Shadow,

My comments above were restricted to the polygraph examiner basic course that all new federal polygraph examiners receive. I think it is significant that such little time is dedicated to the subject of countermeasures, and that it is tacked on to the end of the course (as if it were an afterthought).

Thank you for posting the countermeasure course description. I note that has changed since the last time I read it. It formerly read:


Quote:

COUNTERMEASURES (40 CEH)   This 40-hour course gives the PDD examiner the information and experience needed to deal with countermeasures in criminal and intelligence (human intelligence, offensive counterintelligence, and security screening) environments. The course presents concepts, theories, research data, laboratory exercises, and case histories involving criminal and intelligence testing, including the Ames case. Detailed information is included on countermeasure programs and operations conducted by hostile intelligence services during the Cold War, and current foreign polygraph capabilities. This course devotes more time to counter-measures than the Operational Source Testing course described below. As such, it is intended as the primary countermeasures course for criminal and security screening PDD examiners, or as a periodic refresher course for examiners experienced in human intelligence and offensive counterintelligence PDD operations. The course includes daily homework assignments followed the next day by classroom seminars and quizzes. The course includes a final examination.

That DoDPI has a 40-hour countermeasure course has been discussed earlier (see the message thread Lies in The Lie Behind the Lie Detector, which includes the earlier course description). But the existence of this course presents no convincing evidence that DoDPI has developed any reliable method of countermeasure detection, and there is strong circumstantial evidence that it has not.

For example, the National Academy of Sciences notes in its report, The Polygraph and Lie Detection, in a subchapter titled "Bias, Conflict of Interest, and Unscientific Decision Making":


Quote:

...we were advised by officials from DOE and DoDPI that there was information relevant to our work, classified at the secret level, particularly with regard to polygraph countermeasures. In order to review such information, several committee members and staff obtained national security clearances at the secret level. We were subsequently told by officials of the Central Intelligence Agency and DoDPI that there were no completed studies of polygraph countermeasures at the secret level...

Interestingly, the new countermeasure course description states that the course "presents...research data related to polygraph countermeasures." One wonders precisely what countermeasure research data is being presented in the class, and why any such data was not made available to the National Academy of Sciences. (The publicly available countermeasure research, conducted by Charles R. Honts and collaborators, suggests that even experienced polygraphers cannot detect countermeasures of the kind described in The Lie Behind the Lie Detector at better-than-chance levels of accuracy.)

Additionally Paul M. Menges, who teaches the DoDPI countermeasure course, has recently suggested that making countermeasure information available to the public is unethical and should be criminalized. Would he be making such arguments if DoDPI had a reliable method of countermeasure detection? See the discussion thread A Response to Paul M. Menges for more on this.

Finally, note that that Dr. Richardson's polygraph countermeasure challenge has now gone 488 days without takers.