Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy reports in the Project’s Secrecy News e-mail publication: JUSTICE DEPT INSPECTOR GENERAL REVIEWS POLYGRAPH POLICY The Department of Justice Inspector General is undertaking a review of the use of polygraph testing throughout the Department. “Polygraph examinations are used in criminal investigations and counterintelligence …
Joel Mowbray writes for the Washington Times. Excerpt: To a number of civilian employees at the Pentagon, a New York Times story on June 3 came as quite a jolt: Some of them apparently already had been polygraphed as part of an investigation into Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi. But it never happened. Nearly …
In their “Inside the Ring” column, Washington Times reporters Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough question a recent New York Times report that the FBI has begun polygraphing DoD civilians regarding an alleged leak of classified information: Who’s lying? The breathless headline in a major daily newspaper read yesterday, “Polygraph Testing Starts at Pentagon in Chalabi …
David Johnston and James Risen report for the New York Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON, June 2 — Federal investigators have begun administering polygraph examinations to civilian employees at the Pentagon to determine who may have disclosed highly classified intelligence to Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi who authorities suspect turned the information over to Iran, government officials said …
This short BBC News article is cited here in full: A lie detector test carried out on employees at Colombia’s Prosecutor General’s office has produced an embarrassing 20% failure rate. The FBI-administered test was designed to root out corruption, including involvement in drugs trafficking or guerrilla and paramilitary groups. Employees have complained that the test …
Tim Smith reports for the Greenville Times. Excerpt: The FBI has begun polygraphing Greenville postal workers and truck drivers as the investigation into who delivered a package containing the deadly poison ricin to a Greenville mail facility moves into the third week, the president of the local postal workers union said Thursday. Dennis Zimmerman, president …
Associated Press writer Kimberly Hefling reports how an innocent suspect failed his FBI polygraph “test,” while his lying accuser passed. Excerpt: EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) – An FBI agent who helped arrest eight Egyptian men in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks became the driving force behind clearing their names, an arduous process that eventually …
Denver Post reporter Nancy Lofholm reports in an article titled, “Blagg interrogation at issue.” Excerpt: GRAND JUNCTION – On the morning of Feb. 5, 2002, Michael Blagg failed a two-hour polygraph exam conducted by an FBI expert. Later that day, after more than 10 total hours of interrogation, Blagg allegedly broke down, sobbed, prayed and …
Washington Post staff writer Susan Schmidt reports in an article titled, “Physicist’s Case Examined for Link to Alleged Spy.” Excerpt: FBI inspectors are now poring over the activities of [former Supervisory Special Agent James J.] Smith’s squad. According to sources with knowledge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, two other agents who worked with the …
On Wednesday, 7 May 2003, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted former FBI supervisory special agent James J. Smith over his handling of confidential informant and accused Chinese double agent Katrina M. Leung. The indictment alleges Smith failed to report Leung’s refusal in 1991 to submit to a polygraph examination and instead represented …