{"id":115,"date":"2007-02-13T06:11:03","date_gmt":"2007-02-13T10:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/?p=115"},"modified":"2026-05-10T00:10:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T05:10:00","slug":"department-of-defense-polygraph-policy-makeover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/2007\/02\/13\/department-of-defense-polygraph-policy-makeover\/","title":{"rendered":"Department of Defense Polygraph Program Gets Makeover"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Steven Aftergood reports<\/a> in the Federation of American Scientists’ Secrecy News<\/em> newsletter & blog that on 25 January 2007, the Department of Defense issued a new directive governing polygraph policy:<\/p>\n

The Department of Defense has revised and supplemented its polygraph program to include non-polygraph techniques for detecting deception.<\/p>\n

A new Pentagon directive<\/a> (pdf) introduces the term “Credibility Assessment (CA),” which refers to “The multi-disciplinary field of existing as well as potential techniques and procedures to assess truthfulness that relies on physiological reactions and behavioral measures to test the agreement between an individual’s memories and statements.”<\/p>\n

The new directive also transfers the polygraph program from the Defense Security Service to the secretive DoD Counterintelligence Field Activity<\/a> (CIFA). The program will be overseen by the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.<\/p>\n

Eleven military and defense intelligence organizations listed in the directive are authorized to conduct polygraph and credibility assessment examinations.<\/p>\n

The reliability of polygraph testing for employee screening is widely disputed on scientific grounds. But many government security officials nevertheless insist on its value and utility, and the practice persists.<\/p>\n

See “Polygraph and Credibility Assessment Program,”<\/a> Department of Defense Directive 5210.48, January 25, 2007.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Significantly, the new directive tightens control over DoD agencies’ use of any “credibility assessment” technology other than the polygraph. This seems a likely reaction to the post-9\/11 debacle wherein some DoD components began using Computer Voice Stress Analysis<\/a> (CVSA) to interrogate prisoners. The manufacturer of this quack device, the so-called “National Institute of Truth Verification,” has admitted in court<\/a> that CVSA “is not capable of lie detection,” and the company was recently the subject of an ABC News expos\u00e9<\/a>. DoD eventually put an end<\/a> to its use of CVSA. The new directive ensures that henceforward, DoD agencies will use only officially approved pseudoscientific techniques for “credibility assessment” purposes.<\/p>\n

The new directive also changes the name of the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute (DoDPI) to the “Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment” (DACA). At the time of this writing, the DoDPI website<\/a> has not yet been updated to reflect this change.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steven Aftergood reports in the Federation of American Scientists’ Secrecy News newsletter & blog that on 25 January 2007, the Department of Defense issued a new directive governing polygraph policy: The Department of Defense has revised and supplemented its polygraph program to include non-polygraph techniques for detecting deception. A new Pentagon directive (pdf) introduces the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[291,10,290],"class_list":{"0":"post-115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-polygraph","7":"category-voice-stress","8":"tag-cifa","9":"tag-cvsa","10":"tag-daca","11":"anons"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5533,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions\/5533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}