Arizona Bans Polygraphs in Law Enforcement Internal Investigations

According to an official news release, Arizona governor Doug Ducey on 25 April 2022 signed into law H.B 2159, a bill introduced by Representative John Kavanagh that withdraws authorization for the use of polygraphs in law enforcement internal investigations. Kavanagh, a Republican representing Arizona’s 23rd district, previously worked as a police officer with the Port …

Confession of White Perpetrator in Brittanee Drexel Missing Person Investigation Clears Black Suspect Who Failed FBI Polygraph

On 25 April 2009, 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel of Chili, New York went missing while on holiday in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The investigation of the case dragged on for years and garnered nationwide attention. In 2016, Tequan L. Brown, a jailhouse informant, implicated Timothy Da’Shaun Taylor in Brittanee Drexel’s disappearance, claiming that Drexel “was gang …

Polygraph Operator Lisa Ribacoff Dodges Questions at Crime Conference

Polygraph operator and American Polygraph Association board of directors member Lisa Ribacoff, who is in business with her father, fraud-tainted celebrity polygrapher and private investigator Dan Ribacoff, was a speaker at the Oxygen Network’s recently concluded CrimeCon 2022 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her talk was styled as an “AMA” (“Ask Me Anything”) affair, but …

Halifax Scraps Polygraph Screening of Police Applicants

On Tuesday, 8 February 2022, the regional council of Halifax, the largest municipality of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, voted to end polygraph screening of applicants for employment with the Halifax Regional Police as of 30 September 2022. See Zane Woodford’s reporting for the Halifax Examiner and Jen Taplin’s reporting for the Chronicle Herald. …

On the Origins of the NSA Polygraph Program

In 1951, the NSA’s forerunner organization, the Armed Forces Security Agency, began “voluntary” polygraph screening of civilian applicants for employment. On 6 December 1953, the National Security Agency (NSA) made pre-employment polygraph screening mandatory for civilian applicants. Writer Stephen Budiansky describes the origins of the NSA’s polygraph program at pp. 163-65 of his 2016 history, …

Former San Jose Police Polygraph Operator Robert E. Foster Pleads No Contest to Fraud Charges, Faces Three Years in Jail

In July 2020, the Santa Clara County, California District Attorney’s Office charged Robert E. Foster, then a polygraph operator with the San Jose Police Department, “with using his private security company to commit insurance fraud, tax evasion, wage theft, and about $18 million in money laundering.” On Friday, 14 January 2022, the Santa Clara County, …

Once Secret CIA Report Reveals Derogatory Information on Polygraph Luminaries Gugas, Barefoot, and Harrelson

A formerly secret CIA report (PDF) provides derogatory information about three prominent polygraph operators of the mid-20th century. The report was declassified and publicly released pursuant to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The subject of the two-page report, dated 14 August 1968, is Chris Gugas (1921-2007), a former CIA …

American Polygraph Association Declines Comment as More Racist Text Messages by Member Daniel Ribacoff Surface

Dirty Cops & PIs blog founder and editor Jeffrey Augustine reports on newly discovered racist text messages attributed to disgraced polygraph operator Daniel Ribacoff in an article titled, “Trouble for Polygraph Expert Dan Ribacoff as More Racist Texts Surface.” Both AntiPolygraph.org and Dirty Cops & PIs previously reported on a different set of racist text …

In PR Scramble, New York Metropolitan Transit Authority Abruptly Terminates Business With Fraud-Tainted Polygraph Operator Daniel Ribacoff

On the morning of Friday, 12 November 2021, the New York Daily News published online news of Long Island polygraph operator Daniel D. Ribacoff’s racist text messages, which were first reported by AntiPolygraph.org in early October and later that month by Jeffrey Augustine on his Dirty Cops and PIs blog. As reported by AntiPolygraph.org in …