Learn how to cheat a polygraph test. Ex-cop, Doug Williams, says it's a lot easier than you think. 

Doug Williams is looking over his shoulder because, since 1979, he's been on a crusade to defeat the polygraph machine. In 1996, he started a website called polygraph.com, offering a handbook and one-on-one training teaching people how to pass the test. 

"There is no Pinocchio response. Your nose does not grow when you lie." - Doug Williams, polygraph critic

According to Doug Williams, a lie detector test is about as accurate as a coin toss. He claims the machine doesn't work, and as a result, innocent people are paying the price. Many innocent people have pleaded guilty and skipped trial because they failed a polygraph during an interrogation. And employers routinely administered polygraph tests as part of their hiring process. If you fail a lie detector test in the US federal government, you're potentially placed on a blacklist and never allowed to apply for that government agency job again. 

Doug Willams says that the polygraph is just a stage prop used to scare people. How does he know this? Because he spent most of his law enforcement career using it as what he calls a psychological billy club. To him, it was just a tool to beat a confession out of a bad guy. But over the years, he realized that a polygraph test is just that... a test. It can be cheated. And he was going to devote the rest of his life to destroy it. 

Doug Williams made a career giving people polygraphs exams. Now, he's going to prison for teaching people how to cheat the test.    

To listen to the undercover tape that led to his arrest. 

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Credits

This episode was reported by Javier Leiva. 

Special thanks to George Maschke with antipolygraph.org

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