CSIS urged to end polygraph testing

Andrew Mitrovica

Toronto — ANDREW MITROVICA The Globe and Mail

Published Monday, Jun. 12, 2000 12:00AM EDT

Last updated Saturday, Mar. 21, 2009 4:34PM EDT

Canada's intelligence service should abolish the use of polygraph testing because the device is unreliable and has lost its scientific credibility, says the former head of the agency's polygraph unit.

"I agree it should be abolished if it is not done properly and I am not convinced that it is being done properly just about anywhere, including at CSIS," said Brian Lynch, a former chief psychologist at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Mr. Lynch said last week in an interview with The Globe and Mail that CSIS managers pressed him to divulge employees' confidential medical and psychological information.

One of the agencies acting as a watchdog for Canada's intelligence service says the allegations are a grave matter which could trigger a formal inquiry.

"It's obviously a very serious allegation to make," Maurice Archdeacon, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's Inspector-General, said in a recent interview.

Mr. Archdeacon, who reports to Solicitor-General Lawrence MacAuley, said that, if true, the allegations may be investigated "more seriously."

Dr. John Service, executive-director of the Canadian Psychological Association, said the allegations were "troubling" and he would welcome any probe that would "get to the bottom" of the issue.

"We hold the confidentiality of client information very dear. It's very important," Dr. Service said.

Both men were responding to accusations made by Mr. Lynch who left CSIS in 1996 after spending 12 years at the service. He suggested last week that the pressure from some CSIS managers to provide the sensitive information became so untenable that he chose to leave the agency rather than agree to hand it over.

CSIS denies the allegation.

Mr. Lynch joined CSIS in 1984 and set up the new civilian intelligence service's combined polygraph testing and psychological assessment programs.
He said the agency uses polygraph testing simply as a "pretense for interrogation."

The use of polygraph testing is a source of considerable friction between CSIS and its watchdog, the Security Intelligence Review Committee. SIRC has repeatedly urged CSIS to abolish the use of polygraph testing because it also believes it is unreliable.

Indeed, in seven consecutive annual reports from 1985-1986 to 1991-92, SIRC demanded that the solicitor-general and CSIS dump the polygraph, once even suggesting the device be thrown onto the "scrap-heap."

In its reports, SIRC said it had "grave doubts" about the use of the polygraph, pointing out that "even defenders of polygraph examinations admit that their results are sometimes are wrong 10 per cent of the time or more."

SIRC chairwoman Paule Gauthier reiterated the watchdog's desire to see CSIS abandon polygraph testing.

The only concession CSIS has made was to end mandatory testing for employees in the mid-1980s. However, SIRC noted in its 1986-87 report, anyone reluctant to take such a test "would inevitably be suspected of having something to hide."

Mr. Lynch said that polygraph testing was used on all new CSIS recruits and even occasionally for operational purposes.

"It was driven by the police community originally, historically and still primarily. It does not have the academic substance. It doesn't enjoy the kind of reliability that is inherent in most psychological tests," he said.

Mr. Lynch said that while he was head of polygraph testing, the device was not used to determine whether potential recruits were lying or being truthful, but rather to gauge physiological reactions that may warrant further "exploration."

The device "does not allow you to infer mendacity or outright lying," said Mr. Lynch, who is now a senior adviser at the Public Service Commission of Canada.

However, polygraph testing reverted to a tool of "interrogation" when responsibility for the program was assumed by the agency's internal security division in 1989, Mr. Lynch said.

"I thought it was a very bad move. It was being administered by non-psychologists. I thought that was not the way to go," he said.

Mr. Lynch said that despite its unreliability, polygraph testing was increasingly used at CSIS to "scope people out."

A CSIS spokesman refused a request for an interview.