Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
Carrie Wells reports for the Baltimore Sun that on Friday, 26 April 2013, Maryland Secretary of Public Safety & Correctional Services Gary D. Maynard ordered that three senior administrators at the Baltimore City Detention Center submit to polygraph interrogations, and that more polygraphs may follow. Excerpt: Polygraph tests for three top officials at the Baltimore …
On 25 April 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed the existence of a previously sealed indictment (455 kb PDF) against former U.S. Agency for International Development employee Marta Rita Velázquez, who is charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit espionage. The indictment alleges that it was Velázquez who recruited Ana Belen Montes, …
On 17 April 2013, Cuban intelligence officer Nicolás Alberto Sirgado Ros ((The Granma article provides “Ross” as his maternal family name, but this appears to be a clerical error.)) died at the age of 77 years according to a short notice published on 19 April by Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party. …
Limestone Technologies vice president Tyler Buttle faces a 5 June 2013 pre-trial hearing on charges of assaulting with intent to rape a woman he met at a conference on sexual abuse. The conference, held 10-12 April 2013 in Marlborough, Massachusetts and co-hosted by the Massachusetts Adolescent Sex Offender Coalition and the Massachusetts Association for …
Disbarred criminal defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey will be the keynote speaker at a seminar jointly presented by the American Polygraph Association and the Maine Polygraph Association next Wednesday to Friday, 24-26 April 2013 in Saco, Maine. The stated purpose of the seminar is “to educate lawyers, investigators, therapists, probation and governmental officers and members …
In a class action appeal filed with the Merit Systems Protection Board, four military reserve officers allege that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has engaged in a “continuous” and “wide-ranging pattern of harassment” against members of the U.S. Armed Services and National Guard, including targeting them with pre-employment polygraph screening, in violation of the …
On Friday, 12 April 2013, AntiPolygraph co-founder George Maschke sent an inquiry to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder seeking clarification on whether the U.S. Department of Justice considers the learning, using, or teaching of polygraph countermeasures by or to federal employees or applicants for employment is a crime: Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:38:55 +0000 …
The federal criminal investigation into polygraph countermeasure training reported by AntiPolygraph.org last week is named “Operation Lie Busters.” The name, which was redacted from a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) document (5.4 mb PDF) released to the Center for Investigative Reporting under the Freedom of Information Act, suggests that polygraph countermeasures are central, and …
Polygraph countermeasures are techniques for passing or beating a polygraph “test.” Publicly, polygraph operators claim that polygraph countermeasures are ineffective and that they can easily detect them. But documents provided to AntiPolygraph.org reveal that behind closed doors, they admit that countermeasures can indeed be effective and that they are difficult to detect. The most informative …
On 4 April 2013, the Center for Investigative Reporting published two articles by Andrew Becker on U.S. Customs and Border Patrol’s pre-employment polygraph screening program. The first, which has garnered considerable attention and was featured on Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast, is “During polygraphs, border agency applicants admit to rape, kidnapping.” ((The Daily Beast ran …