[Mb-civic] Polygraph Results Often in Question - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Polygraph Results Often in Question
CIA, FBI Defend Test's Use in Probes

By Dan Eggen and Shankar Vedantam
Washington 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 Washington 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 reporters 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 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," 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 purportedly 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 report 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."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/30/AR2006043001006.html
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