Afghan President’s Half-Brother Volunteered to Take Polygraph Test

by

Who’s afraid of a polygraph test? Not Afghanistan’s most notorious reputed drug lord, who is on the CIA payroll. Jeff Stein reports in his Washington Post SpyTalk column that a secret State Department cable recently published by Wikileaks reveals that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of Afghan president Hamid Karzai, wanted a polygraph test to clear … Read more

John Dullahan, DIA Analyst Fired After Failing Polygraph, Profiled in Washington Post

by

Washington Post staff writer Peter Finn reports in an above-the-fold front page article on the case of retired army lieutenant colonel and Defense Intelligence Agency analyst John Dullahan, whose security clearance was suspended in February 2009 after he failed three polygraph “tests.” Then DIA director LTG Michael D. Maples fired Dullahan in March 2009 (his last month as director).

DIA refuses to state its reasons for terminating LTC Dullahan, averring that “the interests of the nation do not permit disclosure to the employee of specific information about the reasons for his removal from federal service,” and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has not responded to an appeal Dullahan submitted some 18 months ago.

Read more

Polygraph “Testing” at Issue in Canadian Armored Car Drivers’ Strike

by

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation mentions in a report dated 23 September 2010 that anticipated polygraph testing is among the causes of an armored car drivers’ strike in the provinces of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island: Armoured car drivers have set up picket lines across New Brunswick and P.E.I. Members of the International Brotherhood of … Read more

Polygraph Dragnet Planned in Clayton County, Georgia Sheriff’s Office

by

Kevin Rowson of WXIA television news in Atlanta reports on Clayton County sheriff Kemuel “Kem” Kimbrough’s plans to subject 40-50 employees to polygraph screening in an attempt to determine who anonymously e-mailed reporters a complaint about work conditions in the department: CLAYTON COUNTY, GA — Clayton County Sheriff deputies are being asked to take a … Read more

The Truth About the Polygraph (According to the NSA)

by

The National Security Agency (NSA) has produced a video about its polygraph screening program. Watch it here, along with AntiPolygraph.org’s commentary: The original source video is available here. For commentary on the NSA’s accompanying polygraph leaflet, see our earlier blog post, NSA Leaflet: Your Polygraph Examination. For a thorough debunking of polygraphy, with extensive citations … Read more

Polygraph Operator Sally VanBeek Doesn’t Think Sociopaths Can Beat the Lie Detector

by

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Seattle 911 blog today featured a video report by Parella Lewis of KCPQ-TV’s Washington’s Most Wanted show. Lewis interviewed Detective Sally VanBeek, a polygraph operator with the Everett Police Department, who opined that sociopaths cannot beat the polygraph. Is VanBeek, who is also president of the Northwest Polygraph Examiners Association, somehow unaware … Read more

Lee Anthony Evans, Cleared As Suspect by Polygraph, Arrested for 1978 Murders

by

WCBS TV reports that Lee Evans, an early suspect in the 1978 disappearance of five Newark, New Jersey teenagers, has been arrested for their murder along with another as-yet-unidentified man. The Associated Press reports that Evans had earlier been eliminated as a suspect after passing a polygraph test: The boys, Melvin Pittman and Ernest Taylor, … Read more

Ohio Judge Orders Victims in Sexual Assault Cases to Submit to Lie Detector Tests

by

Rachel Dissell of the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Judge Alison Floyd has ordered the victims in four sexual assault cases to submit to polygraph “testing.” In addition, Floyd has ordered the perpetrators of the assaults, who have already been found guilty, to submit to polygraph tests for sentencing purposes. It … Read more

Kaiser Fung on Lie Detectors

by

AntiPolygraph.org has received a complementary copy of statistician Kaiser Fung’s new book, Numbers Rule Your World: The Hidden Influence of Probability and Statistics on Everything You Do (New York: McGraw Hill, 2010), a short primer on statistics written for a general audience. In Chapter 4, Fung addresses the trade-off between false positives and false negatives … Read more

Dueling Polygraphs in Pittsburgh Beating Case

by
Jordan Miles
Jordan Miles after police beating

Three Pittsburgh police officers who stand accused of wantonly beating 18-year-old honor student Jordan Miles have all passed lie detector tests. But Miles also passed a lie detector test regarding the incident. So whose lie detector is lying?

Jill King Greenwood reports for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Three Pittsburgh police officers accused of beating a Homewood teenager during a January arrest near his home passed polygraph tests over the weekend, the president of the police union said.

Officers David Sisak, Richard Ewing and Michael Saldutte took the tests from a private polygraph administrator at the same time that nearly 100 other city officers marched in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Downtown on Saturday wearing T-shirts in support of the three, who are on paid administrative leave while the city and FBI investigate the Jan. 12 incident.

Read more