Coach who taught people how to beat lie detectors headed to prison (original) (raw)

An Indiana Little League coach who trained several people to beat polygraph tests is going to federal prison.

Thirty-four-year-old Chad Dixon provided training to several applicants for federal jobs, including jobs in the intelligence community. According to the government, "Dixon taught physical and mental polygraph countermeasures" that could produce truthful results "even if you are flat out lying." He advertised on the Internet and offered private training sessions from 1,000to1,000 to 1,000to2,000 plus travel expenses.

It's a case that even the judge acknowledged is in a "gray area" between Dixon's First Amendment right to talk about polygraph techniques and the crime of teaching someone to lie while undergoing a government polygraph. "There's nothing unlawful about maybe 95 percent of the business he conducted," said the sentencing judge, according to a McClatchy report.

Polygraph machines, invented in 1921, are notoriously unreliable, and evidence from them is rarely admitted in court. Online talk about how they can be beat is not unusual, and it has even been discussed in the Ars forums.

Court documents state that Dixon helped two federal contractors who had Top Secret clearances—one who was an applicant for a position at an unspecified US intelligence agency and another who had applied to a federal law enforcement agency. He also admitted to helping nine convicted sex offenders who were taking polygraph tests as part of their parole or probation.

Ultimately, Dixon ended up "training" undercover agents. One agent told Dixon she used to smuggle contraband into a jail, accepted bribes, and was an active drug user. "Dixon instructed the agent to lie about her past criminal activities and taught her how to obstruct the polygraph test," according to the Department of Justice press release. Another said he had sex with a minor and was involved with a drug cartel "involved in cross-border crimes including drugs, extortion, murder, and kidnapping."

Dixon's defense lawyer said prosecutors just want to turn her client into a "poster child for its newly undertaken campaign" to stop anti-polygraph training.

Press reports from Friday's sentencing hearing also say that federal agents targeted a former Oklahoma City police polygrapher, but the results of that investigation are unclear. That polygrapher, Doug Williams, says he has been teaching polygraph-defeating techniques for three decades and has done nothing wrong.