September 25, 2015
By
John Vibes
69-year-old
Douglas G. Williams of Norman, Oklahoma was sentenced to two years in
prison this week for running a website that pointed out the flaws in lie
detector tests. Williams is a former detective for the Oklahoma City
Police Department and throughout the course of his career he
administered thousands of polygraph tests for his own police department,
as well as other agencies like the FBI and the Secret Service. Through
his experience, Williams learned that a polygraph is not a valid way of
truly figuring out whether or not someone is lying. In 1979, he invented
“the sting technique,” which polygraph experts now refer to as
“countermeasures.”
He wrote the first manual teaching people how
to pass a polygraph test, which was initially published in 1979 and,
according to him, was one of the very first e-books available on the
Internet.
The U.S. Department Of Justice issued a
press release this week stating that they planted federal agents to pose
as customers and entrap Williams in schemes to help the agents cheat on
polygraph tests.
According to the press release:
According
to admissions made in connection with his plea, Williams owned and
operated Polygraph.com, an Internet-based business through which he
trained people how to conceal misconduct and other disqualifying
information when submitting to polygraph examinations in connection with
federal employment suitability assessments, background investigations,
internal agency investigations and other proceedings. In particular,
Williams admitted that he trained an individual posing as a federal law
enforcement officer to lie and conceal involvement in criminal activity
from an internal agency investigation. Williams also admitted to
training a second individual, posing as an applicant seeking federal
employment, to lie and conceal crimes in a pre-employment polygraph
examination. Williams also admitted to instructing the individuals to
deny receiving his polygraph training.
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