Drew

Good to see you're now an advocate for the use of polygraph.  What brought you over from the dark side?

Drew,

Now that White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has indicated that administration officials will submit to polygraph examinations if asked, your commentary is especially timely.

But it is hard to imagine that Robert Novak, the media person who revealed the CIA employee's identity, would be willing to cooperate with investigators seeking to identify his source. Without confidential information from Novak (or any other reporters who may have been provided with this information but chose not to publish it), can you imagine any scenario in which a concealed information test might be constructed for this investigation?

Drew,

I agree with you on two points. First of all, your desire for thorough investigation of the matter should always be the first step.  We should expect nothing less. Talking polygraph up front is putting the cart before the horse.  No polygraph should be conducted in a specific issue context without completion of thorough investigation.  Polygraph is a very useful investigative tool when utilized properly.  It is not a substitute for investigation.

Secondly, I agree that any polygraph examinations that might be conducted should be should be as sophisticated, effective, and appropriate to the investigation as possible.

However, I share the concerns of George regarding the development of a GKT/CIT examination for this investigation.  First of all, it is fair to suspect that only the perpetrator of the leak and the reporter witnessed the transaction of the information. Thus, as George asserted, development of details from which to create the exam would have to come from a person who might not be willing divulge them.  And if he discloses the kind of details necessary for CIT, perhaps he'd be willing to simply identify his source.  I doubt any disclosure of such information would occur without some sort of court order -- subpoena, Grand Jury, etc.  Again if those investigating could succeed in obtaing that, why not just demand the identity of the person from Mr. Novak.

And, what kind of details would one look to obtain in order to set up a GKT?  Perhaps the method of transaction (face to face, phone, email, third party delivery, etc)?  Maybe code names/words used by the reporter to identify the source or facilitate meetings?  Maybe location of meetings or what Mr. Novak (or a representaive who made the meeting) was wearing?  What if there was an unwitting go-between, thus leaving the actual leak no knowledge of the transaction details.

The question becomes, is the investigation being conducted to identify the source of the leak, or to set up a test that one can only hope potential suspects would be willing to undergo.  

My hope is that all details are being sought by the investigation anyway; and that their revelation will lead to the answer.  Of course if someone were investigating for the purpose of developing a test, they might step back and find the answers without it.  But the bottom line is that polygraph (all formats) exists as a tool for investigation, not vice versa.

Polygraph becomes useful once thorough investigation narrows the pool of suspects.  Once thorough investigation determines who is a viable candidate for the exam, if sufficient concealed details are not available for CIT, a well-prepared exam of other (perhaps less palatable, to many who visit this site,)format(s) could be quite effective.

If details sufficient for GKT/CIT were obtained, and there were suspects willing to take the exam, would you be offering to add a CNS dimension to the exam?  

In that same vein, have you, or your colleagues conducted (or contemplated) research based on CNS response to deception (as opposed to memory pattern)?  If such a pattern could be found you could hold the key to a universally applicable examination free of the difficulties of GKT, without the hard to measure dependency on pre-test, low susceptibility to CMs, and hopefully with a measurably high rate of accuracy/validity.  Imagine finding the CNS response which triggers the physiological responses of a deceptive person to CQT style questions. Of course it's developer would likely become rich, but possibly infamous in civil liberties circles.  Just a thought. 

Thanks for suffering through my ramblings.

Public Servant 

Public Servant,

Continuing where I left off in replying to your latest post, you write:

Quote:


Actually both aspects are important and it is essential that both task areas be performed, neither to the exclusion of the other.  Neither is in conflict with the other, and an investigator not being aware of and/or not keeping the parameters/requirements of a concealed information test in mind during an investigation will only lead to a rather deficient “Did you do it?” sort of polygraph examination if and when administering one should become an option.  Nothing about identifying the source of the leak, proving the elements of the crime, and maintaining the possibility of doing a meaningful polygraph exam are contradictory or mutually exclusive. 
 
You further write:
 
Quote:


This is a topic that I don’t believe I have commented on before and one in which commonly expressed clichés warrant a close look.  I believe (as do you) that thoroughness is a proper and necessary parameter of any criminal investigation, but I am not sure that generally having a polygraph examination done later rather than sooner is necessarily a good idea.  That which you say is clearly common practice amongst CQT polygraphers, i.e., in a criminal specific incident test they prefer to do examinations later in an investigation rather than earlier (will comment on the stated and real rationale subsequently).  When one examines this common practice I don’t think it is necessarily a rational course of action for either CQT or the CIT examinations we have been discussing.  With regard to the latter (clearly an investigation-based format), I believe it makes sense to conduct sufficient investigation to develop the necessary GKT/CIT subject areas and test questions and then to administer it in a timely fashion, i.e., as soon as this is accomplished and an examinee is available and willing to take the exam to avoid the possibility of concealed and testable information having been made public (or at least known to the examinee through press reports, discovery proceedings, etc) information and therefore unusable for testing.  

With regard to lie tests, i.e. probable lie control question tests (PLCQTs), these, if scrutinized at all, are found not really to be investigation-based exams.  It really makes little difference (in terms of relevant question construction) neither whether these types of exams are given on day one or day 1000 of a leak investigation nor if ten or a thousand people make up the potential examinee pool.  More specifically, a CQT examination done in this leak investigation would normally and will likely include some variant of “Did you leak Ms. Plame’s name and occupation to…?” regardless of which of the above extremes exist in terms of either investigative time length or size of examinee candidate population.  This type of examination largely develops relevant questions by merely putting the elements of the crime in interrogatory form.  Although they (he/she) might not understand that they were doing such, any layman on the street can compose the relevant questions that are generally used in a CQT examination, i.e., no real knowledge of the investigation needed to do the above. 

As far as I can tell the main advantage (I realize that there exist time, financial, subsequently developed relevant issues as well) to hope that continued investigation will reduce the potential examinee population is merely to confuscate how poorly a CQT exam would be expected to work.  The primary difference between administering such an exam in a leak investigation to a 1000 White House employees vs. doing so with 100 White House employees is merely the number of false positive results one would expect and actually obtain.  As I stated in my initial post in this thread, I believe a large number of innocent people, if asked some variant of “Did you leak the occupation of Ms. Plame to…?” would react (physiologically respond so as to be deemed deceptive) to the consequences of being branded a liar in such an important matter and one having serious consequences associated with being so branded.  This is precisely the type of examination that reveals just how poor a diagnostic tool the CQT is.  This in and of itself would be an important and sufficient reason to administer said exams if not for the intolerable expense and plight  of missed culprits and horribly and wrongfully accused innocent examinees.   

The final area that you address deals with the use of CNS based examination techniques for both CIT and lie tests.  There is a fair amount to be said about both and I will return to those areas in a subsequent post.  Best Regards,

Drew Richardson