FBI Employees Asked on Polygraph Whether They Have Cast Aspersions on Director Kash Patel

New York Times reporter Adam Goldman, following up on his earlier reporting that senior FBI executives were being polygraphed at a “rapid rate,” provides new details about the FBI’s use of polygraphs to go after journalistic sources in a new article titled, “The F.B.I. Is Using Polygraphs to Test Officials’ Loyalty.” Excerpt:

Typically, the F.B.I. has turned to polygraph tests to sniff out employees who might have betrayed their country or shown they cannot be trusted with secrets.

Since Kash Patel took office as the director of the F.B.I., the bureau has significantly stepped up the use of the lie-detector test, at times subjecting personnel to a question as specific as whether they have cast aspersions on Mr. Patel himself.

In interviews and polygraph tests, the F.B.I. has asked senior employees whether they have said anything negative about Mr. Patel, according to two people with knowledge of the questions and others familiar with similar accounts. In one instance, officials were forced to take a polygraph as the agency sought to determine who disclosed to the news media that Mr. Patel had demanded a service weapon, an unusual request given that he is not an agent. The number of officials asked to take a polygraph is in the dozens, several people familiar with the matter said, though it is unclear how many have specifically been asked about Mr. Patel.

The use of the polygraph, and the nature of the questioning, is part of the F.B.I.’s broader crackdown on news leaks, reflecting, to a degree, Mr. Patel’s acute awareness of how he is publicly portrayed. The moves, former bureau officials say, are politically charged and highly inappropriate, underscoring what they describe as an alarming quest for fealty at the F.B.I., where there is little tolerance for dissent. Disparaging Mr. Patel or his deputy, Dan Bongino, former officials say, could cost people their job.

“An F.B.I. employee’s loyalty is to the Constitution, not to the director or deputy director,” said James Davidson, a former agent who spent 23 years in the bureau. “It says everything about Patel’s weak constitution that this is even on his radar.”

The F.B.I. declined to comment, citing “personnel matters and internal deliberations.”

…

Former polygraphers suggested the question asking employees whether they had said anything negative about Mr. Patel might also have been devised to be what is known as a control question. Such questions are intended to elicit certain physiological responses for the purposes of comparing a participant’s answers to other questions.

Whatever the reason behind the question, it is sowing mistrust and stoking concerns of a politicized F.B.I.

The explanation that the question about whether an employee has said anything negative about FBI Director Patel may very well have been a probable-lie “control” question.

Polygraph “tests” are scored by comparing physiological responses to a relevant question, for example, “Did you tell anyone outside the FBI that Director Patel requested a service weapon?” with responses to a probable-lie “control” or comparison question that is intended to create an emotional response even in someone who is answering the relevant question truthfully.

A clever polygraph operator might suppose that asking an employee whether he has ever disparaged the Director would serve as a good “control” question, as it is widely assumed in polygraph circles that everyone has engaged in gossip.

While “control” questions are used for scoring purposes against the relevant questions, a subject is not deemed to have failed for having shown a strong response to a “control” question. Indeed, the key to passing is precisely to exhibit stronger reactions to “control” questions than to relevant questions.

Nonetheless, any admissions made to such “control” questions may be noted, and, as Goldman observes, the use of such a “control” question would tend to give rise to concerns about its propriety. When AntiPolygraph.org first went online, the U.S. Secret Service routinely asked applicants whether they had ever had sex with an animal as a form of “control” question, a practice that it seems to have abandoned.

For more on polygraph procedure, see Chapter 3 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector.

AntiPolygraph.org welcomes comment from anyone with further insights into the FBI’s polygraph practices. Apart from commenting here, you can also reach us privately and securely via Signal at ap_org.01 or via SimpleX Chat.

Adam Goldman spoke about his most recent article on the FBI’s polygraph campaign with Nicolle Wallace of MSNBC, along with former FBI special agent Michael Feinberg, whose saga is also addressed in Goldman’s article: