Page 48 of Denied Access
Polygrapher slots were much sought after. Likening the examiners to the inquisitors of old wasn’t a fair comparison, but it was one that was often made by those required to endure periodic five-year examinations, or worse yet, an unannounced session with an interrogator.
Zeke hated polys.
As did everyone.
“Sorry,” Zeke said.
He was not sorry.
As with anyone who occupied the pressed-wood chair, he had secrets.
Ones he did not intend to reveal.
Whether those secrets remained intact depended in large part on the skill of the examiner and how deeply he intended to probe.You might beat me, but you’ll never beat the machinewas a common refrain voiced by polygraphers. Zeke subscribed to that sentiment after a fashion, but with a very large asterisk. He didn’t believe he could beat man or machine, nor did he want to. Instead he was focused on fencing off their conversation to topics he was willing to divulge, while countering the examiner’s attempts to shine a spotlight into the dark corners of his mind.
This mental chess match was not unique.
Men and women had been shrouding portions of their lives from questioners for as long as security interviews had been in existence. Everyone had secrets. Zeke hitched a breath as he concentrated on the paint chip. The change in respiration wasn’t great enough to garner a reprimand from the examiner, but it would register to the multiple sensors attached to his head, torso, and feet. A deviation in a subject’s breathing pattern could signify many things, but in the scope of this conversation, he was hoping the examiner would attribute the blip to contrition.
Zeke was not contrite.
Not in the least.
“Have you ever met with an agent of a foreign government?”
“Yes.”
Contact with agents of foreign governments were part and parcel of Zeke’s job.
Though this reinvestigation pertained to the security clearance he held as a staffer for the National Security Council, or NSC, this was not Zeke’s primary role. He actually worked for Bob Hillman, a former congressman and one-term senator who hailed from a flyover state. Like many of DC’s professional class, Bob had come to the nation’s capital as a wide-eyed idealist of modest means but had quickly realized that there was money to be made in the District of Columbia. After losing his senatorial reelection bid, Bob had chosen to monetize the relationships he’d developed while serving in the legislature rather than return to Kansas.
Zeke had interned for Bob during the congressman’s initial campaign and had been promoted to chief of staff by the end of Senator Hillman’s political career. Accordingly, he’d followed his boss to lucrative stints as a K Street lobbyist and campaign advisor. Several years ago, Bob had founded a think tank focused on increasing international trade. He’d been instrumental in helping the current president win the Oval Office and had been awarded a seat on the NSC as thanks. Atnearly seventy years of age, Bob wasn’t much on attending meetings, so Zeke nearly always represented his principal at NSC gatherings.
But this was just a side hustle.
Zeke’s primary responsibility was to meet with foreign entities who wished to invest in or acquire American companies. Many of these meetings included representatives from foreign governments.
“Other than the instances that you previously disclosed in your preinterview questionnaire, have you ever met with an agent of a foreign government?”
“No.”
Zeke responded with the rapidity that the examiner expected even as he focused the whole of his being on the paint chip. He made no effort to alter his already steady respiration, but he ran through a mental exercise to slow his pulse.
More faint clicking from the keyboard.
More silence.
Then, “Other than the instances that you previously disclosed in your preinterview questionnaire, have you every mishandled classified material?”
“No.”
As if he were opening a boiler’s safety valve, Zeke allowed his anxiety to bleed through. The definition applied to the charge of mishandling classified material was so broad as to be almost all-encompassing. From failing to engage your computer’s screensaver when stepping away from your desk, to accidentally attaching the wrong cover sheet to a restricted document, almost any common mistake could fall under the category of mishandling classified material.
Prior to the examination, Zeke had already admitted to his most egregious examples in response to the preinterview questionnaire. Times when he’d momentarily exited a SCIF with a classified document in hand, or the instance when he’d forgotten to put his cell phone in one of the lockboxes affixed to the wall outside the facility. Both of these sins had been quickly forgiven after he’d confessed them, but where there was onemistake, others were sure to lurk. Others that reared their heads only after the subject was attached to a polygraph machine and under the duress prompted by an examiner’s questions.
This was intentional.
Contrary to what he told participants, part of the examiner’s job was to ask questions designed to make his subjects feel uncomfortable. Despite vehement claims to the contrary, analyzing the results of a polygraph was still more art than science. British intelligence refused to use the devices at all, and even in America, the results from a polygraph were inadmissible in court. This was because every individual’s baseline was different and therefore subject to interpretation. There was no such thing as a perfect result to a polygraph. In the same way in which human appearances came in all shapes and sizes, a person’s mind was as unique as their fingerprints.
