The Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice, has released a 151-page report titled, "Use of Polygraph Examinations in the Department of Justice" (1 mb PDF):

http://antipolygraph.org/documents/doj-use-of-polygraph-2006.pdf

The report provides a description of how polygraph examinations are used by various component agencies of the Justice Department, including the pre-employment screening programs of the FBI, ATF, and DEA.

Notably absent from the report is any mention of the National Academy of Sciences' key finding in its 2002 research review report, The Polygraph and Lie Detection, that "[polygraph testing's] accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies." Despite this, the report shows that the FBI's reliance on polygraphy has steadily grown since the NAS published its findings. In fact, the FBI is considering "a plan to expand the requirement for periodic and random counterintelligence-scope polygraph examinations to all of the FBI’s approximately 35,000 employees, contractors, task force members, and a number of non-FBI personnel with special access."

Also absent from the DOJ report is any mention of how convicted spy Leandro Aragoncillo passed his FBI pre-employment polygraph examination, which includes a relevant question about unauthorized disclosure of classified information, when he had done precisely that while working in the Executive Office of the Vice President. Aragoncillo continued his espionage against the United States after obtaining employment as an FBI analyst. But the OIG report doesn't address this critical failure of the polygraph to detect or deter espionage.

The DOJ report fails to mention other colossal failures of the polygraph. For example, in 1938, in what may have been its first use of the lie detector in an espionage investigation, the FBI allowed Nazi spy suspect Theodor Ignatz Griebl to escape to Germany when it relaxed surveillance of him because he had passed the polygraph.

More recently, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City might have been averted had not the FBI terminated a key intelligence source, Emad Salem, who had penetrated the group that carried out the bombing, in part because of his failure to pass a polygraph examination. After the bombing, the FBI re-hired Salem, whose information helped to thwart a second planned attack.

Also of interest is that the FBI's polygraph program failed to pass the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute's "quality control" inspections until January 2006. Multiple and repeated deficiencies were noted. These are addressed at pp. 59-63.

George,

Its a very enlightening read, Of real interest in the FBI section is how the polygraphers were using inappropriate questioning techniques, and were taken to task by DODPI. Also of note on page 44, the part where the examiners were destroying the test scoring sheets, also against DODPI standards, to circumvent any court or legal challenge if it arose, its the same as shreading or destroying evidence, in my book. This challenge would have put the credibility of there program in great question. Even though we know its a joke. More reading and more analysis will be forthcoming as I keep reading the various parts. If its any solice, the FBI from 2001 - til just this last January were using highly questionable testing tactics. Makes one wonder how may they branded wrongly in the hiring process. The other infuriating part is the costs associated with the program. Talk about wasting tax payer dollars. I think this website is going to be getting quite busy, if they do expand there program out to 35K + employees and various other associated workers.

Regards

EOS:

I told you the demand for polygraph  tests was going to soar after 9/11. Good luck to the feds in their job of keeping us safe. Yes Eos, this site will probably get visited a lot more now by people wanting to use CMs. The fallout from that is a lot of people will have their dreams snatched from them after they are caught cheating. The upside is that many  who have an intent on doing harm to our country will be  eliminated from the hiring process. (some  who probably thought they could cheat by coming to this site.) Some may get through but with periodical polygraphs they too will be discovered.

RetCopper,

Never let it be said that I won't admit when I am wrong, yes it does appear that our wonderful federal government is expanding the polygraph usage across a large part of the government agencies. The down side of this, is that hiring new people into government jobs is now going to become exponentially harder. And keeping seasoned employees will be harder too.  As most technical, analytical, and scientific types that understand what a sham the polygraph is, will refuse to even consider a government career or stay in one.  As far as keeping us safe, its not a matter of if we get hit again, its when. And I have little or no confidence in our current administration in protecting us.  This polygraph usage  increase will become a self defeating prophesy. Then lets see how safe you feel.  But again only time will tell.

Regards ...

Congressional Quarterly national security editor Jeff Stein, who first brought the DOJ report to my attention, has filed the following report:


Quote:

http://www.cq.com/public/20060919_homeland.html Justice Report: Standards Lacking on ‘Lie Detector’ Tests By Jeff Stein, CQ Staff The FBI and three other Justice Department components are conducting over 16,000 polygraph tests a year, even though they have no uniform standards for administering them, the department’s inspector general reported Monday. The FBI requires job applicants and employees in sensitive positions to pass polygraphs as a condition of employment, even though their scientific basis and reliability have been sharply challenged in the past decade. The FBI’s polygraph program failed to meet federal standards during 2003-2005, the inspector general (IG) said. More than 49,000 polygraph examinations were conducted by the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and the office of the Inspector General (OIG) itself during that period, the report said. The lion’s share of those — 77 percent, or 38,017 tests — were conducted by the FBI during 2003-2005. Thousands more polygraph examinations —by the CIA, the military services, Pentagon agencies or other Justice Department components that do not have their own programs, such as the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals Service—are conducted annually on subjects as varied as job applicants, employees, contractors, confidential sources and even participants in the Witness Protection Program. “However, our review found no [Justice] Department-wide policy concerning the conduct and use of polygraph examinations,” the OIG said. “Rather, each Department component has developed its own policies, procedures, and practices to govern polygraph examinations.” In 2004, the Justice Department’s Management Division concluded that without a uniform standard, agencies under its jurisdiction should not be able to “compel Department employees to take a polygraph in a misconduct investigation.” Two years later, only the FBI among its components has codified its policies and procedures for making an employee submit to a polygraph, the report said. Critics were quick to point out that the polygraph examinations can give the FBI a false sense of security. Such infamous turncoats as the CIA’s Aldrich Ames and the FBI’s Robert Hanssen, both of whom spied for the Russians for years, passed routine polygraph examinations, where they were asked about their loyalty to the United States. More recently, in May, an FBI intelligence analyst with a top secret clearance pled guilty in May to spying for Philippines officials. Leandro Aragoncillo, who joined the FBI in 2004 after 21 years in the Marines, which included a stint in the office of the vice president, would have been asked about any unauthorized use of classified documents in a standard polygraph test. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s review of pre-Iraq war intelligence also reported that three key Iraqi exiles who supplied false or misleading intelligence to the Pentagon all passed polygraphs. None of these cases was part of the OIG’s study, which focused on the administration of polygraph programs, not the validity of the tests themselves. The report did, say, however, that Justice Department examiners were certified by the Department of Defense’s Polygraph Institute. The DoDPI not only trains polygraphers for military services and civilian agencies, it administers the government’s Quality Assurance Program that judges how well the programs are working. Bad Grades Critics say the system has built-in conflicts of interest, but the OIG’s report revealed that the DoDPI inspectors could hand out bad grades, too, especially to the FBI. “The programs of the DEA, ATF, and OIG were consistently certified as being in compliance with federal standards,” the OIG’s report said. “However, the FBI’s program was not certified as complying with federal standard after the three inspections DoDPI conducted in fiscal 2003 through 2005, because of repeated instances of noncompliance with federal polygraph standards during polygraph examinations. “The noncompliance included instances of improperly constructed questions, opinions on results . . . that were not supported by standard test scoring techniques, and the routine destruction of the score sheets that examiners and supervisors prepared when examining polygraph test results,” the report said. FBI polygraphers turned around their program last year, the OIG said. “Although not all issues were finally resolved, the issues were sufficiently addressed so that in January 2006 DoDPI certified the FBI polygraph program for the first time.” Worthless? George W. Maschke, an Arabic language translator who also worked with the FBI on terrorism cases in the 1990s, said the IG report had significant holes. “The most noteworthy thing about this report is that which it fails to address,” said Maschke, who also runs the AntiPolygraph.org Web site. One important omission, he said, was any reference to the National Academy of Sciences’ 2002 finding that “[polygraph testing’s] accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies.” Maschke said, “The OIG report fails to address why DOJ (in particular, the FBI) has substantially increased its reliance on polygraph screening since fiscal 2002 despite [this report]. In fact, the OIG report makes no mention of this critical finding.” Retired FBI scientist Drew Richardson, another prominent polygraph critic, said “Anything that doesn’t deal with the substance of the polygraph as a diagnostic tool is basically worthless. It’s really just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.