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 … Read more
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 … Read more
In an article entitled “FBI agents urge more scrutiny for Condit,” Washington Times staff writer Jerry Seper reports that members of the FBI Agents Association have pointed out to the Senate and House intelligence committees the hypocrisy of requiring FBI employees to submit to polygraph interrogations while Congress exempts itself from this requirement. Excerpt: FBI … Read more
Lenny Savino of the Knight Ridder Washington bureau reports. Excerpt: WASHINGTON – “Less than 25” top FBI officials and other personnel in sensitive positions failed to pass polygraph exams initiated in the wake of the Robert Hanssen spy case, according to senior bureau officials. Failure to pass could mean either that the findings were inconclusive … Read more
Today’s Washington Post editorial, “Mr. Hanssen’s Plea” carries with it an implicit endorsement of polygraph screening. Excerpt (emphasis added): Fixing…vulnerabilities [in FBI security procedures] is the task ahead. No system can ensure perfect security. There will be smart and unscrupulous would-be spies at an organization the size of the bureau who find cracks to slip … Read more
In an article titled “Plea Bargain is Planned in FBI Spy Case,” Washington Post staff writers Brooke A. Masters and Dan Eggen report that Robert P. Hanssen will plead guilty to espionage charges. Excerpt: The government has dropped its demand for the death penalty and Hanssen, 57, has agreed to sit for extensive debriefings and … Read more
Associated Press correspondent Jesse J. Holland reports on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s 25 April hearing on “Issues Surrounding the Use of Polygraphs.” Note that the only scientific expert among the witnesses who spoke was Professor William G. Iacono. Excerpt: WASHINGTON (AP) – The FBI might have started earlier to investigate Robert Hanssen, the … Read more
Washington Post staff writer Dan Eggen reports on FBI polygraph policy. Excerpt: It seemed like a routine polygraph screening. Mark Mallah and his colleagues, members of an FBI counterintelligence unit in New York, were hooked up to lie detector machines and quizzed about drug use, contacts with foreigners and other subjects deemed vital to their … Read more
n his electronic newsletter, Secrecy News, Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy reports: ASHCROFT ON POLYGRAPH TESTING Attorney General John Ashcroft gave a qualified endorsement to polygraph testing at the FBI at a press conference yesterday. “It’s my understanding that there have been cases in the past that polygraphing … Read more
In an article entitled “FBI to Expand Polygraph Testing After Spy Case,” Reuters correspondent James Vicini notes that Attorney General John Ashcroft said in a press conference that he knows polygraph screening “tests” to have a 15% false positive rate. (Ashcroft’s actual words were, “The polygraph is said to have about 15 percent false positives…”) … Read more