ABC News reports that the suicide bomber who killed at least six CIA employees at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan "was a regular CIA informant who had visited the same base multiple times in the past."

If this is true, then it is very likely that the bomber passed a CIA polygraph test. It is decades-old CIA practice to vet informants by means of polygraph screening.




Former National Security Council chief counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke opined to Good Morning America weekend edition anchor Kate Snow that the bomber "was probably a double-agent all along." If that is indeed the case, then the CIA's reliance on polygraphy may well have been a contributing factor in the chain of events leading to the CIA officers' deaths.

As the CIA reviews its security procedures, now would be an opportune occasion for the Agency to heed the conclusion of the National Academy of Sciences that polygraph screening is completely invalid and end its misplaced reliance on the pseudoscience of polygraphy.

In this regard, it's worth recalling that the man who introduced the polygraph to the CIA back in 1948, and who devised protocols that are to this very day used by polygraph operators nationwide, is a crackpot who believes that plants can read human thought.

It's also worth recalling that, as documented here on AntiPolygraph.org more than seven years ago, unlike the CIA, Al-Qaeda understands that the lie detector is a sham: it's in their Encylopedia of Jihad! Shouldn't the CIA be at least as smart as the enemy it is confronting?

As I've said before, make-believe science yields make-believe security.

CBS News is reporting that double agent and suicide bomber Humam al-Balawi was not polygraphed by the CIA:

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If this report is correct, then the CIA is to be congratulated, not faulted, for not having relied on the magical thinking associated with polygraphy to vet al-Balawi.

Pailryder,

Polygraphy is a tool at the CIA's disposal in the same sense and to the same degree that cow dung is a tool at the CIA's disposal.  I suppose both are available, neither will reveal where truth lies, and both will leave you with dirty hands and an obnoxious smell wherever you go.

Pailryder,

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As long as no one misrepresents what is really going on, I say give it your best shot.

I note that ABC News's reporting that Humam al-Balawi "was a regular CIA informant who had visited the same base multiple times in the past" is contradicted by L.A. Times correspondent Greg Miller, who on 6 January reported:

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If Miller's sources are correct, then if al-Balawi was never polygraphed, it may simply be because the CIA never had the opportunity to polygraph him, and not because the CIA has at long last embraced the reality that polygraphy is not to be relied upon.

With regard to the suggestion that the CIA "should use every legal tool at their disposal to prevent this from happening again," it should be noted that ouija boards, tarot cards, tea leaves, and Magic 8-Balls are all legal "tools" at the CIA's disposal. But like polygraphy, they are not reliable.

Again, as previously documented here on AntiPolygraph.org, Al-Qaeda and Iraqi jihadists have published literature explaining that the lie detector is a sham. The Khost bomber, a medical doctor who presumably knew how to use "the Google," would not likely have been fooled.

As-Sahab media has released video of an interview conducted with Humam al-Balawi shortly before his 30 December 2009 suicide mission in which he discusses how he reached that point. The interview, translated into English by As-Sahab, is available here:

http://www.archive.org/details/Sahab_Kharsni_06

Al-Balawi makes no mention of having ever wittingly met with a CIA officer.