Trust and Polygraphs

[George Maschke (Guest)]

#nosmileys

In an article on page A02 of today's (1 Dec. 2000) Washington 
Post entitled, "CIA Shuts Chatroom, Suspends 10, Fires 4," 
staff writer Vernon Loeb reports on CIA's disciplinary 
actions against employees who participated in an unauthorized 
computer chatroom. Loeb writes in part:

    One senior intelligence official responded that 
    senior CIA management felt compelled to take action 
    because the organizers of the hidden chat rooms 
    deliberately deceived their superiors. "The issue 
    here," the official said, "is violation of trust," 
    not just some "off-color" e-mail.
    
The entire Washington Post article may be read on-line here:

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7159-2000Nov30.html

Senior CIA management needs to realize that trust is a two-
way street. These CIA employees were disciplined for 
deliberately deceiving their supervisors, yet these same 
supervisors feel at liberty to deliberately deceive every CIA 
employee through the polygraph screening process. As Loeb's 
anonymous senior intelligence official piously observed, 
"the issue here is violation of trust."

Writing to the Federation of American Scientists from the 
federal penitentiary at Allenwood, Pennsylvania, convicted spy 
Aldrich H. Ames offered some insight into why the polygraph is 
so attractive to senior bureaucrats:

    Most people in the intelligence and CI business are 
    well aware of the theoretical and practical 
    failings of the polygraph, but are equally alert to 
    its value in institutional, bureaucratic terms and 
    treasure its use accordingly. This same logic 
    applies to its use in screening potential and 
    current employees, whether of the CIA, NSA, DOE or 
    even of private organizations.
    
    Deciding whether to trust or credit a person is 
    always an uncertain task, and in a variety of 
    situations a bad, lazy or just unlucky decision 
    about a person can result not only in serious 
    problems for the organization and its purposes, but 
    in career-damaging blame for the unfortunate 
    decision-maker. Here, the polygraph is a scientific 
    godsend: the bureaucrat accounting for a bad 
    decision, or sometimes for a missed opportunity 
    (the latter is much less often questioned in a 
    bureaucracy) can point to what is considered an 
    unassailably objective, though occasionally and 
    unavoidably fallible, polygraph judgment. All that 
    was at fault was some practical application of a 
    "scientific" technique, like those frozen O-rings, 
    or the sandstorms between the Gulf and Desert One 
    in 1980.
    
The entire text of Ames' letter can be read on-line here:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/polygraph/ames.html

It will be recalled that Ames passed two CIA polygraph 
"tests" while spying for the Soviet Union and later, Russia. 
For more on the CIA's use of the polygraph in the Ames case, 
see pp. 11-16 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector (503 kb):

http://antipolygraph.org/lie-behind-the-lie-detector.pdf

AntiPolygraph.org is working to hold those people in the 
intelligence and counterintelligence business who knowingly 
continue to rely on unreliable polygraph "testing" 
accountable for their actions, and to warn employees and 
prospective employees about the trickery which is being 
practiced against them through the polygraph process.

We have recently learned from Al Zelicoff at Sandia National 
Laboratories that it is Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 
Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) who is responsible for the 
insertion of language into the Fiscal Year 2001 Defense 
Authorization Act that makes polygraph screening mandatory 
for an additional 5,000 Department of Energy employees and 
contractors, raising the total number of affected persons to 
some 20,000. Dr. Zelicoff's unanswered letter to Senator 
Shelby about polygraph screening may be read on the 
AntiPolygraph.org website at:

http://antipolygraph.org/articles/article-006.shtml

Those 5,000 additional employees to be polygraphed might want to 
ask Senator Shelby the question I asked Secretary of Energy Bill 
Richardson on 12 October 2000:

    What is the Department of Energy's policy regarding 
    those employees and contractors who, because of 
    their understanding of "the lie behind the lie 
    detector," are unsuitable candidates for 
    polygraphic interrogation?
    
The entire letter, which I also copied to Senator Shelby, 
among others, may be read on-line at:

http://antipolygraph.org/articles/article-005.shtml

The Secretary never responded. Neither did Senator Shelby.

George Maschke
AntiPolygraph.org

[heavyrunner]

I need some help.  I have a mentally ill daughter who has a history of false accusations.   Recently she passed a polygraph test.  Is there info on this out there

[George W. Maschke]

heavyrunner,

What sort of information are you looking for?

For information on the scientific status of the "Control Question Test" (by far the most widely used polygraph technique), see Chapter 1 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector. You'll find a fuller explanation of how the "test" actually works in Chapter 3, and in Chapter 4, you'll learn how anyone -- truthful or untruthful -- can pass these asinine "tests."

By the way, to start a new message thread (instead of posting a message in one that is unrelated to your question), go to the forum in which you want to post and click the "new thread" button near the top of the window.