Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
David Johnston writes in the New York Times: WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 — Robert Philip Hanssen was never polygraphed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine whether he might be a security risk during the 15 years when, it is charged, he spied for the Soviet Union and then Russia, law enforcement officials said today. …
Washington Post staff writers David A. Vise and Dan Eggen discuss FBI security in the wake of the Hanssen spy scandal: Congressional panels, inspectors general, interagency task forces, blue-ribbon commissions and other repeatedly warned the FBI that it needed more frequent lie detector tests like those now used by the CIA… Vise and Eggen also …
In “Spy case reveals FBI failings,” Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz discusses the use of polygraph screening by the FBI and other agencies. Mr. Gertz seems to equate polygraphs with security, opening his article, “The arrest of Robert P. Hanssen on charges he spied for Moscow has exposed weaknesses in FBI internal security, including document-handling …
In an article entitled “Invisible on the Inside,” Walter Pincus and Vernon Loeb of the Washington Post report that the FBI may consider expanding its polygraph program to include random “testing” of personnel in the wake of the Robert P. Hanssen espionage case, and reveal that a plan has been on the shelf for three …
In a knee-jerk reacton to the Hanssen case, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has called for increased use of polygraph screening at the FBI. In an article titled “Russian Spy Case Worries Congress,” Carol Skorneck of the Associated Press writes: WASHINGTON (AP) – The arrest of a veteran FBI agent on …
In an article entitled “Lab Security Measures Shelved Pending Study,” Washington Post staff writer Walter Pincus suggests that expanded polygraph screening has been suspended pending a review. Excerpt: In his last days in office, former energy secretary Bill Richardson temporarily suspended a series of measures that had been taken over the past two years to …
In an article entitled, “Key witness now prime suspect,” staff writer Michelle Roberts of The Oregonian reports that Mr. Humberto Castro Soler, who testified that he watched Mr. James Bryant shoot a Salem woman and her boyfriend over a 1999 drug deal gone bad, is now the prime suspect in those murders. Mr. Soler had …
In an article entitled, “Sheriff’s department to get polygraph equipment,” Alicia Henrikson of the Topeka Capital-Journal writes: County commissioners approved the purchase of a polygraph instrument and polygraph training for a sheriff’s deputy on Thursday in a 3-0 vote at the county commission meeting. The cost for the instrument, training and a laptop computer is …
In an article entitled, “Sheriff’s office asks county for polygraph,” Alicia Henrikson of the Topeka Capital-Journal writes: The Shawnee County Sheriff’s Department has never had anyone trained to operate a polygraph instrument. The department has never had such a need because it doesn’t have a polygraph. That may be about to change. The sheriff’s department …
Patrick E. Gauen of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes on the case of Rodney Woidtke, who was being retried for murder in Bellevue, Illinois: Polygraph, or lie-detector, tests are not admissible in Illinois courts, and case law suggests that mere mention of the word can be considered poison to a jury’s fairness.