I will have to admit I am afraid to make waves. If one accusation of drug use in a pre-employment exam can completely ruin my chances of federal employment, FOREVER, I am extremely reluctant to go after the polygrapher himself. After all, it is my word, against his, and he has the backing of a government organization with a lot of money and good lawyers. I am just a struggling student straight out of grad school trying to find a job, who can't afford to pay the $300.00 an hour for a lawyer who specializes in this ;[
What I will be doing however, is taking a drug test at my own expense and sending it in with my letter to the FBI contesting my results. I will also be sending those results to several congressmen along with a letter explaining what happened to me. I am sure the FBI will "loose" the results proving I'm not a current drug user, or just say it doesn't matter as their policy indicates I could not have used in the past 5-10 years (depending on the drug) but hopefully any reasonable person conducting a background check would see my results and realize that someone who was "guilty" would not have bothered. Or one can hope.
I am still really upset about it, and haven't even been able to muster up the willpower to start applying to private sector jobs. I just feel beat down by this, and destroyed that I probably couldn't even get a clerks position now with the VA, or some other branch which doesn't deal with national security concerns.
It's also really warped my sense of the US government, big time.
I'm also embarrassed, as many of my peers and supervisors know that I was up for a few federal jobs, and now I have to explain to them what happened, and I'm sure more than a few of them will sit back and wonder if I'm telling the truth, because the story is just so unbelievable.