9Īs we have seen, it is in your interest to make no admissions. Some polygraph operators routinely bluff every subject this way, whether or not the charts indicate deception at all. In reality, this is another way of badgering the subject into a damaging admission. In theory, this is to point out areas of strong responses on the charts, and to offer the subject an opportunity to explain them. Polygraph operators usually follow up the test with a post-test interrogation. Jack Luger, in an earthy book on interrogation writes: Mallah was finally absolved, his career in the FBI became untenable because of the suspicion and innuendo brought about as a result of the false positive result. He worked for nearly six years in counterintelligence and himself became the subject of a two-year espionage investigation based on a false-positive polygraph screening "test." 8 Although Mr. So the slightest sliver of anything - anything that can be construed or misconstrued as damaging - that examiner has a strong incentive to say, "I got an admission this person was deceptive here's the proof." 7 Former FBI Special Agent Mark Mallah testified at the Department of Energy's public hearing on polygraph policy at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on 14 September 1999:Īnd also be aware that to a polygraph examiner/interrogator, a confession is like a trophy. Keep in mind that any admissions you make during your polygraph interrogation may be blown out of all proportion by your polygrapher. On, the National Security Agency (NSA) wrote to the White House, "over 95% of the information the NSA develops on individuals who do not meet federal security guidelines is derived via the polygraph process." 6 Rather, the polygraph examination results that are most important to NSA security adjudicators are the data provided by the individual during the pretest or posttest phase of the examination". deceptive' concept of polygraph examinations commonly used in criminal cases. NSA has stated that the agency "does not use the 'truth v. It appears that NSA (and possibly CIA) use the polygraph not to determine deception or truthfulness per se, but as a technique of interrogation to encourage admissions. In 1983, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment reported: These admissions, rather than the polygraph results per se, often used as the basis for an adverse recommendation. In this stressful context, many people will make damaging admissions hoping that, after their conscience has been purged, the polygraph will pronounce them truthful. Many polygraphers the polygraph as an interrogation tool, asking subjects to explain why certain questions on the screening test might have disturbed them enough to cause a response. David Thoreson Lykken notes in his seminal work on polygraphy, A Tremor in the Blood: Uses and Abuses of the Lie Detector (Plenum Press, 1998): But unlike criminal interrogations, our government denies you the right to have legal counsel present at a polygraph screening interrogation. FBI Special Agent David Vessel begins a recent article on interrogation with the observation that "btaining information that an individual does not want to provide constitutes the sole purpose of an interrogation." 4Īs with criminal interrogations, anything you say during a polygraph screening interrogation can and will be used against you. Your mild-mannered polygrapher is a trained interrogator, and his main objective is to extract damaging admissions from you. In the following paragraphs, I will provide details about this polygraph screening format that the United States government does not want you to know, along with references for further reading.įirst and foremost, you must understand that your polygraph "test" is actually an interrogation. Your polygraph examiner will under no circumstances give you an honest explanation of the game he is playing with you. 3 Before our government plays this high-stakes game with you, you would do well to know the unspoken rules. The game is the "Test for Espionage and Sabotage" (TES), a variety of what is known in the polygraph trade as a "directed-lie control test" (DLCT). The Department of Defense (DoD) began playing this game with its employees in the mid-90s, 1 and in 1999, the Department of Energy (DOE) decided to follow suit. IF I WERE TO DIRECT YOU to answer a question falsely, would your false answer be a lie? As absurd as such an exercise may seem, it is a game which the United States government plays with thousands of Americans to determine whether they are worthy of being trusted with America's most sensitive secrets. National Security and the Test for Espionage and Sabotage
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