Travis Walton - Suppressed Polygraph Exam and Controversy

Suppressed Polygraph Exam and Controversy

In the meantime, Spaulding had announced to the press that he and "Dr." Steward had questioned Walton for two hours, and had uncovered inconsistencies in Walton's account that would "Blow this story out". (Clark, 637) The Phoenix Gazette ran a story about Steward, who related his claims that the "Waltons fear exposure" of a carefully crafted lie. (Clark, 638)

Sheriff Gillespie arranged for a polygraph, but when word of the exam was leaked to the press, Duane canceled it, thinking that Gillespie had broken his promise to keep the test a secret. Gillespie would later insist he had not leaked word of the polygraph, and that the case had become too sensationalistic to keep anything secret for long.

The National Enquirer wanted Walton to take a polygraph as soon as possible, and arranged for one, after Duane insisted that he and Walton have the power to veto any public disclosure of the test results. Harder thought that Walton was too distraught to take a polygraph, but the examiner — John J McCarthy, of the Arizona Polygraph Laboratory — said he could take Walton's nervous state into consideration.

In interviewing Walton before the exam began, McCarthy extracted two admissions from him: First, that he had smoked marijuana a few times, but had never used the drug regularly, and secondly, that he and Mike Rogers' younger brother had committed check fraud a few years earlier by altering payroll checks. It was his only serious brush with the law – Walton completed two years probation without further incident – but Walton remained deeply embarrassed about the check fraud episode. (Incidentally, Philip J. Klass notes that Walton once claimed to have been jailed for this crime, though he actually received two years' probation as a first-time offender.)

McCarthy then administered the polygraph, which remains mired in controversy. Walton asserts McCarthy behaved unprofessionally, while McCarthy insists Walton both failed the polygraph and tried to cheat. At one point, says Walton, McCarthy asked if Walton had "colluded" with anyone to perpetrate a hoax. Walton said he was unfamiliar with the word, and Walton reported that McCarthy replied, in a confrontational and aggressive manner, that collusion was planning or conspiring with another, just as Walton had colluded to steal and forge payroll checks.

After completing the exam, McCarthy determined that Walton was lying. Clark quotes from McCarthy's official report: "Based on his reaction on all charts, it is the opinion of this examiner that Walton, in concert with others, is attempting to perpetrate a UFO hoax, and that he has not been on any spacecraft". (Clark, 640) Later, McCarthy would assert that "sometimes Travis would hold his breath, in an effort to 'beat the machine."

The Waltons, APRO and the National Enquirer then agreed to keep the results of this polygraph a secret, due in large part, they insisted, to doubts about McCarthy's methods and objectivity. Eight months later, when word of this decision was made public, there would be more charges of deception and cover-up. Walton would later take and pass two additional polygraph exams, though the suppressed results of the first exam would shadow him and earn mention in nearly every discussion of the case to the present.

Once word of the suppressed polygraph was made public by Klass, many who had thought Walton had related a true account (or at least what he thought was a true account) reconsidered the case with a more skeptical eye. Walton, Duane and APRO members argued that McCarthy was biased, and had asked Walton embarrassing, irrelevant questions in an effort to create turbulent conditions more likely to produce a negative result. According to Clark, the opinions of recognized polygraph experts were divided about the propriety of McCarthy's exam: Harry Reed supported the validity of McCarthy's exam, while psychologist David Raskin of the University of Utah asserted that McCarthy's method was "more than 30 years out of date."

Philip J. Klass — an aviation journalist by profession, but also a well-known UFO debunker — launched a concerted, sustained critique against Walton's claims, arguing especially that there was a strong financial motive to the entire affair. Rogers knew he would be unable to complete his contract with the Forest Service, argued Klass, and concocted a scheme to invoke the contract's act of God clause, thus dissolving the contract without fault. Others argued against this idea, noting that defaulting on a Forest Service contract was not necessarily the catastrophe Klass implied: Rogers had failed to complete two of his many earlier Forest Service contracts, yet had been rehired without apparent prejudice. Furthermore, despite his anxiety over the contract, Rogers never invoked or tried to invoke the "act of God" clause in the aftermath of Walton's disappearance.

Klass and others also noted that The UFO Incident was broadcast on NBC just a few weeks before Walton's disappearance. This made-for-television film was a fictionalized account of the Hill Abduction, the first widely publicized case of alien abduction. Klass and others speculated that Walton had been inspired by the program. Walton denied that he had watched the program, but Klass notes that Mike Rogers watched at least a portion of the program. Clark argues that Walton's account of his time on the UFO is quite different from the Hill account, and that furthermore, "there is not a great deal of similarity between Walton's and any other abduction narrative" publicly discussed as of November, 1975. (Clark, 649)