POLYGRAPH TESTS TAKE IT ON THE CHIN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605720003-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 1, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: January 1, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/02 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605720003-2
WASHINGTON TIMES
1 January 1986
Polygraph tests take it on the Chin
The year just ended might, at
first blush, seem to have
been a disastrous one for
the United States, as far as
spies go. In fact, however, it was a
bad year for the spies = because so
many of them got caught.
And as a bonus there were some
important defections from the KGB,
not even counting the one who
changed his mind and went home.
Of the spies we discovered in
1985, in many ways the most inter-
esting was Larry Wu-tai Chin, the
former CIA analyst who appears to
have served as an espionage agent
for the Red Chinese for 30 or even 40
years. He may have become a Com-
munist as early as 1943, and was re-
portedly honored for his services at
a dinner in Peking in 1982, the year
after his official retirement from the
CIA.
We are not told very precisely
what Chin did for the CIA, but it is
clear that he was in a position to see,
and "borrow," many highly classi-
fied documents. He turned copies of
these over to couriers near the To-
ronto airport, and was paid for them
in the course of separate trips that
he made from time to time to Hong
Kong.
Eventually the payments Chin
was receiving from the Communists
grew so large that it became neces-
sary to explain to his American
friends how a middle-ranking CIA
employee was able to invest in real
estate all around the Washington
area while simultaneously putting
his children through school. Chin
boasted that he had invented a "sys-
tem" for winning at Las Vegas and
attributed his prosperity to that.
Chin may not actually have had a
system for beating the bank in Las
Vegas, but he certainly seems to
have had one for beating the poly-
graph in Langley. All CIA employees
are routinely required to undergo lie
detector tests at regular intervals,
and Chin was surely no exception.
How, then, did he manage to fool the
machine again and again, over a mat-
ter of decades?
An honest answer to that question
might well be the most useful in-
formation Larry Chin has to bargain
with, if he's interested in getting his
prison term shortened a bit. Secre-
tary of State Shultz's well-known res-
ervations about such tests simply in-
crease the question's urgency.
Polygraphs, better known as "lie
detector machines," aren't
perfect, and are not ordinarily
accepted as valid sources of evi-
dence in a court of law. But they do
measure the subtle physical indica-
tions of stress that are produced by
(among other things) the effort of
lying.
. They can, therefore, be extremely
useful in spotting sensitive areas in
the course of a long series of ques-
tions, and in a setting like Langley
they have, to my personal
knowledge, resulted in discoveries
extremely useful to those concerned
with American security.
There are all sorts of old wives'
tales about how to beat the poly-
graph - e.g., to disrupt reaction pat-
terns by hiding a pebble between
your toes and squeezing it (to pro-
duce pain and a blip on the machine)
at irrelevant moments. But Chin
must have confronted the monster
dozens of times, and seems to have
fooled it every time. Is he some sort
of pathological liar, from whom ly-
ing elicits no more effort, let alone
stress, than telling the truth? Or is
he somehow particularly nerveless
and low-key, in a way. that simply
anesthetized the machine?
Whatever the explanation, it
seems likely to lead to revisions in
the CIAs already strict procedures
for granting and renewing security
clearances. And if any part of Larry
Chin's explanation can be made pub-
lic in due course, without damage to
national security, I hope the CIA
won't allow its natural penchant for:
secrecy to deter it from releasing it.
The human race in general has a
legitimate interest in knowing-.just
how fallible these lie detectors can
be.
William Rusher, publisher of Na-
tional Review, is a nationally syndi-
cated columnist.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/02 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605720003-2