DIA's Insider Threat Program

[John M.]

DIA Office of Security acknowledges receipt - 17JUN2014.

[John M.]

DIA response to Congress - 25SEP2014.

[Wandersmann]

DIA Office of Security acknowledges receipt - 17JUN2014.

  Herein lies the problem ....... noted from the DIA response ......"unable to meet personnel security vetting requirements".  Those "requirements" are nothing more than a roll of the dice or reading Tarot cards.  So says the AMA, National Academy of Science and experts like Dr. Drew Richardson.  The expertise relied upon by Congress is now the polygraph community itself.
What a joke.  What a crime.  Our legislatures that enable and endorse this system by their failure to correct it are the most liable.   

[John M.]

What a crime.  Our legislatures that enable and endorse this system by their failure to correct it are the most liable.

The noose is tightening.

[John M.]

To borrow a line from Rush Limbaugh while describing government, "Everything about them is perception, manipulation and lies.  Everything.  Everything is 'wag the dog'.  Everything is structured deception".

Congress and all their committees and boards are helpless to their trickery, as everyone who could actually do something to stop them, falls victim to the perception deception.

Can anyone handle the truth?

[John M.]

To be fair and balanced, Stephen Colbert says "Truthfulness is tearing apart our country, and I don't mean the argument over who came up with the word. I don't know whether it's a new thing, but it's certainly a current thing, in that it doesn't seem to matter what facts are. It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case any more. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything."

It's easier to fool a man than to convince him that he was fooled.

[Charlie M]

John M:  whatever happened after this? Did you comply and move to DIA HQ?  Did you resign? Get fired?

[John M.]

whatever happened after this? Did you comply and move to DIA HQ?  Did you resign? Get fired?

It's still happening, Charlie M.  Three years and counting.

DIA blames SOCOM.  SOCOM blames DIA.  No one will accept responsibility for the decision to take unfavorable administrative actions against me.

According to my Congressman, a court ruling will be made in my case by November (this year).  Stay tuned.

[John M.]

Can you guess what is a Prohibited Personnel Practice?

5 U.S. Code § 2302 - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/2302

Apply the rules and policy from DODI 5210.91 and Voilà - we have the Coup de grâce

[John M.]

From the National Academy of Sciences - https://www.nap.edu/read/10420/chapter/1


SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE


Basic Science

Almost a century of research in scientific psychology and physiology provides little basis for the expectation that a polygraph test could have extremely high accuracy. Although psychological states often associated with deception (e.g., fear of being judged deceptive) do tend to affect the physiological responses that the polygraph measures, these same states can arise in the absence of deception. Moreover, many other psychological and physiological factors (e.g., anxiety about being tested) also affect those responses. Such phenomena make polygraph testing intrinsically susceptible to producing erroneous results. This inherent ambiguity of the physiological measures used in the polygraph suggests that further investments in improving polygraph technique and interpretation will bring only modest improvements in accuracy.

Polygraph research has not developed and tested theories of the underlying factors that produce the observed responses. Factors other than truthfulness that affect the physiological responses being measured can vary substantially across settings in which polygraph tests are used. There is little knowledge about how much these factors influence the outcomes of polygraph tests in field settings. For example, there is evidence suggesting that truthful members of socially stigmatized groups and truthful examinees who are believed to be guilty or believed to have a high likelihood of being guilty may show emotional and physiological responses in polygraph test situations that mimic the responses that are expected of deceptive individuals. The lack of understanding of the processes that underlie polygraph responses makes it very difficult to generalize from the results obtained in specific research settings or with particular subject populations to other settings or populations, or from laboratory research studies to real-world applications.

[John M.]

I guess no one in government bothered to read it -

CONCLUSION: Notwithstanding the limitations of the quality of the empirical research and the limited ability to generalize to real-world settings, we conclude that in populations of examinees such as those represented in the polygraph research literature, untrained in countermeasures, specific-incident polygraph tests can discriminate lying from truth telling at rates well above chance, though well below perfection. Because the studies of acceptable quality all focus on specific incidents, generalization from them to uses for screening is not justified. Because actual screening applications involve considerably more ambiguity for the examinee and in determining truth than arises in specific-incident studies, polygraph accuracy for screening purposes is almost certainly lower than what can be achieved by specific-incident polygraph tests in the field.

CONCLUSION: Polygraph testing yields an unacceptable choice for DOE employee security screening between too many loyal employees falsely judged deceptive and too many major security threats left undetected. Its accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies.

[John M.]

Interesting - Appendix B provides a copy of the DOE Polygraph Examination Regulations.

It also prohibits taking unfavorable actions against an individual based solely on the polygraph "results".

NSA and CIA must also have regulations - are they classified?

[John M.]

Is this 1984 NSA/CSS regulation still relevant?

https://antipolygraph.org/documents/nsa-polygraph-regulation.shtml

If so, there are some very important take-aways:

- Under Use of Polygraph Examination Results:
Any final administrative determinations rendered in cases in which a polygraph examination is taken shall not be based on the results of an analysis of the polygraph charts.
(** This follows all other approved and relevant regulations regarding the use of the 'results')


- Under Conduct of Examinations: The Chief, Clearance (M55), with the concurrence of a certified polygraph supervisory official, shall determine whether it is appropriate to request an individual to undergo a repeat polygraph examination. When three unsuccessful examinations have been conducted on an examinee, the decision for a fourth examination will be made only by the Director of Security.  Any examination beyond that must be approved by the Deputy Director for Administration.
(** My congressman was told by DIA that five polygraphs in three years was not considered to be excessive - although they didn't provide a regulation that covered it)

[John M.]

This is all that I could find on CIA:

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/528259-fortish15.html

A common theme remains - the polygraph is an aid to investigations.

[John M.]

I just had a somewhat congenial conversation on Twitter with a gentleman named Mike Himsworth.

Guess what?

He claims to have helped write DODI 5210.91 too. 

And you'll never guess what else - he also is ignorant of DOD's restrictions on the use of the polygraph and the use of polygraph results.  What gives?

Question - do you think he actually believes - like brainwashed, believes - or, is it more evidence of a concerted effort to cover-up the abuse?

In the end, I blame mostly Jerry Springer, Maury Povich and Dr. Phil.

I love this episode of Adam Ruins Everything - https://youtu.be/nyDMoGjKvNk