Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
On Monday, 7 May 1984, polygraph operator Norman R. “Norm” Matzke of the King County, Washington Sheriff’s Office conducted a polygraph “test” of Gary Leon Ridgway regarding the deaths of prostitutes whose bodies had been dumped in or near the Green River beginning in 1982. After passing the polygraph, Ridgway, who had been arrested on …
In 2011, AntiPolygraph.org reported that a consortium of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies had created a “Polygraph Law Enforcement Accreditation” (PLEA) program and had in 2010 promulgated a 65-page “Polygraph Guide for Standards and Practices,” a copy of which we obtained and published (1.9 MB PDF). The PLEA consortium continues to function and …
AntiPolygraph.org has obtained an unredacted copy of the regulation governing the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA’s) polygraph program. The document, marked “For Official Use Only” and titled “Credibility Assessment Program” is DIA Instruction 5200.002 dated 3 July 2014. Of special note is Section 4.22, which seemingly provides for the possible removal of DIA personnel based solely …
An exhibit (PDF) submitted by prosecutors in the Espionage Act trial of Joshua Adam Schulte for allegedly providing a collection of CIA hacking tools dubbed “Vault 7” to WikiLeaks shows that Schulte understood that polygraph “testing” is bogus. AntiPolygraph.org has previously reported that Schulte passed multiple CIA polygraphs despite having allegedly downloaded child pornography before …
On Wednesday, 11 December 2019, Anca Pennington, 30, of Omaha, Nebraska purchased three bottles of Tylenol, each containing 24 pills, after passing through security at Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey. She then proceeded to a restroom stall, swallowed all of the pills, and laid down to die. Earlier that day Pennington, a single mother …
The “Test for Espionage and Sabotage” is the primary counterintelligence-scope polygraph screening format employed by the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy. The procedure is described in detail in a 2016 National Center for Credibility Assessment administration guide (1.2 MB PDF) obtained by AntiPolygraph.org. The guide, marked “For Official Use Only,” sets forth the relevant, …
AntiPolygraph.org has obtained a copy of the National Center for Credibility Assessment’s documentation of the polygraph screening technique “used by federal law enforcement agencies during the pre-employment process.” The 23-page document, dated 3 March 2016, provides instructions for administration of the so-called “Law Enforcement Pre-Employment Test” (LEPET), to which applicants for employment with such agencies …
AntiPolygraph.org has published a set of documents concerning the San Diego Police Department’s polygraph practices. These documents, which date to 2017, focus primarily on pre-employment polygraph screening. The most notable document, titled “SDPD DLST Preemployment Script” instructs the polygraph operator how to conduct the “pre-test” procedure. “DLST” stands for “directed-lie screening test.” Directed-lie “control” questions …
In July 2018, the so-named National Institute for Truth Verification (NITV) of West Palm Beach, Florida, which markets a scientifically baseless lie detector called the Computer Voice Stress Analyzer (CVSA), filed in Florida a federal lawsuit against competitor Dektor Corporation and its sole proprietor, Arthur Herring III, of Coopersburg, Pennsylvania. Dektor markets a similarly scientifically …
Longtime polygraph critic Doug Williams, himself a former police polygraph operator, is scheduled to testify as an expert witness against the admissibility of polygraph evidence in a New Mexico court hearing scheduled for 30 May 2019. Dr. Alan Vaughn Emamdee of Farmington, New Mexico faces an 11-count indictment for alleged sexual abuse of patients and …