why Fox News does not do that when they have William Kristol or Bush Administration officials on?
Comments closed April 16, 2008. |
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Heads in the Sand
Er.. Matthew, the spy business is a little more complicated than that.
We need to know that when the DIA applies electrodes to your testicles and cranks up the juice, that you won't give them our name and email address. And verbal assurances don't quite cut it.
How about you get a Hotmail account and post its username/password so that we can use it from some terminal in a public library?
That way when DIA tracks the email account, it will point back to you. And since your ass would already be cooked, there's no harm done.
In a perfect world, you would have given us sheets for a one-time cipher -- but it's kinda late for that.
How about it? Ready to be a patriot and take one for the team?? hee hee
PS Don't carry a cellphone. They can (a) track your location constantly with it and (b) can turn it on remotely and use it as a bug
Posted by Don Williams | April 2, 2008 1:30 PM