Admiral Stansfied Turner, ret., served as Director of the CIA under President Jimmy Carter. In his book,
Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985), he discussed his views on polygraph policy, which may be of interest here. The following is excerpted from pp. 69-70:
Quote:The most important specific tool of counterintelligence is the polygraph, a controversial instrument that stirs strong feelings in both its advocates and its opponents. The latter, in part, have an emotional reaction against the unpleasantness of the experience of being tested. I volunteered for testing twice and each time found it repugnant just to have my honor implicitly questioned. And the sensation of being wired to a machine and not having any idea what it is registering created a sense of tension. Civil libertarians loathe the polygraph because of the potential for injustice. After a good deal of observation of the results of polygraph tests, I believe the potential definitely exists. It is low, but polygraph tests are subject to the attitude of the person doing the testing and his interpretation of the readings. I have seen a number of questionable results, and I would not count on a polygraph test as the only evidence against an individual. I view the polygraph only as a supplementary counterintelligence device when used on our own personnel.
There are two situations in which such use is called for: the screening of new applicants for employment (the CIA and the National Security Agency both use this) and the periodic, un-scheduled retesting of employees. What I found extremely helpful was the confessions that were elicited during the retesting. We learned of people taking classified documents home to work on them, of staff having unauthorized discussions with newsmen, and of personal habits that raise questions of reliability. In addition, the fact that every CIA and NSA employee knows that he or she may be subject to a surprise polygraph test in itself inhibits loose security practices.
Largely because of the confessions and the inhibiting effect, I felt the polygraph had its usefulness, and I attempted to extend its use to civilian contractors and to certain other government personnel. For example, we were sending construction workmen to Moscow to help build a new embassy. We needed enough Americans on that job to prevent the Soviets from planting listening devices in the building.[footnote deleted] I wanted all workmen who were sent to Moscow and the State Department and Marine Corps security personnel overseeing them to be polygraphed on their return home. The idea was to make certain that none had been bribed to let the Soviets install any devices. [Secretary of State] Cy Vance and [Secretary of Defense] Harold Brown initially acquiesced, and I got the President's approval. Later, because of antipathy toward polygraphing, Vance and Brown were under such pressure from their bureaucracies that they persuaded the President to reverse himself.
Besides polygraphing new applicants and repolygraphing employees, the CIA uses the polygraph on foreign agents whenever feasible. In such cases it is an even more useful tool, because in the murky world of espionage the rights of the individual are not a high concern. First of all, these agents are well aware that establishing who's honest and who's not is a key element of their trade. Beyond that, they are not U.S. citizens protected by our constitutional rights. And there is little harm done if they are falsely accused by a polygraph report. Either we don't trust their reporting, and that would be our loss; or we don't employ them, both our loss and theirs, but they have no particular right to work for the CIA. Perhaps the best evidence that the polygraph does help separate true agents from false is that we know the KGB has made determined efforts to develop techniques for "beating the machine." Although there is a risk that some professionals will fool the polygraph, there is the greater one that our intelligence agencies will rely on it too heavily. If we take for granted that a person is loyal because he or she passed a polygraph test in the past, we may ignore signals that should indicate the contrary.
Of course, that the KGB developed polygraph countermeasures is no evidence that the polygraph helps separate true agents from false: even the broken clock is right twice a day, and an intelligence service would want to protect its intelligence assets from even the random risk of "failing" a polygraph "test."
It's interesting to note that Turner's support for the polygraph was essentially based not on any purported ability to differentiate truth from deception, but on the confessions obtained and a perceived deterrent effect. Both of these purported benefits of polygraphy depend, however, on those being "tested" believing in a lie (i.e., that the lie detector really works). As "the lie behind the lie detector" becomes more and more widely known to those who are subjected to polygraph screening, those perceived benefits will increasingly vanish, and the risk involved in placing any reliance whatsoever on polygraph chart readings will increase.
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Ex-CIA Director Stansfield Turner on Polygraphy (Read 2088 times)
