In this Washington Post op-ed piece, former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal writer Ronald Kessler says that FBI Director Louis Freeh should be fired for not having required routine polygraph “testing” for FBI counterintelligence personnel. Mr. Kessler obviously doesn’t know about “the lie behind the lie detector.” Excerpt:
Back in 1994, just after the arrest of CIA officer Aldrich Ames for espionage, bureau officials developed a plan to screen FBI agents by using polygraph tests. The idea was not radical. CIA officers and National Security Agency employees had long been subject to routine polygraph exams. More recently, the FBI urged the Energy Department to require polygraph tests at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Mesmerized by their own legend of incorruptibility, many FBI agents objected. But most acknowledged that the FBI’s position as the agency in charge of catching spies shouldn’t exempt it from scrutiny. In the end, Freeh took no action on the polygraph proposal, leaving the FBI in the curious position of advocating polygraphs at other agencies but not for itself.
Asked about this, John Collingwood, the FBI’s assistant director for public and congressional affairs, said that while Freeh was aware of the discussions, he never received a formal proposal from bureau officials to institute polygraph screening, because there was no consensus among them on the issue.
To be sure, polygraphs had not been effective in detecting Ames’s spying. But the CIA had misread its own polygraph results. When FBI polygraph examiners later looked at the CIA’s charts, they concluded that Ames, when asked about spy activities, clearly had shown signs of deception.
The FBI is perfectly happy to polygraph criminal suspects, if they consent. Because of Freeh, the bureau also now polygraphs applicants to the FBI. It polygraphs counterintelligence agents assigned to especially sensitive cases like the Ames investigation. While polygraphs are not infallible, they clearly serve as a deterrent.