Description

Book Synopsis
A person strapped to a polygraph machine. Nervous eyes, sweaty brow, the needle trembling up and down. Few images are more evocative of Cold War paranoia.

In this first comprehensive history of the polygraph as a tool and symbol of American Cold War policies, John Philipp Baesler tells the story of a technology with weak scientific credentials that was nevertheless celebrated as a device that could expose both internal and external enemies. Considered the go-to technology to test agents' and employees' loyalty, the polygraph's true power was to expose deep ideological and political fault lines. While advocates praised it as America's hard-nosed yet fair answer to communist brainwashing, critics claimed that its use undermined the very values of justice, equality, and the presumption of innocence for which the nation stood.

Clearer Than Truth demonstrates that what began as quick-fix technology promising a precise test of honesty and allegiance eventually came to embody tensions in American Cold War culture between security and freedom, concerns that reach deep into the present day.

Clearer Than Truth: The Polygraph and the

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    A Paperback / softback by John Philipp Baesler

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      View other formats and editions of Clearer Than Truth: The Polygraph and the by John Philipp Baesler

      Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
      Publication Date: Publication Date: 30/05/2018
      ISBN13: 9781625343253, 978-1625343253
      ISBN10: 1625343256
      Also in:
      Cold wars and proxy conflicts

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      A person strapped to a polygraph machine. Nervous eyes, sweaty brow, the needle trembling up and down. Few images are more evocative of Cold War paranoia.

      In this first comprehensive history of the polygraph as a tool and symbol of American Cold War policies, John Philipp Baesler tells the story of a technology with weak scientific credentials that was nevertheless celebrated as a device that could expose both internal and external enemies. Considered the go-to technology to test agents' and employees' loyalty, the polygraph's true power was to expose deep ideological and political fault lines. While advocates praised it as America's hard-nosed yet fair answer to communist brainwashing, critics claimed that its use undermined the very values of justice, equality, and the presumption of innocence for which the nation stood.

      Clearer Than Truth demonstrates that what began as quick-fix technology promising a precise test of honesty and allegiance eventually came to embody tensions in American Cold War culture between security and freedom, concerns that reach deep into the present day.

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