{"id":2952,"date":"2001-04-04T15:00:09","date_gmt":"2001-04-04T20:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/?p=2952"},"modified":"2026-05-09T23:25:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T04:25:13","slug":"oversight-of-the-daniel-king-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/2001\/04\/04\/oversight-of-the-daniel-king-case\/","title":{"rendered":"“Oversight of the Daniel King Case”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n

Steven Aftergood of the American Federation of Scientists’ Secrecy in Government Project <\/a>writes<\/a> in today’s edition of Secrecy News<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OVERSIGHT OF THE DANIEL KING CASE<\/p>

Yesterday the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held a closed hearing to consider the case of Daniel M. King, a Navy officer who was accused of espionage, held for 520 days, and then released last month when the Navy was unable to substantiate the charges against him.<\/p>

“What happened to Petty Officer King is alien and antithetical to our system,” said Jonathan Turley, King’s civilian attorney, in a lengthy prepared statement submitted to the Committee.<\/p>

Among numerous government abuses alleged by the defense team in its testimony, the handling of King’s indeterminate polygraph examination stands out. “A routine ‘no opinion’ glitch on a polygraph was allowed to mutate into an espionage investigation from the very first day,” said Turley.<\/p>

A blow by blow account of the repeated polygraph sessions was provided in a statement by JAG attorney Lt. Matthew Sidney Freedus, a member of King’s defense. Told that he had failed the polygraph test, “King admitted that he had occasional fantasies about espionage over his 20-year career, but stated unequivocally that these were just fantasies and that he would never do anything to hurt the Navy.”<\/p>

“It should be noted that it is very common for individuals working in the national security field to have fantasies of committing espionage,” according to Lt. Freedus.<\/p>

“In fact, during an interview several months later, [the polygrapher who examined King] acknowledged that fantasies of espionage were common and even admitted that he had thoughts of espionage.”<\/p>

“It is deeply troubling to me that the Navy has never issued a formal apology to CTR1 King and his family for this colossal miscarriage of justice and that no government officials have been held accountable,” Freedus concluded.<\/p>

Rather inexplicably, “the Navy congratulated the prosecutor in this case and awarded her the prestigious Meritorious Service Medal.”<\/p>

Testimony that provides the government’s view of the case is classified. None of the government statements from yesterday’s closed Senate Intelligence Committee hearing can be released, a Committee spokeswoman said.<\/p>

But the statements of the three defense attorneys are presented here:<\/p>

http:\/\/www.fas.org\/irp\/ops\/ci\/king\/index.html#ssci<\/a><\/p>

A press release issued yesterday by the King defense, including a relatively concise Fact Sheet presenting its perspective on the case, is posted here:<\/p>

http:\/\/www.fas.org\/sgp\/news\/2001\/04\/turley.html<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steven Aftergood of the American Federation of Scientists’ Secrecy in Government Project writes in today’s edition of Secrecy News: OVERSIGHT OF THE DANIEL KING CASE Yesterday the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held a closed hearing to consider the case of Daniel M. King, a Navy officer who was accused of espionage, held for 520 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[310,309,318],"class_list":{"0":"post-2952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-polygraph","7":"tag-daniel-king","8":"tag-ncis","9":"tag-senate-select-committee-on-intelligence","10":"anons"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2952","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=2952"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5510,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2952\/revisions\/5510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}