Paul Kirk
A United States expert on cheating lie detector tests has been inundated with queries from South Africans eager to dodge the tests widely employed in the local insurance industry.
Doug Williams, a former detective sergeant in the Oklahoma City police and a former polygrapher for the US government, actively set out on a campaign to discredit and eventually ban polygraph tests.
After more than 10 years as the head of the polygraph unit of his police force’s internal affairs division, Williams quit his job and became one of the most ardent crusaders against the use of the polygraph.
He wrote a book on how to beat polygraph tests. The manual is available over the Internet and this week Williams told the Mail & Guardian he had been flooded with calls from crazed South Africa. “I have had thousands of orders from South Africa,” he said.
But South Africans could soon be able to get by without Williams’s manual. This week the Insurance Ombudsman announced imminent changes to the laws governing the use of lie detector tests by South African insurers. Michael Bennett, the insurance ombudsman of South Africa, said it would soon become illegal for insurance companies to insist upon their clients undergoing lie detector or polygraph tests. He said the changes would mean “insurance companies will not be able to refuse to pay out an insured person based only on the results of a polygraph test”.
Williams made headlines in the US when he had a top TV show hire three polygraphers to administer tests on three people who he claimed had been involved in a non-existent crime. The lie detector operators found all three people to have been lying, and by implication involved in the crime, and announced the three were all murderers. Williams then took the stand and lied about everything, including his own name, and passed with flying colours.
Last week Williams gave testimony to the Kansas State House of Representatives Committee where, in a world record, he taught a member of the US Senate how to beat a lie detector test in less than 10 seconds.