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Travis Walton Takes "Moment Of Truth" Polygraph Test


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The last question asked was straightforward enough* Were you abducted by a UFO in November 1975. And very Interesting it came back as false.

The host of the show said to Travis the polygraph conclusively showed you were being deceptive. Is Travis hiding something from us?

What could help Travis here is he has no honest memory of being abducted by a UFO. He only remembers being underneath the object, he was hit by a beam of light that came from the UFO which knocked Travis out, this information came from best friend Mike and his fellow co-workers, but nobody actually observed Travis been taken aboard the craft they all claimed they'd witnessed.

---------- Post added at 03:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:11 PM ----------
Ron Collins said:
Interesting. He did seem very shocked and angry that it was false though. I would like to hear his response to this. Does anyone know when this was taped?
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I say Ron it fairly new Comments on YouTube are less then one week old and the video was just posted this month. If it was an old video it would have been posted long time ago.
 
As I was thinking about this one thing struck me. He has passed at least 7 other polygraphs. They asked othr questions that inclued the abduction from a UFO motif and no deception was detected. When he does pass a polygraph I didn't hear skeptics everywhere saying "Well, he did pass the polygraph so I guess it happened." but I guarantee you that Shermer will start to use this ""False" as new justification that he made the whole thing up. In the end, we have only eye witness testimony and a hand full of radiation test results and circumstantial sightings in the area. unfortunately this just firther muddies the water for the phenomenon. I gotta say though, he has some huge galvanized stainless steel balls to sit in that seat.
 
I feel bad for him. He seems like a good, honest guy.
I don't think he was abducted by aliens, I never have, but I don't think that a lie detector test produces any conclusive results. It means nothing, one way or another. The truth is that all we have to go by is his word, and that of his co-workers. Unless there's some late in life confession that it was some sort of hoax like that Patterson bigfoot film, we will never know what actually happened.

---------- Post added at 11:01 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:58 AM ----------
Ron Collins said:
As I was thinking about this one thing struck me. He has passed at least 7 other polygraphs. They asked othr questions that inclued the abduction from a UFO motif and no deception was detected. When he does pass a polygraph I didn't hear skeptics everywhere saying "Well, he did pass the polygraph so I guess it happened." but I guarantee you that Shermer will start to use this ""False" as new justification that he made the whole thing up. In the end, we have only eye witness testimony and a hand full of radiation test results and circumstantial sightings in the area. unfortunately this just firther muddies the water for the phenomenon. I gotta say though, he has some huge galvanized stainless steel balls to sit in that seat.
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I can say that the fact that the result was "false" means absolutely nothing. Any one that does is being disingenuous. You can't pick and choose which results you like. I still don't think that he was abducted by aliens, but this show is meaningless. At least he won some money for himself.
 
Kieran said:
The last question asked was straightforward enough* Were you abducted by a UFO in November 1975. And very Interesting it came back as false.

The host of the show said to Travis the polygraph conclusively showed you were being deceptive. Is Travis hiding something from us?
Click to expand...

Also, while I was thinking about this, I remembered something Travis has said many times. About thinking that they didn't mean to hurt him and seemed to take him only to heal him. Perhaps h feels that the term abduction is not accurate. He may say something like "yes, I was abducted" because that is the best description for the public at large. But he may privately feel that this is not an accurate way to describe it. I don't want to be an apologist but these sort of nuances are why polygraphs are inconclusive.
 
I don't know whether Travis was abducted or not. It remains a 'grey case' for me and reasonably interesting. I listened to a Travis Walton interview on WHFR radio some weeks ago and he seems sincere. All parties involved have stood by him. Saying that, I've heard the tape where his brother phoned NUFORC and reported the incident a day before Travis Walton reappeared. He doesn't come across like a guy who's brother has gone missing and is being suspected of foul play by the local law.

There's a focus on the last answer that overlooks the previous ones. If the others that referred to the abduction were accepted as 'true' then the polygraph must be inherently flawed. If the final answer is 'false' then the others must be wrong. This throws all the show's polygraph responses into question as far I'm concerned.

Inconclusive...like it always is. :)

ETA: Travis Walton has posted a response to the show just 15 minutes back on ATS. You can read his reply.... Travis Walton (Moment Of Truth) Proof, Hes A Liar!!, page 5
 
Ron Collins said:
This is from Travis Waltons reply. Truth about The Moment of Truth
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There are a lot of Con-Artists out there, even in the UFO field (which is amusing really), but that guy stood by his story for over 20 years and comes of as rather humble. Why he did the show...monetary reasons I guess. After listening to many interviews with him, that test proves or disproves nothing really.There's also the question why he would put himself through that test except for the aforementioned money if he was a 'faker' from the beginning.
I find it rather odd that he tries to defend his story on ATS though.
 
I don't know why these people even bother taking polygraph examinations. They don't do them any good. If they pass those with an inclination to disbelieve just assume they fooled the test or at best will only concede this classic line, "I believe they believe it." But if they fail lots of these same people will accept it as definitive proof that they are being dishonest. It's a nothing/lose situation for them so why bother? The National Academy of Sciences has likened polygraph exams to tarot cards or crystal balls so why does anyone use them?

---------- Post added at 12:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:00 PM ----------
Kandinsky said:
I don't know whether Travis was abducted or not. It remains a 'grey case' for me and reasonably interesting. I listened to a Travis Walton interview on WHFR radio some weeks ago and he seems sincere. All parties involved have stood by him. Saying that, I've heard the tape where his brother phoned NUFORC and reported the incident a day before Travis Walton reappeared. He doesn't come across like a guy who's brother has gone missing and is being suspected of foul play by the local law.

There's a focus on the last answer that overlooks the previous ones. If the others that referred to the abduction were accepted as 'true' then the polygraph must be inherently flawed. If the final answer is 'false' then the others must be wrong. This throws all the show's polygraph responses into question as far I'm concerned.

Inconclusive...like it always is. :)

ETA: Travis Walton has posted a response to the show just 15 minutes back on ATS. You can read his reply.... Travis Walton (Moment Of Truth) Proof, Hes A Liar!!, page 5
Click to expand...

I read Walton's comments and they were very well presented. However, I find myself scratching my head as to why he would agree to be tested in such a ridiculous format in the first place. Perhaps a long line of passed tests made him overconfident. According to his rebuttals he's been tested again since that show and passed.

---------- Post added at 12:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:25 PM ----------

I guess this answers my question:

Travis here. That's a fair question. The best answer being that I was an idiot. Too much overtime dulled my mind.
I should have seen it coming. I should have known better. But there were unique circumstances. The company where I had worked for almost a decade announced a corporate headquarters decision to downsize by permanently terminating the fifty most recently hired workers, regardless of their performance. My hire date put me on that list. I came home that same day to receive a phone call inviting me to be a “contestant” on a show I’d never seen that offered the possibility of winning up to $100,000. An opportunity to solve my layoff problem? I was wary. I began taping our negotiations. I watched an episode. I knew the examiner was their man, with every incentive to keep his employers from having to pay out big prize money. I wrote e-mails to a few of my friends about my apprehensions. I wrestled with doubt. I learned the show specialized in setting “contestants” up for dramatically devastating revelations. Still, all I had to do was answer 25 questions truthfully, what could be easier than that? Impossible, I later learned. In all the show’s years NO contestant had ever won the top prize. But I didn’t know that yet, so I asked, does the examiner use modern accepted methodology? I was assured he did. This was as far from true as you can get. The producer telling me this untruth may have believed it simply because the higher ups said so. Or they all, producers and network, may have been deceived by the examiner, who, with his training, absolutely had to know his methods were bogus. We went back and forth. I sent them my refusal. They came back and were very persuasive and said they were planning on responding to criticisms by making sure more prizes would be awarded. I so very foolishly yielded to the temptation. Even after arriving for taping I learned such disappointing details and got such bad vibes that I announced I was going home, but my objections were again negotiated away. I found out a major portion of episodes already taped never aired because the “contestants” withdrew and walked out.
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Kieran said:
The host of the show said to Travis the polygraph conclusively showed you were being deceptive. Is Travis hiding something from us?
Click to expand...

One of the many reasons polygraphs aren't used in a court of law is that we are routinely being deceptive and hiding things, whether or not we're consciously aware of it. Hence, false readings.

It's 1940's technology that is similar to watching someone's eyes to see if they're telling the truth, as if everyone reacts the same way to everything. Naive.
 
i was trained to pass polys. i'm prior service US army intelligence. it's really not that complicated. however, the average person, when under pressure and fear, will not pass one. if he were lying or being deceptive, he would have failed his first couple polygraph tests. he made it through 7 up until this one. i imagine it was his nerves about being on the show and having his abduction being openly broadcast. additionally, it's true what he said about them only being accurate to a point. a lot of it depends on the test administrator because reading a poly is really a matter of interpretation. i'm not entirely convinced that aliens exist, BUT i believe this man is telling the truth to the best of his knowledge. that's just my two cents.
 
Sloppy Joe said:
i was trained to pass polys. i'm prior service US army intelligence. it's really not that complicated. however, the average person, when under pressure and fear, will not pass one. if he were lying or being deceptive, he would have failed his first couple polygraph tests. he made it through 7 up until this one. i imagine it was his nerves about being on the show and having his abduction being openly broadcast. additionally, it's true what he said about them only being accurate to a point. a lot of it depends on the test administrator because reading a poly is really a matter of interpretation. i'm not entirely convinced that aliens exist, BUT i believe this man is telling the truth to the best of his knowledge. that's just my two cents.
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Hold on, your saying that the Army, the U.S. Army, trained you to beat a polygraph. what was your MOS? What job in the US Army requires a soldier that can beat a polygraph?
 
Ron Collins said:
Hold on, your saying that the Army, the U.S. Army, trained you to beat a polygraph. what was your MOS? What job in the US Army requires a soldier that can beat a polygraph?
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I'm guessing that the polygraph is widely available in countries outside the US that, after capturing an American agent/soldier, may try to use it to evaluate the validity of the information extracted in an interrogation. Then again, people may start to think that some US army personnel are trained to beat polygraphs so that they can lie to their own people without being recognized as doing so :)
 
Facius_Cardan said:
I'm guessing that the polygraph is widely available in countries outside the US that, after capturing an American agent/soldier, may try to use it to evaluate the validity of the information extracted in an interrogation. Then again, people may start to think that some US army personnel are trained to beat polygraphs so that they can lie to their own people without being recognized as doing so :)
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I have never heard of that outside of special forces and by that I mean specifically SFOD-D (Delta Force) and I am not even sure that is accurate. Not to mention that polygraphs really measure physiological stress. So they require the participant to be realtively calm and willing to go through the process. This is why polygraphs are NEVER consulted in interrogations or on prisoners. In that scenario the physiological and psychological stress factors would be to unpredictable to establish and accurate baseline.

Plus, this guy claims he was in "Intelligence". Special forces guys have a member of the team responsible for operational intel but he doesn't claim to be in intelligence. He would claim to be a special forces operator. Guys that claim to be in intelligence occupy comm shacks, command and control centers, mission planing rooms, and other duties that are not typically in a position to be captured. This is to minimize the risk of exposing them and their "sources and methods" knowledge of intelligence collection and distribution to potential enemy capture. That isn't to say that they are weenies. They are just aren't typically trigger guys.

So basically, I want to call this out. I want to know his MOS and specifically what job he had that required specialized training to defeat polygraphs and specifically what polygraph systems he was trained to defeat. My

So, for me, it is hard to imagine a job that requires specialized training of this nature outside of deep cover CIA type scenarios. I just can't believe that unless I can confirm with others in that exact same job that it was a requirement. Now, if I am wrong so be it. I would issue a strong apology and be better armed with information for the future. For me it just doesn't hold water. Many of you know how I feel about misrepresenting military service or outright lying about it. So I would hope he doesn't take too much offense to the questions as my intentions are honorable.

As an aside: I know of a guy right here on these forums that was an intelligence specialist in the Navy. I will send him a PM and ask him to weigh in as he has first hand experiance being in an intelligence job.
 
Ron Collins said:
I have never heard of that outside of special forces and by that I mean specifically SFOD-D (Delta Force) and I am not even sure that is accurate.
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I was trying to be funny. :) From what I know enemy forces are usually far less kind in their methods of interrogation. Currently, the polygraph is a machine that only makes sense for TV show producers.
 
Facius_Cardan said:
I was trying to be funny. :) From what I know enemy forces are usually far less kind in their methods of interrogation. Currently, the polygraph is a machine that only makes sense for TV show producers.
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Sorry, I missed that. :) I just get a bit frustrated with what I am fully expecting is a load of horse shit.
 
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