retcopper wrote on May 1
st, 2006 at 6:49pm:
FBIReject:
Actually the article is encouraging to the polygraph industry. The opening paragraph states that the feds are using polygraph more than ever. According to the CIA McCarthy is no longer working for them because she was found to be deceptive duringa poly test. I question the validity of the so called test that included 10 spies and only 8 were caught but without the poly these 8 would never have been caught so the poly was of great service to the intelligence community.
Yes 2 caught 8 free and you only have to fire 16% of your workforce to catch them.
I postulate that if you fire 100% of your work force you will absolutely have zero spies.
Edit--
Here is what I figured out using Sixth Grade math:
Let me offer a little sense of proportion:
Assuming 50,000 CIA employees undergo a 5 year periodic screening (which Mahle’s polygraph probably was not). You would have 10,000 polygraphs a year. I don’t know the exact year the CIA started polygraphs but lets assume 1976 just to make the math easy.
You have a total of (10,000 polygraphs a year X 30 years) 300,000 polygraphs and the best you have to show for it is an employee who may or may not have leaked information to a reporter. It will be interesting to see if any criminal prosecution follows.
Also please keep in mind most of the information in the original story was derived from open source flight logs. The role of any person leaking information is far from clear.
In baseball you'd be batting 3.333 X 10E-6 (The E-6 means you put 6 Zeros in front of the 3)