Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
In a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary held Thursday, 30 June 2016, Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) expressed concern to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson about the level of false positives in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection pre-employment polygraph program, and that such false positives amount to a …
On 21 February 2013, federal agents raided former police polygraphist Doug Williams‘ home and office, seizing his customer records as part of an investigation targeting polygraph countermeasure instructors. The U.S. government used these records to create a interagency watch list of individuals who had purchased Williams’ manual, How to Sting the Polygraph, an accompanying DVD, …
On 9 June 2016, Chief United States District Judge for the District of New Mexico M. Christina Armijo signed an 8-page order suppressing inculpatory statements made to an FBI polygraph examiner by the suspect in a child molestation investigation. The post-polygraph statements made by Jamaico Tennison to FBI Special Agent and polygraph examiner Jennifer Sullivan …
In a 10-page published decision (PDF) filed on 23 May 2016, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled that “[b]ecause polygraph testing has not been proven reliable, polygraph test results are not admissible as substantive evidence of a probation violation in probation-revocation proceedings.” The case is State of Minnesota, Respondent, vs. Chad Michael Nowacki, Appellant.
Steven Williams, a 30-year-old U.S. Air Force staff sergeant stationed at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, has confessed to killing his ex-wife, Tricia Todd, on the night of 26 April 2016. Williams reportedly dismembered Todd with a chain saw and buried her body parts in an acid-filled container in a pre-dug grave …
In an address to members of the Federalist Society at the South Texas College of Law that was posted to YouTube on 15 April 2016, Department of Defense (and probable NSA) polygraph operator Brian R. Morris mentioned that in the aftermath of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations, the Department of Defense tripled the number of …
The United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit has ruled in a 25-page opinion (PDF) that a convicted sex offender in a post-conviction polygraph program cannot be compelled to answer questions about his sexual history that could tend to incriminate him. So-called “sexual history polygraphs” are commonly administered early in such programs, and …
Aron Ra, Texas state director of American Atheists and host of the Ra-Men podcast spoke with AntiPolygraph.org co-founder George Maschke for the 44th episode of his Ra-Men podcast. Topics covered include the origins of AntiPolygraph.org, polygraphy’s lack of scientific underpinnings, why the U.S. government persists in its reliance on polygraphy, polygraph countermeasures, and Operation Lie …
The following is a guest post from Doug Williams, who writes from the federal prison camp at Florence, Colorado. Williams, who for decades had taught people how to pass or beat polygraph “tests” without incident (and whose website, Polygraph.com, remains online), was targeted for entrapment in a federal criminal investigation dubbed Operation Lie Busters. On …
Around midnight on the evening of 22-23 February 2015, two armed men accosted Matthew Yussman at his New Britain, Connecticut home. They held Yussman and his mother at gunpoint, forced Yussman, the chief financial officer of a credit union, to wear a device that they said was a bomb, and early in the morning made …