This Huntsville Times editorial warns of the danger of substituting polygraphy for effective counterintelligence reform. Excerpt:
A kid takes a gun to school and shoots some classmates. So parents and administrators respond by banning baggy pants and nose rings. A career FBI agent is arrested and charged with spying for the Soviet Union and then for Russia. So the FBI responds by announcing that it will administer lie-detector tests to 500 employees with access to confidential information.
The two situations are not quite comparable, but they share similarities that point up the danger in fashioning a partial response to a problem and then fooling ourselves into believing we’ve solved the problem.