Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
Following a Thursday, 20 March 2025 report by the New York Times that “[t]he Pentagon was scheduled on Friday to brief Elon Musk on the U.S. military’s plan for any war that might break out with China,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joseph R. “Joe” Kasper on Friday, 21 March signed a …
As noted by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy, “the Senate Intelligence Committee’s markup of the 2013 intelligence authorization bill includes 12 provisions that are intended to combat unauthorized disclosures of classified information.” Among these provisions is a requirement that within 120 days of enactment, the Director of National …
Dana Liebelson and Adam Zagorin of the Project on Government Oversight report on Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper’s recent decision to use polygraphs in an attempt to detect and deter media leaks. AntiPolygraph.org co-founder George Maschke is among those interviewed for this article.
On 25 June 2012, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper announced (PDF) that he is “mandating that a question related to unauthorized disclosure of classified information be added to the counterintelligence polygraph used by all intelligence agencies that administer the examination (CIA, DIA, DOE, FBI, NGA, NRO, and NSA).” Although Clapper’s announcement does not specify what …
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 …
Greensboro, North Carolina News Record staff writer Eric Swensen reports in a 19 April article titled, “Council Says Yes to Polygraphs” that with a lone dissenting vote, the Greensboro City Council has voted to voluntary subject itself to lie detector testing in an effort to determine who amongst them leaked a police report to the …
Thumbs down to California Court of Appeal Associate Justice Franklin D. Elia, who yesterday suggested that Apple Computer, which is seeking access to e-mail archives that could help identify an employee believed to have leaked trade secrets, should have done due diligence by subjecting its employees to lie detector testing to find the leaker. Matthew …
The following report from IsraelNationalNews.com is cited here in full. It makes reference to the compulsory polygraph “testing” of Israeli officers in an attempt to track the source of a media leak about a military disagreement with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: (IsraelNN.com) MK (Yahad) Avshalom Vilan, who served in an elite IDF unit, expressed sharp …