In an 11 August 2001 article titled, "The Wronged Man: C.I.A. Officer Mistaken for Spy Down the Street," James Risen and David Johnston of
The New York Times reported on the case of an anonymous senior CIA counterintelligence officer whom the FBI wrongly suspected of being a mole who tipped off the Soviets to the 1989 FBI espionage investigation of former State Department official Felix Bloch. The article is currently available on-line at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/11/national/11SPY.html The article sheds some light on FBI polygraph policy. To begin with, the CIA officer who had been suspected of espionage seems to have been set-up for a pretext polygraph screening examination in 1998:
Quote:In an apparent effort to expose him, he was asked to join a supposedly sensitive joint operation involving a Russian agent who was about to come to the West, and who could solve the riddle of who sabotaged the Bloch case. But he was told that to join the team, he had to take a lie detector test. When he agreed, the investigators subtly probed his reaction to the possibility that the government would soon learn who compromised the Bloch investigation. He was told that he passed the test. But then he was told that the Russian defector was not arriving after all, and that he was no longer needed in the investigation.
In retrospect, the C.I.A. officer and his lawyer suspect that the operation was a ruse. Law enforcement officials would not discuss the matter.
This putative pretext polygraph interrogation calls to mind the cases of Wen Ho Lee, who was administered a polygraph screening "test" by the Department of Energy in December 1998 on the pretext that he had just returned from a trip overseas (to Taiwan), when, in fact, he was suspected of espionage, and Army civilian employee
David Tenenbaum, who in January 1997 was interrogated by Defense Security Service (then Defense Investigative Service) special agents on the pretext that his security clearance was to be upgraded for a special project, when, in fact, he was suspected of espionage.
The anonymous senior CIA counterintelligence officer presumably passed his 1998 polygraph interrogation. And since CIA employees are subject to polygraph screening every five years, it would follow that the CIA officer had also passed at least one polygraph screening "test" since the time of the abortive 1989 Bloch investigation.
Now, speaking at the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary's 25 April 2001
hearing on issues surrounding the use of polygraphs, retired FBI polygrapher and past American Polygraph Association president Richard W. Keifer testified:
Quote:Based on the results of scientific studies, when conducting a screening polygraph, you will have high confidence (99.99 %) on decisions to clear people. In other words, the error rate on those who pass the test is very miniscule.
Mr. Keifer's entire statement may be found here:
http://antipolygraph.org/hearings/senate-judiciary-2001/keifer-statement.shtml If Mr. Keifer's asserted confidence level of 99.99% (i.e, a margin of error of 1 in 10,000) on decisions to clear people were true, then if the CIA official under investigation had passed
two polygraph screenings, the odds of his being a mole would have been 1 in 100,000,000. (Since Aldrich Ames passed two polygraph screening "tests," the chances of his actually being a spy would also be 1 in 100,000,000; perhaps he should appeal his conviction!)
In any event, the FBI and CIA seem not to have shared Mr. Keifer's confidence in polygraphy, because even after the CIA officer was told he had passed, he remained the FBI's prime suspect. He was placed under surveillance and his home was secretly searched. Risen and Johnston report:
Quote:At one point, he kept a map of Nottoway Park, marking his jogging times from point to point. Investigators who found it during a surreptitious search of his house saw it as proof of his betrayal.
On Aug. 18, 1999, he was summoned to a cramped conference room at C.I.A. headquarters, where two F.B.I. agents shoved in front of him a copy of his old jogging map, stamped "Secret" by the F.B.I.
The map, the agents told him, was solid evidence that he was the Russian mole. The "X" marks and time notations were seen as telltale signs of where and at what time he had dropped off classified information. They called it a "spy map" and demanded that he confess. "How do you explain this?" one shouted.
"Where did you get my jogging map?" he asked in return.
In the four-hour F.B.I. interrogation, the C.I.A. officer offered to answer all questions without a lawyer, and to take a lie detector test. But his lawyer says the F.B.I. declined to take him up on the offer. He was escorted out of C.I.A. headquarters, stripped of his security badge and put on administrative leave.
How strange that the FBI would turn down a suspected spy's offer to take a polygraph test! Retired FBI polygrapher Richard Keifer testified at the above-cited Senate hearing, "It is my opinion that in a security screening polygraph examination, Robert Hansen would have reacted with greater than 99% certainty." Again it seems that the FBI does not share Mr. Keifer's confidence in polygraphy.
If the FBI has such little confidence in polygraphy when push comes to shove, then why does it use it to screen applicants for employment as well as current employees?
After refusing to believe the outcome of the anonymous CIA officer's 1998 polygraph interrogation and rejecting his 1999 offer to submit to yet another polygraph interrogation, the FBI strangely demanded that he submit to yet another polygraph interrogation before returning to work at the CIA! Dan Eggen of the
Washington Post reports in a 12 August 2001 article titled, "FBI Refuses to Apologize to Cleared CIA Officer":
Quote:The focus of the FBI's probe did not shift until late last year when investigators obtained documents pointing toward Hanssen. Finally on Feb. 19 -- the day after Hanssen's arrest -- the CIA officer was contacted by the FBI and asked to take another polygraph, which he passed.
The entire article may be read here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64592-2001Aug11.html The FBI's equivocal reliance on polygraphy in its investigation of the anonymous senior CIA counterintelligence officer is an appropriate topic of inquiry for the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary in its ongoing FBI oversight hearings.
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The FBI, the Polygraph, and the CIA Spy Suspect (Read 6681 times)
