This editorial in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel takes a sober look at calls for more polygraph “testing” in the FBI. Excerpt:
The government’s latest spy scandal is putting enormous pressure on the FBI to make greater use of polygraph tests. The reason is the disclosure that accused spy Robert Philip Hanssen had never been given a lie-detector test during the 15 years he allegedly sold U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and Russia.
The FBI may have been guilty of negligence – or worse – in its failure to dig out what it believes was a mole in its midst. That important question will be investigated by someone who can be safely entrusted with the job: William Webster, a former director of both the FBI and the CIA.
But there is no question about the failings of lie-detector tests, and the FBI would be taking on an enormous risk if it began to use them more frequently than it does.
The bureau now uses such examinations to screen prospective agents, but it does not administer them to employees unless they are suspected of wrongdoing or are assigned to certain jobs. There are good reasons for this reluctance.
For one thing, polygraph test results are unreliable. Aldrich Ames, the infamous CIA counterintelligence official who spied for Moscow for nine years before his arrest in 1994, passed two lie-detector tests.
For another, they deprive the FBI (and the country) of talented people. Polygraph exams can doom the careers of patriotic, effective agents by disclosing damaging but irrelevant personal information about their backgrounds. What’s more, prospective FBI agents who don’t want to surrender their privacy so drastically might be unwilling to join the bureau in the first place.
If heavily used, lie-detector tests also can produce a false sense of security; they can lead to the neglect of other security measures that require more effort and time, such as background checks. A turncoat like Ames who passes a polygraph test might evade the kind of scrutiny that would expose his treachery.