The Truth Machine (45 page)

19
. Bunn, “The Lie Detector,
Wonder Woman
and Liberty.”

20
. His sexual “endocrine” theories were in keeping with what most popular psychology was promoting during the 1920s and 1930s. See John C. Burnham, “The New Psychology: From Narcissism to Social Control,” in
Paths into American Culture: Psychology, Medicine, and Morals
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988. First published 1968); Burnham,
How Superstition Won and Science Lost: Popularizing Science and Health in the United States
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 98–99.

21
. “Lie Detector ‘Tells All,'” 65.

22
. Marston might have persuaded the readers of
Life
magazine of the lie detector's capabilities, but he didn't convince the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Writing to explain how the Gillette advert had come about, an FBI Special Agent told FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in July 1939 that Marston “stood to make around thirty thousand dollars for his part in the entire scheme.” At the bottom of the letter someone, possibly Hoover, scrawled “I always thought this fellow Marston was a phony and this proves it.” FBI File on William Moulton Marston,
http://antipolygraph.org/documents/marston-fbi-file.pdf
(accessed April 3, 2008).

23
. For similar “confessional” autobiographical works by polygraphists see Robert J. Ferguson Jr.,
The Scientific Informer
(Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1971); and Chris Gugas,
The Silent Witness: A Polygraphist's Casebook
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1979).

24
. Marston,
The Lie Detector Test,
87.

25
. Ibid., 7.

26
. Ibid., chap. 2.

27
. Historians doubt the existence of a “crime wave” in 1930s, attributing the sense of national emergency to a few spectacular and well-publicized events like the St. Valentine's Day massacre and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. Supported by the press, Hoover's FBI did much to whip up national hysteria. In 1933 two criminologists asserted, “No support is found for the belief that an immense crime wave has engulfed the United States.” Quoted in Samuel Walker,
A Critical History of Police Reform: The Emergence of Professionalism
(Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1977), 152.

28
. Marston,
The Lie Detector Test,
15.

29
. Ibid., 17, 16, 99, 103, 29, 132, 133, 142.

30
. Charles Keeler to August Vollmer, March 14, 1930, August Vollmer Papers, ca. 19181955, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, California (hereafter AVP).

31
. Eloise Keeler,
The Lie Detector Man: The Career and Cases of Leonarde Keeler
(Boston: Telshare Publishing, 1984), 12.

32
. Ken Alder,
The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession
(New York: Free Press, 2007), 55.

33
. Joseph G. Woods, “Introduction,” in
Law Enforcement in Los Angeles: Los Angeles Police Department Annual Report, 1924,
ed. August Vollmer (New York: Arno Press, 1974.)

34
. It was Jacques Loeb who had introduced Vollmer to European criminologists such as Hans Gross. See Gene E. Carte and Elaine H. Carte,
Police Reform in the United States: The Era of August Vollmer
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975). Alfred Parker suggests that it was Gross' discussion of lying that inspired Vollmer to instruct his department to build a lie detector. Alfred Parker,
The Berkeley Police Story
(Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1972).

35
. Walker,
A Critical History of Police Reform,
chap. 4.

36
. Carte and Carte,
Police Reform,
45.

37
. Thomas J. Deakin,
Police Professionalism: The Renaissance of American Law Enforcement
(Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1988), 89.

38
. Walker,
A Critical History of Police Reform,
82.

39
. Carte and Carte,
Police Reform,
57.

40
. Quoted in Woods,
Law Enforcement in Los Angeles,
162.

41
. August Vollmer,
The Police and Modern Society
(Montclair: Patterson Smith, 1936), 222.

42
. James F. Richardson,
Urban Police in the United States
(Port Washington, NY: National University Publications, 1974), 135.

43
. Walker,
A Critical History of Police Reform,
chap. 4.

44
. Alder,
The Lie Detectors,
76–77.

45
. Ibid., 79.

46
. Charles Keeler to August Vollmer, December 23, 1929, AVP.

47
. Leonarde Keeler to August Vollmer, September 17, 1937, AVP.

48
. Leonarde Keeler to August Vollmer, March 28, 1938, AVP.

49
. Alder,
The Lie Detectors,
239–40.

50
. Ibid., 68.

51
. Collins, “The Future Looks Dark for Liars,” 7.

52
. Ibid., 26.

53
. Leonarde Keeler, “A Method For Detecting Deception,”
American Journal of Police Science
1 (1930).

54
. Charles Keeler to August Vollmer, November 26, 1929, AVP.

55
. Keeler,
The Lie Detector Man,
28.

56
. “Guilty By Lie Detector,”
New York Times,
May 24, 1930, 2.

57
. Leonarde Keeler, “‘The Canary Murder Case': The Use of the Deception Test to Determine Guilt,”
American Journal of Police Science
1 (1930): 381–86.

58
. “Lie Detector ‘Clears' Winkler,”
New York Times,
November 26, 1931, 56.

59
. Keeler,
The Lie Detector Man,
chap. 13.

60
. “Lie Tracer is Honored,”
New York Times,
January 21, 1933, 17.

61
. Keeler,
The Lie Detector Man,
81.

62
. Ibid., 83.

63
. Fred E. Inbau, “The ‘Lie-Detector,'”
Scientific Monthly
40, 1935, 81–82.

64
. Keeler,
The Lie Detector Man,
162.

65
. Quoted in Keeler,
The Lie Detector Man,
160–61.

66
. “Paramount Pictures Presents Popular Science [1944],” in
The Smithsonian Institution Presents: Invention,
a production of The Discovery Channel and Koch TV Productions, Inc., in association with Beyond Productions PTY Ltd.

67
. The New York Police Department was inspired to invest $7000 in a similar “Mobile Laboratory Truck.” See “Clue Wagon,”
New Yorker
19, December 4, 1943, 28.

68
. William A. Dyche, “Science in the Detection of Crime,”
The Review of Reviews,
January 1932, 52.

69
. Henry Morton Robinson, “Science Gets the Confession,”
Forum and Century
93, 1935, 15.

70
. Keeler,
The Lie Detector Man,
35.

71
. Ibid., 97–98.

72
. Fred Inbau later recalled that the Chicago World's Fair crime detection exhibit was “a good ad for the university and for the whole cause of scientific crime detection.” Fred E. Inbau, “Scientific Crime Detection: Early Efforts in Chicago,” in Gene Carte,
August Vollmer: Pioneer in Police Professionalism
2 (Berkeley: University of California Bancroft Library, 1983), 4.

73
. Nealis O'Leary, “A Criminologist to the Rescue,”
The Literary Digest
118, October 6, 1934, 22.

74
. “Lie Detection,”
Living Age
348, March 1935, 92.

75
. “New Crime-Detection Laboratories,”
The American City
49, October 1934, 13.

76
. Deakin,
Police Professionalism,
156–57.

77
. Leonarde Keeler to August Vollmer, July 19, 1932, AVP.

78
. Leonarde Keeler to August Vollmer, February 12, 1935, AVP.

79
. Leonarde Keeler to August Vollmer, March 19, 1934, AVP.

80
. Alder,
The Lie Detectors,
140.

81
. Leonarde Keeler to August Vollmer, March 19, 1934, AVP.

82
. Alder,
The Lie Detectors,
138.

83
. Leonarde Keeler to August Vollmer, March 19, 1934, AVP.

84
. Leonarde Keeler to August Vollmer, July 29, 1936, AVP.

85
. Leonarde Keeler to August Vollmer, February 26, 1937, AVP.

86
. Ibid.

87
. Leonarde Keeler to August Vollmer, June 21, 1938, AVP.

88
. Ibid.

89
. Ibid.

90
. Leonarde Keeler to August Vollmer, May 31, 1938, AVP.

91
. Leonarde Keeler to August Vollmer, August 21, 1937, AVP.

92
. Leonarde Keeler to August Vollmer, November 13, 1938, AVP.

93
. R. E. Allen “Lie Detector Pays,”
The American City
54, October 1939, 15.

94
. “Lie Detectors for Employees,”
Business Week,
September 16, 1939, 36–37; Marston,
The Lie Detector Test,
155.

95
. J. P. McEvoy, “The Lie Detector Goes into Business,”
Reader's Digest
(American Edition) 38, February 1941.

96
. Alva Johnston, “The Magic Lie Detector I,”
Saturday Evening Post
216, April 15, 1944; Leonarde Keeler to August Vollmer, May 2, 1944, AVP.

97
. “Hesse Gems Found in Station Locker,”
New York Times,
June 9, 1946, 1.

98
. Molly Rhodes, “Wonder Woman and her Disciplinary Powers: The Queer Intersection of Scientific Authority and Mass Culture,” in
Doing Science and Culture: How Cultural and Interdisciplinary Studies Are Changing the Way We Look at Science and Medicine,
ed. Roddey Reid and Sharon Traweek (New York: Routledge, 2000), 99.

99
. Ken Alder, “A Social History of Untruth: Lie Detection and Trust in Twentieth-Century America,”
Representations
80 (2002): 11, 14.

100
. Charles Thorpe and Steven Shapin, “Who Was J. Robert Oppenheimer?: Charisma and Complex Organization,”
Social Studies of Science
30 (2000): 580.

101
. Max Weber, “The Sociology of Charismatic Authority / The Nature of Charismatic Authority and Its Routinization,” in
The Celebrity Culture Reader,
ed. P. David Marshall (London: Routledge, 2006), 56.

102
. Ibid.

Epigraphs.
Nietzsche,
Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future,
trans. R. J. Hollingworth (London: Penguin, 1973), 33. Philip K. Dick,
Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep)
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1968), 35.

1
. “Lie Detector Seals Doom of Murderer,”
New York Times,
March 2, 1937, 44.

2
. “Lie Detector: Marks in Ink Final Judges for Murder Case,”
Newsweek
9, March 13, 1937, 34.

3
. “Polygraph Proof: Illinois Murderer Dies Because of Governor's Belief in Test,”
Literary Digest
123, March 13, 1937, 9–10.

4
. “Polygraph Proof.”

5
. “Lie Detector Seals Doom.”

6
. “‘Lie detector' Gets $10 from 2 boys,”
New York Times,
June 8, 1937, 27.

7
. Ibid.

8
. The
New York Times
reported on a number of “fake” lie detectors during the 1930s. In
one case, a confession was obtained “with [a] contraption of radio parts and hot peppers” (“‘Lie Detector' Traps Philadelphia Youth”). In another, a school principal was forced to destroy his contraption—a “black box equipped with dials and electric bulbs”—despite having obtained a confession from a thief of a pair of gloves (“Principal His ‘Lie Detector,'”
New York Times,
September 25, 1936, 5).

9
. Leonarde Keeler, “Debunking the ‘Lie-Detector,'”
Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science
25 (1934–35): 153.

10
. Ibid., 158

11
. Ibid.

12
. Leonarde Keeler, “A Method For Detecting Deception,”
American Journal of Police Science
1 (1930): 48.

13
. Such apparently extraneous procedures have since become codified as correct practice in polygraph textbooks. These texts advise polygraphers to pay careful attention to the design of the examination room, the placement and appearance of the machine, and even to their mannerisms and body language. James Allan Matté,
The Art and Science of the Polygraph Technique
(Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1980); John E. Reid and Fred E. Inbau,
Truth and Deception: The Polygraph (“Lie Detection”) Technique
(Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1977), 5–7.

14
. Ken Alder, “A Social History of Untruth: Lie Detection and Trust in Twentieth-Century America,”
Representations
80 (2002).

15
. Stephanie A. Shields, “Passionate Men, Emotional Women: Psychology Constructs Gender Difference in the Late 19th Century,”
History of Psychology
10, no. 2 (2007): 92–110.

16
. Gaston Bachelard,
The Formation of the Scientific Mind: A Contribution to a Psychoanalysis of Objective Knowledge.
Intro., trans., and annotated by Mary McAllester Jones (Manchester: Clinamen Press, 2002). First published in 1938.

17
. Michael Billig,
Ideological Dilemmas: A Social Psychology of Everyday Thinking
(London: Sage, 1988).