Jerome Aning, Armand N. Nocum, and Cathy C. Yamsuan report for the Philippine Inquirer News Service. Excerpt:
“ADOR,” a former civilian agent of the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, last night demanded to take an “independent” polygraph test witnessed by representatives of the press, fearing that he failed one administered earlier yesterday at the National Bureau of Investigation.
Ador (not his real name) voluntarily took the lie detector test and underwent another round of interrogation in the hope of bolstering his claims that Sen. Panfilo Lacson and his top aides had hatched a plot to destabilize the Macapagal administration and had ordered a number of kidnappings.
On his first day of work as a senator, Lacson, a former Philippine National Police chief, said he would ask his fellow lawmakers to investigate Ador’s charges.
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Results of Ador’s polygraph test will not be ready for two or three days, NBI officials said. Lie detector tests are widely perceived to be unreliable and their results are often rejected in court as evidence of guilt or innocence.
But Justice Secretary Hernando Perez told reporters that while such results are “not conclusive,” they would still assist prosecutors in assessing whether Ador would be useful in building a criminal case against those he has implicated.
Ador arrived at the NBI in Manila around 9 a.m., wearing a cap, sunglasses, and a large gray handkerchief covering the lower half of his face. He was accompanied by his wife and his lawyer.
The former agent refused to utter a single word, despite several attempts by reporters to interview him.
Last night, he demanded to retake the polygraph test in the presence of his lawyers and representatives from the INQUIRER and GMA-7.
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Ador claimed he was tense during the first after being hounded by the press and being given a runaround by NBI employees, and said he feared that his tension might have resulted in inaccurate test readings.
“It was like a wild goose chase. Reporters were chasing me when I went to the second floor for the polygraph test. Then I was asked to go to the first floor and then again to the second floor because the test would be held there,” Ador told the INQUIRER.
Ador said reporters hounded him as he went from one room to another looking for the polygraph examiner.
“When I finally saw the polygraph machine, it was like an electric chair, so it added to my tension. And the examiner kept on telling me not to move, so I just became more tense,” he added.
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[Sen. Panfilo] Lacson brushed off Ador’s challenge to him to take a lie detector test, remarking: “I (won’t) dignify his accusations.”