ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the mechanisms of polygraph interrogations and shows how the deceptions upon which they operate can result in deeply problematic outcomes. It provides an overview of how lie detection and police lying have been connected, drawing on existing social histories of interrogation practices and the polygraph machine. The chapter shows how these techniques led to a false confession in the case of Peter Reilly, exemplifying the power and danger of polygraphy. It outlines four techniques of interrogations: performing objectivity; performing expertise; epistemological and ontological certainty; and bleeding, clearing and composing based on empirical data. The chapter also outlines a number of techniques used by polygraph interrogators to extract confessions from suspects, drawing on key interrogation transcripts. The most paradoxical issue in the heart of polygraph examinations, amidst a range of ironies and doubled meanings, is that the polygraph interrogation's ability to bring about a false confession demonstrates the fundamental ontological conceit of lie detection is itself false.
