On 18 July 2001, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on
"Reforming FBI Management: The Views from Inside and Out". Kenneth H. Senser, Acting Deputy Assistant Director, Security Programs and Countermeasures, briefly discussed FBI polygraph policy in a statement submitted for the record. The relevant portion is excerpted below:
Quote:
Expanded Polygraph Program. Currently, the FBI conducts polygraphs of all new employees prior to them beginning their service. In addition, individuals with access to certain sensitive programs or cases are polygraphed and, of course, the polygraph is used during serious internal inquiries to resolve unexplained anomalies and ambiguities.
As an interim measure, we identified for periodic polygraph examination those individuals who, by the nature of their assignment, have broad access to the FBI's most sensitive information. This includes any level of employee in any occupation who has access to our most sensitive information, such as data base administrators. In addition, we are conducting polygraph examinations of those employees leaving for and returning from permanent foreign assignments. These polygraph examinations are essentially complete. A more significant proposal for expanding the polygraph program is currently being reviewed by the AD security task force.
Judge Webster will closely examine the entire polygraph issue to include random polygraphs and inclusion of the polygraph as part of the five-year reinvestigation every employee now undergoes.
As there are elsewhere in the Intelligence Community, there will be unexplainable false positives and, as we saw in the Ames case, false negatives. On balance, however, we believe the potential for damage to be done by traitors outweighs these concerns. Accordingly, Director Freeh implemented this interim step with the full expectation that Judge Webster will examine this issue in its entirety and make further recommendations.
Senser's complete statement is available on the Committee's website at:
http://www.senate.gov/~judiciary/te071801-sen.htm Senser's acknowledgement that "there will be unexplainable false positives" is prima facie proof that the FBI is aware of the false positive problem. And although he claims that "the potential for damage to be done by traitors outweighs these concerns," it should be noted that in the case of applicants for employment with the Bureau, the vast majority who "fail" are not accused of lying about national security issues, but about illegal drug use. Their applications are peremptorily terminated with no appeal. The FBI needs to be held accountable for its denial of due process based on a pseudoscientific procedure that it knows to be unreliable.