Normal Topic Probable CIA/FBI False Positive Led to Suicide (Read 9708 times)
Paste Member Name in Quick Reply Box George W. Maschke
Global Moderator
*****
Offline


Make-believe science yields
make-believe security.

Posts: 6232
Joined: Sep 29th, 2000
Probable CIA/FBI False Positive Led to Suicide
Mar 7th, 2006 at 7:08pm
Mark & QuoteQuote Print Post  
In The Fifty Year Wound: The True Price of America's Cold War Victory, (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2002) Georgetown University professor Derek Leebaert relates, among other things, the story of James Schneider, a Navy veteran driven to suicide by what in all probability were false positive CIA and FBI polygraph results. The following excerpt is from pages 571-72:

Quote:
The Cold War ended at different times and on different fronts, one all too close to home. James Schneider graduated in 1991 from Georgetown University. He joined the Navy and served as an officer on a guided-missile carrier for three years before being honorably discharged with an unblemished record in June 1995. As his next career step, he had applied to both the CIA and the Foreign Service, making the extremely difficult cut for the latter and surmounting the State Department's intense background investigation. However, he was one of the 90 percent who had failed the CIA's routine polygraph test.

Schneider was sworn in that November by State, and by mid-1996 was awaiting assignment to Athens as a counselor [sic, correct: consular] officer. But the consequences of his CIA application were lurking. The Agency had originally turned his polygraph results over to its counterintelligence office, which includes several FBI agents--a spokesman later commenting that "the threshold for reporting cases is not all that high."[endnote omitted] In summer 1996, nearly a year after the CIA test, State Department officials learned of the failed polygraph from the Bureau. Schneider was immediately denied access to most anything concerning his work. Notification had not been made earlier to State because FBI officials had concluded that Schneider's questionable results were "eminently resolvable." The Bureau suddenly saw fit to administer its own polygraph--the CIA probably realized that Schneider had become a Foreign Service Officer--and he supposedly failed that one too. The issue, the FBI later said, may have been that he had "merely spoke[n] too loosely about classified material with non-Navy personnel" while in uniform.[endnote omitted] Or it may have been nothing. There was no elaboration from Langley: it just helped draw the most destructive, disqualifying insinuations, eventually including unspecified ties to Moscow.

These persistent, career-threatening calumnies were sufficient to drive the twenty-seven-year-old Schneider to suicide. It is unlikely that he was the first to be marched by those means down that bleak road--or that he will be the last.

Reagan signed the Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988, which prohibited industry from using the device to screen applicants. Shamefully, federal employees were exempted....
  

George W. Maschke
I am generally available in the chat room from 3 AM to 3 PM Eastern time.
Tel/SMS: 1-202-810-2105 (Please use Signal Private Messenger or WhatsApp to text or call.)
E-mail/iMessage/FaceTime: antipolygraph.org@protonmail.com
Wire: @ap_org
Threema: A4PYDD5S
Personal Statement: "Too Hot of a Potato"
Back to top
IP Logged
 
Paste Member Name in Quick Reply Box antrella
User
**
Offline



Posts: 40
Joined: Mar 3rd, 2006
Re: Probable CIA/FBI False Positive Led to Suicide
Reply #1 - Mar 9th, 2006 at 7:05am
Mark & QuoteQuote Print Post  
How disturbing. The sad truth is that it will take many more such headline-grabbing tragedies before the media (and, perforce, the public) pick up the polygraph issue in earnest.

Until then, the issue (and this website, its visitors and vindicators) will remain on the periphery: marginalized by the ignorant and vilified by the profiteers of psuedo-science.
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
Paste Member Name in Quick Reply Box Juan-John
New User
*
Offline



Posts: 1
Joined: Feb 26th, 2010
Re: Probable CIA/FBI False Positive Led to Suicide
Reply #2 - Feb 26th, 2010 at 6:24am
Mark & QuoteQuote Print Post  
Neither here nor there, but Jim Schneider served on a guided missile *cruiser*, not a carrier.
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
Probable CIA/FBI False Positive Led to Suicide

Please type the characters that appear in the image. The characters must be typed in the same order, and they are case-sensitive.
Open Preview Preview

You can resize the textbox by dragging the right or bottom border.
Insert Hyperlink Insert FTP Link Insert Image Insert E-mail Insert Media Insert Table Insert Table Row Insert Table Column Insert Horizontal Rule Insert Teletype Insert Code Insert Quote Edited Superscript Subscript Insert List /me - my name Insert Marquee Insert Timestamp No Parse
Bold Italicized Underline Insert Strikethrough Highlight
                       
Change Text Color
Insert Preformatted Text Left Align Centered Right Align
resize_wb
resize_hb







Max 200000 characters. Remaining characters:
Text size: pt
More Smilies
View All Smilies
Collapse additional features Collapse/Expand additional features Smiley Wink Cheesy Grin Angry Sad Shocked Cool Huh Roll Eyes Tongue Embarrassed Lips Sealed Undecided Kiss Cry
Attachments More Attachments Allowed file types: txt doc docx ics psd pdf bmp jpe jpg jpeg gif png swf zip rar tar gz 7z odt ods mp3 mp4 wav avi mov 3gp html maff pgp gpg
Maximum Attachment size: 500000 KB
Attachment 1:
X