Polygraph Results Often in Question
CIA, FBI Defend Test's Use in Probes
By Dan Eggen and Shankar Vedantam
Wa****ngton Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 1, 2006; A01
The CIA, the FBI and other federal agencies are using
polygraph machines more than ever to screen applicants and
hunt for lawbreakers, even as scientists have become more
certain that the equipment is ineffective in accurately
detecting when people are lying.
Instead, many experts say, the real utility of the polygraph
machine, or "lie detector," is that many of the tens of
thousands of people who are subjected to it each year
believe that it works -- and thus will frequently admit to
things they might not otherwise acknowledge during an
interview or interrogation.
Many researchers and defense attorneys say the technology is
prone to a high number of false results that have stalled or
derailed hundreds of careers and have prevented many
qualified applicants from joining the fight against
terrorism. At the FBI, for example, about 25 percent of
applicants fail a polygraph exam each year, according to the
bureau's security director.
The polygraph has emerged as a pivotal tool in the CIA's
aggressive effort to identify suspected leakers after
embarrassing disclosures about government anti-terrorism
tactics. The agency fired a veteran officer, Mary O.
McCarthy, on April 20, alleging that she had shared
classified information and operational details with The
Wa****ngton Post and other news organizations, a charge her
lawyer disputes.
CIA officials have said that McCarthy failed more than one
polygraph examination administered by the CIA, but the
details surrounding those interviews remain unclear. Dozens
of senior-level CIA officials have been subjected to
polygraph tests as part of the inquiry, which is aimed at
identifying employees who may have talked to re****ters about
classified programs, including providing information about
the agency's network of secret prisons for terrorism suspects.
"The reason an officer at CIA was terminated was for having
unauthorized contact with the media and the improper release
of classified information," said Paul Gimigliano, a CIA
spokesman. "Don't think in terms of a failure of a polygraph
being the reason for termination -- the polygraph is one
tool in an investigative process."
In the popular mind, fueled by Hollywood representations,
polygraphs are lie-detection machines that can peer inside
people's heads to determine whether they are telling the truth.
The scientific reality is far different: The machines
measure various physiological changes, including in blood
pressure and heart rate, to determine when subjects are
getting anxious, based on the idea that deception involves
an element of anxiety. But because an emotion such as
anxiety can be triggered by many factors other than lying,
experts worry that the tests can overlook smooth-talking
liars while pointing a finger at innocent people who just
happen to be rattled.
In settings in which large numbers of employees are screened
to determine whether they are spies, the polygraph produces
results that are extremely problematic, according to a
comprehensive 2002 review by a federal panel of
distinguished scientists. The study found that if polygraphs
were administered to a group of 10,000 people that included
10 spies, nearly 1,600 innocent people would fail the test
-- and two of the spies would pass.
"Its accuracy in distingui****ng actual or potential security
violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to
justify reliance on its use in employee security screening
in federal agencies," the panel concluded.
Polygraph test results are also generally inadmissible in
federal courts and in most state courts because of doubts
about their reliability. Statements or admissions made by
test subjects during a polygraph session, however, can often
be used by prosecutors at trial, according to legal experts.
But even critics of the polygraph concede that it can help
managers learn things about employees that would otherwise
remain hidden. That aspect of polygraph testing lies at the
heart of its continuing appeal, said Alan Zelicoff, a former
scientist at Sandia National Laboratories who quit because
he believed that polygraphs are unethical.
Although polygraph tests involving national security are
supposed to be about a handful of questions involving
espionage, Zelicoff said the tests take hours: "In each and
every test, what happens is after question two or three the
questioner will pause and very deliberately take a long hard
look at the chart and take a deep breath and sigh and say,
'You did really well on question one, but on the second
question, about whether you released classified information,
I am getting a strange reading. Tell you what -- I am going
to turn the machine off and I am going to ask whether there
is something you want to get off your chest.' "
"That is what the polygraph is about," said Zelicoff, who
has testimony from several employees who are angry about the
tests. "It is about an excuse to conduct a wide-ranging
inquisition."
The subjective opinions of polygraph examiners play a huge
role in whether people are said to pass or fail, said
William Iacono, a psychologist at the University of
Minnesota who has extensively studied the technique. As
evidence, Iacono said that polygraph tests rarely find
problems among senior staff members at organizations, even
as 30 to 40 percent of applicants for entry-level positions
fail.
"The director of the CIA just took a test," said Iacono.
"How would you like to be the examiner who gave him a test
and say he failed? What kind of a career would you have?"
The president of the American Polygraph Association, T.V.
O'Malley, said polygraph technology is held to an unfair
standard in many cases, and he compared it to mammograms and
other medical screening procedures that are imperfect but
valuable in detecting problems. He also acknowledged that
some of the polygraph's value is simply in prompting people
to tell the truth.
"It's kind of like confessing . . . to a priest: You feel a
little better by getting rid of your baggage," O'Malley
said. "The same thing often happens with a polygraph
examination."
Charles S. Phalen Jr., the FBI's assistant director for
security, said the polygraph is a vital component of the
bureau's security program.
"This is the most effective collection tool that we have in
our arsenal of security tools to identify disqualifying
behavior and disqualifying activities," Phalen said. "I will
never sit here and say this is a perfect tool because it's
not. . . . In and of itself it won't produce the truth, but
it's a way at getting at the truth."
The ubiquity of polygraph testing in the federal government
is due in large part to spy scandals that rocked the
government over the past dozen years, including those
involving Aldrich Ames at the CIA and Robert P. Hanssen at
the FBI. Ames was allowed to continue working despite
questionable polygraph results, whereas Hanssen was never
given a lie-detector exam during his long FBI career.
Previous efforts to implement wide-scale testing were met
with fierce opposition not only from rank-and-file employees
but also from senior government officials. In 1985,
President Ronald Reagan scaled back an order requiring
thousands of government employees to submit to polygraphs
after Secretary of State George P. Shultz threatened to
resign if ordered to take one.
As part of changes implemented after Hanssen's arrest in
2001, the FBI now conducts about 8,000 polygraph tests each
year, most of which involve current employees, applicants
and contractors. All applicants and new employees undergo a
polygraph at the FBI, and nearly every employee -- including
the director -- is subject to a new test every five years,
officials said.
The CIA enacted broader testing policies after Ames's
unmasking. At the Department of Energy, which implemented
changes as a result of the Wen Ho Lee case, about 20,000
employees are currently eligible for mandatory polygraph
screening tests. (Lee, a former nuclear weapons scientist,
was held by the government for pur****tedly smuggling
weapon-design secrets to China; all but one charge was dropped.)
The Department of Energy is considering scaling back its
program to focus on 4,500 employees with access to the most
sensitive information, in large part because of the 2002
analysis by the federal panel, according to a congressional
re****t released last week.
Many scientists who criticize polygraphs as a screening tool
say the machines can be effective when used as part of a
"guilty-knowledge test." In a bank robbery investigation,
for example, suspects could be quizzed in multiple-choice
tests on whether they knew if the weapon used was a gun or a
knife, whether the money taken was $10, $1,000 or $10,000.
Focused questions that test whether people have memory of an
event yield far more reliable results than open-ended
screening tests that rely on emotions that can be triggered
by a wide range of factors, said Iacono, who added that the
federal government has resolutely refused to use the
guilty-knowledge test. Officials have declined to describe
the kind of tests McCarthy underwent at the CIA.
Iacono said conventional polygraph tests have little
scientific validity but allow examiners to say, "I am
getting the sense you are holding something back; is there
something you want to tell me?"
"When people hear that, they admit things it would be
difficult to get in any other way," he said. "People will
confess to crimes or make admissions about themselves or
other people. They may reveal suspicions about a co-worker
or explain they did something they should not have done. The
government loves that."
Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this re****t.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/1587154838/ref=nosim/thedanclorenecro
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