On Tuesday, 13 November 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice announced, "Nada Nadim Prouty, a 37-year-old Lebanese national and resident of Vienna, Va., pleaded guilty today in the Eastern District of Michigan to charges of fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship, which she later used to gain employment at the FBI and CIA; accessing a federal computer system to unlawfully query information about her relatives and the terrorist organization Hizballah; and conspiracy to defraud the United States."

Prouty's plea agreement states, among other things (at p.3):

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All FBI and CIA employees must pass a pre-employment polygraph screening examination. One of the questions on Prouty's FBI pre-employment polygraph examination would have been something similar to, "Have you deliberately withheld any important information from your application?"

For more background on the Prouty case, see "Ex-FBI Employee's Case Raises New Security Concerns" by Washington Post staff writers Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen.

Just a bit of slightly off-topic chat:

Someone posted the contents of George's post iro Nada Prouty on the PolygraphPlace board for comment - surprise surprise - it was deleted entirely in minutes. 

The pro poly crowd are absolute hypocritical cowards. They come to this site in an organised blitzkrieg & sprout their pseudo science babble.

But God forbid one should post anything at all that threatens the image of polygraph on their own asinine site. No matter how factual the post is, it will be deleted.

On their site they are gentlemanly. On AP site they vent like maniacs
and are pointedly rude, patronising & insulting.


It is impossible to engage them on their own turf. They are evidently terrified that the public may see polygraph exposed for what it is.

nopolycop wrote on Nov 15^th, 2007 at 2:38pm:


At this point, despite some sensationalist press accounts (such as the New York Post's titling of an article on the case "Feds' Jihad Jane Shame"), there is no evidence that Nada Nadim Prouty has committed espionage against the United States.

Nonetheless, I think even polygraphy's staunchest defenders would be hard pressed to argue that Prouty didn't deliberately withhold important information from her FBI application. The Prouty case is clearly a polygraph screening failure.

Among those pointing out the failure of the polygraph are former counterterrorism official Richard A. Clarke, now an ABC News consultant, who has earlier come out against polygraph screening. ABC News quotes Clarke regarding the Prouty case:

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And former CIA agent Larry Johnson in commenting on the Prouty case notes among other things:

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One of the specific items identified by many congressmen and defense contractors is the inability to obtain a clearance in a "reasonable" time period.

The second one being a valid acceptable procedure to grant a security clearance between agencies.

Once again the "we do things better" will rear its ugly head as the CIA accuses the FBI background check as being inferior.  The FBI has its own arrogant attitude that no other agency meets their standards.

A good background investigation takes time and money.  The pre-screening polygraph was created as an illusion that "the highest standards and precautions" are being used to vet the information on a background check.  A top secret clearance should be fully acceptable in between agencies and the procedures to obtain one should be nearly identical and repeatable.

Once again, do we want security, speed, acceptability, or cost effectiveness to be the priority in processing applicants?

The Federal government has not producing the amount of "mass" retirements predicted which would cause a strain on the current system.

The polygraph is strictly another illusional band-aid covering up a festering security infection that needs a completely new treatment.

Regards.

Since she has not been sentenced yet, she should cut a deal to discuss how she passed the poly, in exchange for a lighter sentence.

Of course, she would need to take another poly to confirm she was telling the truth.   

Barry_C wrote on Nov 20^th, 2007 at 2:05am:


The value of those admissions must also be weighed against the harm done to the many individuals who will inevitably be falsely accused of deception when reliance is wrongly placed on an invalid test:

https://antipolygraph.org/statements.shtml

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Agreed. No vetting system will be perfect.

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The Prouty case is one of many data points. While no evidence that Prouty committed espionage against the United States has been made public, spies who have fooled the polygraph include:

• Ignatz Theodor Griebl
• Karel Frantisek Koecher
• Larry Wu-tai Chin
• Aldrich Hazen Ames
• Ana Belen Montes
• Leandro Aragoncillo

Would you care to name any American turncoats caught by the polygraph? I can only think of one who is credibly alleged to have been so caught: Sharon Scranage, a CIA secretary who admitted to passing the identities of CIA employees to her Ghanaian boyfriend, who was an intelligence officer.

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It's not at all clear that polygraphy reliably works at better-than-chance levels of accuracy, especially when the person being "tested" understands that the "test" is a pseudoscientific sham and knows polygraph countermeasures. Comparing the list of spies who fooled the polygraph against the single spy who was arguably caught by it, it looks like you miss more than you catch.

It's high time that our government heeded the National Academy of Sciences' conclusion that "[polygraph testing's] accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies." The time to end our misplaced reliance on polygraph screening is now.

Barry_C wrote on Nov 20^th, 2007 at 2:05am:


My quick comment simply implies that the polygraph apparently doesn't do a very good job of catching spies.  How many people are spying right now, who have passed polygraphs?  And, how did they pass?  From my reading, it appears there seems to be an unhealthy reliance upon the polygraph to weed out undesirables from government law enforcement or security service.  What other explanation could there be for Prouty?  Her whole life was a lie, but apparently no one checked.  But, they DID giver her a polygraph.