A climactic CIA polygraph test
True story. And my father was likely the case officer.
Prologue
Before I decided to publish my mother’s CIA memoir, I read several other memoirs by CIA spies and family members. One of those books was A Life of Lies and Spies by Alan B. Trabue. In his memoir, Trabue shares some wild stories from his career as a CIA polygraph examiner traveling all over the world to conduct polygraph (lie detector) tests on agents. (A reminder: contrary to the common misuse of the word, CIA operatives are not called “agents;” they are called case officers. Agents are the people that case officers recruit to provide information.)
After reading Trabue’s memoir, I reached out to tell him how much I enjoyed it and to ask a few questions about his publishing experience. This led to a fun correspondence. Since Trabue does not specify the years or country names in his stories, I remarked in one message that I could picture a particular story happening in Tokyo. He replied that yes indeed, it did happen there, and when he calculated the year, it coincided with when we lived there. I described my father (though his spy disguise might’ve hidden his true appearance) and Trabue surmised that my father was very likely the case officer in that story. Small world! We got a kick out of that.
I was thinking about that story recently and thought it’d be fun to share here.
This is the story, as told by Trabue:
When I conducted a case in the field, I was most concerned about inside conversations being heard outside the room. To help prevent my conversation with an agent from being overheard, I used the concept of “white noise.” White noise is simply sound, music, song, or conversation that is designed to mask your voice, making it more difficult to discern your conversation from other sound. Just think how difficult it can be to hear a specific conversation among the many conversations going on at a cocktail party or sports event. Similarly, think about how difficult it is to hear the other party during a phone conversation when others are talking near you.
In the field, I often had a radio or TV turned on in the area of the examination to help mask the conversation with the agent. I once conducted a covert case in a very nice hotel room in the Far East. The room was luxurious, a suite actually, and had all the furniture necessary to comfortably accommodate me, the agent, and the case officer, who was going to serve as my interpreter. I selected the living room as the most appropriate place to conduct the interview and moved the furniture around slightly so that tables and chairs were configured properly for the interview and testing. The hotel room had a TV located off to one side. I turned it on to provide the white noise I wanted to mask our conversation. Shows with a lot of action, like bombings, shootings, fistfights, etc., would not be appropriate and might actually be distracting. I finally selected a channel that looked and sounded like it might be a daytime soap opera show with a great deal of talking. It seemed like the perfect selection, but, of course, I couldn’t be certain because I didn’t speak the language. The TV was not in the agent’s line of sight, but the case officer and I were positioned so that we could see it out of the corner of our eyes.
The interview progressed smoothly and was well on its way to become one of many routine, unremarkable covert cases I conducted in an exotic Far East country. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a routine case, in fact, I prefer them and have been involved in scores of them. As my interview with the agent progressed, I clearly heard people on the TV show talking back and forth, and I was able to see a little bit of the show out of the corner of my eye from time to time. However, the TV show interrupted my pre-test discussion with the agent as the characters’ dialogue turned to moans and groans, unmistakably of an erotic, sexual nature. I glanced over and discovered that what I initially thought was a soap opera was actually a graphic, sexually explicit, hardcore, pornographic movie. The moans and groans also piqued the case officer’s curiosity. His full attention wandered from his interpreter duties as he glanced over at the TV. The agent, who was facing away from the TV, tried to turn around to see the scene that was so obviously coming to a rousing and climactic end behind him.
I’m as patriotic, mission oriented, and hard working as the next guy, and I tried my hardest to not let the movie distract me, but I found myself glancing at the TV far too frequently. I may be a polygraph examiner, but I’m still human. At last, I changed the channel and continued with the interview without the distraction that I had inadvertently created. With everyone’s full attention on the business at hand, the agent’s polygraph test was successfully completed with No Deception Indicated results.
From A Life of Lies and Spies: Tales of a CIA Covert Ops Polygraph Interrogator by Alan B. Trabue ©2015 Alan B. Trabue /Thomas Dunne Books
Postscript
I remember one afternoon after our initial arrival in Tokyo, when us three kids (aged 14, 13, and 11) sat bored in a hotel room; our parents out doing whatever it was they were doing. We turned on the television, despite not understanding the language. There was John Wayne on a horse speaking in Japanese with two other cowboys as they trotted across the open plains. We laughed and turned the station. There was a talk show with much guffawing. We turned the station. There was some kind of foreign film with a young Caucasian woman sitting alone in the corner of a room. Not much dialog and what little she muttered was dubbed in Japanese. We watched, trying to figure out what was going on. Well, let’s just say the woman was holding a vegetable and . . . I’ll leave it at that. We were initially confused. then quickly bewildered. We looked at each other in complete shock and immediately turned the television off.
Welcome to a weekday afternoon of regular TV programming in Tokyo in the late ‘70s.
Postscript #2
Months after our correspondence, Trabue read my mother’s then-published book and offered his endorsement. The blurb is on the back cover and I’ll share it again here:
“We’ve all read the romanticized accounts of a CIA officer’s life overseas. Rarely do we ever get to read about the spy’s family. Six Car Lengths Behind an Elephant by Lillian McCloy is an engrossing, decades-long memoir of foreign life under deep cover for the CIA. McCloy reveals the intrigue, danger, and humor of clandestine life in her thoroughly entertaining account of a CIA family’s nomadic lifestyle. Few living in the U.S. will ever encounter the unique trials and tribulations of the McCloy family, but what a fascinating read it is!”—Alan B. Trabue, CIA (Ret.), author of A Life of Lies and Spies
Postscript #3
Monday, May 27 is Memorial Day, a holiday marked to honor all who have died in service to our country. The usual focus is on members of the military, but let’s not forget the 140 fallen intelligence officers and the very brave (and anonymous) sacrifices they made for this country. Read about the CIA Memorial Wall.
And last but not least . . .
I’ve recorded voiceovers of some of my written posts for the In This Life podcast. Below is the latest one:
I had fun putting that podcast episode together. I incorporated some audio pieces to help give a sense of the feel and sound of my experience.
I welcome your thoughts! You can “like” or comment on this post, below. 😊