Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
Don Bohning reviews John Sullivan’s new book for the Miami Herald: NONFICTION CIA agent tells the truth about the polygraph An insider reveals much about the secretive agency and its controversies. BY DON BOHNING GATEKEEPER: Memoirs of a CIA Polygraph Examiner. John F. Sullivan. Potomac. 288 pages. $27.95. John Sullivan’s job was ferreting out liars. …
A post on the Gone Nuclear blog titled, “I Cannot Tell a Lie” has been devoted to documenting the experiences of those who have been through the Department of Energy’s polygraph screening program.
The Cleveland Law Library Weblog provides further information on Summit County judge Judith Hunter’s 15-page order [link fixed] (252 kb PDF) to allow polygraph evidence over the prosecutor’s objection in the rape trial of Sahil Sharma (State v. Sharma, Case No. 06-09-3248).
James Ewinger reports for the Cleveland Plain Dealer in “Judge OKs Lie Detector Tests in Sex Case”: With a Summit County judge’s decision to admit lie-detector evidence, a New York law student may end up setting legal precedent even before he takes a bar exam. Sahil Sharma, 26, is charged with a single count of …
In “Freed After 22 Years,” Jonathan Casiano and Mark Mueller of the Newark, New Jersey Star-Ledger report on the case of Byron Halsey, from whom it now appears police extracted a false confession to the molestation and brutal murder of two children after he wrongly failed a polygraph examination. DNA evidence exculpates Halsey and has …
WorldNetDaily.com reports in a story titled, “Polygraph for Sandy Berger to be Studied” Excerpt: A spokesman for President Bush says a demand by Republicans for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to follow through on former White House insider Sandy Berger’s promise to take a polygraph test regarding the classified documents he took from the National Archives …
Despite a 2003 finding by the National Academy of Sciences that “[polygraph testing’s] accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies,” an internal memorandum to employees at Los Alamos National Laboratory posted on the blog, LANL: …
Historian Ken Alder discusses the nexus between America’s atomic weapons program and the lie detector in “America’s Two Gadgets: Of Bombs and Polygraphs,” Isis, 2007, 98:124-137.
In “DoD researches high-tech ways to find liars,” published on 28 April 2007 among in the Army Times, among other places, Associated Press reporter Susanne M. Schafer writes on current research at the Defense Academy for Credibility Research (DACA, the former Department of Defense Polygraph Institute): FORT JACKSON, S.C. — An eerie image of a …
In a 28 April 2007 editorial cryptically titled, “Wired Policing Stresses Voices, More,” the Daytona Beach News-Journal skewers local law enforcement agencies’ reliance on voice stress analyzers: As the urban legend goes, police interrogating a suspect put a colander on the suspect’s head, run wires from the colander to a copy machine, make a meaningless …