Today, I e-mailed the following letter to Senator Orrin Hatch:

Dear Senator Hatch:

I am a co-founder of AntiPolygraph.org, a non-profit, public interest website dedicated to exposing and ending waste, fraud, and abuse associated with the use of polygraphs (lie detectors).

The New York Times reports regarding the leak of the name of an FBI confidential informant in a Detroit terrorism case that in a letter to the Attorney General last month, you questioned whether Justice Department officials "are fully cooperating...including submitting to polygraphs."

Your question suggests that you believe that polygraph testing has some validity as a means of determining truth versus deception. But in 2002, the National Academy of Sciences in its landmark report, The Polygraph and Lie Detection, confirmed the consensus of the scientific community that polygraph testing has no scientific basis. While the polygraph may be useful as an interrogational prop, it has no more validity than astrology or tarot cards.

In past hunts for leakers, misplaced reliance on polygraphs has caused serious harm. In 1982, a polygraph dragnet for the source of a leak in the 30-member Defense Resources Board failed to find the leaker, but did lead to John Tillson, director of manpower management at the Pentagon being falsely accused. He was exonerated only when reporter George Wilson of the Washington Post assured Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger that Tillson was not the leaker. Polygraph hunts for leakers also led to Marine colonel Robert McFarlane (1982) and Assistant Undersecretary of Defense Michael Pillsbury (1986) being falsely accused. (For documentation, see D.T. Lykken's A Tremor in the Blood: Uses and Abuses of the Lie Detector, pp. 216-18.)

Moreover, polygraph tests are easily beaten through the use of simple countermeasures that polygraph examiners -- despite their unsupported claims to the contrary -- cannot reliably detect. Detailed information on how anyone can fool the polygraph (you don't have to go to spy school) is readily available in AntiPolygraph.org's free e-book, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector:

http://antipolygraph.org/lie-behind-the-lie-detector.pdf

We made this information available not to help liars to beat the system, but to provide the truthful with a means of protecting themselves against the random error associated with this invalid test. Nonetheless, nothing prevents liars from exploiting this information to fool the polygraph.

You co-sponsored the 1988 Employee Polygraph Protection Act restricting the ability of the private sector to compel employees to submit to lie detector testing. But government was granted a blanket exemption from this law. Should not government abide by the same rules it imposes on private enterprise? Why the double standard? I hope you will consider sponsoring a new, Comprehensive Employee Polygraph Protection Act that would extend to public employees the same protections enjoyed by other Americans by removing the exemptions of the 1988 law. You will find proposed language for such legislation here:

http://antipolygraph.org/ceppa.shtml

I would be happy to answer any questions you may have regarding the foregoing matters.

Sincerely,

George W. Maschke
AntiPolygraph.org

PS: A copy of this letter will be posted to the AntiPolygraph.org message board:

http://antipolygraph.org/cgi-bin/forums/YaBB.pl