Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
In 1951, the NSA’s forerunner organization, the Armed Forces Security Agency, began “voluntary” polygraph screening of civilian applicants for employment. On 6 December 1953, the National Security Agency (NSA) made pre-employment polygraph screening mandatory for civilian applicants. Writer Stephen Budiansky describes the origins of the NSA’s polygraph program at pp. 163-65 of his 2016 history, …
A formerly secret CIA report (PDF) provides derogatory information about three prominent polygraph operators of the mid-20th century. The report was declassified and publicly released pursuant to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The subject of the two-page report, dated 14 August 1968, is Chris Gugas (1921-2007), a former CIA …
Since 2002, the CIA has used the pseudonym “Molly Hale” to respond to selected public inquiries. Since 2019, such inquiries may be directed to the CIA’s Twitter or Facebook accounts using the hashtag #AskMollyHale. On 3 March 2021, Molly Hale replied to the following inquiry: Dear Molly, I would really love to work for CIA, …
On 8 October 2020, the FBI filed a under seal a criminal complaint and supporting affidavit against former federal employee Brian Jeffrey Raymond in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, charging him with a single count of violating 18 U.S.C. ยง2422(a), alleging that he “[k]nowingly induced an individual to travel for the …
On Thursday, 13 August 2020, FBI Special Agent Chris Jensen filed under seal a criminal complaint against Alexander Yuk Ching Ma of Honolulu, Hawaii, charging him with “Conspiracy to Gather and Communicate National Defense Information of the United States to a Foreign Nation.” On Monday, 17 August 2020, the complaint was unsealed. In an accompanying …
An exhibit (PDF) submitted by prosecutors in the Espionage Act trial of Joshua Adam Schulte for allegedly providing a collection of CIA hacking tools dubbed “Vault 7” to WikiLeaks shows that Schulte understood that polygraph “testing” is bogus. AntiPolygraph.org has previously reported that Schulte passed multiple CIA polygraphs despite having allegedly downloaded child pornography before …
Electrical engineer Byron Johns, “a polygraph victim who was constantly recruited and rejected from CIA, NSA, FBI, DOD contractors, and later resigned from the U.S. Foreign Service,” tells his story in a blog titled, The U.S. Intelligence Community Reject.
On 23 August 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted former CIA employee Joshua Adam Schulte for receipt, possession, and transportation of child pornography dating back to 2009. In 2010, Schulte sought and obtained employment with the CIA. All CIA applicants are required to pass a pre-employment polygraph as well as periodic polygraph screening after …
Alan B. Trabue retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 2011 after a 40-year career, 38 years of which he spent in the polygraph division. AntiPolygraph.org has received a review copy of his memoir, A Life of Lies and Spies: Tales of a CIA Ops Polygraph Interrogator (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015). The book …
Coming on the heels of an accusation that a senior official at the National Center for Credibility Assessment (NCCA) facilitated the transfer of classified information to the government of Singapore via the Lafayette Instrument Company, AntiPolygraph.org has received information that NCCA has provided polygraph countermeasure documentation to a representative of Stoelting Co., another polygraph-manufacturing company. …