During the poly, few question in, guy asked me if I ever looked up how to beat a poly. I naturally said yes cause I was startled that this in fact could be one of the questions, which automatically ended the interview.
Thats when I realized that smart people don't work in the government.
I guess this is sort of a chicken/egg problem since you can't or won't get hired for the job if you appear too familiar with the workings of the recruitment process. But then if you don't get hired, they might be leaving out one of the better informed candidates.
Anecdotally from the defense contractor industry I've known a number of people who have a whole bookshelf of books on subjects like cold war era espionage, are deeply familiar with some of the most noteworthy moles/spies that were publicly prosecuted and jailed (or north korean, chinese, soviet officers and officials who were just straight out executed with a bullet to the back of the head). It didn't seem to prevent any of them from passing their clearances. Some jobs want to know that you're motivated to learn the subject matter at hand and research its past 60+ years of history.
Its so frustrating because from my perspective its like... what do you want me to say/do here? Do you really think a curious person isnt going to look up polys? Am I supposed to deny that I did that? The whole thing is a joke. How many good candidates are we missing that could be working in the public sector just because of this BS filtering?
(Polygraphs are pseudoscientific BS in the first place, but I know there are some cases where you must undergo them for whatever reason.)
EDIT: I'm not aware of any polys leading to discovering enemies of the state. Its all self-elected information from my understanding, in line with your suggestion.
Polys are not the end-all for detecting bad guys but if you choose to ignore it anyway, it certainly becomes useless.
I hadn't heard of the Ames poly history but I just looked it up and its interesting because apparently he had the same mindset that I do about polys in general [1], and basically when the poly tech said during the interview that they were getting some weird results, he essentially told them the same thing [2] and they were like "yeah youre right" lol.
[1] - https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/polygraph/ames.html
[2] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2002/04/16/failure-of-the-polygraph/07c406a5-0aa3-4e20-8dcc-89781162aaa8/In his original 1986 poly, he popped on one question but basically smooth talked his way out of it so it never was something that required followup (i.e. they were sufficiently convinced he was a good guy). In the 1991 poly it gets more interesting because the entire poly was partially a ruse because he was _already under investigation_. Due to timing, the interviewer didn't get coached to dig in on specifics around financial issues, and so they followed a bog-standard interview which Ames passed. The really interesting quote around this is how the postmortum basically says this was a bad poly because they didnt play enough mind games to get him nervous in the first place:
In its review of the Ames polygraphs, the CIA IG report quotes several current and former polygraph examiners who stated that the Ames case should not be considered to be a polygraph "chart interpretation" problem. Rather, they say, the fundamental problem is that the 1986 and 1991 polygraph charts were invalid because the examiner in each case failed to establish a proper psychological atmosphere in the examination sessions. A former polygrapher noted that without proper preparation, a subject has no fear of detection and, without fear of detection, the subject will not necessarily demonstrate the proper physiological response. Consequently, they surmise, the Ames polygraph tests were invalid because the process was flawed by examiners who had not establish the proper psychological mind set in Ames because they were overly friendly. As a result, Ames's physiological reactions were unreliable.