Appendix C. STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONER LAPHAM ON POLYGRAPH
The Commission struggled hard to reach a consensus on issues relating to polygraph
testing for personnel screening purposes. In the end, however, I decided to go my own way
on these issues, and to prepare this separate statement of my views. I did so not because
I disagree with all of the Commission's recommendations and conclusions-indeed, there are
a number with which I agree-but mainly because I do not believe that the report contains
an adequate or well-reasoned analysis of the issues, and because I believe that
shortcoming impeaches even those recommendations and conclusions with which I do agree.
Polygraph testing is an obviously invasive procedure, the more so in screening contexts
than in other applications. In the more typical setting, there is a single factual issue
that needs to be resolved, or some single event that is known to have happened and that is
under investigation. Therefore the scope of the test is apt to be narrow, as is the class
of persons who may have some relevant information to provide. Screening polygraphs have no
such natural limits. Almost by definition they affect larger classes of persons and sweep
more widely for information. The goal is not to find out the truth about some event that
is known to have happened, but rather to find out about the background and personal
history of the person being examined. Given that purpose, multiple topics are within the
field of inquiry, and the questions may range across an entire lifetime or a substantial
period of years and may begin for example with the words "have you ever" or
"within the last five years have you ever." The breadth of the inquiry is one
reason why privacy interests are so deeply implicated by screening polygraphs, and
especially by the full-scope tests that include the so-called "lifestyle
questions."
There is also the matter of the surroundings in which the tests are conducted. The
atmosphere is clinical. The chair is no more appealing than a dentist's chair. The
technology is apt to be mysterious, and only one of the three machine-to-body connectors,
the blood pressure cuff, is apt to be familiar. There is an underlying premise that
something about to be said, or already said in a personal history statement, may be a lie.
The examiner is a stranger, and the entire session, including the pretest interview and
any posttest questioning, is being tape-recorded or videotaped and is destined to become a
government record. Those circumstances are almost bound to make the test an unnerving and
intimidating experience, even apart from the extent to which the questioning encroaches on
privacy zones.
Privacy interests, however, are not the same thing as legitimate expectations of
privacy. At least as I see it, any analysis of the polygraph procedure, like any analysis
of other invasive techniques that are used to screen government personnel, such as
drug-testing programs in which urine samples are required to be given, must involve a
balancing of such privacy expectations against the governmental interests that are at
stake, and ultimately a determination as to whether the procedure is reasonable. My
personal conclusion is that the procedure is reasonable. At least implicitly the
Commission reached the same conclusion, but I get there by a different route.
Governmental interests and individual privacy expectations
At a threshold level, the analysis is pretty simple, and the balance is clearly in
favor of the government. Not long ago, in l988, the Supreme Court said that the nation's
security depends in large measure on the reliability and trustworthiness of CIA employees.
That remark could just as well have been made with respect to others who occupy positions
involving access to highly classified information. The self-evident point here is that the
government has a compelling interest in assuring itself that such persons meet high
standards. That interest necessitates a screening process. Individuals who seek
intelligence agency positions, or other positions of equal trust, have every reason to
understand and expect that such a process will be conducted, and that it will include a
searching inquiry into their personal backgrounds. To be sure, there is room for
disagreement about the appropriate scope of such inquiries, and as to the categories of
information that are truly germane to the reliability and trustworthiness determinations
that need to be made. In my opinion, however, so long as the inquiries stay within
rational bounds and are carried out by lawful means, and with the consent of the persons
affected, those persons can have no valid objections based on legitimate expectations of
privacy.
Where the screening process entails a polygraph test, whether as a condition of initial
or continued employment or as a condition of access, that fact is made known in advance,
as are the topics to be covered. A decision to submit to the test is a matter of choice,
requiring a voluntary consent by the person to be examined. In some cases that choice may
be personally difficult, but then it is not the government's responsibility to make the
screening process easy or painless. Nor can hard or difficult choices be equated with
compulsion. A refusal to take a polygraph may have negative consequences, as for example
the loss of a job opportunity at CIA or NSA, and there may be strong pressures to avoid
those consequences, but this does not mean that a decision to take the test is forced or
involuntary. While there are distinctions that can be made here between initial applicants
for employment and persons who are already embarked on government or industry careers, and
for whom therefore the pressures are undoubtedly greater, these distinctions are to some
extent accommodated by the different test formats that are used and in any event it is
still true that the tests are known-in-advance requirements, are conducted on a consensual
basis, and not inconsistent with any fair expectations of privacy.
The relevance of the questions
However compelling the government's interest, the intentional collection of personal
information unrelated to that interest, especially by invasive techniques, is not
defensible. The issue here is therefore whether a rational link exists between the kinds
of conduct that are probed by the "relevant" polygraph questions and the
reliability and trustworthiness determinations that the government must make. In other
words, the issue is whether these questions are "relevant" not just because they
are so denominated in a polygraph test, but because they are tied to conduct about which
the government has legitimate reason to be concerned and to inquire.
My own belief on this score is that, as the tests are currently structured, in both the
full-scope format and the counterintelligence-scope format, all the relevant questions in
the line-up deal with matters that are proper subjects of inquiry. Most of the controversy
surrounds the so-called "lifestyle questions," which is the term commonly used
to describe some of the questions that are asked when the test is given in the full- scope
format, as it is to all applicants for CIA and NSA employment.
I view the term "lifestyle questions" as an unfortunate misnomer. The flavor
of the term is that these questions have only to do with personal matters that are none of
the government's business. In fact, however, the questions deal with such matters as prior
criminal conduct, illicit drug use, alcohol abuse, and any history of serious financial or
mental health problems. These same subjects are matters of inquiry on personal history
statement forms and associated forms, and during background investigations. If they were
judged to be irrelevant, they should be declared out of bounds on all these fronts, not
just on the polygraph front. As I see it, however, all these subjects can readily be
linked to reliability and trustworthiness concerns, and to established adjudicative
criteria. Indeed it is hard for me to imagine a credible screening process in which these
subjects were not pursued.
At the same time, it is my opinion that some of the relevant questions, including some
of the "lifestyle questions," as currently approved for use in screening
polygraphs, are overly general and too broadly worded. As a consequence, as these
questions are discussed between the examiner and the person to be examined during the
pre-test interview, there is a high likelihood that personal information will be elicited,
perhaps embarrassing information, that could have no value in any adjudicative decision. I
would therefore favor an effort to rework some of the questions, so that they would have a
sharper and more narrow focus at the outset, and so that there would be a lesser chance of
eliciting irrelevant personal information. I would also like to see it become an explicit
objective of polygraph examiners to minimize the incidental "take" of such
irrelevant information. I believe these steps would shorten the tests, make them less
intrusive, and reduce the number of retests that need to be given, all without any
offsetting disadvantage.
Utility
I agree with the Commission's finding that polygraph testing has high utility as a
personnel screening tool. The utility evidence is varied. It consists partly of data
showing that large numbers of significant admissions are made during the interview phase
of the procedure that takes place before the polygraph machine is ever activated and
during the questioning that may follow after the machine is deactivated. There are also
less tangible but nevertheless important utility considerations having to do with the
deterrent effects of the procedure in relation to both applicants and employees, with the
mutual trust engendered among employees by their common polygraph experience, and with the
fact that the procedure is seen as eliminating the need for other personally invasive
security safeguards, as for example random drug testing programs.
Without exception, the senior agency officials consulted by the Commission, having
direct responsibility for polygraph screening programs, gave it as their opinion that
these programs were the single most useful screening tool at their disposal, and were the
linchpin of their personnel security efforts. Granting that these opinions hardly come
from neutral sources, they are still worthy of respect and are made all the more
significant when considered in the light of the Commission's recognition that personnel
security is the most vital ingredient in any security system.
Validity
The question that lurks behind the utility evidence, particularly insofar as it
consists of data showing success in the elicitation of admissions, is whether the
procedure is otherwise a sham, and succeeds only because it is orchestrated in such a way
as to make it appear to persons being examined that they have only two choices, one being
to make admissions assuming they have something to admit and the other being to practice
deception and be detected. In other words, as I see it, the fundamental validity issue is
whether the promise of detection is an empty threat, and therefore whether the whole
procedure is a trick, or whether within some range of probability the procedure can
actually distinguish a true answer from a false answer. By endorsing various expert
pronouncements that "The scientific validity of the polygraph [when used for
personnel security purposes] is yet to be established, "the Commission appears to
come down on the first side of this issue. As a consequence, when it goes on to recommend
that polygraph screening programs be continued with certain modifications, the report
apparently adopts the position that, even though the procedure employed by these programs
is or may be invalid, the programs should be maintained in any event because they are
useful. If the lack-of-validity premise of that position is accepted, the programs are
likely to be discontinued despite their utility.
I am not so ready as the Commission to write off screening polygraphs as lacking in
scientific validity, in part because the Commission never explains what it means by that
term, and even if I were ready to do so, I still would not quickly jump ahead to the
separate conclusion that polygraph testing has no validity as a personnel screening tool.
What follows is my own non-expert conception of the problem.
A polygraph machine monitors, usually on three channels, physiological reactions that
are produced by persons as they respond to questions that can only be answered yes or no.
The reactions show up as tracings on charts. The machine is not difficult to operate.
There is no real dispute that it does what it is designed to do-which again is only to
monitor physiological reactions and make them visible in the form of chart tracings-and
that it does so accurately.
The validity problem arises not because the machine is fallible but rather because it
requires an inference to derive some meaning from the charts, and because there are
numerous important variables that bear on the correctness and strength of such an
inference, the theoretical basis for which may itself be open to debate.
As the Commission notes in its report, there is no physiological reaction or
combination of reactions that is known to be a unique earmark of lying or deception. In
isolation, therefore, any reaction or set of reactions to any one question is meaningless.
So, for example, if I were placed on a polygraph machine and asked only the single
question whether I was an agent of the foreign intelligence service of country X, and the
truth was yes but my answer was no, the best polygraph examiner in the business could not
make heads or tails of my physiological reactions to that question. It is only in relation
to my reactions to other questions that the examiner could begin to make sense out of my
reactions to the key "are you an agent" question, and have some basis for an
inference that my answer to that question was false. That inference would proceed on the
theory that I would have a heightened concern about the key question and therefore react
more strongly to that question than to others that were asked for the purpose of eliciting
reactions that could serve as points of comparison.
All polygraph tests rely on this essential theory. The charts are diagnosed, or scored,
and inferences thus drawn in favor of or against the persons being examined, by comparing
the reactions to the relevant questions with the reactions to other questions. Different
polygraph examiners, including CIA and NSA examiners, use different examination
techniques, and different types of questions to elicit the reactions that are then
compared with the reactions to the relevant questions in order to score the test. Each of
the different methods has its champions, but nobody has ever discovered the magic formula.
No matter which technique is used, no matter how skilled the examiner, and no matter what
scoring system is applied, the resulting diagnosis may still be mistaken. If a truthful
person is diagnosed as deceptive, the mistake is known as a "false positive." If
a deceptive person is diagnosed as truthful, the mistake is known as a "false
negative."
The accuracy and error rates of screening polygraphs are at best very difficult to
estimate. The same is true in non-screening contexts, except in validity studies where
mock crimes or some similar events are staged and the tests are then conducted in
laboratory conditions, allowing the variables to be controlled. In such studies the guilt
or innocence of the role-playing characters is known, although not to the polygraph
examiner, and there is accordingly a stone tablet-a record of what is known in the
business as "ground truth"-against which the examiner's conclusions can be
cross-checked. Such tablets don't exist outside the laboratory, and even where they do
exist, there is apt to be heated debate among experts about the design of the studies and
about the extent to which their findings can be generalized.
None of this, however, leads me to believe that the use of polygraph testing for
screening purposes is an unreasonable procedure. To say that polygraphy may not be an
exact science is not at all to say that polygraphers cannot reach credible and reasoned
opinions, let alone that such opinions can be dismissed as wild guesses. We are not
dealing here with a procedure in which an examiner simply hooks up a machine, looks at the
charts, and delivers a verdict. We are dealing instead with a much more careful procedure,
one in which both the relevant and other questions are previewed and discussed with the
person to be examined, and in which the examiner then seeks to adjust the relevant
questions so as to eliminate possible causes of high-stress reactions not attributable to
deception. We are also dealing with a procedure in which equally careful efforts are made,
following a run on the machine that does not produce a "clear chart," to again
eliminate, by further adjustments in the relevant questions, any high-stress reactions to
those questions that could have causes or explanations other than deception. At the end of
the procedure, if the high-stress reactions remain, there at a minimum is a rational basis
for an inference that deception is the most probable cause of those reactions.
Where the Commission's report goes wrong, it seems to me, is in its apparent suggestion
that the validity of polygraph testing is an all-or-nothing proposition. The sense of the
report is that one or another of two propositions must be accepted-either the procedure is
able to distinguish truth from deception with scientific accuracy, or it isn't able to
distinguish anything at all.
If matters were this simple, the policy choices would be far easier than in fact they
are. If polygraph testing produced results that were no better than random chance, say no
better than the results that could be obtained by flipping coins, the arguments against it
would be much stronger and might even be overwhelming, despite the utility evidence and
the government's compelling interest in conducting an effective screening process. On the
other hand, if polygraph testing results had the same degree of certainty as, say, the
results of the testing of urine or blood samples, the arguments in favor of it would be
much stronger, although for different reasons the technique would still be controversial.
As it is, however, at least in my opinion, the reality is somewhere in between, probably
much closer to the high end of the scale than to the coin-toss end but nevertheless at a
point on the scale where there is some significant chance that opinions may be mistaken.
The hard policy problem for any manager or adjudicator then becomes: how much credence can
or should be given to such opinions, and who should bear the burden of the doubt, the
government or the individual.
The Commission's report does not lay any of this out, but instead sidesteps and masks
this policy problem by its treatment of polygraph validity as an all-or-nothing
proposition, and leaves what I regard as a false impression both as to the state of the
art today (the inference being that validity is zero) and as to the promise of research
tomorrow (the inference being that something approaching absolute validity might be
established.)
I am a strong supporter of further basic research, but I have also come to appreciate
the challenge of designing high-yield research projects in this field, and I believe that
any advances in knowledge will come slowly and in small increments. Again, in my view the
opinion products of polygraph testing, assuming the competence of the examiner, are
rational inferences either that a person is probably telling the truth or probably being
deceptive, or perhaps that the results are too inconclusive to support an inference one
way or the other. It may well be that a procedure that is so dependent on the competence
of an examiner, and that deals in inferences about probabilities, could never meet
exacting standards of scientific accuracy, no matter how extensive or well designed any
future research projects might be.
If my conceptions are right, any DCI, Director of NSA, or Secretary of Defense who
wishes to maintain polygraph screening programs, now or in the foreseeable future, will
have to accept the uncertainty of accuracy rates, and the inevitability of some false
positive outcomes, as facts of life. Likewise inevitable are some false negative outcomes.
On that side the possibility that the polygraph can be "beaten," by physical
countermeasures or otherwise, adds something, although nobody can say how much, to the
accuracy rate uncertainty. Insofar as polygraph testing results may play a decisive role
in connection with security approval decisions, these uncertainties mean that some
deserving individuals will be screened out, and some undeserving individuals, conceivably
even a trained foreign agent from whom we have the most to fear, will make their way
through.
These uncertainties, however, need to be kept in perspective. While polygraph tests may
not be scientifically exact, the other available means of investigating a person's
background are anything but foolproof themselves. Personal history statements, personal
interviews, and background investigations can be, and often are, carriers of information
that is false, distorted, or misleading, purposely or otherwise, and record checks are not
guaranteed to be reliable either. Even in the best of circumstances, the information
derived from these other sources does not meet, nor is it expected to meet, any scientific
accuracy standards, and may be low-grade in terms of its value and credibility. If
anything, polygraph testing is less open to being faulted on these grounds, particularly
considering the fact that it so often leads to admissions that have undoubted reliability.
Given a choice between two screening regimes, one of which would involve a personal
history statement and the other traditional non-polygraph means of investigation, and the
other of which would involve a personal history statement plus only polygraph testing, my
guess is that CIA and NSA would vote for the second every time. However, there is no
reason to make that choice, because better decisions are likely to be made when all
sources of information are used in tandem.
Whether I am right or wrong in any of this, I do not think that any major policy shifts
should be based on non-expert judgments concerning a set of issues that are as technically
complex as the issues related to the validity of polygraph testing procedures used to
screen personnel.
Recommendations of the Commission
I will turn now to the various recommendations contained in the Commission's report.
Before doing so, however, I want to comment about one of the other statements in the
Commission's report with which I strongly disagree. In its catalogue of pro-polygraph
arguments, the report includes an alleged argument relating to
"cost-effectiveness," and goes on to say that both CIA and NSA present a good
case that "[w]hen admissions made by a subject during a polygraph test result in a
disqualification, these agencies are saved the considerable cost and time of conducting a
background investigation. "As far as I know, neither CIA nor NSA has ever said that
polygraph testing is conducted in order to save money. What they have said is that it
makes more sense to conduct the testing, as they do, at the front end of the screening
process, rather than as a last step in that process, because when things were done in the
reverse sequence, as was formerly the case, too often the background investigation would
be successfully completed only to find that the applicant made disqualifying admissions
during the polygraph test. The real argument here is that polygraph testing often turns up
information that background investigations do not. Cost effectiveness has nothing to do
with whether such testing is conducted, only when it is conducted. Counting cost
effectiveness as a pro-polygraph argument is incorrect and only serves to belittle the
serious pro-polygraph position.
Scope. The Commission's first three recommendations relate to the scope of the
relevant questions to be asked on screening polygraphs conducted by DOD and intelligence
community agencies.
The first recommendation is that all such testing be limited to the so-called
"CI-scope" questions, except in the case of applicants seeking staff positions
at CIA or NSA. As I understand it, this recommendation is principally aimed at the testing
of contractor personnel, and specifically NSA contractor personnel and some CIA contractor
personnel, who today are required to take the so-called "full- scope" tests. I
agree with the recommendation. My reason for that agreement is that, as I see it,
contractor personnel are in a somewhat different position, so far as concerns their
legitimate expectations of privacy, than applicants for full-time staff positions at CIA
or NSA. The latter are seeking careers that would give them continued and wide-ranging
access to highly classified information over a long period. The former are apt to be
persons who are already embarked on careers in industry, which they may well have
undertaken without any reason to believe that their personal backgrounds would ultimately
be the subject of searching inquiry by the government, and who in any event may have only
less wide-ranging and only temporary access to highly classified information. In my view
these considerations support the recommendation.
The second recommendation is that the testing of applicants for staff positions at CIA
and NSA be limited to the so-called "CI-scope" questions plus questions about
serious criminal conduct and recent drug use. The rationale is that the other questions
currently asked on the so-called "full-scope" tests do not produce much useful
information and therefore should be eliminated, producing a cost-free benefit in the form
of a reduction in intrusiveness. In my judgment, as I have said, the other questions are
not objectionable on relevance grounds, and I would be slow to discard them without a
fuller cost-benefit breakout than I think the Commission has ever seen.
The third recommendation is that all reinvestigation polygraphs be limited to CI-scope
questions. This recommendation would simply continue current practice.
Reciprocity. The Commission's fourth recommendation is that "the polygraph
should not serve as a bar to clearance reciprocity or to the exchange of classified or
sensitive information." This recommendation is not explained in the report, and I am
not sure what problem it is meant to correct, or what the correction would be.
Control questions. The fifth recommendation is a large mosaic of several ideas:
that "the intrusiveness of control questions be minimized;" that there be strict
oversight to prevent abusive control questions; that information elicited by control
questions not be kept in a permanent record unless it relates to criminal activity; and
that appropriate compliance procedures be adopted and enforced.
The predicate of this recommendation is a finding in the report that "control
questions are frequently identified as the most intrusive aspect of the polygraph." I
do not agree with the finding, which I believe is based on several misconceptions, but I
do agree that there is probably room to narrow the scope of control questions, just as I
believe that there should be some narrowing of the relevant questions. So far as concerns
the idea of keeping no permanent record of information elicited by control questions, I am
very doubtful that this idea makes any sense, although it may deserve further study. If
the idea were to be implemented, it presumably would require that the audiotape or
videotape be edited. This would involve the partial destruction of these records, even
though one of the purposes for which they are kept is to assure their availability in the
event of any complaint about misconduct or overreaching by the examiner. Further, these
records are held very closely, and I am unaware of any evidence that came before the
Commission of any instance in which there was an improper release or any misuse of the
kind of information to which the recommendation relates. While the recommendation calls
for implementing procedures, it is impossible to know what sort of procedures the report
might have in mind.
Over-reliance. The Commission's sixth recommendation is that "physiological
reactions without admissions, to questions during a polygraph examination should not be
used to disqualify individuals without efforts to independently resolve the issue of
concern." This recommendation is low in clarity. What kinds of efforts would be
required to "independently resolve the issue of concern," and what could happen
if those efforts failed? Suppose there were two equally well qualified applicants for the
same position, and the polygraph tests resulted in an examiner's opinion of probable
deception in one case but not the other. Would that then mean that, absent some
confirmation of the probable deception opinion, these results had to be ignored in making
the decision as to which applicant to hire? The recommendation raises more questions than
it answers, and provides no useful guidance.
Oversight. The seventh recommendation is that a new independent and external
mechanism be established to investigate and track polygraph complaints. It is a given that
polygraph programs should be subject to rigorous and effective oversight. This
recommendation is made, however, without any real review of existing oversight structures,
or any real effort to show how or why those structures might be inadequate, or any
indication of how the new "mechanism" would be expected to operate. If the
existing oversight is ineffective, obviously it should be improved. But within CIA, for
example, there is already oversight within the Polygraph Section of The Office of
Security, and there is also a special oversight panel (The Polygraph Complaint Oversight
Board) which includes a representative of the Office of General Counsel and that was
formed in mid-1992 for the explicit purpose of resolving polygraph-related complaints, not
to mention the Inspector General's office. Surely any recommendation calling for
additional oversight should be based on some showing, which the report does not contain,
that these checks and safeguards are insufficient.
Standardization. The Commission's eighth recommendation is that "standards
be developed to ensure consistency in the administration, application and quality control
of screening polygraphs." There is already a trend in this direction, and I agree
that further steps should be taken. I do not understand, for example, why the relevant
questions, in whichever of the two basic formats the tests are given, should be different
depending on which agency is conducting the test.
The different practices to which this recommendation relates, however, are overshadowed
by circumstances that the Commission's report barely even mentions.
Polygraph screening programs are not in effect, and have virtually no chance of being
placed into effect, in parts of the government where highly sensitive national security
information is handled on a steady basis. So, for example, no screening polygraphs are
given to State Department employees at any level, or to officials in the national security
apparatus at the White House, or to members of the defense and intelligence committee
staffs in the Congress, although many of these persons have access to much of the same
information as intelligence agency employees, or to equally sensitive information. Even in
DOD, the program has a very spotty application, if only because of the numerical limit on
screening polygraphs imposed by the Congress. Among other things, high-ranking civilian
employees are essentially exempt, and many high-ranking military personnel are also
unlikely to be affected.
If the programs are truly important to the protection of national security information,
the question that obviously waits to be asked is why the programs don't have more general
coverage and acceptance. If they are needed in one place, why not in another? The
Commission's report never asks this question. Instead it cites, and singles out for
criticism, various differences in the ways in which polygraph screening programs are
administered at CIA and NSA. These differences are small matters, however, compared to the
double standard that exists by virtue of the fact that such programs are used in one form
or another by both these agencies, and seen by both as indispensable security measures,
but are not used in any form by other agencies whose personnel have access to the same or
equally sensitive information. From a broad policy perspective, it is this double
standard, not the much more minor differences cited by the Commission, that has real
significance, because it points to a security system that taken as a whole is lacking in
coherence and logic.
I am frankly at a loss to know where any of this leads, but there is at least a need to
raise these considerations and make them part of the debate.
Certification. The Commission's next recommendation is that "certification
of polygraph examiners under the auspices of a single entity should be mandatory" and
that "mandatory requirements for recertification also should be established." I
do not know what this recommendation means. As I understand it, polygraph examiners who
complete the training curriculums at the DOD Polygraph Institute or at the CIA polygraph
school already receive certificates reflecting their successful completion of training
programs approved by the American Polygraph Association. Further as I understand it, that
Association views these programs as the finest of their kind in the country. I agree of
course that superior training is a must, because competence and professionalism on the
part of examiners are key elements in any polygraph program, but here again I have no
basis to be critical of the way in which DOD or CIA polygraphers are trained, and the
report provides no such basis.
National polygraph institute. The Commission's next recommendation is that
"the CIA polygraph school be consolidated into the DOD Polygraph Institute to form a
national polygraph institute that would conduct all training and certification of
government polygraph examiners." This recommendation does not appear to have any cost
cutting rationale, since none is mentioned in the report. Instead the stated objective is
to "enhance the quality of polygraph training provided by the government." If
such was the likely outcome, I would favor the recommendation, but here again the report
provides no supporting reasons that point to such a likely outcome, and the recommendation
has the feel of one that was made just for the sake of moving some furniture around.
Research. The Commission's last recommendation is that "a robust
interagency-coordinated and centrally funded research program should be established with
DOD/PI as executive agent," and that this program "concentrate on the
development of valid and reliable security and screening tests and standardize their
use." I have already said that I am a strong supporter of further basic research.
DOD/PI already conducts a broad research program, however, and I am not sure how the
Commission would want to see this program redirected. Nor do I understand how it could be
the function of any research program to "standardize" the use of polygraph
tests. Only management decisions could have that result. Further, the wording of the
recommendation suggests by implication that polygraph screening tests, as currently
administered, have no validity or reliability, and I do not agree with that implication,
which may not have been intended.
Closing thoughts
I am not blind to the fact that screening polygraphs, for many people, are hateful
experiences. The one such test that I took in my own life, which was one of the full-scope
models, was certainly no picnic. It is only natural for people to think of themselves as
patriotic, and fit to serve in government positions of trust should the opportunity to do
so come along. All probably resent the idea that their honesty or integrity might be
impugned by a polygraph examiner armed with a set of form questions and a strange
technology. But there are higher stakes here, because mistakes can have fateful
consequences for the country. Somewhere among us (no reference here of course to any
members of the Commission) there are some bad apples. Others among us, whatever we may
think of ourselves, do not meet the standards of reliability and trustworthiness that the
government is entitled to set, and indeed must set if there are to be any personnel
security controls at all rather than a system in which all comers are accepted, no
questions asked. The standard-setting alone is a difficult job, and judgmental to the
core. So is the sorting process. I end up believing that polygraph testing is a reasonable
step in that process.
I am also well aware of the fact that polygraph testing has a high potential for abuse.
There are few clear roadsigns here, however, and except in obvious cases, as for example
if an examiner pursues unauthorized lines of inquiry, abuses are hard to define. I favor
an effort to develop an agreed set of ethical guidelines, beyond any that exist today,
that would apply to the conduct of screening polygraphs. I also favor the other steps to
which I have referred in this statement, but in substantial part I do not favor the
Commission's recommendations, and for that reason and the others I have already stated, I
concluded that I could not join in the Commission's report.
To proceed to Appendix D click here.
To proceed to Appendix E click here.
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Report
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Chapters
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