Various Polys - How far back

[Polyphobia]

I've been looking for a different job and saw that many of them require a poly.  I've been involved in LE for over 10 years and have had a very sucessful career.  I just vested with my pension so I'm looking at getting out of my current dept now.  Current dept now polys, but only started a couple years ago.

My question is how far back does your typical gov. polygraph go in relation to relevant questions?  

Reason is... around the age of 15-17 years old, I fell in with the wrong crowd and did some thing I'm not proud of... mostly drug related, trespassing, etc... like many other dumb-ass kids who dont know any better.  I'm not looking for countermeasures or other way of fooling the poly.

The problem is that I would answer truthfully.  I really dont cary what the poly operator thinks, but with the LE community as tight as it is, I would be worried that my early transgressions would come to light and that the guys I work with (future or current co-workers) may find out.

Its nothing I would get fired over, but I would feel a little uncomfortable at work.  With 10+ years, I dont think I will have a problem getting hired, but if a new-hire applied with the same screw-ups and was without any practical experience or an extended work record, they probably wouldn't get picked up.

Also, I know all about doing backgrounds, but have no real experience with the poly.  Ony of the local departments I was looking at just poly'd one of our new hires, part-time position, guy has 15+ years experience.  The poly operator  prefaced his questions to the time that the new-hire had been employed in LE  ie "Since you were hired by the XXXX police department, have you ever ..."

Outside of that department referenced above, I'm also looking at several federal agencies, most of which poly; CIA, NSA, DoD, and the FBI.

Thanks,

H.M.

[George W. Maschke]

My question is how far back does your typical gov. polygraph go in relation to relevant questions?

In federal pre-employment polygraph screening, the relevant questions cover the examinee's entire life. You'll find the polygraph format used by the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies (including questions asked) laid out in the DoDPI Law Enforcement Pre-Employment Test examiner's guide:

http://antipolygraph.org/documents/dodpi-lepet.pdf