CBP Polygraph Handbook (Of Interest to All Who Face Polygraph Screening)

[George W. Maschke]

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Internal Affairs Credibility Assessment Division Policy and Reference Manual With Appendices from DACA and Federal Standards, dated 1 July 2010 will be of interest to all who face polygraph screening:

https://antipolygraph.org/documents/cbp-polygraph-handbook-2010-01-07.pdf

This handbook is more detailed than the federal polygraph examiner's handbook, which is included as Appendix A.

The CBP polygraph handbook describes the Law Enforcement Pre-Employment Test (LEPET), which is the technique used by all federal law enforcement agencies with a pre-employment polygraph requirement, in particular detail. Numerous state and local law enforcement agencies, including the Pennsylvania State Police have also adapted the LEPET for their own use. The LEPET is covered in Sections II-VI of the handbook.

The handbook also provides detailed documentation of the Test for Espionage and Sabotage (TES), a federal polygraph technique used for counterintelligence-scope examinations. This technique, which is particularly favored by the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, is described in Sections VIII and IX. Evidently, CBP also uses the TES in some situations.

The CBP polygraph handbook is the single most significant official polygraph document that I've seen, and I recommend that all download and share it.

[Ex Member]

The CBP polygraph handbook is the single most significant official polygraph document that I've seen

Indeed a comprehensive document. Interestingly, it's very vague and aloof regarding detecting countermeasures. It refers to "signatures"; would anyone have any details on these countermeasure signatures?

[George W. Maschke]

The countermeasure "signatures" to which the CBP polygraph handbook refers presumably includes the breathing reactions illustrated in Doug Williams' manual, "How to Sting the Polygraph." These supposed countermeasure signatures are addressed in slides 116-120 of Mark Handler's 2009 presentation, Countermeasures: What Every Examiner Should Know:

https://antipolygraph.org/read.shtml#countermeasure-files

Research by Charles Honts and  Mike Crawford refutes the notion that the breathing reactions illustrated in Doug Williams' manual can be considered "signatures" for countermeasure use, showing that innocent people with no exposure to "How to Sting the Polygraph" exhibit such reactions to about the same extent as guilty persons.

Their research was summarized in a March 2010 paper, the citation and abstract for which are:

Citation: Honts, C. R. and Crawford, M. , 2010-03-18 "Polygraph Countermeasures Cannot Be Detected From Respiratory Signatures: Government Policy Puts The Innocent At Risk" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychology - Law Society, Westin Bayshore Hotel, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Abstract: Recently the US Government claims to have detected unique respiratory signatures of countermeasure training that are diagnostic of countermeasure use and deception. Those claims have already had impacted policy, practice and the courts. We examined the Government’s claims in mock-crime participants. We found frequent spontaneous occurrences of all but one of the allegedly unique countermeasure signatures. However, those occurrences were not associated with countermeasure attempts. If current government practices are followed, over half of our innocent participants would be misclassified as deceptive countermeasure users. These results raise serious questions about the quality of the Government’s scientific programs on credibility assessment and their policy oversight procedures.

[Ex Member]

These supposed countermeasure signatures are addressed in slides 116-120 of Mark Handler's 2009 presentation, Countermeasures: What Every Examiner Should Know...

Sheesssh, I tried to make it through that 210 slide monstrosity of regurgitated nonsense. Awkward, lacking cohesion and originality--certainly only the most passionate polygraph ideologues could have maintained a woody throughout that presentation.