Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
Tim Golden of The New York Times reports on the case of Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst Ana Belen Montes, who according to court documents was already working for the Cuban Directorate of Intelligence when she joined the DIA in September, 1985. If Montes was ever subjected to a counterintelligence-scope polygraph “test,” then it would …
John McDonald reports for the Orange County [California] Register on the $10,000,000 lawsuit brought by a man who spent 19 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of murder. Excerpt: The two Orange County public defenders who represented DeWayne McKinney on murder charges say they kept secret for 20 years their belief that he flunked …
Emma Young reports for the NewScientist.com news service. Excerpt: People who think of themselves as being intuitive make worse lie detectors than those who do not trust in a “gut instinct”, according to new research. “People generally aren’t very good at detecting lies – accuracy is between 45 and 65 per cent,” says Paul Seager …
Taipei Times staff reporter Brian Hsu reports in an article titled, “NSB plans oversight committee.” Excerpt: National Security Bureau (NSB) director Tsai Tsao-ming…yesterday said that the bureau has begun instituting plans for the formation of a legislative committee to oversee intelligence. Tsai said the plans were in line with recent legislative proposals to better monitor …
Larry Lebowitz and Wanda J. DeMarzo of the Miami Herald report. Excerpt: Former Broward Sheriff’s detention deputy Andrew Johnson repeatedly gave deceptive answers to lie-detector questions posed by detectives investigating the murder of Deputy Patrick Behan, according to a memo summarizing the tests. Johnson, who was fired from his job as a jail guard four …
South Florida Sun-Sentinel staff writers Paula McMahon and Ardy Friedberg report. Excerpt: The man at the center of the reinvestigation of the 1990 murder of a Broward sheriff’s deputy showed deception on a lie detector test when he said he had not killed a deputy, according to the polygrapher’s report released Wednesday. Sheriff’s detectives began …
Jessica Bezuidenhout reports for the Sunday Times of South Africa in an article titled, “Staff under scrutiny for arms-probe leak.” Excerpt: INVESTIGATORS probing South Africa’s R66-billion arms deal have been told to undergo lie-detector tests and lay bare their private telephone records while their bosses hunt down staff suspected of leaking information to the media. …
Muskegon [Michigan] Chronicle staff writer John S. Hausman reports on post-conviction sex offender polygraph “testing” in Michigan. Excerpt: In a program launched last March in Muskegon, also under way in Flint and Detroit, the Michigan Department of Corrections is requiring paroled sex offenders to submit to periodic polygraph tests as a condition of their freedom. …
Rocky Mountain News staff writers Jeff Kass, Kevin Vaughan and Lynn Bartels report in an article titled, “Jeffco vows to find who leaked photos.” Excerpt: Employees in the Jefferson County sheriff’s department will be given lie detector tests in the coming days as officials try to determine how more than 60 secret Columbine High School …
Peter Baker reports for the Washington Post. Excerpt: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – It didn’t seem all that strange to his son when Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood began spending part of his retirement in Afghanistan working on charity projects. But he was curious enough after one of those trips to ask his father if he had met Osama …