Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
Megan Garvey and Eric Lichtblau report for the Los Angeles Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — The decision by the FBI to administer polygraph tests to hundreds of federal workers at two top military research facilities marks a new effort by investigators to smoke out individuals who might have information about last year’s deadly anthrax attacks. Seven …
Scott Shane reports for the Baltimore Sun. Excerpt: The FBI will soon begin giving polygraph exams to scores of employees at the Army’s bio- defense center at Fort Detrick in Frederick and at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah to see if a government insider mailed the anthrax that killed five people last fall, an FBI …
Associated Press writer Christopher Newman reports. Excerpt: WASHINGTON (AP) – The Justice Department is preparing to give lie detector tests to hundreds of federal workers at two facilities where anthrax is stored, hoping to identify suspects in the letter attacks, a law enforcement official said Monday. Beginning in June, the government will administer the tests …
Pierre Thomas reports for ABCNews.com. This short article is cited here in full: May 20 — The government will launch a wide-ranging program of polygraph testing to determine if one of its own employees is responsible for last year’s anthrax attacks, ABCNEWS has learned. As many as 200 current and former employees at Fort Detrick …
In an article titled, “FBI seeks to rebuild its image,” Chris Mondics of the Philadelphia Inquirer Washington bureau reports that Roger L. Trott, chief of the FBI’s agent training unit, asserts that nearly half of FBI agent applicants who pass preliminary tests don’t pass the polygraph. Excerpt: …The bureau expects to hire only about 5 …
Washington Post staff writers Steve Fainaru and Amy Goldstein report on the case of Osama Awadallah in an article titled, “Judge Rejects Jailing Of Material Witnesses.” Excerpt: NEW YORK, April 30 — A key legal tactic employed by the government in its post-Sept. 11 war on terror is illegal, a federal judge ruled today, delivering …
Attorney Mark S. Zaid discusses polygraph policy in this op-ed column. Excerpt: In the wake of the FBI’s embarrassment at having one of its own caught spying for the Russians, former FBI director William Webster was appointed to head a commission to find out what went wrong. The commission concluded that lax security allowed Special …
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel blasts the FBI’s plans for more lie detector “testing” in this editorial. Excerpt: The bureau’s plan to expand the use of lie detector tests is just plain unprofessional and unscientific. The fact is, they are notoriously unreliable. Aldrich Ames, the CIA agent who in 1994 admitted to spying for Russia, passed …
Associated Press correspondent Jesse J. Holland reports. Excerpt: April 9, 2002 | WASHINGTON (AP) — While two U.S. citizens have been arrested for espionage since July, increased FBI lie detector tests have uncovered several lesser security transgressions among FBI employees, the agency’s security chief said Tuesday. None of the information gained from the 700 polygraph …
The Commission for the Review of FBI Security Programs, better known as the Webster Commission, has delivered its report to the Attorney General, and it may now be downloaded as a 1.14 MB Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file from the U.S. Department of Justice website at: http://www.usdoj.gov/05publications/websterreport.pdf Substantive discussion of polygraph policy begins at p. 67 …