Mark,

The very fact that the D.C. Metro police requested that the FBI Laboratory provide an opinion on Rep. Condit's polygraph charts suggests that D.C. police do not agree with the FBI's claim that rendering an opinion would "hamper" any future polygraph examinations that the FBI might be requested to conduct for them in connection with the search for Chandra Levy. Indeed, Michael Doyle reported in the Modesto Bee on Wednesday, 18 June 2001:


Quote:

WASHINGTON -- FBI experts on Tuesday began examining Rep. Gary Condit's private lie-detector test, while police searched woods in the Chandra Levy disappearance, and Condit went about his business in the camera's glare. Although skeptical of the test sprung on them by Condit's attorney, Washington police officials say the FBI's laboratory will give it a fair reading. Police gave the results to the lab on Tuesday after receiving them Monday. "It has to be analyzed," Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance Gainer told reporters Tuesday afternoon. "It really takes an expert in the field to make heads or tails of it, and it would be pitiful for me to try."

If it is indeed the FBI's longstanding policy not to render opinions on polygraph examinations conducted by outside agencies, then why did the FBI agree to look at the charts in the first place? And how did Washington police officials come to believe that "the FBI's laboratory [would] give it a fair reading?" Who told them that?

This seems to be another of those situations where you don't need a lie detector to detect a lie from the polygraph community.