In an article entitled “To Tell The Truth,” US News and World Report writers Kevin Whitelaw and David E. Kaplan put forth informed commentary on the dangers of security vetting by polygraph. Excerpt:
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The task [of finding moles in the CIA] fell to [Edward] Curran, who sensed the nation’s premier spy agency was consumed by mistrust. Routine polygraphs became grueling interrogation sessions. The polygraphers treated their colleagues “like criminals,” says Curran. “This might be great in a prison but not with civil servants.”
The crackdown turned up serious security problems. But innocent people were also snagged, raising the question of whether the agency used the decidedly wrong medicine for a cure. As many as 100 people–including some of the nation’s top spies–found their careers paralyzed: Many lost coveted transfers overseas; others were pushed into dead-end jobs; still others quit in frustration or were forced out. “No organization can afford to have that many experienced officers tied up in limbo,” says Frederick Hitz, the CIA inspector general for much of the 1990s. Says a former station chief: “The effect was devastating.”
Today, the dragnet at the CIA offers a cautionary tale as other federal agencies embark on their own sweeping spy hunts. The FBI has launched an agencywide mole hunt, sparked by the February arrest of veteran counterintelligence agent Robert Hanssen.…
“If they can’t pass a CIA polygraph, fire them,” former CIA officials recall Rep. Norman Dicks, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, barking at the time.
Everyone knew of the polygraph’s flaws, shortcomings so glaring that the test results are inadmissible in most courts. A tabletop box that monitors pulse, breathing, and skin moisture, the machine measures stress, not truthfulness. Even veteran polygraphers concede there is a 10 percent to 15 percent “false positive” rate. That’s where the machine registers a “significant physiological response” on a truthful answer. “The polygraph is not really a lie detector,” says former CIA director James Woolsey. “You have cases in which truthful people look like they’re lying and where lying people look like they’re truthful.” Many times during the exams, officials say, fears unrelated to counterintelligence or criminal behavior clouded the results. Horror stories about bad polygraph sessions soon raced through the agency.