The article, "Interviewing With An Intelligence Agency (or, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Fort Meade)," written under the pseudonym "Ralph J. Perro" and recently posted on the Federation of American Scientists' website, will be of interest to anyone contemplating employment with an intelligence agency (especially the NSA):

http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/nsa-interview.pdf

I agree with Kona, Wow!

I posted a note about this article to the popular website, Slashdot.org, where a lively discussion has started:

http://slashdot.org/articles/03/12/05/141248.shtml?tid=103&tid=158&tid=99

Quote:


George,
This is very interesting, especially when considered in the context of some of the complaints we've seen from polygraphers that providing polygraph countermeasure information is akin to teaching people how to "beat" the MMPI.  Evidently, MMPI testing is of highly questionable value when predicting security risk, as well.

One might conclude, based upon not one (the polygraph) but two (throw in the MMPI) examples of government counterintelligence procedures which appear to add essentially no incremental value to the clearance process, that perhaps something is very, very wrong with American security procedures.  Indeed, it seems more and more obvious that considerations quite apart from security are taking precedence.

Skeptic

Message edited to update URL in quoted text -- AntiPolygraph.org Administrator

This note has two separate purposes.  The first one is to inform readers that Dr. Stone's (who is me) referenced works are not reachable with the internet address given in the notes above.  My web site pages and sections have been placed on another internect connector company's servers.  The 'old'ones that include "sgi" or "stargate" are now obsolete and will only lead to a dead end.  My PSSPQ web site's address is:  http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/psspq.html
Some of the above reference research works that pertain to the PSSPQ can be found in the electronic Psychology of Espionage Reports, whose internet address is:
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/espionage.html

The second part of this note is addressed to some of the comments made in a couple of the above notes.  Stone found evidence that a couple spies produced, when they were being processed for hire by the government, quite normal and average appearing MMPI results.  Also, he reported a lack of correlation between MMPI scale scores and subsequent success/failure to be granted high-level security clearance status.

Stone (i.e., I) found abundant evidence to suggest that his PSSPQ test, in contrast to the MMPI, shows very high correlation with subsequent success/failure to be granted high-level security clearance status.  He also has found, based upon some susggestive evidence, that the LIE Scale, of his PSSPQ test, might identify, persons, who are to be considered for high-level security clearance status, who later turn out to be spies.  However, it is important to note that the PSSPQ was NEVER constructed to identify persons with some potential for spying.  It is strictly developed to accurately predict success/failure to be eventaually granted high-level security clearance status.

Hi Marty -
I fully agree that the PG approach in the screening of persons for positions of trust probably screens out a lot of persons who most likely are above-average in their being honest.  In over 14 years of conducting psych. interviews with candidates for positions of HIGH trust, I found that an unusual number of candiates who had backgrounds as members of the Church of Latter Day Saints or were AA members who had successfully gone the way of that organization's "12 Steps" tended to honestly 'spill their guts out' in the psych interviews, on testing (such as the MMPI), and in their polygraph interviews.  Such unusual levels of honesty seemly were simply not expected and were interpreted as being highly indicative of underlying psychopathy and the like.  Too much honesty, in such evaluative situations, will create a negative impression rather than a positive one, as one would hope.

Interestingly enough, the overly honest applicants/candidates, in my data base, seem to validly exhibit their true nateure on the PSSPQ' LIE Scfale - they tend to look as if they were responding in a markedly honest fashion.

Roy Stone