Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
It appears that CIA officer Mary McCarthy was not the source of Washington Post reporter Dana Priest’s information on the CIA’s secret prisons. In “Dismissed CIA Officer Denies Leak Role,” Post staff writers R. Jeffrey Smith and Dafna Linzer report that she denies it, and the CIA is not alleging it. Excerpt: A lawyer representing …
In “Moves Signal Tighter Secrecy Within C.I.A.,” New York Times reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti write that CIA Inspector General John L. Helgerson is among the employees polygraphed in the Agency’s ongoing leak hunt. Excerpt: WASHINGTON, April 23 — The crackdown on leaks at the Central Intelligence Agency that led to the dismissal of …
While there is broad agreement amongst scientists that polygraph “testing” has no scientific basis, and the National Academy of Sciences has recently confirmed that polygraph screening is completely invalid, there is no question that the polygraph can be useful for getting admissions from those who can still be convinced that the polygrapher can see their …
False intelligence information provided by an Iraqi informant that Iraq possessed mobile biological warfare laboratories was believed in part because the source had passed a polygraph “test.” The bogus information was used by the Bush Administration in making the case for war, and was cited by Secretary of State Colin Powell in a pre-war speech …
In an article titled, “CIA Poised to Quiz Hussein,” Washington Post staff writers Dana Priest and Thomas E. Ricks mention that the CIA team that has planned the interrogation of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein includes “operations officers, polygraphers and psychiatrists.” It thus seems likely that CIA polygraph operators will at some point “flutter” Saddam …
In an article titled, “Iraq Spy Service Planned by U.S. To Stem Attacks,”Washington Post staff writers Dana Priest and Robin Wright mention that “[t]o vet Iraq’s former intelligence officials, the CIA has flown polygraph machines to Iraq.” Agents for the “new” Iraqi intelligence service are to be recruited largely from the ranks of Saddam Hussein’s …
Washington Times staff writer Rowan Scarborough reports. Excerpt: Captured Saddam Hussein loyalists in Iraq are proving adept at beating lie-detector tests, frustrating attempts to find banned weapons and to learn what happened to Navy Capt. Michael Scott Speicher. U.S. officials and military officers say trained interrogators in Baghdad have caught Iraqi Ba’ath Party loyalists lying …
The Daily Northwestern published the following letter by George Maschke in response to Sheila Burt’s 16 May 2003 article, “CIA recruiters more Moneypenny than Bond”: CIA recruiter Elizabeth was less than candid when she told Northwestern students that “those who tell the truth have nothing to worry about” regarding the polygraph. The National Academy of …
Sheila Burt reports for the Daily Northwestern on the campus visit of two CIA recruiters, Marcus and Elizabeth, in an article titled, “CIA recruiters more Moneypenny than Bond.” Excerpt: …applicants must go through a rather extensive interview process before becoming official CIA agents. The process includes a background check, a lie detector test and a …
Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy discusses the National Academy of Science’s polygraph report in his Secrecy News e-mail publication: NATIONAL ACADEMY ON POLYGRAPH TESTING The polygraph is a flawed instrument that is “intrinsically susceptible to producing erroneous results,” according to a new report of a National Academy of …