While the FBI is willing to brand some 20% of applicants as liars through its pre-employment polygraph screening program, the Department of Defense, like the Department of Energy, is more circumspect about making such accusations through its counterintelligence-scope polygraph screening program.

The Department of Defense (DoD) Polygraph Program Report to Congress for Fiscal Year 2000 is now available on the Federation of American Scientists website at:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/polygraph/dod-2000.html

The counterintelligence-scope polygraph screening format used by DoD (and also by the Department of Energy) is the Test for Espionage and Sabotage, which I critiqued in "The Lying Game: National Security and the Test for Espionage and Sabotage":

http://antipolygraph.org/articles/article-002.shtml

Amazingly, the DoD polygraph report for FY 2000 indicates that the only individuals who "failed" their DoD polygraph screening "tests" were those who made significant admissions! Everyone else "passed." Thus, the key to passing seems to be simply to make no significant admissions! The FY 2000 DoD report to Congress states:

Quote:


The report goes on to clarify:

Quote:


This report makes it clear that the polygraph charts are not being used to determine whether individuals pass or fail: if the individual provides no "substantive information," then any physiological responses he/she may have shown to the relevant questions are deemed not to be significant, and the individual "passes." If the individual provides substantive information, then he/she "fails," regardless of polygraph chart readings, and further investigation is conducted by more conventional means.

While the report claims that "[t]he purpose of the [Counterintelligence-Scope Polygraph] Program is to deter and detect espionage, sabotage, and terrorism," it seems that the only spies, saboteurs, or terrorists who will be deterred or detected by it are those who are dumb enough to make admissions.


Last modification: George Maschke - 01/26/01 at 04:11:27

Im going to take the police polygraph test. I have smoked week over 100 times and done shrooms, once or twice. I have alos sold weed before alil...How would i go about handling this problem when tested? Do they ask for round #'s like, "have you smoked weed say 10 times?" should i admit to a #? how do i go about handling this situation? or is lying with counter measures the best way???

THANKS!

orolan wrote on Apr 24^th, 2003 at 7:50pm:


I have changed i have stoped smoking since i was arrested with a gram and changed my life alot and now i think i would make a good cop

Hmmmmmm countermeasures is the only solution i guess 

the arrest is ok, but dealing...........

Shadow,

I am indeed the one who originated this message thread. I don't mean to be flippant, but I suggest that you carefully re-read the first post in this thread.

Shadow,

You write:

Quote:


No. As the report makes clear, "The ... 202 individuals yielded significant responses and/or provided substantive information." The "and/or" indicates that while some of the 202 yielded significant responses and provided significant information, others merely provided substantive information. The one feature all of the 202 had in common was that they provided "substantive information." That is what it took to "fail."

In addition, the claim in the report that "7,688 showed no significant physiological response to the relevant questions (non-deceptive) and provided no substantive information" is simply not credible. The only way one obtains such a low false positive rate (0%) is by deeming reactions to relevant questions as "insignificant" if the examinee provides no "substantive information." Which is precisely what it appears the DoD is doing.

Orolan,

In the first message in this thread, I cited figures from DoD's polygraph report for FY 2000. In the second, I cited the report for FY 2001.