Federal Polygraph School Gets Another Name Change

[George W. Maschke]

According to an American Polygraph Association press release, the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment (DACA) is now the National Center for Credibility Assessment:

Press Release:Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment now the National Center for Credibility Assessment

August 26, 2010: The Deputy Secretary of Defense has designated the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment as the National Center for Credibility Assessment (NCCA, the Center). First established in 1951 as the US Army Polygraph School, the Center has expanded its focus over the years to encompass all technologies that rely on physiological and behavioral measures to test for agreement between an individual's statements and memories. Its graduate-level polygraph education program remains a key feature of the Center, while research and development efforts are underway to produce technologies that fit applications for which the polygraph is not suited, as well as find improvements to the polygraph. The Center also provides inspection oversight for all 25 federal polygraph programs. Located at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina, the Center falls under the Defense Intelligence Agency.

This is the second name change in three years. In 2007, the name was changed from the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute to the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment.

Despite the name changes, the National Center for Credibility Assessment remains at its core a polygraph school, training federal interrogators in the same discredited, pseudoscientific methods that have been taught there for decades. The recent name changes are simply exercises in obscurantism, likely made in response to growing public awareness of the unreliability of polygraphy.