From: vin@shore.net (Vin McLellan)
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 19:23:06 +0800
To: Sandy Sandfort <sandfort@crl.com>
Subject: Re: Voice Stress Analysis of Debates?
Message-ID: <v02130511ae80cb8ea1a6@[198.115.177.224]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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        Jim Bell queried the List about potential AP decision-support tools
like voice-stress detectors which could identify truth-tellers among
politicians and other possible candidates for Mr. Bell's much-debated
proposal to cleanse the body politic.   One anon C'punker responded with a
fine terse summary of VS/PSE tech (along with the surprising news that
VS/PSE chips are now available at $89.95 per.)   Another, Sandy Sandfort,
noted:

>The original device was the PSE, the psychological stress
>evaluator.  It was, as still is, sold by a company called
>Dektor.  It is located in the DC area (Maryland?) and is run
>by a group of ex-spooks.  It's been around for 25 years or so.

        Dektor Counterintelligence is located in Savannah, Ga.

        The Dektor PSE was developed by Col. Allan Bell (USA, ret.) shortly
after he retired from the Army, where -- towards the end of a long career
which included, as I recall, a stint in charge of the MI detachment in West
Berlin -- he had played "Q," the inventive spy-supply wizard, at the US
Army military intelligence headquarters.

        Dektor's PSE came into some prominence after Col. Bell, then a
civilian,  showed up with his black box to assist Italian police during
their huge investigation of the kidnapping of US Army General James Dozier
by the Red Brigades in '82.  The fact that Dozier was located and rescued
by the Carabinieri commandos after five weeks in captivity -- while Prime
Minister Aldo Moro had been murdered by the Red Brigades, eight weeks after
his kidnapping in '78 -- led inevitably to stories, probably mythical, that
Bell's PSE was a significant factor in the investigation.  As Clarke or
someone said, any technology sufficiently advanced will be considered magic
-- and it is doubtless true that, for many Italians interviewed during the
Drozier inquiry, the quiet presence of the diminutive American civilian,
with his utterly mysterious "truth-detector," inspired fear and awe.

        The Legend that came out of Italy was doubtless a factor in
Dektor's subsequent success selling the $5K PSE into the corporate and
security market.  (There was a period where corporate negotiations were
sometimes held in a hotel chosen only just before the start of the talks,
for fear that one party or the other might have pre-installed a PSE.)   In
the mid and late '80s, dozens, perhaps hundreds of PIs -- and maybe a few
journalists -- were actually running around using tape recorders to
interview people, then running back to their hotel rooms to spin the tape
for their PSE.

        All of this was something of a giggle for Allan Bell, a Cold
Warrior with a sense of humor who would _love_ this List.  Bell offered
(when asked) a much more modest description of the potential of the PSE.
As I recall, Bell described the PSE as tool which could allow an
investigator to identify, with reasonable certainty, the utterly innocent
(lumped together, perhaps, with the utter psychotic; those who couldn't
themselves separate truth from falsehood)... but which offered only limited
utility in sorting the liars from others of various types who might
experience stress or tension when faced with an interrogation or interview.


        The utterly innocent and the utterly psychotic both being
relatively uncommon breeds (even among politicians and/or Libertarians,)
the PSE never quite made it as a standard tool for criminal justice, or
journalistic, inquiries.

        Bell set up what I always believed to be an elaborate practical
joke on the Beltway Bandit Culture when, at the height of the PSE craze, he
let Dektor's sales office in suburban D.C. -- Vienna, maybe? -- be used
after-hours as the world headquarters/classroom/PR center for the
short-lived Mensa University.  (MU's president of which was a local PSE
distributor, and very much a true believer.)

        The idea that the very bright might have to be very honest to
matriculate intrigued me... but I'll admit I wasn't surprised when MU,
quite honestly, collapsed into something of a laughingstock.

        Suerte,

                        _Vin

         Vin McLellan +The Privacy Guild+ <vin@shore.net>
      53 Nichols St., Chelsea, Ma. 02150 USA Tel: (617) 884-5548
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