DIA

An FBI Veteran Comments on the Pentagon’s Polygraph Push

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In “Paranoia in the Pentagon,” security consultant and 25-year FBI veteran Jim Dooley lampoons the Defense Intelligence Agency’s decision to greatly expand its polygraph screening program:

The Pentagon, speaking as a single scary voice, says that it needs more polygraph studios. They need them to catch the spies. What spies? The spies it just knows are everywhere, in the Army, in the Navy, in the CIA, and even in the ranks of the presumptive spy catchers, the FBI. Colonel Clousseau suspects no one, but he is no fool; everyone is a suspect.

I would say that The Pentagon is likely to get everything it wants, being the Pentagon, studios, machines, operators, especially operators, with all but the dentist’s chair contracted out. Too bad. In the gigantic incomprehensible incoherent mess of stuff the Pentagon gets, this idea falls flat in the zone of pernicious blunder.

It would be bad enough if it were just another example of security theater, similar to TSA airport screening. ‘That vial of suntan lotion, not that one miss, the one that says SPF 45, it’s too big.’ ‘No it’s not, it says 3 ounces right on it.’ ‘Are you telling me?’ ‘No, I guess I have a flight to catch, where can I throw it away.’

As it is, I don’t imagine that the Pentagon, which after is all there to conduct wars, is the most fun place to work. You never really know, though. I have a friend Lee who told me that the most fun he ever had was the year he spent flying Helicopters in Viet Nam. He showed me pictures of the bullet holes in the canopy of his Cobra to prove it. Whatever, however the work-a-day world once was in the Pentagon, the polygraph is about to make it a lot worse.

My own experience in the FBI with the polygraph was uniformly bad. One of the first substantial cases on which I worked was a kidnapping case. The kidnappers left some confusion as to where they wanted the ransom package dropped and we got it wrong. We dropped the package of money on top of some railroad workers who thought that it was their lucky night. Realizing our mistake we interviewed the workers who denied knowing anything about the money. The polygraph cleared them. Several weeks later, one of them confessed, implicating the other. Each one said that from the start the other one threatened to kill him if he said anything. I still don’t know which one I really believe.

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DIA to Expand and Outsource Polygraph Screening

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Associated Press writer Pamela Hess reports on the Defense Intelligence Agency’s scheme to greatly expand polygraph screening of its personnel. It should be noted that Ana Belen Montes, the most notorious spy ever to infiltrate the DIA, was neither detected nor deterred by polygraph screening:

Pentagon’s intelligence arm steps up lie detecting

By PAMELA HESS – 12 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon’s intelligence arm is adding more polygraph studios and relying on outside contractors for the first time to conduct lie detection tests in an attempt to screen its 5,700 prospective and current employees every year.

The stepped-up effort by the Defense Intelligence Agency is part of a growing emphasis on counterintelligence, detecting and thwarting would-be spies and keeping sensitive information away from America’s enemies.

A polygraph is not foolproof as a screening tool. The test gives a high rate of false positives on innocent people, and guilty subjects can be trained to beat the system, according to expert Charles Honts, a psychology professor at Boise State University.

The National Research Council noted these deficiencies in a 2003 report. The council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, found that lie detectors can be useful for ferreting out the truth in specific incidents, but are unreliable for screening prospective national security employees for trustworthiness.

“Its 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,” the council concluded. “Polygraph testing as currently used has extremely serious limitations in such screening applications, if the intent is both to identify security risks and protect valued employees.”

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Senate Report Disputes Press Accounts of CIA Polygraph of Iraqi Informant

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As mentioned by Washington Post staff writer Walter Pincus in a recent article, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence‘s recently released report, The Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress (9.5 mb PDF), documents three intelligence sources who provided unreliable information but nonetheless passed DIA polygraph screening examinations. … Read more

Iraqi Fabricators Passed DIA Polygraph

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On Saturday, 9 September 2006, Washington Post staff writer Walter Pincus reported on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s recently released review of pre-war intelligence on Iraq in an article titled, “Report Details Errors Before War.” Excerpt: The long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report released yesterday sheds new light on why U.S. intelligence agencies provided … Read more

Alleged Spy for Iran Reportedly Passed U.S. Government Polygraph

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Knight-Ridder reporters Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott report in an article published in the Contra Costa Times titled, “U.S. probes Chalabi’s ties to Iran” that U.S. Government officials allege that evidence suggests that Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi’s security chief, Arras Habib, is an Iranian spy who passed highly sensitive U.S. secrets to … Read more

Iraqi Fabricator Passed Polygraph

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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 … Read more

“Saddam’s Loyalists Thwart Polygraph Tests”

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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 … Read more

“Cuban Spy Passed Polygraph at Least Once”

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Miami Herald Washington correspondent Tim Johnson reports. Excerpt: WASHINGTON – Even though confessed Cuban spy Ana Belen Montes already outwitted a lie-detector test, the government plans to rely on polygraph exams to check her honesty as they debrief her about her 16-year spying career while working for U.S. military intelligence. Montes took a polygraph examination … Read more

“Top U.S. Analyst Admits to Spying for Cuba”

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Knight-Ridder Washington correspondent Tim Johnson reports in an article published in the Miami Herald on the guilty plea of DIA analyst Ana Belen Montes, who was recruited by Cuban intelligence even before she began her DIA career. Excerpt: WASHINGTON – A senior U.S. intelligence analyst, Ana Belen Montes, admitted in federal court on Tuesday that … Read more

“Pentagon’s Top Cuba Expert Pleads Guilty to Espionage”

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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 … Read more