Episode 618 of the popular radio program This American Life features the story of Doug Williams, the former police polygraphist who turned against polygraphy and in 1979 began providing the public with information and training on how to pass or beat a polygraph “test.” Over three decades later, Williams was targeted for prosecution in a federal investigation dubbed “Operation Lie Busters” and is now nearing the end of a two-year prison sentence. You can listen online or download the episode as an MP3 file here.
Doug Williams Argues Why He Should Be Allowed to Continue Teaching People How to Pass a Polygraph Test
On 21 November 2016, imprisoned polygraph critic Doug Williams filed a court motion seeking amendment of federal judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange‘s sentencing order, which stipulates that upon release, Williams will be subject to three years’ “supervised release” during which time he “shall not participate in any form of polygraph-related activity.” Williams asks the court to modify the conditions of his release to allow him to engage in polygraph-related activity to the extent that it is not “intended or part of a scheme to defraud the United States or tamper with witnesses.”
On 10 February 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief opposing Williams’ motion, effectively conceding that polygraph countermeasures work and arguing that “the restriction on polygraph-related activities for the full term of supervised release is the minimum restriction necessary to protect the public.”
On 21 February 2017, Doug Williams filed a reply to the government’s opposition, challenging the Justice Department’s legal arguments and arguing forcefully why his freedom of speech should not be curtailed. His broader arguments are worth citing here (cited as filed, without corrections):
7. Williams is a highly trained and experience polygraph operator. He has been working in his profession for over 44 years. The District Court has discretion to impose an occupational restriction as a special condition of supervised release, but its discretion must be exercised in accordance with 18 U.S.C. S3538 (d) Subsection (a) states that a sentencing court may impose an occupational restriction only if it determines that ” … Imposition of such a restriction is reasonably necessary to protect the public because there is reason to believe that absent such restriction, the defendant will continue to engage in unlawful conduct similar to that for which the defendant was convicted.”
8. In this case there is no reason to believe that Williams will “continue to engage in unlawful conduct.” Williams can practice his profession as a polygraph operator and continue to publish information about the ineffectiveness of the polygraph examination without engaging in a scheme to defraud the United States Government, or without tampering with a witness. Williams has a 1st Amendment right to provide information about how a person taking a polygraph test can avoid being falsely accused of deception simply because they have a nervous reaction to a relevant question. Williams has no intention of providing information or training to any person for the purpose of defrauding the government, or the tampering with a witness. In his business and occupation, Williams seeks to provide comprehensive information about the use of the polygraph examination as well as methods used by the subject being tested to prove their truthfulness on a polygraph examination.
9. Any occupational restriction must be “reasonably necessary to protect the public” which requires a finding by the Court that, in the absence of the restriction “the defendant will continue to engage in unlawful conduct similar to that for which the defendant was convicted.” U.S.S.G. 5F1.5 (a)(2). In providing information about the use of the polygraph examination as well as methods to produce a “truthful” polygraph chart tracing, Williams is actually protecting the public and individual citizens from being defrauded by government agencies or employees who improperly use the polygraph testing process, and falsely brand a truthful person as a liar simply because they are nervous.
10. The government’s response states: “Given the defendant’s (Mr. Williams) extreme disregard for public safety and national security, there are no less restrictive alternatives that would adequately prevent him from helping individuals lie in order to obtain or keep sensitive government positions. Williams would submit that he is more concerned with our national security as evidenced by the fact that he has devoted almost forty years of his life proving the polygraph is nothing but a scam and he has been warning the government that it is foolish and dangerous to rely in the polygraph as a “lie detector”. In truth and in fact, it is the polygraph operators and those government officials who rely on the polygraph who are the ones who have demonstrated little regard for public safety and national security by relying on such an unreliable procedure as polygraph testing. Furttier, there IS no evidence that Williams has ever been involved in “helping individuals lie in order to obtain or keep sensitive government positions”. In fact, the government seized Mr. Williams’ computer and downloaded the records of over 4900 people who had either purchased his manual and DVD or took part in my one on one polygraph test preparation training. The government agents, and an AUSA interviewed every one of these people who were of interest to them. They started the interview by saying, “We’re not after you, we are after Doug Williams.”. They interrogated them very intensely asking them if Williams ever told them to lie or if they ever told Williams they were going to lie. Not one of these people ever said Williams told them to lie or that they ever told Williams they were going to lie. It is of interest to note that polygraph operators from this same agency, the Customs and Border Patrol, admit that over two-thirds of the applicants for positions with that agency are denied employment because of a “failed” polygraph test so it is obvious that many thousands of people have been falsely accused of deception by government polygraph operators. This failure rate is another example of the polygraph program’s extreme disregard for public safety and national security by thwarting the Customs and Border Patrol’s efforts to adequately staff their agency.
11. The government’s response states: “Both UCs made it clear to defendant (Mr. Williams) that they could not keep or obtain federal employment unless he helped them lie about their crimes during their respective polygraph examinations. Knowing the UCs intent to lie to federal investigators in order to get or keep federal law enforcement positions, defendant (Mr. Williams) willingly trained them how to provide false responses to polygraphers questions and still pass.” That is not true, neither of the UCs told Mr. Williams they were going to lie on the polygraph test, nor did Mr. Williams ever tell them to lie. The first undercover agent simply said the investigators already knew he had “turned his head” while a friend brought in some drugs and the second undercover agent said he was going to tell the polygraph operator about his “crimes” and his only concern was that it would get back to the sheriff and he would lose his job as a deputy. Also, the government has no evidence that Mr. Williams “trained them to provide false responses to polygraphers questions and still pass”. The fact is that no polygraph test was ever administered to either of these undercover agents, nor did they ever intend to take a polygraph test. And there is no evidence that Mr. Williams helped them “lie about their crimes during their respective polygraph examinations” when no such test was ever taken. The UCs were the ones doing all the lying and they needed no help from Mr. Williams. Indeed, this was all pretend and they were even lying about lying since everything they said was scripted.
12. The polygraph is A simple device that has not changed significantly since in was invented in 1920. It records the subject’s blood pressure, pulse rate, respiration and what’s known as the galvanic skin response which is basically just a measurement of the increase or decrease of sweat activity on the subject’s fingers. Polygraph operators ask a series of questions during the test and measure the subject’s reaction or lack of reaction to the questions. There are two types of questions asked on the polygraph test – relevant and control. The relevant questions are those that pertain to the point at issue. For example, if the polygraph test is about drug smuggling, the questions would be as follows: Did you smuggle drugs into the country? Did you work with someone to smuggle drugs into the country? Right now could you take me to any of the drugs that were smuggled into the country? The polygraph operator will intersperse control questions during the test. The control questions would be as follows: Have you ever lied to anyone in authority to keep from getting in trouble? Did you ever deliberately hurt anyone? Have you ever stolen anything? The theory underlying the polygraph as a “lie detector” is as follows: If a subject has a reaction on a relevant questions that is greater than their reaction to a control questions, the subject is deemed to be deceptive. If the reverse is true, and the subject has a reaction to the control questions that is greater than their reaction to the relevant questions, the subject is deemed to be truthful. This reaction that would brand a person as a liar is simply a nervous reaction such as is seen in the fight or flight response. When a person is confronted with a threatening stimulus their body releases a shot of adrenalin which causes their blood pressure to increase, their breathing to become erratic, and the sweat activity on their hand to increase. In order for the polygraph to be accurate as a “lie detector’, this reaction that polygraph operators refer to as a “lying reaction” or a “reaction indicative of deception” must always indicate deception. The problem is that there is no such thing as a “lying reaction”. In fact, the reaction that brands a person as a liar can and often is caused by any number of innocent stimuli – such as embarrassment, rage at having been asked an accusatory question, simple nervousness, fear of being falsely accused of lying – even the tone of the examiner during questioning can elicit a reaction that would cause a person to fail the test. So, the polygraph records a person’s nervous reaction to relevant questions but the problem is that nervousness does not always indicate deception – in fact it only indicates deception about 50% of the time. Thus the polygraph is no more accurate than “the toss of a coin”. Mr. Williams simply teaches people what the polygraph records, teaches them the difference between the relevant and control questions and runs them through a relaxation exercise similar to that used in the Lamas technique of natural child birth. This training only takes about twenty minutes and then the subject is hooked up to the polygraph and is allowed to demonstrate their ability to relax when answering the relevant questions and think of something frightening when answering the control questions thereby producing a perfect “truthful” chart. When you consider the extraordinary failure rate of almost 70% at the Customs and Border Patrol – as well as other government agencies – it is logical to assume that many thousands of people are falsely branded as liars by government polygraph operators. It would be unconscionable to deprive those persons seeking this training from receiving it by prohibiting Mr. Williams from continuing to educate them about how to avoid being falsely accused of deception simply because they are nervous.
13. The government’s response states: “Because defendant’s criminal conduct was inextricably linked with his polygraph business and because defendant has repeatedly and deliberately sought to avoid knowledge of his clients intention to lie during polygraph examinations (in order to insulate himself from criminal activity), the Court’s restriction on defendants participation in polygraph related activity is necessary to protect the public.” There is no statute that prohibits Mr. Williams from teaching a person to pass, or for that matter to “beat” a polygraph test. Williams was charged with witness tampering and Mr. Williams’ knowledge or lack of knowledge about his clients intention to lie during polygraph examinations is irrelevant simply because having the knowledge that a person he is training plans to lie does not constitute a crime. The crime Mr. Williams was charged with is witness tampering not teaching a person how to pass a polygraph test. Further, as will be discussed later, except in these two cases, there is no evidence that anyone has ever told him they intended to lie during polygraph examinations, and Mr. Williams has certainly never told anyone to lie on their polygraph examinations – and in fact Mr. Williams never told any of these undercover agents to lie – nor did they ever tell Mr. Williams they planned to lie on their polygraph examinations. As regards the charges of witness tampering, it appears from the record that the only “tampering” being done was done by the government’s undercover agents. And it should be noted that these agents were not “witnesses” to anything. In fact everything they said was a lie. Also, everything Mr. Williams told the government’s undercover agents about how to pass a polygraph test was in his testimony to the congress in 1985 in support of the Employee Polygraph Protection Act. So Mr. Williams is in prison for telling the undercover agents exactly what he told the congress over thirty years ago.
14. Williams has been demonstrating how simple it is to “beat the box” on national television and in hundreds of seminars over the past thirty eight years. It is true that anyone can use Mr. Williams’ techniques to pass their polygraph test regardless of whether they are nervous or not, lying or not, no matter what. Mr. Williams has been saying that for almost forty years. He says that is hopes that those who use the polygraph or rely on the results reported to them by polygraph operators will realize that it is not accurate or reliable as a “lie detector” and will quit using it. Besides, liars can pass the polygraph test easily regardless of whether they have been trained or not. History is replete with examples of people who have lied and passed polygraph tests with no problem, Aldridge Ames, the CIA agent who was a notorious traitor, passed many polygraph examinations – and he was actively passing classified information to the Soviets when he took – and passed – many polygraph tests. As a matter of fact, there has never been even one traitor, or spy ever caught by the polygraph. Even the most recent episode with Edward Snowden demonstrates how foolish and dangerous it is to rely on the results of a polygraph test. Snowden passed two polygraph tests in order to get access to the information he leaked from the NSA. Snowden not only passed the pre-employment polygraph test, but he also passed the all encompassing, highly vaunted “lifestyle” polygraph test. Snowden passed both polygraph tests, even though he knew at the time he took the tests what he planned to do when he got his security clearance. If that doesn’t prove the polygraph is worthless, what does? So, the polygraph brands truthful people as liars and allows liars to pass the test with no problem. In fact, liars have demonstrated the ability to pass the polygraph test without any training whatsoever while truthful people are branded as liars at an alarming rate. Therefore, Williams’ training is essential to help truthful people avoid being falsely accused of deception. Accordingly Williams requests that the Court remove the special condition of his supervised release prohibiting his participation in any form of polygraph related activity.
Respectfully submitted
Douglas G Williams
Pro Se
Williams’ full brief may be downloaded here. For discussion of Williams’ case, see the Doug Williams Polygraph Trial Discussion Thread.
U.S. Department of Justice Effectively Concedes that Polygraph Countermeasures Are Effective
The U.S. Department of Justice effectively conceded that polygraph countermeasures are effective in arguing against incarcerated polygraph critic Doug Williams‘ motion that he be allowed to engage in polygraph-related activities during his upcoming three-year period of supervised release. DOJ’s opposition brief (PDF), filed on 10 February 2017, notes, at p. 2:
In addition to training manuals and DVDs, defendant sold in-person, confidential, “one-on-one” polygraph countermeasures training sessions. During these sessions, defendant taught clients how to pass polygraph tests even if they were lying. (emphasis added)
The brief, which largely recaps details of the government-orchestrated “crimes” for which Williams was convicted, concludes by arguing that “the restriction on polygraph-related activities for the full term of supervised release is the minimum restriction necessary to protect the public.” This flies in the face of the polygraph community’s claims that sophisticated polygraph countermeasures can be routinely detected and are ineffective.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Applicant Megan Brown Discusses Her Polygraph Experience
In this video statement posted to YouTube on 31 January 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Protection applicant Megan Brown describes her pre-employment polygraph experience, which included an accusation of attempted polygraph countermeasures:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzRRfmQvh_U
Polygraph Screening Prevents U.S. Customs and Border Protection from Meeting Hiring Goals
Associated Press reporter Elliot Spagat reports on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s pre-employment polygraph screening program:
SAN DIEGO (AP) — David Kirk was a career Marine pilot with a top-secret security clearance and a record of flying classified missions. He was in the cockpit when President George W. Bush and Vice Presidents Dick Cheney and Joe Biden traveled around the nation’s capital by helicopter.
With credentials like that, Kirk was stunned to fail a lie detector when he applied for a pilot’s job with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which guards 6,000 miles of border with Mexico and Canada. After two contentious polygraph sessions that lasted a combined eight hours, Kirk said, he drove home “with my tail between my legs,” wondering how things had gone so wrong.
Two out of three applicants to the CBP fail its polygraph, according to the agency — more than double the average rate of eight law enforcement agencies that provided data to The Associated Press under open-records requests.
Stories like David Kirk’s are common at CBP. See, for example, the dozens of comments on our 2010 blog post, Customs and Border Protection Polygraph Failure Rate Pegged at 60%.
It’s a big reason approximately 2,000 jobs at the nation’s largest law enforcement agency are empty, with the Border Patrol, a part of CBP, recently slipping below 20,000 agents for the first time since 2009. And it has raised questions of whether the lie detector tests are being properly administered.
CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske said the failure rate is too high, but that it’s largely because the agency hasn’t attracted the applicants it wants. He and other law enforcement experts contend the polygraphs are generally working as intended at the agency, which has been trying to root out bribery and other corruption.
Gil Kerlikowske should be asked to document how he knows that the reason the CBP failure rate is so high is “largely because the agency hasn’t attracted the applicants it wants.” A more plausible explanation is that an invalid procedure (polygraph screening) is frequently and predictably producing invalid results.
But others, including lawmakers, union leaders and polygraph experts, contend that the use of lie detectors has gone awry and that many applicants are being subjected to unusually long and hostile interrogations, which some say can make people look deceptive even when they are telling the truth.
Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona said he suspects CBP examiners fail applicants to justify their own jobs. He said he worries applicants are being wrongly branded with a “scarlet letter” in the eyes of other potential government employers.
“There seems to be no good explanation, and when we hear so many anecdotal stories, it starts to look like a trend where they feel like they have to fail them, a certain number,” he said. “It makes you angry that people would be put through that.”
Senator Jeff Flake is likely correct. Polygraph operators’ pass/fail rates are compared, and it’s likely that polygraph they don’t want to appear to be “soft” compared to their peers. Sen. Flake raised concern about the level of false positives in the CBP polygraph program in a Judiciary Committee meeting held in June 2016.
In December, the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general said it was reviewing whether CBP’s polygraphs are effective in hiring. The hiring difficulties have become so acute that the Border Patrol recently took the unusual step of asking Congress to use money earmarked for 300 jobs for other purposes. That raises doubts about President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to add 5,000 agents.
Taking a polygraph became a hiring requirement at CBP in 2012 after a huge hiring surge led to more agents getting arrested for misconduct.
James Tomsheck said that when he was CBP’s chief of internal affairs from 2006 to 2014, about 30 applicants admitted during the lie detector test that they were sent by drug cartels; one said he killed his infant son.
One applicant revealed his brother-in-law wanted him to smuggle cocaine on the job, and another said he used marijuana 9,000 times, including the night before his test, according to the Government Accountability Office.
It is true, as James Tomsheck notes, that applicants sometimes admit to disqualifying behavior during pre-employment polygraph examinations.1 But only the most stupid of applicants make such admissions. Any person of reasonable intelligence seeking to infiltrate CBP on behalf of a drug cartel can pass the polygraph using simple countermeasures (see Chapter 4) that polygraph operators cannot detect.
Interviews with six applicants who failed to clear the polygraph fit a pattern: The examiner abruptly changes tone, leveling accusations of lying or holding something back. The job-seeker denies it and the questioning goes in circles for hours. Some are invited for a second visit, which ends no differently.
Luis Granado applied to the Border Patrol in 2014 with military experience and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona. His father is an agent, and Granado used to proudly try on the badge as a boy.
“This was my dream job,” said Granado, 31, who is now a full-time Air Force reservist in Tucson, Arizona. “I wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps forever.”
He said the examiner scolded him for answers that were “too emphatic, too fast” and told him to stop grinding his teeth.
Granado said the examiner was troubled by an admission that he cheated on a test in high school. When he denied ever belonging to a cartel or terrorist group, the examiner stopped and said, “Well, I think you’re being deceptive,” according to Granado. After two sessions that lasted a total of 12 hours, his conditional job offer was rescinded.
CBP declined to comment on individual cases.
Luis Granado’s experience is an all-too-common story, and it’s happening not only to CBP applicants, but also to applicants with other federal agencies with a polygraph screening requirement. See AntiPolygraph.org’s Personal Statements page for examples.
CBP’s Kerlikowske put the agency’s polygraph failure rate at about 65 percent. The AP asked law enforcement agencies across the country for two years of lie-detector data for job applicants, including police departments in the nation’s 10 largest cities and in major towns along the Mexican border. The eight that supplied numbers showed an average failure rate of 28 percent.
Tomsheck said that when he was CBP’s internal affairs chief, other federal agencies, including the FBI and Secret Service, had failure rates of less than 35 percent. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the only federal agency that supplied data to the AP, failed 36 percent in the last two years.
Mark Handler, editor in chief of the American Polygraph Association, said failure rates of about 30 percent are typical in law enforcement hiring.
Kerlikowske explained that the agency isn’t getting the applicants it wants because the relatively new CBP, created in 2003, “doesn’t have a brand” and is unfamiliar to some.
Among other possible reasons offered by some experts for the agency’s failure rate: CBP may have higher standards than local departments, and it get less-experienced applicants who have never taken a lie detector before.
Agencies can and do set their polygraph pass/fail rates as high or as low as they please. For example, in the late 1990s, the FBI had a pre-employment polygraph failure rate of 20%. But after 9/11, with a surge in the number of applicants, that failure rate more than doubled to 50% by 2002. It is not plausible that this rate increase had anything to do with the FBI having higher hiring standards (they didn’t change) or the fact that applicants had never been polygraphed before. Rather, with more applicants, the FBI felt it could afford to arbitrarily brand a higher percentage of applicants as liars and disqualify them.
The duration of CBP’s testing strikes some experts as unusual.
“If there’s an exam that lasts four to eight hours, your polygrapher is either incompetent or a fool or both,” said Capt. Alan Hamilton, commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s recruitment and employment division. His department’s exams last no longer than 90 minutes.
Handler said prolonged, accusatory interviews can lead to failures for people who are telling the truth. Lie detectors measure blood pressure, sweating and breathing.
The relatively lengthy polygraph interrogations at CBP likely result from the fact that the CBP polygraph program was largely created and initially staffed with retired U.S. Secret Service polygraph operators, who could collect their pensions while receiving federal salaries with CBP (“double-dipping”). Lengthy, abusive interrogations have long been a hallmark of the USSS polygraph program. See, for example, the personal statement of Bill Roche.
Polygraphs are generally not admissible in court, and federal law bars private employers from using them to hire. The military doesn’t use them to screen enlistees, and some law enforcement agencies don’t use them in hiring, including the New York Police Department, U.S. Marshals Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
CBP, under pressure to hire, recently loosened standards on previous marijuana use and, under a law that took effect in December, can waive polygraphs for veterans with top-secret clearances.
A better solution would be to scrap the polygraph program entirely. Given polygraphy’s lack of scientific underpinnings and vulnerability to simple, easily-learned countermeasures, CBP and other federal agencies should scrap their misplaced reliance on it. See AntiPolygraph.org’s proposed legislation for effecting this outcome.
Kirk, 47, of Friendswood, Texas, applied to CBP in 2013 after 20 years as a Marine officer and calls it one of the worst experiences of his life. In the Marines, “one of our biggest mantras is our honesty and integrity,” he said. “Someone calling me a liar, I take it very personally.”
During the 2013 polygraph exams, he said, he was accused of cheating on his wife and mishandling classified information and was told he acted like a drug trafficker trying to infiltrate the agency. Kirk vehemently denies the allegations.
The accusation of marital infidelity “almost made me want to jump across the desk,” said the father of four. He told the examiner that he tried marijuana in college and says the biggest mark on his record is a speeding ticket.
“They treated me like a criminal,” said Kirk, now a private pilot. “I don’t know who was better qualified than me to fill this position.”
See also this video report produced by the Associated Press, which includes an interview with David Kirk:
- AntiPolygraph.org is unaware of any instance where someone attempting to infiltrate CBP on behalf of a drug cartel was criminally prosecuted. [↩]
Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Tyree C. Blocker Scraps Polygraph Screening
Applicants for employment with the Pennsylvania State Police will no longer be required to submit to the pseudoscientific ritual of polygraph screening. Angela Couloumbis reports for the Philadelphia Inquirer:
HARRISBURG – In a move sparking controversy, Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Tyree C. Blocker has quietly scrapped the agency’s long-held practice of administering lie-detector tests to its recruits.
State Police officials confirmed this week that applicants vying to become state troopers will no longer undergo polygraph testing as part of an extensive background check that helps determine their acceptance into the State Police Academy.
A spokesman for the State Police would not say why Blocker ordered the change. The agency also could not immediately provide information on how many candidates fail the test annually, what kind of questions are asked, or whether it has been successful in the past in identifying red flags.
But two state officials familiar with the decision said Blocker told agency managers he believes the testing slows down the hiring process, leading the State Police to lose out on qualified candidates who end up taking jobs elsewhere. The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.
The fact that polygraphy has no scientific basis whatsoever is reason enough to scrap it. With respect to the Pennsylvania State Police polygraph program, AntiPolygraph.org has previously published documentation of its policies, including the specific questions asked of applicants.
Blocker is facing pushback from troopers who believe eliminating the polygraph takes away an important tool the agency has used to weed out unqualified applicants.
Joe Kovel, president of the Pennsylvania State Troopers Association, called it a “bad idea.”
“Right now, people in society want to know that we are doing everything we can to ensure that the men and women we hire are of the outmost integrity – and the polygraph test has proven to be an important tool in determining that,” said Kovel.
He said he had expressed the concerns of his union’s membership – more than 4,000 troopers – to Blocker.
Pennsylvania State Troopers Association president Joseph R. Kovel’s misgivings about the decision to scrap the polygraph are misplaced. There is no evidence that polygraph screening results in a more honest police force. For example, there is no documentation that police forces in Pennsylvania, where polygraph screening is generally permitted, are any less honest than police forces in the neighboring state of New Jersey, where state law prohibits polygraph screening of police applicants.
Moreover, as more and more people in society come to understand that polygraph “testing” is a pseudoscientific fraud, the fact that police agencies rely on it in the hiring process will increasingly inspire the opposite of confidence.
Despite debate over the effectiveness and reliability of lie-detector tests, most federal, state and local law enforcement agencies use them when screening applicants. Candidates may be asked, for instance, about sexual activity, employers, past drug use, contact with criminals or legal actions against them.
There are exceptions: the New York City Police Department and the New Jersey State Police, for instance, do not use polygraphs in pre-employment screening.
But particularly at the federal level, the results can automatically disqualify applicants, said George Maschke, a onetime U.S. Army reserve intelligence officer and co-founder of AntiPolygraph.org, a non-profit website that questions the reliability and effectiveness of polygraph testing, as well as the science behind them.
In an interview, Maschke called the State Police’s decision to scrap the test “a wise one.”
He called the science behind them “junk,” and said they can easily be manipulated by knowledgeable applicants. Conversely, he said, the tests can also produce faulty results because the things they measure – such as changes in breathing, perspiration and blood pressure – often occur for reasons other than lying.
“Resentment at being asked an accusatory question, fear of not being believed even though you are telling the truth, embarrassment over being asked a personal question – all sorts of things could cause those changes,” said Maschke. “Even the tone of voice of the interrogators can produce that change.”
Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Tyree C. Blocker is to be commended for his decision to terminate the long-held but invalid practice of polygraph screening. It is inherently biased against the truthful, resulting in many false positives, while liars can easily fool the polygraph using simple countermeasures that polygraph operators cannot detect. Other law enforcement agency leaders should take note and follow Commissioner Blocker’s example.
Jailed Polygraph Critic Doug Williams Appeals Ban on Post-Release Participation “In Any Form of Polygraph-Related Activity”
On 22 September 2015, federal judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange sentenced Doug Williams to 24 months in prison following his guilty plea to charges connected with his having taught undercover federal agents how to pass or beat a polygraph “test.” Her sentencing order further instructs that upon release (scheduled for 26 July 2017), Williams will be subjected to three years’ “supervised release” during which time he “shall not participate in any form of polygraph-related activity.”
This prohibition on participation “in any form of polygraph-related activity” curtails Williams’ 1st Amendment right to free speech and severely limits the self-employed 71-year-old’s ability to earn a living.
On 21 November 2016, Williams filed a pro se motion (PDF) for modification of the terms of his supervised release. Citing relevant 10th Circuit Court of Appeals precedent, Williams asks the court to modify the conditions of his release to allow him to engage in polygraph-related activity to the extent that it is not “intended or part of a scheme to defraud the United States or tamper with witnesses.”
At the time of writing, the United States Attorney’s Office has not filed a response.
Do Polygraph Tests Actually Work?
In a well-researched article written for the website Priceonomics, Simon R. Gardner asks the question: “Do polygraph tests actually work?” and concludes that the answer is a definitive “No.” Excerpt:
You’ve been arrested for a brutal murder you didn’t commit. The evidence is circumstantial, but the police are convinced you’re the killer. The prosecutor offers you a deal. They’ll drop the charges, but only if you take a polygraph test to prove your innocence.
What would you do?
Unfortunately this is no hypothetical, but rather a scene from a real life nightmare.
In 1978, Fred Ery was working in his general store in Perrysberg, Ohio, when a masked assailant burst in and shot him. Before he died on the operating table, he was able to tell his wife the name of his killer, and even gave detectives his address. It seemed like an open-and-shut case, and police soon had Floyd “Buzz” Fay’s house surrounded.
Fay later failed a polygraph test not once but twice. With the results admitted into evidence during his trial, he spent the next two and a half years in prison before he was exonerated when the mother of the real killer came forward. During this time, Fay became a vocal campaigner against the polygraph, even appearing on NBC’s “Today” show after his release to call for polygraph tests to be banned from criminal trials.
Nearly 40 years later, the polygraph still commands something of a towering cultural presence in modern day life. From Hollywood movies to infamous criminal cases to daytime television, it’s used as a definitive arbiter by both the justice system and entertainers.
But can a machine really detect lies?
Read the full article here.
DIA to Require All Contractors with SCI Access to Pass Polygraph
On 1 November 2016, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) director of security Michael P. Londregan published a notice that beginning in 2017, all DIA contractors whose work requires access to sensitive compartmented information will be required to pass a polygraph “test.” Excerpt:
1 November 2016
Security Notice
(From the Director of Security)Subject: Contractor Counterintelligence-Scope Polygraph Screening
On Jan. 1, 2017, DIA will begin implementing a phased change to its polygraph policy. All contractors or employees of contractors identified to perform work for DIA, and where the work requires access to sensitive compartmented information, must either successfully complete a counterintelligence-scope polygraph (CSP) examination (in accordance with Intelligence Community Policy Guidance 704.6 and Security Executive Agent Directive 2) or have on record a reciprocally acceptable polygraph examination from another federal agency prior to being granted unescorted access to DIA systems, facilities or information.
DIA will implement this policy change using the following schedule:
- 1 January 2017: National Capital Region (NCR) approximately 50-mile radius extending outward to Ft Meade, MD and Charlottesville, VA
- 1 April 2017: Continental United States (CONUS) including NCR contractors
- 1 July 2017: Outside CONUS including CONUS contractors and NCR
Regardless of geographical assignment, all polygraph testing will be scheduled through the special security officer (SSO), unit security officer (USO) or your contracting officer representative (COR), respectively, to the DIA Central Processing Center, Reston, Virginia.
Refusal without reasonable cause (as determined by the Director of Security for DIA) to undergo polygraph examination; failure to cooperate during a polygraph examination; or purposeful noncooperation during a polygraph examination — including confirmed use of polygraph countermeasures — could result in additional review or an adverse security determination.
Individuals affected by this policy may wish to review “The Lying Game: National Security and the Test for Espionage and Sabotoge” for a critique of the completely invalid polygraph screening technique used by the U.S. Department of Defense. In the past, it appeared that one could pass the DoD counterintelligence-scope polygraph simply by not making any significant admissions. It is unclear to what extent this remains true.
It’s worth noting that the DIA polygraph screening program has never caught a spy. In 2001, DIA’s senior analyst for Cuban affairs, Ana Belen Montes, was arrested for, and ultimately pled guilty to, having been a Cuban spy. She had been trained by Cuban intelligence how to fool the polygraph, and she did precisely that throughout her DIA employment.
DIA contractors should pay special attention to the notice that “purposeful noncooperation during a polygraph examination — including confirmed use of polygraph countermeasures — could result in additional review or an adverse security determination. If, for example, you breath slowly and deeply during your polygraph “test” in an attempt to remain calm, your polygrapher may accuse you of attempting to use polygraph countermeasures. If you then acknowledge that you were breathing slowly and deeply in an attempt to remain calm so you could pass, that simple admission may be taken as “confirmed use of countermeasures.”
DIA polygraph case files leaked to AntiPolygraph.org suggest that DIA is unable to detect sophisticated polygraph countermeasures, that is, the kinds of things that an actual spy like Ana Belen Montes might be expected to employ. Instead, the “confirmed countermeasure cases” consist entirely of people doing things that no one who understands polygraph procedure would actually do.
For more on the pseudoscience of polygraphy, including tips on how to protect yourself against the random error associated with it, see our free book, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector.
FBI Suspends Senior Analyst’s Security Clearance Over Alleged Polygraph Countermeasures
Huffington Post reporter Jessica Schulberg tells the story of a senior FBI intelligence analyst who lost his security clearance and his job over a polygraph operator’s accusation that he employed polygraph countermeasures. Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — Logan tried to stay calm as he boarded the subway to take the one-mile trip from his office at FBI headquarters to Patriots Plaza. He could have walked, but he didn’t want to risk getting sweaty or disheveled before his polygraph examination.
There was nothing to worry about, Logan told himself. During his 11 years as an FBI intelligence analyst, he had already passed two polygraphs — one when he was hired in 2003 and another in 2008. The bureau administers polygraphs to potential hires and then reinvestigates its employees every five years throughout their employment.
But as he headed to Patriots Plaza that morning in September 2014, Logan (whose name has been changed to protect his identity) couldn’t stop thinking about his polygraph results from the year before. His anxiety had taken over, and the test caught physiological reactions in response to national security questions. The examiner accused him of lying and attempting to cheat the polygraph. Logan denied both charges. The FBI scheduled a retest.
This time would be different. It had to be different, or he could lose his security clearance and his job.
But the 2014 retest got off to a bad start. Logan felt a panic attack set in as soon as the exam began. He focused on steadying his breathing and restoring his calm.
Logan’s attempts to quiet his nerves backfired. The polygrapher accused him of using a “countermeasure” ? a poorly defined term for deliberately altering one’s physiological state (by, say, sticking a thumbtack in one’s shoe) in order to hide lying on a polygraph. Logan denied the charge, but after several hours under pressure, he amended a written statement to include self-incriminating phrases he alleges were fed to him by the polygrapher. That statement was later used against him when the FBI revoked his security clearance, effectively putting him out of work. Logan appealed.
After nearly two years without pay, he is still trying to regain his clearance.
Read the rest of this important story here. In September 2105 the late Dr. Drew C. Richardson, a retired FBI scientist and polygraph critic, posted to AntiPolygraph.org the text of a declaration that he provided in support of the FBI employee in question.