Mr. Specter. Would there be any difference in psychological reactions, Mr. Herndon, on a pattern of deception which the subject considered insignificant as opposed to a pattern of deception which the subject considered significant?
Mr. Herndon. Generally the concept of the polygraph technique is that we are attempting to find out what a man’s physiological responses will be in any area where he is attempting to deceive. The content of the actual deception is not particularly important. We want to get a tracing of where he is attempting to deceive. Now under a situation such as Mr. Ruby was in here, it is more probable that he is more concerned about these relevant questions than these irrelevant or control-type questions. In other words, the relevant questions have more to do with his well-being or what he is trying to prove to the Commission. However, the chart here still shows that he attempted to deceive with regard to what he considered insignificant, but it tends to indicate to me that he will respond to a practice of deception, if that answers your question.
Mr. Specter. What I am driving at here is whether there is any gage in whether he considers it insignificant or significant in the reading. Stated differently, there would be a response even though he might consider a question to be insignificant.
Mr. Herndon. That is right. If there is an attempt on his part to practice deception, if he again, as I say, is competent and reasoning rationally. In general practice of polygraph work, generally speaking the control questions are of lesser severity than the actual pertinent questions, but in those cases where the person appears to be telling the truth, we find that they will respond more to the control questions than the critical question, even though the critical question has more potency and is more severe with regard to his well-being.
Mr. Specter. Were there any other significant findings on that chart?
Mr. Herndon. Yes. Mr. Ruby also responded significantly in a physiological sense with regard to question 9: “Have you ever served time in jail?” He failed to actually respond yes or no. However, there was a decrease in his blood pressure, a moderate impact in the GSR, and a change in the baseline of his pneumograph tracing. The fact that he actually failed to say yes or no precludes my interpretation of whether or not this is an indication of deception, but it does indicate that Ruby did experience a physiological variation from his normal pattern with regard to this question which is of a control-type nature.
Mr. Specter. Does that complete then the relevant findings on that chart?
Mr. Herndon. That concludes series No. 3. It might be worthwhile to record that the total chart minutes on this particular series was 2 minutes 45 seconds.
Mr. Specter. Let us then mark the next series, which is series 3a, as Herndon Deposition Exhibit No. 4.
(Herndon Deposition Exhibit No. 4 was marked for identification.)