In an article mistitled “Freeh beefs up FBI’s security,” Washington Times correspondent Jerry Seper reports that FBI Director Louis Freeh has already ordered expanded polygraph screening within the Bureau. Excerpt:
FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, stung by the arrest of one of his own agents as a Russian spy, has ordered sweeping changes in the bureau’s internal security measures, including expanded use of polygraph tests for FBI employees.
In a strongly worded five-page memo, Mr. Freeh directed that “periodic” polygraph examinations be administered to all agents and support personnel who have access to the “FBI’s most sensitive information” — with the first round of tests beginning within 60 days.
First up, the memo said, will be senior executive personnel, employees leaving and returning from overseas postings, and those agents and other personnel whose assignments “expose them to extremely sensitive information, sources or investigative techniques.”
Mr. Freeh, under pressure from Congress and elsewhere to begin polygraph tests of his agents, said he had asked former FBI Director William H. Webster to conduct an independent review of the bureau’s internal security measures.
But the memo, issued last week, says that improving internal security is “too important to wait” for Mr. Webster’s pending recommendations.
“I ask every employee to give this mandate their serious attention,” he said. “Together, we will strike the proper balance between security, operations and employee privacy necessary to safeguard our nation’s most critical information.”
Noting resistance from within the bureau to widespread polygraph examinations, Mr. Freeh said the tests would focus on counterintelligence issues and would be administered by the bureau’s National Security Division.
AntiPolygraph.org invites all FBI employees to download and read The Lie Behind the Lie Detector and learn how to protect themselves against the scientific fraud that Director Freeh has decided to foist upon them.