Hugo Lowell reports for the Guardian in a 9 May 2025 article titled, “White House to take choice of Pentagon chief of staff out of Hegseth’s hands” that the White House Office of Presidential Personnel has forbidden Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth from making Ricky Buria, whom Hegseth designated in April 2025 as a “Senior Advisor,” his chief of staff.
Lowell’s anonymous sources appear to have wanted to publicly denigrate Buria, and among other things, disclosed the results of a polygraph examination Buria underwent in connection with an as-yet-unsolved leak investigation:
Buria also recently failed to pass a polygraph test that was administered as part of the leak investigation. The polygraph came back as inconclusive, the officials said, a result that would ordinarily require him to retake the test before he could be cleared.
The disclosure of Buria’s polygraph results to the Guardian is an apparent violation of the Privacy Act of 1974. It should be noted that polygraph “testing” has no scientific basis and that there is no documented instance of it ever solving a federal leak investigation.
The polygraph was inconclusive. Maybe they should have given Buria a CVSA since they are never inconclusive. Of course, the CVSA is 50% reliable at best. So, maybe just flip a coin for each official and save a bunch of time and money.