17
FROM THE MOMENT Ethan Ross arrived at the Eisenhower Building at nine a.m. this morning, right after his clandestine meeting at Fort Marcy Park, he’d remained closed up in his office, pretending to work while keeping as much distance from his secretary as possible. While he thumbed through briefing books and scrolled through drafts of policy papers, he all but ignored the words and ideas in front of him, and instead used his fertile brain for other endeavors.
Of primary importance was his need to test the effects of the clonazepam and sertraline on his central nervous system before his polygraph this afternoon. After an hour to let the meds dissolve into his bloodstream he felt they were stabilizing his mood significantly, and he also felt reasonably certain no one would be able to detect he had taken meds to alter his disposition. To doubly confirm this, he made an impromptu call to his mother on the West Coast and chatted with her for several minutes. He knew she would detect any slur to his voice or change in his normal speech patterns, and he decided it would be better to test his coherence on her than on his secretary or other National Security Council staff.
His mother made no mention of his speech during their conversation, so he felt at least somewhat confident the clonazepam and sertraline would do their job today without threatening to reveal themselves by making it seem as if his mouth was full of marbles.
And the glycopyrrolate was unquestionably doing its job. While he would have no reason to perspire here in his cool office, he could tell his mouth was uncomfortably dry, and he presumed this to be due to the effects of the drug. He’d take another pill before the test, just to be certain, and this would add to his completely calm and unfazed appearance.
While closed in his office he also spent his hours before the poly strategizing how he would beat the test. He had given this a great deal of thought in the year he had been passing intelligence to the Project, and he actually found it enjoyable to concoct mental games and thought processes to alter his brainwaves.
During the time he had been whistleblowing, he’d undergone two routine polygraphs, and he’d had no problem with either. That said, today would be several orders of magnitude more challenging, and he knew he’d have to up his game due to the specific nature of today’s questions.
ETHAN TOOK his second dose of the meds at half past two; another glycopyrrolate, another clonazepam, and another sertraline, and then he left for his polygraph ten minutes early. He decided to leave his suit coat on his chair and head down in his shirtsleeves. It might show him to be more relaxed and comfortable, and that might help him during the exam. As he walked down the marble hall he took stock of his disposition and his situation, and he realized he actually felt pretty damn good.
No state college grad in a bad suit was going to outsmart him, Ethan told himself, and he looked forward to the challenge ahead.
The exams were being held in an office suite on the third floor of the Eisenhower Building, and Ethan couldn’t help noticing that the examination room was right next to the administration office computers where he’d slipped in to access the Gaza flotilla files four months earlier. He suspected this was just coincidence, this office suite was the logical place for the examination, so it didn’t cause him any real consternation.
He waited on a sofa in the outer office of the suite while another NSC staffer underwent his own exam, and while waiting, Ethan chatted with the secretary. FBI supervisory special agent Darren Albright, who was himself now working out of an office here in the Eisenhower Building, dropped by to introduce himself, and he and Ross exchanged brief pleasantries. Ethan tried to ingratiate himself a bit to the chiseled and ramrodstraight G-man, but Albright was all business; other than an insincere thanks for Ross’s showing up for the mandatory poly, he didn’t have much to say and he left the room soon after.
A few minutes before three p.m., Walter Pak, assistant deputy director for South and Central Asia, exited the examination room. He was himself in his shirtsleeves, Ethan was relieved to see, and Ethan also felt more comfortable when Pak gave him a relaxed wink as he left the room.
Ethan winked back, then he stood from the sofa when the examiner leaned his head out of the inner sanctum of the suite. “Assistant Deputy Director Ross. Are you ready?” Ethan flashed a wide grin. “Ready and waiting.”
THE EXAMINER was an FBI special agent with the ethnically confusing name Rigoberto Finn. He looked to be near sixty years old, but he was in good shape, and Ethan was unable to tell if the thick dark hair on his head was his own or an excellent toupee.
Ethan had planned on identifying aspects of the examiner to make friendly conversation before the test to curry favor with the man, but the contrasts in Special Agent Finn threw Ross off balance from the start.
Finn walked Ethan back to a small windowless office, sat him down in a wooden chair with a square black pad on the seat, and then the FBI agent spent the next few minutes wiring him up with all the sensors used in the exam.
Finn attached a pair of wired tubes around Ethan’s torso; one measured upper respiratory function and the other lower respiratory function. Three sensors were placed on his pointer, index, and ring fingers to record his EDR, the electrodermal response, or galvanic skin reflex, a measure of his sweat secretion.
As the FBI examiner tightened the Velcro in place, Ethan fought a smile. Due to the glycopyrrolate, Special Agent Finn could lock him in a sauna and Ross wouldn’t do any sweating today.
Last, Finn attached a blood pressure cuff to Ethan’s upper left arm.
Ethan also sat on an activity sensor seat pad. This device recorded both major and minor body movements, ensuring the examiner had a computerized record of how the examinee’s body reacted to the questions asked.
Finn went to work behind his computer, monitoring the signals to make sure everything was hooked up properly and operational. He stepped back around the desk twice to adjust the fingertip straps. Ethan wondered if Finn was surprised how little perspiration he detected on the EDR sensors even before the test began.
“Everything okay?” Ethan asked.
“Just fine,” Finn answered distractedly as he returned to his computer.
While Finn spent a moment behind the laptop on the desk looking over some of the questions, Ethan tried to engage the older man in some small talk. He asked Finn how long he’d been doing this and he did not look up from his work as he replied, “Long, long time. Shall we get started?”
“Be my guest.”
Ross had hoped to curry favor with Finn a bit more before they got started with conversation, but he realized this grizzled old bastard was not going to play around.
Whatever, Ethan told himself. Let’s do it.
The drugs were relaxing him, he was sure, and this belief fed on itself, helping him keep his anxiety level low.
Special Agent Finn began the preexamination with a baseline interview, a series of simple and even inane questions that were designed to see what the examinee’s typical physical response would be when showing indications of either truthfulness or deception. These baseline questions were always similar. The first few were given to elicit responses Finn would know were truthful.
“Is your name Ethan Ross?”
“Yes.”
“Do you work at the National Security Council?”
“Yes.”
“Do you live in the USA?”
“Yes.”
After a few more of these, Finn asked questions he knew would elicit a nervous response, even if the subject told the truth. “Have you ever told a lie?”
Ethan hesitated a moment. “Yes.”
“Have you ever cheated on a test, even as a child?”
Another hesitation. “Yes.”
“Have you ever viewed pornography?”
“Who hasn’t?”
“Yes or no, please.”
“Yes.”
Last, some questions were put in specifically to elicit a “No,” to see how a truthful negative answer would look on the computer.
??
?Is your name Archie Bunker?”
“No.”
“Do you have a pet snake named Simon?”
“No.”
Each time Finn asked a question, Ross kept his face calm and passive, but he clenched his toes and even his sphincter as hard as he could, doing his best to hide the strain visually from Finn while at the same time hoping to spike his sensor readings on the computer. At the same time, he let his mind drift back to his past, and he thought of embarrassing and painful memories.
Finn asked another battery of baseline questions, Ethan answered in the same manner, but after the tenth question Finn’s eyebrows furrowed, then he looked up at his subject. “Please try and relax.”
Ross instantly realized he was overplaying it. The sensors were reading too much distress on the questions where there should have been none. He was trying to muddle the baseline, but instead he realized he ran the risk of waving a red flag at the examiner. The last thing he wanted was for Finn to have reason to suspect him of gaming the test. He smiled, nodded, and said, “I was like this in school. Always got a little antsy on test day. I’m sure you see a lot of people like that.”
Finn looked over the top of his laptop at Ross. “I see a lot of everything.”
Ethan smiled, but the FBI agent had turned his attention once again to his computer and he didn’t catch it.
Finn finished the baseline interview and went into the pretest, talking to Ethan for a few minutes about the questions to come. One by one, he went down the actual list of questions he would ask when the real polygraph was under way. Ethan knew the examination questions were given before the test for two reasons. One, an innocent person would relax somewhat knowing everything that was to be asked of him or her beforehand. And two, a guilty person would only become more anxious knowing what was to come, and the sensors would record the heightened reaction to the question preceding their deception.
Once he’d gone through all the questions, the exam began.
Finn spoke in a slow and measured tone. “Do you plan on responding truthfully during this examination?”
“Yes.”
He went through many of the baseline questions again, then asked, “Did you download the unauthorized CIA files in question?”
For the first time in the sixty or more questions asked by Agent Finn, Ethan did not clench his toes and his sphincter when he answered the question. Instead he tried to channel the most peaceful relaxed thoughts he could. He’d planned for this, so the calm imagery of a yoga retreat on the beach in Thailand he’d visited with his mom and an old girlfriend a few years back entered his head quickly and easily. He imagined himself lying on the yoga mat, the sound of wind chimes and a soft breeze cascading over him.
“No.”
Finn remained hunched over the computer, he made no outward reaction, but he did not ask the next question immediately.
The room was perfectly quiet. Ethan fought the desire to shift in his seat, and he did his best to keep his breath measured. He glanced to a spot on the wall so the stress of trying to gauge Finn’s reaction would not cause him to move and thereby spike his readings.
Nothing. Agent Finn still seemed to be looking at his computer. Ethan fought to keep the peaceful images in his mind while he waited for the next question.
Finally, Finn asked, “Do you know who was responsible for the unauthorized use of the CIA files relating to the Mossad attack on the SS Ardahan?”
Again, Ethan tried to find a Zen thought. Waterfalls. The beach in Phuket. Yoga music.
“No.”
Another long pause. Then, “Is your name Ethan Ross?”
Gone went the yoga retreat, and back came the clenching and the stressful imagery.
“Yes.”
Finn went on to other questions, but circled back to the interrogatories regarding the CIA files several more times. Each time he took longer and longer before he seemed satisfied he’d read all the sensors, and then he would move on to other questions, before coming back again and again to the subject matter under investigation.
Ethan was gaming this exam, but he was pretty sure Finn was gaming it as well. He seemed to be trying to get a sense of Ross’s anxiety about the pertinent questions, and keeping him on the hot seat a little extra longer was one way he could do it.
Twice Finn stopped the test, closed the laptop, and left the room. Once for five minutes, once for fifteen. Each time he returned he asked Ethan if he was applying countermeasures to defeat the polygraph.
Ethan was, in fact, very much using countermeasures, but he did not find these questions terribly panic-inducing, because he’d been asked this on every poly he’d ever sat for. Finn was going through the motions, Ethan told himself, and he concentrated on continuing to obfuscate the results.
Roughly ninety minutes after Ethan sat down, Agent Finn announced the examination was complete. Ethan thought back to his earlier times on the box, and thought this one might have been a little longer than average, but not alarmingly so. He half worried he might have given himself a hernia with all the clenching, but he fought the urge to show even the slightest sign of relief that the test had ended.
Agent Finn seemed more polite now as he unhooked the perspiration sensors from Ethan’s fingers, the respiratory monitors from his chest, and the blood pressure cuff from his arm. He offered Ethan a bottle of water and Ethan took it, then Finn went back behind his desk.
Ross knew that this was the real examination. The postexam interview. Now Agent Finn would try and trip Ethan up, and Ethan was ready.
Finn looked Ethan over for a long time, then said, “We had a little trouble with that one, didn’t we?”
“Trouble? Trouble with what?”
“The computer’s readings on your questions showed some level of deception. I don’t think you are being untruthful, per se, but I need to try and clear up the deception.”
Ethan just shook his head. “I told the truth.”
“Yeah, I hear you, but there are a million shades of the truth. Even the grayer shades are one hundred percent benign, well meaning. The computer has trouble discerning the different shades.” Finn smiled a little. He was all smiles now. “It just smells trouble. It takes a human being to resolve that trouble so we don’t get any false positives.”
Ethan knew exactly what was going on. Finn was playing a good cop/bad cop routine with the machine itself. He’d apologize for the machine’s distrust in him and play himself up as the good actor in the equation.
Ethan just shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. I am very comfortable with all my answers.”
“Look, Mr. Ross. I know how it is working in a government office. There can be a hell of a lot of good reasons to pull a file off a network. We didn’t come over here thinking anyone was a . . .” Ethan thought he was pretending to hunt for the word. “A spy or anything like that. This is a clerical mistake. Don’t worry anyone is going to make this more than it is.” He hesitated. “Unless we can’t resolve the deception. Then we’ll have to dig a little deeper.”
Ethan tried to keep a measured tone. “Honestly, Agent Finn, I can’t think of any reasons to access an unauthorized file. My work is too important to me. It’s really not worth losing a security clearance.”
“I can see you are holding back a little. Coming clean on the truth will keep Albright and his team from working you a lot harder than they need to. If you downloaded the file with someone else’s logon, then you might get your clearance yanked for a month. Just maybe a note in your record. But if your poly comes back deceptive and you don’t resolve that, then CID is going to be looking at you as a potential intelligence officer for a foreign power. Alien and Sedition Act stuff. The whole big enchilada. Nobody needs that.” Another smile, apologetic.
Ethan couldn’t help himself now. He laughed. If he thought he was truly imperiled he would have clammed up and gone in to self-preservation mode, but this guy was insulting his intelligence by using some goofy playground psychology. “Really? This is
your ploy? Does this ever work? Is this the point in the polygraph where a small mind just bursts out a full confession because they think they are going to get charged with a two-hundred-year-old law and spend the rest of their life in Leavenworth? Seriously?”
“Are you saying you would confess if you weren’t so darn smart?”
Another chuckle. “As I said, I’ve got nothing to confess.”
Finn said, “I’ve been doing this a long time.” He let the statement hang in the air in the still room.
“Yes?”
Agent Finn stood and extended his hand. Ethan was surprised by suddenness of the act. He stood himself and shook it.
Finn said, “Thanks for dropping by. I think I have what I need.”
As Ethan turned to walk out the door, Finn called after him, “One more thing, Mr. Ross . . . the exam is over. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
Ethan smiled. “As I’ve said, I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Are you, by any chance, a hyperhidrotic?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m just curious if you suffer from palmar hyperhidrosis?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s a medical condition. Excessive sweating of the hands.”
“What? No. Of course not.” Ethan touched his hands together. Smiled confidently. “I’m not sweating at all.”
“That is precisely my point. Your hands. They are paper dry. Either you have some sort of damage to your sympathetic nerve trunk in your thoracic region, or you are taking an anticollagenic to reduce sweating. There are a few different pills out there to combat it, which might make you dry as a bone if you take too much. But all these meds require a prescription. We can check your medical records. We have the authority to do that, you know. But I already know what we’ll find.”
“You won’t find anything.”
Finn’s smile grew so wide the hairpiece on his head revealed itself by moving as a unit. “I know we won’t.”
“Then . . . what is your point?”
Agent Finn said, “Never mind. Thanks again for coming in.”