The only way polygraphs work is by convincing people its an actual lie detection machine. Cops leveredge this belief and tell you that you "failed miserably" so you ultimately confess because "your caught".
Sure, but that's an argument against them ever being used in the screening process they use for people joining, not to only exempt specific high-level appointees.
The TV news show, "60 Minutes" tested several companies that provided polygraph testing services.
The show claimed some one stole some equipment. For each testing service the show said they suspected a different employee. In every case, the polygraph operator claimed they detected deception in the person they had been told by the show was the person already under suspicion. Polygraph is total bullshit, just used to add a pseudo-scientific shine to prejudice.
> according to two people with knowledge of the questions and others familiar with similar accounts
After all the examples of the media getting caught playing fast and loose with anonymous sources, I’m going to take this one with a huge grain of salt.
The story is about “new applicants” and positions with no access to classified material. It is not illegal to share unclassified material, which is why DHS was having NDAs passed around.
> DHS said it was "unapologetic" about its drive to root out leakers. "We are agnostic about your standing, tenure, political appointment, or status as a career civil servant - we will track down leakers and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law,” a DHS spokesperson told Reuters.
Maybe that’s true? I think HN was ok with this because it felt like a rational reaction to bringing guys like Big Balls into the SCIF.
It’s not illegal for me to share non-confidential data of my employer either, but if you were hiring, would you want to understand an applicants attitudes towards such leaks especially after having issues with it in the past?
I don’t think either one is a distraction. Corruption at the highest levels of government is a serious problem. Government reliance on pseudoscience is a serious problem.
Polygraphs are not detecting lies, they're used to assess your sensitivities; there are really talented interrogators in counterintelligence, whose full-time job is to fuck with you in subtle ways. To poly a person at will is very much a power move, and some guys fucking love it. But that's a different story all together. Most of the time it's a formality like everything else. In reality, people don't have remotely enough bandwidth to pursue stuff like that unless there's a genuine investigation. But office politics people will office-politique.
Unpopular opinion: private companies should poly people more often in hiring, it could prove more useful than other arbitrary kind of culture fit interviews. Food for thought.
> private companies should poly people more often in hiring, it could prove more useful than other arbitrary kind of culture fit interviews.
Useful in what sense? That you can't figure out anyway what tested person is capable of because tested person can believe that they have skills on godlike senior level, but they are junior at best?
Yes I’m also curious. From what I know polygraphs and similar interrogation are for assessing whether there is anything that could be used to blackmail or compromise you. Whether one agrees with the method, the goal seems logical for intelligence orgs. For companies, industrial espionage would be the obvious parallel. I don’t know how polygraphs would relate to culture fit though… watching to see if candidates perspire and their heart beats faster when asked if they have grit and value diversity :)
Well, my perspective is having to do with Ukrainian mil tech, but I believe the same is true in e.g. cybersecurity, and it helps that the newcomers are often familiar with the process. Poly is not for everyone. Now, when you say "industrial espionage" it sounds dandy and fine, but for all intents and purposes there is no such thing. There is exploitation, yes, and it may easily cross from industrial, to defence, to political depending on trade.
I never said I subscribe to the unpopular opinion, but it's a point of contention regardless!
Unless you work in a pharmacy. Or you’re a ‘mall-cop’. Or literally any employee anywhere who is suspected of fraud or embezzlement or any “incident that resulted in a specific economic loss to the employer”.
You are correct. The Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988, which otherwise prohibits the use of putative lie detectors by employees, provides exemptions for such cases.
Unfortunately, that doesn't really prevent companies from doing things being illegal if they turn out to be profitable enough. You could use a multispectral hidden camera and an mmwave radar fed into 'AI' to simulate a lie detector - you can definitely get pulse and breathing rate out of it, probably also perspiration..
> Unpopular opinion: private companies should poly people more often in hiring, it could prove more useful than other arbitrary kind of culture fit interviews. Food for thought.
Because what we need is more inscrutable judgement calls in the interview process?
> Unpopular opinion: private companies should poly people more often in hiring, it could prove more useful than other arbitrary kind of culture fit interviews. Food for thought.
OK. I'll bite. I'm interviewing with you to be a frontend developer. You have me hooked up to a polygraph. What do you ask?
The relationship between politics and finance has lost accountability. Would you take a chance investing with just any cryptocurrency? Or will you make the wise decision and choose mine, the first and only crypto that’s polygraphed all programmers for accountability.
I did paint a cynical picture, so please do take it with a grain of salt.
Poly is just one tool, and it's never a solution to anything. What you say about potential abuses, undesirable selection, etc. I agree 100% and hate the office-politique jockeys as much as the next man. In most corporate environments, fucking with people has no place and use, but it's far from only application, in fact it's pretty much the worst application possible. Doesn't change the fact that it happens, even though it shouldn't. I also believe that it's important for many orgs to start taking security seriously; in the world where there's so much exploitation, and where applicable, it helps a lot if your org can have some kind of counterintel function. It doesn't have to include poly, but whatever helps you better understand the people you work with is surely a boon.
That's not as accurate as flipping a coin. It's a certain success or a probabilistic failure. A random coin flip could get you the wrong answer either way. But here, if someone confesses to something, you can be sure it's true. (unless you pass the threshold where people would rather lie that they did bad things, but that's a different problem... if you're getting the same results as torture, the interviewer is the problem, not the fake machine)
It's interesting to note that the scandal going on in Israel wrt/ the chief prosecutor of the IDF leaking a prisoner abuse video was uncovered in a polygraph test.
"A routine Shin Bet polygraph test of a senior officer close to Military Advocate General reportedly exposed new clues about video leak, prompting Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to order a full criminal investigation"
While polygraphs are not perfect they are widely used as part of a broader set of measures. I'm not sure "must not be used" is really the right way to approach this. This person would not have been caught if it wasn't for this polygraphs screening.
>This person would not have been caught if it wasn't for this polygraphs screening.
The organization whose crimes she exposed claims she would not have been caught if its wasn't for the polygraph screening. Corrupt law enforcement types love things like polygraph tests because they give them a ready avenue for parallel construction.
That was my own interpretation... but admittedly maybe too strong of a statement. Maybe she would have be caught. That said, the psychological setup in those periodic interviews with a "maybe lie detecting machine" create opportunity to find real issues.
In terms of the details here, the leak wasn't to expose the crimes, it was to resist political pressure [my speculation anyways]. The crimes were being investigated anyways and the video was available internally fairly broadly (and I think maybe externally as well). There was a political storm as a result of the investigation and the arrests made. Apparently leaking the video is was not illegal (though that's subject to some interpretations) because the role of the chief prosecutor is independent but this became more complicated when it required lying to the supreme court to cover the leak.
But yeah, it's possible the Shin Bet already had an idea but just used the polygraph as an excuse/opportunity. While it's understandable in the political climate why the chief prosecutor would leak the video it's also unethical and poor judgement for someone in her role to do so, and then to cover it up. The role of the Shin Bet is to find people in sensitive roles who are secretly doing things they should not be doing (typically spies but more generally people betraying the trust put in them). For those not following, the plot got thicker because she proceeded to throw her iPhone in the Mediterranean and it was found by a swimmer some days later. She also tried to harm herself. It's pretty crazy stuff. Now there are arguments about who should oversee the investigation with the supreme court set to decide today. It's a pretty small/tight legal community and everyone knows everyone, especially at the top. The legal system has been in a battle with the government for some while with the justice minister refusing to accept the last appointment of the chief justice of the supreme court.
Anyways, the polygraph angle is interesting. That this machine survives as a practice in many places tells us something about its usefulness (or at least people's belief in its usefulness).
> A routine Shin Bet polygraph test of a senior officer close to Military Advocate General reportedly exposed new clues about video leak...
It should probably read, "A senior officer exposed clues during a polygraph test..."
The polygraph is a McGuffin. The interviewer applies pressure by psychologically manipulating the suspect. That's all the polygraph is, psychological manipulation.
There is really no evidence that it works, even in that way though.
The fact that the person is being asked to take the test is a pretty good indication that investigators think there's something there. The suspicion caused the interview and the interview caused the admission. There's no way to know what happens in an alternate universe with no polygraph. I worry a lot more about law enforcement that use it as justification for their erroneous suspicion.
It's a fine tool as long as the interviewer doesn't think it actually works. I've seen enough police interviews on TV shows to know that many of them are believers.
Police interviews on scripted TV copoganda dramas, or fly on the wall 'reality' police TV shows?
Either way a great many police are believers in the power of theatre. As they should be, staging power imbalnce, inserting faux sympathy, etc. are all powerful tools with strong potential for misuse which has prompted regulation in a number of countries demanding full recording of interactions with suspects.
Speaking of police interviews on TV shows:
Opening scene to Season 5 of The Wire.
Classic moment where a copy machine is used for a lie detector.
I'm not talking about fiction, I'm talking about interviews with detectives on a show like 20/20.
The way they talk about both people refusing to take the polygraph and whether they pass or fail belies a belif in their credibility. I also know some police personally who speak in the same way but that's a much smaller sample size.
I absolutely believe that some police detectives have real genuine faith in polygraphs being accurate. I strongly suspect a good many do not.
That's orthoganal to how detectives that don't have faith in polygraph results being "real" feel about people that refuse to take them.
Many may feel that people that refuse tests that supposedly tell truth telling from lying can be ranked with people that refuse a search or to unlock their phones ... ie. that's a sign that that they very probably have something to hide.
> I'm talking about interviews with detectives on a show like 20/20.
These are professionals being interviewed who are projecting all manner of things, if they don't actually trust that polygraphs work as scientifically accurate tests that reliably detect lies they are still motivated to not say so and to project belief, that's all part of the theatre of manipulating suspects.
Plus, finding "clues" could mean anything, including false leads. If the Shin Bet is resorting to interviews under duress, they really must not have much physical evidence to work with.
That is one of the most surprising aspect of the story for me, that a polygraph worked. (the revelation itself just confirmed what everyone already suspected).
My theory is that the new head of the Shin Bet who is pretty right wing and took a personal interest in the story was involved. They simply used the polygraph results as an excuse to direct the interview in the direction they wanted. The timing is certainly very interesting.
It's a very high profile case so i guess the truth of the matter will eventually emerge.
A polygraph test consists of two components: a bullshit machine, and an interview.
The interview is the part that exposed those clues.
The thing about pseudoscience is that it will sometimes appear to “work.” A dowser will sometimes find water. A horoscope will sometimes predict your day. My birthmark has successfully warded off tiger attacks for 40+ years.
The main point of the screening is to have a highly structured question and answer session that is recorded for posterity, and which can/will be referenced at the next screening 'n' number of years later.
One could even argue that the polygraph benefits the person being screened, as it provides some additional motivation for them to take it seriously.
Door locks are a deterrent that increase the difficulty and cost of a crime. If your neighbor's house is locked and yours isn't, then you're going to be more of a target. In that sense they do provide security, but of course any lock might still be defeated.
Similarly, I can see how structured psychological interrogation, assisted by a polygraph, is a useful deterrent. The presence of moles doesn't negate all of its value. Just like having your house broken into once doesn't mean you'll stop using door locks.
The difference is that locks actually do work. They’re not merely a psychological trick, they actually do provide a barrier, even if one that might not be hard to defeat.
Considering polygraphs don’t work at all, I have to imagine that an equally effective interrogation could be constructed without them.
Nonetheless waiving the theater for Bongino et. al. implies that Patel thinks the theater works, or at least that these guys were likely to fail anyway regardless of "many issues". It smells corrupt, like everything else in this administration. And IMHO that's more important than a technical critique of a particular interrogation method.
Indeed, the FBI participated in the criminal investigation of the late Doug Williams, who offered training on how to pass or beat a polygraph "test." Because there was no actual crime for which to prosecute him, federal agents set out to stage one in a "sting" operation they dubbed "Operation Lie Busters":
The rule has always been that this can be waived at the discretion of specific senior officials. It isn't done for average Federal employees, and not always for political positions, but it is a thing that exists.
Rules are only words on paper unless they are enforced, especially to constrain the actions of the powerful.
Once they are consistently broken, the rules only matter for the powerless.
There have always been stupid rules, and legitimate reasons to break them. But “I am an unqualified appointee and this unqualified person is my friend” is not a legitimate reason.
When I was in college they did an audit to see if I could graduate and it was flagged that I had been allowed to skip the Introduction to Computer Science class because I got a 5 on the AP Comp Sci test. The problem was that I took the test while it was administered in C++ and it had later switched to Java.
The school decided they were not going to recognize the test results and instead would only credit me with an elective class for it, I would still have ot pass the introductory class. This is in spite of pass all the later comptuer science classwork.
I escalated it to the dean, who told me that while he recognized this made no sense, "rules are rules and if we didn't follow them they wouldn't be rules".
If you'd passed their Intro CS class when it was C++, and they'd later switch to Java, would you have had to re-take the Intro class? I'd bet "no". Even though there'd be no difference - except that they'd collected your tuition $$$ for the class, and the bad optics.
My general experience with colleges is that "rules" are mostly for the little people. And pretty much all of them become negotiable the moment that serious money, prestige, or scandal avoidance are on the table.
(BTW - University of Michigan? I know several people who got similar crap from their CS Dept.)
> Yes polygraphs are bollocks, but, rules are rules.
> The issue is, if exceptions are made, ...
Except that "exceptions are made" can also be a stage of phasing out useless or counter-productive rules - as social acceptance grows that Astrology, Polygraphs, and Tarot have no place in security screening.
Procedure has to evolve, but the point I was trying to get across is that making arbitrary changes to let powerful people do what ever they want is bad.
If the rules are bad, then work with the whole team to change them. Don't just ad-hoc fiddle, that makes procedural debt.
Yes - in a high-functioning, professional outfit that'd be quite true. Vs. this item is about a huge US Gov't security organization. Try searching on a few phrases like "FBI incompetence scandal". Or similar for "CIA", or "NSA", or ...
The best that we can realistically hope for is that they'll muddle toward being better, as older managers retire and the org's social consensus drifts away from "Competence Theater is good enough", "CYA is SOP", and "Phrenology works".
That's just the FBI side. The Trump administration has, as a policy, that the Counsel for the President can clear someone without them going through the usual clearance process. Some senior White House staff have been "cleared" that way.
The standard process starts, as it has for decades, with filling out Standard Form 86.[1] I see they only want residences for the last 10 years. It used to be "list all residences from birth".
Then, all of that gets checked.[2]
These criteria are not, apparently, applied to White House staff or Presidential appointees.
I suppose that matters of how closely the body guards get exposed to state secrets. Surely there is some accidental leakage, but you would hope that getting elevated to the top would require close scrutiny.
From mid-way in the article
He’s had a rocky tenure so far, marked by public fights with senior Cabinet officials and accusations that he leaked information to the press, which Bongino denied. In August, Trump appointed Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey as co-deputy director at the FBI, setting off speculation that the White House had lost faith in Bongino. But he remains in the job.
ProPublica could not determine whether Bongino sat for a polygraph exam or what its results were. Though the existence of a polygraph waiver is an indication he may not have passed the test, it is possible Bongino received a preemptive exemption, a former senior FBI official with knowledge of the vetting program told ProPublica.
When ProPublica sought comment from the FBI, the agency denied that Bongino or the other senior staff members failed polygraph tests. “It is false that the individuals you referenced failed polygraphs,” wrote spokesperson Ben Williamson.
Unfortunately, a testimony form this administration is not worth much, so I am stuck in a schordinger's situation where he both passed and failed the polygraph.
I don't know who the other two are, but Bongino was already polygraphed and cleared for the Secret Service -- there's no reason to pretend that he wasn't cleared for the job. This article reads like a political hit piece and has no real grasp of reality. It also has statements that clearly betray its author doesn't really understand how security clearances work anyway -- most clearances don't require polygraphs, those are an IC and LE thing, and any OCA can grant any waiver they choose to grant. In this particular case if the AG wanted to review this decision she could do so as his boss, but it really makes no difference.
Given that polygraphs are, again, junk science, who gives a shit.
Sure, but don't you find it a little curious that these tests are being waived so selectively? If the FBI believes polygraphs serve some purpose, why would it choose to waive them?
Person A says "we shouldn't use this on Persons B, C, D".
Pretty major implications about the integrity and suitability of Persons B, C, and D, and about how Person A suspects they have stuff to hide.
(In some ways this is a good reason to keep them around. Even if some people know they're crap, the existence and popular mythology causes people to reveal more than they otherwise would through actions like this.)
If they were using dowsing rods instead of polygraphs would you still feel the same way?
It’s certainly suspicious. But it’s also a huge problem they use them at all when the private sector was banned from doing so since they’re so unreliable decades ago.
I'd absolutely feel the same way if we were talking about dowsing rods or a plastic Harry Potter sorting hat or any bullshit we can think of. I don't want our national security to rely on untested or disproven methods to determine whether people are trustworthy. Even so, as you say, that's also a problem (a big one).
I'd be quite comfortable if I knew that these polygraph tests were being scrapped entirely because they're nonsense and that the FBI is reworking its security procedures to improve all its background checks. As it is, these articles make it sound like they're replacing the polygraph test with nothing, and only for these select few people. I don't like that. It is a human-led interrogation, albeit with a useless (at best) machine. I want to know what's so trustworthy about these people that the FBI doesn't even want to get to know them before giving them jobs high up?
I think that's one very reasonable interpretation. The other is "I really want these people w to come work here and they don't want to do the polygraph because it's a huge pain so I as the manager I'm going to waive it to reduce their objections to being hired".
That's something that companies do all the time, they pay people "out of band" or give them extra benefits or accelerate their vacation accrual or vesting, or one of hundreds of other things.
I agree it looks bad for sure but it isn't necessarily sinister.
There has always been a contingent of people that do sensitive work for the government because they have important expertise but are either "unclearable" or unwilling to go through the formal clearance process. Limited affordances are sometimes made in these cases at the discretion of senior officials with that authority. For the government it is a practical risk/benefit calculus and they still have the ability to do a substantial background check on their own without a formal process.
While it would never be allowed for the average Federal employee it does exist outside of purely political positions.
That solution is to a problem that is not the topic of conversation here.
The problem is selective waiving of vetting processes due to political pressure and affiliation.
Acting as if the efficacy of the vetting process is a point relevant to this conversation either implies you believe they waived this process for these three due to their ineffectiveness - very much not the belief held my most observers, why just 3 then - otherwise it’s a pure strawman argument. Neither option is good.
You really mean it's not worth getting upset that employees are put through stupid and sometimes even quite invasive or degrading questioning in a humiliating and fear-driven process that bosses don't?
Right, when people sow chaos sometimes the random chaos includes a few nuggets that are good. "No more polygraphs" isn't quite "Stop making pennies" but it's also not "We're reintroducing slavery" is it?
Yes, but do you think that will be the outcome? Uniform scrutiny and uniform rules that benefit everyone equally and don't advantage the loyal coterie is not how situations like this go, and it's not how this one is going so far, is it? Exceptions to rules for insiders and the loyal is how it is actually going.
"For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law" — Óscar Benavides.
* Polygraph “tests” presented as objective, independent evidence for the truth or falsehood of statements, and
* Polygraph used as an additional channel (similar to but on top of assessment of body language, voice tone, etc.) by an interviewer to determine how to guide an interview to elicit information from a subject, including information that they might prefer to conceal.
The reason it's interesting is that the subjects of these fake tests thought they might work and thus they skipped them.
It's irrelevant whether they do anything. It's more important why they were skipped. What questions would the interviewer ask that they didn't want to risk answering?
> The reason it's interesting is that the subjects of these fake tests thought they might work and thus they skipped them.
This is just something you made up. Here's an alternative idea:
You are deciding whether to take a test. The test's results are 100% subjective. Anything you say during the test can be interpreted as a negative statement about yourself, and this determination will be made by the examiner.
polygraphs are federally banned for employment except for in the federal government, so that's more controversial circumventing the federal government's hypocrisy
you're blind if you want to pretend that this specific action is the top of a slippery slope when we're below the slope at this point, Congress isn't gong to do anything so why even act surprised. let's focus on the hypocrisy of polygraph being standard at all
I think many on this thread are missing the point. the fact that it had to be waived alone speaks volumes. Sure they're about as accurate as a coin flip as the top commenter said, but they are theatrics and what you do before, during, and after usually gives interrogators lots of clues about you that they wouldn't otherwise have observed.
If you're trying "tricks" to get past it for example, that's one data point. It's useful for things like clearance investigations because there is a counter-intel side to it, your comms, pattern of live and other things will be scrutinized.
it is essentially a "vibe" tool. Do you look too clam, too nervous,etc..
That said, people end up contradicting themselves when focusing too much on beating the polygraph too. Skilled interrogators throw questions that will cause that. Do you sound too prepared and detailed, answering questions with details most people won't remember? Are you too consistent, indicating recollection of prepared facts, instead of wading through unreliable human memory?
Even without a polygraph, your eye movements alone are hard to get under control unless you practice for it. That's why they baseline you first with simple things you're expected to lie on, and then more complex things that most people would at least partially lie about.
The accuracy of the polygraph itself is not too relevant. If you're hiring someone for a senior role at the FBI, a polygraph is the formality that opens you up to all kinds of legal trouble. it's purpose is to put the subject under legal jeopardy. A simple interrogation will do, but a polygraph introduces an adversarial evidentiary element into the equation.
In short, it gives the FBI in this case the option to say "this guy is acting shady, we can't trust him". Even if they're wrong, the sensitivity of the position requires passing on good candidates if they must. An investigator on their own would have to prove/justify their conclusion. a polygraph is their way out. They've seen spies, traitors, etc.. it's a way to filter people out with a somewhat justifiable cause.
The question you should be asking is why was it waived in this case just for those three staff members? If it is indeed unreliable, why not stop it entirely?
Millions of Americans have TS/SCI clearance, which had them pass a polygraph just fine. The government isn't losing a lot of talent who're fumbling a polygraph. This is a big deal. Any conversation about the reliability of a polygraph is a distraction.
It doesn't speak volumes. It just says that the people being hired had enough status that they don't have to go through what amounts to an initiation ritual.
Polygraphs appear to be another sad outcrop from the same pseudoscience formation as phrenology or witch-ducking; basically theatre to legitimise people exercising power in a way they were already going to do. The fact that it gets used speaks more volumes about the culture in intelligence services than the people who may or may not undergo the test.
the FBI’s employment eligibility guidelines say all employees must obtain a “Top Secret” clearance in order to work at the agency following a background check.
The furor here is about Dan Bongino, and Nicole Rucker, Kash Patel's assitant
The article goes on to say that FBI employees at the level Bongino and Rucker are working at have "SCI" clearance on top of Top Secret. Back in the 1990s, it was exceptionally difficult to get TS clearance. SCI on top of that must have been even harder.
I guess this is no worse than Jared Kushner getting a waiver to work at the White House during Trump's first term, but holy cow, getting this kind of special treatment really does reinforce a big difference between classes, doesn't it? Any ordinary, non-rich person getting "alerts" on polygraphs would probably be immediately dropped from getting a Top Secret.
> Back in the 1990s, it was exceptionally difficult to get TS clearance. SCI on top of that must have been even harder.
I think you are exaggerating this as the other poster points out. Every US military cryptolinguist gets a TS-SCI clearance. So, while every student at Defense Language Institute was doing his/her language course, a background check was done, and the rejection rate in the 1990s was presumably tiny. And ditto for other military intelligence roles. A certain amount of military personnel getting the clearance were semi-native speakers of a language in demand who still had foreign ties (family or land owned in the old country) but they passed nonetheless, which must speak to a certain laxness.
Is Kash Patel's assistant rich? What does rich have to do with anything, that came out of nowhere. A more likely scenario is that these are political appointees and presumably an elected official wants to be able to get their guy in there no matter what
> getting this kind of special treatment really does reinforce a big difference between classes
The Trump admin has always been an example of ignoring the elite political class and bringing in whoever he likes. Kash Patel himself came from a family of asylum seekers who fled India and he got his start as a public defender. Not exactly old money.
The guy he brought on as an assistant (without a polygraph) got his start as a beat cop from NYPD before joining the Secret Service.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of TS/SCI cleared government employees and contractors. There is nothing "exceptionally difficult" about any of this.
I think this is a misunderstanding a lot of people have about clearance.
The different clearance levels are not really an indication of different levels of vetting being done to a person. If you can get cleared for Secret, there's no particular reason you couldn't get cleared for TS. It's the same SF-86 form, the same investigation (well, not that I know, exactly. All I know is that it didn't look any different from my perspective), the same interview. There are some differences in how often you'll get re-interviewed, I think. It's not really anything so onerous that you have to ever think about it, really.
The different levels are much more about need to know, which is driven by potential impact of breach. You don't even have to go through the lower levels before you get to the higher ones. The selectiveness of giving people higher clearance levels is more about controlling exposure surface area.
On top of that, clearance level is kind of more about what meetings you'll be allowed in, what conversations you'll be allowed to participate in. SCI is more having ongoing access to data. Then there are additionally "caveats", which are clearances to specific programs. Each of these things are a different axis in the clearance system, not different levels of a linear system.
Contrary to somewhat popular belief, a polygraph is not required to obtain TS/SCI. You can do a polygraph and that's a whole additional designation, "TS/SCI with Poly," as you might see in various job ads.
The fact that these people can't pass TS is extremely telling and extremely concerning. Not being able to pass basically means the investigation revealed information that the person has a reasonable chance of being coerced into providing information. A simple example: maybe you have a mistress you're trying to hide; a foreign intelligence service could try to blackmail you into providing them information. Maybe you have a lot of debt, especially gambling debt; you'd be judged particularly susceptible to taking bribes, which would also set you up to be easily blackmailed.
But I know at least one guy who is a raging pothead who has had high level clearance for the last 20 years. They didn't care because he was open about it. If he was open about it with them, then it was clear it wasn't an issue he could be coerced over. I know people who had past criminal charges on their records. They were fine, too, for the same reason. It used to be you couldn't hold a clearance if you were gay, but nowadays, people are much more open and accepting of it such that it's not a reasonable attack vector for coercion.
Basically, it means you've got major skeletons in your closet and probably tried to lie about them if you can't pass for S or TS. If you can't pass for TS then you probably shouldn't have a position of public trust at all, even for just handling CUI.
Some clearable people simple don’t want to bother with the process, understandably. This discretion exists in part to allow the government to make a risk/benefit judgment for people they deem critical in these cases.
Big companies make these kinds of exceptions for important hires all the time. This is no different.
You may not like it but that’s how it works and why. It has been this way as long as I can remember. Same deal when they need to read in someone who is “unclearable”. The process doesn’t exist for its own sake.
The other reality is that no one needs to fill out an SF-86 to enable them to do a thorough background check.
Even for the 15 page "short form", required to get a "Secret" clearance, you had to list everywhere you'd lived for the past N years, N >= 10 as I recall and give a non-family person who could testify you lived there. You had to list all the organizations you belonged to.
Some fed contacted every single reference I gave, my old scoutmaster, and the minister of the church I was a janitor for during college. Top Secret was notoriously more difficult in terms of paperwork and scrutiny of your past.
The article about Bongino's waiver made it clear that TS was a requirement for FBI employment, an entire division of the government, although it wasn't clear if that was everyone, or just the higher level administrative staff.
> required to get a "Secret" clearance, you had to list everywhere you'd lived for the past N years, N >= 10 as I recall and give a non-family person who could testify you lived there. You had to list all the organizations you belonged to.
As a former federal government employee, all of this is also required as part of the standard background check. People will show up in a black sedan and interview your neighbors, all you past employers and people who knew you at each residence. This happened for me and I’ve never had any real security clearance (nor required it).
Just because it’s work doesn’t mean it’s rare. My father and most of his coworkers all had TS clearance in the 90s. It required flying out to Dallas (if I recall correctly) for the polygraph. Lots of work but very common.
Thorough papwerwork is not the same as "exceptionally difficult."
I've been a reference interviewed in the processes before. It was not exactly rigorous. (It would have been hard to be, frankly... I had no knowledge of them doing anything shady, and they had no specific prior area of concern to try to grill me specifically on.)
TS is "more difficult" than S in the sense that is more difficult to win a lottery jackpot than the smaller prizes. It's not "more difficult" in the sense that there are higher expectations or you're held to a higher standard. If you fail a TS clearance investigation, you won't be able to have any position of public trust at all, even if it's just being in HR and processing government employees' health insurance elections.
There is an entire industry built around clearing people, your tax dollars pay them. Of course everyone you listed was contacted, that’s the whole point.
How is filling out an SF-86 hard?
Maybe what you meant was, justifying the reason to get a clearance in the 90s was harder. Perhaps that is true. Getting a clearance isn’t hard.
The fact that these are still used is a bit of a scandal. They are total bullshit. If they “work” at all it’s by convincing gullible people they work, so they might make someone slip up or confess thinking the magic machine will get them.
Of course things have improved. Decades ago they were trusted a lot more to the point that a lot of innocent people got prosecuted and guilty people went free based on polygraphs. These days they’re inadmissible in court, but they’re still used in the court of public opinion and in some jobs.
The only way polygraphs work is by convincing people its an actual lie detection machine. Cops leveredge this belief and tell you that you "failed miserably" so you ultimately confess because "your caught".
They are about as accurate as flipping a coin.
Sure, but that's an argument against them ever being used in the screening process they use for people joining, not to only exempt specific high-level appointees.
> They are about as accurate as flipping a coin.
They are actually worse than a coin toss.
The TV news show, "60 Minutes" tested several companies that provided polygraph testing services.
The show claimed some one stole some equipment. For each testing service the show said they suspected a different employee. In every case, the polygraph operator claimed they detected deception in the person they had been told by the show was the person already under suspicion. Polygraph is total bullshit, just used to add a pseudo-scientific shine to prejudice.
That CBS 60 Minutes exposé aired 40 years ago, yet it remains relevant today. It may be viewed in its entirety here:
https://antipolygraph.org/blog/2007/01/30/cbs-60-minutes-exp...
That's beside the paint of political appointees getting special treatment. Patel's FBI has been using polygraphs extensively to test political loyalty
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/us/politics/fbi-polygraph...
> according to two people with knowledge of the questions and others familiar with similar accounts
After all the examples of the media getting caught playing fast and loose with anonymous sources, I’m going to take this one with a huge grain of salt.
DHS and Musk’s people confirmed it. See Reuters back in May 21.
From Teuters: "officials quickly launched an investigation to find out who was leaking to the press"
Leading is a bit different than "loyalty tests" isn't it?
The story is about “new applicants” and positions with no access to classified material. It is not illegal to share unclassified material, which is why DHS was having NDAs passed around.
> DHS said it was "unapologetic" about its drive to root out leakers. "We are agnostic about your standing, tenure, political appointment, or status as a career civil servant - we will track down leakers and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law,” a DHS spokesperson told Reuters.
Maybe that’s true? I think HN was ok with this because it felt like a rational reaction to bringing guys like Big Balls into the SCIF.
It’s not illegal for me to share non-confidential data of my employer either, but if you were hiring, would you want to understand an applicants attitudes towards such leaks especially after having issues with it in the past?
I would.
So it’s not involved in a criminal investigation. Then it’s a loyalty test. Specifically, it reassures them you can keep a secret.
Which is a distraction from the fact that taking one is part of the process, and for no reason senior appointees have been exempted.
It would be a different matter if the entire process was being removed as policy, but nope, that's not it.
I don’t think either one is a distraction. Corruption at the highest levels of government is a serious problem. Government reliance on pseudoscience is a serious problem.
This is not accurate.
Polygraphs are not detecting lies, they're used to assess your sensitivities; there are really talented interrogators in counterintelligence, whose full-time job is to fuck with you in subtle ways. To poly a person at will is very much a power move, and some guys fucking love it. But that's a different story all together. Most of the time it's a formality like everything else. In reality, people don't have remotely enough bandwidth to pursue stuff like that unless there's a genuine investigation. But office politics people will office-politique.
Unpopular opinion: private companies should poly people more often in hiring, it could prove more useful than other arbitrary kind of culture fit interviews. Food for thought.
> private companies should poly people more often in hiring, it could prove more useful than other arbitrary kind of culture fit interviews.
Useful in what sense? That you can't figure out anyway what tested person is capable of because tested person can believe that they have skills on godlike senior level, but they are junior at best?
Yes I’m also curious. From what I know polygraphs and similar interrogation are for assessing whether there is anything that could be used to blackmail or compromise you. Whether one agrees with the method, the goal seems logical for intelligence orgs. For companies, industrial espionage would be the obvious parallel. I don’t know how polygraphs would relate to culture fit though… watching to see if candidates perspire and their heart beats faster when asked if they have grit and value diversity :)
Well, my perspective is having to do with Ukrainian mil tech, but I believe the same is true in e.g. cybersecurity, and it helps that the newcomers are often familiar with the process. Poly is not for everyone. Now, when you say "industrial espionage" it sounds dandy and fine, but for all intents and purposes there is no such thing. There is exploitation, yes, and it may easily cross from industrial, to defence, to political depending on trade.
I never said I subscribe to the unpopular opinion, but it's a point of contention regardless!
Thankfully, it is illegal for private companies to do that.
Unless you work in a pharmacy. Or you’re a ‘mall-cop’. Or literally any employee anywhere who is suspected of fraud or embezzlement or any “incident that resulted in a specific economic loss to the employer”.
You are correct. The Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988, which otherwise prohibits the use of putative lie detectors by employees, provides exemptions for such cases.
Unfortunately, that doesn't really prevent companies from doing things being illegal if they turn out to be profitable enough. You could use a multispectral hidden camera and an mmwave radar fed into 'AI' to simulate a lie detector - you can definitely get pulse and breathing rate out of it, probably also perspiration..
Sure. And then someone who set that up will get fired and leak the scheme, and nudes from mmWave will be found, and it’s all lawyers and liability.
> Unpopular opinion: private companies should poly people more often in hiring, it could prove more useful than other arbitrary kind of culture fit interviews. Food for thought.
Because what we need is more inscrutable judgement calls in the interview process?
Unpopular because it’s a bad idea. You’re now hiring better liars and scaring away humble talent.
And if you stop doing it, you now have a group who were polygraphed and a group who were not.
> Unpopular opinion: private companies should poly people more often in hiring, it could prove more useful than other arbitrary kind of culture fit interviews. Food for thought.
OK. I'll bite. I'm interviewing with you to be a frontend developer. You have me hooked up to a polygraph. What do you ask?
“If you had the opportunity to inject pig-butchering scenery into our banking app, would you flee the country after its executed?”
“Have you ever used a <table> for non-tabular data to avoid looking up the CSS grid syntax?”
> "This is not accurate"
I don't get what you thought was inaccurate?
I couldn't disagree with you more about your unpopular opinion.
I've been hiring for years and imo the best interview is a trial period doing the actual work with the actual team, not cop movie cosplay.
> whose full-time job is to fuck with you in subtle ways.
And this is a process that you expect to produce an output with any predictive value what so ever?
> it could prove more useful than other arbitrary kind of culture fit interviews.
You could also just end up selecting for psychopaths and sociopaths for whom this test does not function, regardless of how much you "fuck with them."
There is something of value it produces:
The relationship between politics and finance has lost accountability. Would you take a chance investing with just any cryptocurrency? Or will you make the wise decision and choose mine, the first and only crypto that’s polygraphed all programmers for accountability.
I did paint a cynical picture, so please do take it with a grain of salt.
Poly is just one tool, and it's never a solution to anything. What you say about potential abuses, undesirable selection, etc. I agree 100% and hate the office-politique jockeys as much as the next man. In most corporate environments, fucking with people has no place and use, but it's far from only application, in fact it's pretty much the worst application possible. Doesn't change the fact that it happens, even though it shouldn't. I also believe that it's important for many orgs to start taking security seriously; in the world where there's so much exploitation, and where applicable, it helps a lot if your org can have some kind of counterintel function. It doesn't have to include poly, but whatever helps you better understand the people you work with is surely a boon.
That's not as accurate as flipping a coin. It's a certain success or a probabilistic failure. A random coin flip could get you the wrong answer either way. But here, if someone confesses to something, you can be sure it's true. (unless you pass the threshold where people would rather lie that they did bad things, but that's a different problem... if you're getting the same results as torture, the interviewer is the problem, not the fake machine)
Polygraphs must not be used as they are completely unreliable and subject to many issues.
The government does a lot of security theater and campaigns to make you believe that they are competent.
It's interesting to note that the scandal going on in Israel wrt/ the chief prosecutor of the IDF leaking a prisoner abuse video was uncovered in a polygraph test.
"A routine Shin Bet polygraph test of a senior officer close to Military Advocate General reportedly exposed new clues about video leak, prompting Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to order a full criminal investigation"
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bkbichbjbe
While polygraphs are not perfect they are widely used as part of a broader set of measures. I'm not sure "must not be used" is really the right way to approach this. This person would not have been caught if it wasn't for this polygraphs screening.
>This person would not have been caught if it wasn't for this polygraphs screening.
The organization whose crimes she exposed claims she would not have been caught if its wasn't for the polygraph screening. Corrupt law enforcement types love things like polygraph tests because they give them a ready avenue for parallel construction.
That was my own interpretation... but admittedly maybe too strong of a statement. Maybe she would have be caught. That said, the psychological setup in those periodic interviews with a "maybe lie detecting machine" create opportunity to find real issues.
In terms of the details here, the leak wasn't to expose the crimes, it was to resist political pressure [my speculation anyways]. The crimes were being investigated anyways and the video was available internally fairly broadly (and I think maybe externally as well). There was a political storm as a result of the investigation and the arrests made. Apparently leaking the video is was not illegal (though that's subject to some interpretations) because the role of the chief prosecutor is independent but this became more complicated when it required lying to the supreme court to cover the leak.
But yeah, it's possible the Shin Bet already had an idea but just used the polygraph as an excuse/opportunity. While it's understandable in the political climate why the chief prosecutor would leak the video it's also unethical and poor judgement for someone in her role to do so, and then to cover it up. The role of the Shin Bet is to find people in sensitive roles who are secretly doing things they should not be doing (typically spies but more generally people betraying the trust put in them). For those not following, the plot got thicker because she proceeded to throw her iPhone in the Mediterranean and it was found by a swimmer some days later. She also tried to harm herself. It's pretty crazy stuff. Now there are arguments about who should oversee the investigation with the supreme court set to decide today. It's a pretty small/tight legal community and everyone knows everyone, especially at the top. The legal system has been in a battle with the government for some while with the justice minister refusing to accept the last appointment of the chief justice of the supreme court.
Anyways, the polygraph angle is interesting. That this machine survives as a practice in many places tells us something about its usefulness (or at least people's belief in its usefulness).
> A routine Shin Bet polygraph test of a senior officer close to Military Advocate General reportedly exposed new clues about video leak...
It should probably read, "A senior officer exposed clues during a polygraph test..."
The polygraph is a McGuffin. The interviewer applies pressure by psychologically manipulating the suspect. That's all the polygraph is, psychological manipulation.
Maybe. The same can be said for placebo. But if it works - it works.
There is really no evidence that it works, even in that way though.
The fact that the person is being asked to take the test is a pretty good indication that investigators think there's something there. The suspicion caused the interview and the interview caused the admission. There's no way to know what happens in an alternate universe with no polygraph. I worry a lot more about law enforcement that use it as justification for their erroneous suspicion.
It's a fine tool as long as the interviewer doesn't think it actually works. I've seen enough police interviews on TV shows to know that many of them are believers.
Police interviews on scripted TV copoganda dramas, or fly on the wall 'reality' police TV shows?
Either way a great many police are believers in the power of theatre. As they should be, staging power imbalnce, inserting faux sympathy, etc. are all powerful tools with strong potential for misuse which has prompted regulation in a number of countries demanding full recording of interactions with suspects.
Speaking of police interviews on TV shows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgrO_rAaiq0I'm not talking about fiction, I'm talking about interviews with detectives on a show like 20/20.
The way they talk about both people refusing to take the polygraph and whether they pass or fail belies a belif in their credibility. I also know some police personally who speak in the same way but that's a much smaller sample size.
This is still subjective feels.
I absolutely believe that some police detectives have real genuine faith in polygraphs being accurate. I strongly suspect a good many do not.
That's orthoganal to how detectives that don't have faith in polygraph results being "real" feel about people that refuse to take them.
Many may feel that people that refuse tests that supposedly tell truth telling from lying can be ranked with people that refuse a search or to unlock their phones ... ie. that's a sign that that they very probably have something to hide.
> I'm talking about interviews with detectives on a show like 20/20.
These are professionals being interviewed who are projecting all manner of things, if they don't actually trust that polygraphs work as scientifically accurate tests that reliably detect lies they are still motivated to not say so and to project belief, that's all part of the theatre of manipulating suspects.
That's a very peculiar non-sequitur to pick.
Plus, finding "clues" could mean anything, including false leads. If the Shin Bet is resorting to interviews under duress, they really must not have much physical evidence to work with.
This is standard procedure for everyone in certain roles. Presumably for the same reasons the FBI does this.
That is one of the most surprising aspect of the story for me, that a polygraph worked. (the revelation itself just confirmed what everyone already suspected).
My theory is that the new head of the Shin Bet who is pretty right wing and took a personal interest in the story was involved. They simply used the polygraph results as an excuse to direct the interview in the direction they wanted. The timing is certainly very interesting.
It's a very high profile case so i guess the truth of the matter will eventually emerge.
A polygraph test consists of two components: a bullshit machine, and an interview.
The interview is the part that exposed those clues.
The thing about pseudoscience is that it will sometimes appear to “work.” A dowser will sometimes find water. A horoscope will sometimes predict your day. My birthmark has successfully warded off tiger attacks for 40+ years.
No, polygraphs are bad lie detectors/truth detectors.
They are perfectly fine as detectors of areas of interest for investigators to probe deeper.
Yes or to pressure you into confessing, honestly good interrogators can do this without the machinery.
Good carpenters can build stuff without nail guns, doesn’t mean it makes sense to use hammers.
Carpenters use hammers all the time…
Uh yeah… just like investigators use tools other than polygraphs.
The point is that just because something can be done without a specific tool does not mean you should never use the tool.
I guess I should’ve added “doesn’t mean it makes sense to use hammers exclusively" for the HN pedants.
No, because I would never talk to them.
Unless you just never talk to anyone, how can you be sure you'd know?
The main point of the screening is to have a highly structured question and answer session that is recorded for posterity, and which can/will be referenced at the next screening 'n' number of years later.
One could even argue that the polygraph benefits the person being screened, as it provides some additional motivation for them to take it seriously.
The FBI and CIA have polygraphs.
The FBI and CIA still have moles and they often times operate out of the highest levels.
They're like door locks. They keep honest people honest. They provide zero security.
Door locks are a deterrent that increase the difficulty and cost of a crime. If your neighbor's house is locked and yours isn't, then you're going to be more of a target. In that sense they do provide security, but of course any lock might still be defeated.
Similarly, I can see how structured psychological interrogation, assisted by a polygraph, is a useful deterrent. The presence of moles doesn't negate all of its value. Just like having your house broken into once doesn't mean you'll stop using door locks.
The difference is that locks actually do work. They’re not merely a psychological trick, they actually do provide a barrier, even if one that might not be hard to defeat.
Considering polygraphs don’t work at all, I have to imagine that an equally effective interrogation could be constructed without them.
Nonetheless waiving the theater for Bongino et. al. implies that Patel thinks the theater works, or at least that these guys were likely to fail anyway regardless of "many issues". It smells corrupt, like everything else in this administration. And IMHO that's more important than a technical critique of a particular interrogation method.
Good writeup of what happens in an FBI pre-employment polygraph: https://www.andrewwatters.com/hall-of-shame/FBI-SACU/FSL/pol...
Dang so this is much more comprehensive than a normal polygraph. I know the write up says it would be almost impossible to beat, but is that true?
Well the FBI prosecuted a guy who provided training on how to beat it.
Indeed, the FBI participated in the criminal investigation of the late Doug Williams, who offered training on how to pass or beat a polygraph "test." Because there was no actual crime for which to prosecute him, federal agents set out to stage one in a "sting" operation they dubbed "Operation Lie Busters":
https://antipolygraph.org/blog/2016/04/26/operation-lie-bust...
Yes, the polygraph has one purpose, instill fear. It's an over the top interrogation. Level 1 torture.
Yes polygraphs are bollocks, but, rules are rules.
The issue is, if exceptions are made, what's stopping other breaking the rules?
I don't care if he's a dem, rep or maga, rules are rules.
The rule has always been that this can be waived at the discretion of specific senior officials. It isn't done for average Federal employees, and not always for political positions, but it is a thing that exists.
Rules are only words on paper unless they are enforced, especially to constrain the actions of the powerful.
Once they are consistently broken, the rules only matter for the powerless.
There have always been stupid rules, and legitimate reasons to break them. But “I am an unqualified appointee and this unqualified person is my friend” is not a legitimate reason.
When I was in college they did an audit to see if I could graduate and it was flagged that I had been allowed to skip the Introduction to Computer Science class because I got a 5 on the AP Comp Sci test. The problem was that I took the test while it was administered in C++ and it had later switched to Java.
The school decided they were not going to recognize the test results and instead would only credit me with an elective class for it, I would still have ot pass the introductory class. This is in spite of pass all the later comptuer science classwork.
I escalated it to the dean, who told me that while he recognized this made no sense, "rules are rules and if we didn't follow them they wouldn't be rules".
But the "rule" in this case is that political appointees can have the polygraph waived at some senior leader's discretion, up to the president.
I would have lawyered up. But the experience seems to have turned you into a mindless rule follower.
Quite the contrary, it solidified for me how silly the 'rules are rules' thinking is.
If you'd passed their Intro CS class when it was C++, and they'd later switch to Java, would you have had to re-take the Intro class? I'd bet "no". Even though there'd be no difference - except that they'd collected your tuition $$$ for the class, and the bad optics.
My general experience with colleges is that "rules" are mostly for the little people. And pretty much all of them become negotiable the moment that serious money, prestige, or scandal avoidance are on the table.
(BTW - University of Michigan? I know several people who got similar crap from their CS Dept.)
Not the same
So many things we thought were rules or laws or regulations were never actually anything but customs, traditions, and gentlemens' agreements.
Which works great as long as the people in command are sane and ethical. When you have an FBI director who spells his name with a dollar sign, well...
> Yes polygraphs are bollocks, but, rules are rules.
> The issue is, if exceptions are made, ...
Except that "exceptions are made" can also be a stage of phasing out useless or counter-productive rules - as social acceptance grows that Astrology, Polygraphs, and Tarot have no place in security screening.
Procedure has to evolve, but the point I was trying to get across is that making arbitrary changes to let powerful people do what ever they want is bad.
If the rules are bad, then work with the whole team to change them. Don't just ad-hoc fiddle, that makes procedural debt.
Yes - in a high-functioning, professional outfit that'd be quite true. Vs. this item is about a huge US Gov't security organization. Try searching on a few phrases like "FBI incompetence scandal". Or similar for "CIA", or "NSA", or ...
The best that we can realistically hope for is that they'll muddle toward being better, as older managers retire and the org's social consensus drifts away from "Competence Theater is good enough", "CYA is SOP", and "Phrenology works".
</sad cynicism>
Rank speculation-- polygraph is a fake tool, but when people who think it works attempt to avoid it, real data is produced. :)
That's just the FBI side. The Trump administration has, as a policy, that the Counsel for the President can clear someone without them going through the usual clearance process. Some senior White House staff have been "cleared" that way.
The standard process starts, as it has for decades, with filling out Standard Form 86.[1] I see they only want residences for the last 10 years. It used to be "list all residences from birth".
Then, all of that gets checked.[2]
These criteria are not, apparently, applied to White House staff or Presidential appointees.
[1] https://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf86/
[2] https://sgp.fas.org/spb/bginvest.html
Bongino use to be Secret Service, tasked with protecting Bush then Obama, for what it’s worth.
I suppose that matters of how closely the body guards get exposed to state secrets. Surely there is some accidental leakage, but you would hope that getting elevated to the top would require close scrutiny.
From mid-way in the article
Unfortunately, a testimony form this administration is not worth much, so I am stuck in a schordinger's situation where he both passed and failed the polygraph.polygraphs are junk science.
I don't know who the other two are, but Bongino was already polygraphed and cleared for the Secret Service -- there's no reason to pretend that he wasn't cleared for the job. This article reads like a political hit piece and has no real grasp of reality. It also has statements that clearly betray its author doesn't really understand how security clearances work anyway -- most clearances don't require polygraphs, those are an IC and LE thing, and any OCA can grant any waiver they choose to grant. In this particular case if the AG wanted to review this decision she could do so as his boss, but it really makes no difference.
Given that polygraphs are, again, junk science, who gives a shit.
It'd matter more if polygraphs weren't completely bogus pseudoscience in the first place
Sure, but don't you find it a little curious that these tests are being waived so selectively? If the FBI believes polygraphs serve some purpose, why would it choose to waive them?
Does it bother me? Yes. But the real solution is to not have polygraphs at all, not to get upset that a few people didn't get them.
Let's ignore that they're crap.
Person A believes they work.
Person A says "we shouldn't use this on Persons B, C, D".
Pretty major implications about the integrity and suitability of Persons B, C, and D, and about how Person A suspects they have stuff to hide.
(In some ways this is a good reason to keep them around. Even if some people know they're crap, the existence and popular mythology causes people to reveal more than they otherwise would through actions like this.)
If they were using dowsing rods instead of polygraphs would you still feel the same way?
It’s certainly suspicious. But it’s also a huge problem they use them at all when the private sector was banned from doing so since they’re so unreliable decades ago.
I'd absolutely feel the same way if we were talking about dowsing rods or a plastic Harry Potter sorting hat or any bullshit we can think of. I don't want our national security to rely on untested or disproven methods to determine whether people are trustworthy. Even so, as you say, that's also a problem (a big one).
I'd be quite comfortable if I knew that these polygraph tests were being scrapped entirely because they're nonsense and that the FBI is reworking its security procedures to improve all its background checks. As it is, these articles make it sound like they're replacing the polygraph test with nothing, and only for these select few people. I don't like that. It is a human-led interrogation, albeit with a useless (at best) machine. I want to know what's so trustworthy about these people that the FBI doesn't even want to get to know them before giving them jobs high up?
I think that's one very reasonable interpretation. The other is "I really want these people w to come work here and they don't want to do the polygraph because it's a huge pain so I as the manager I'm going to waive it to reduce their objections to being hired".
That's something that companies do all the time, they pay people "out of band" or give them extra benefits or accelerate their vacation accrual or vesting, or one of hundreds of other things.
I agree it looks bad for sure but it isn't necessarily sinister.
There has always been a contingent of people that do sensitive work for the government because they have important expertise but are either "unclearable" or unwilling to go through the formal clearance process. Limited affordances are sometimes made in these cases at the discretion of senior officials with that authority. For the government it is a practical risk/benefit calculus and they still have the ability to do a substantial background check on their own without a formal process.
While it would never be allowed for the average Federal employee it does exist outside of purely political positions.
That solution is to a problem that is not the topic of conversation here.
The problem is selective waiving of vetting processes due to political pressure and affiliation.
Acting as if the efficacy of the vetting process is a point relevant to this conversation either implies you believe they waived this process for these three due to their ineffectiveness - very much not the belief held my most observers, why just 3 then - otherwise it’s a pure strawman argument. Neither option is good.
> The problem is selective waiving of vetting processes due to political pressure and affiliation.
It's all part of the same problem.
When you have agencies lead by people so incompetent that they believe polygraphs work then you will inevitably get more bad decision making.
You really mean it's not worth getting upset that employees are put through stupid and sometimes even quite invasive or degrading questioning in a humiliating and fear-driven process that bosses don't?
I'd prefer they just get rid of them altogether. They're stupid.
Right, when people sow chaos sometimes the random chaos includes a few nuggets that are good. "No more polygraphs" isn't quite "Stop making pennies" but it's also not "We're reintroducing slavery" is it?
Yes, but do you think that will be the outcome? Uniform scrutiny and uniform rules that benefit everyone equally and don't advantage the loyal coterie is not how situations like this go, and it's not how this one is going so far, is it? Exceptions to rules for insiders and the loyal is how it is actually going.
"For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law" — Óscar Benavides.
Nope. The tests don't do anything. It sucks that we require them for anybody but I have bigger fairness fish to fry with this administration.
I think distinction needs to be made between:
* Polygraph “tests” presented as objective, independent evidence for the truth or falsehood of statements, and
* Polygraph used as an additional channel (similar to but on top of assessment of body language, voice tone, etc.) by an interviewer to determine how to guide an interview to elicit information from a subject, including information that they might prefer to conceal.
Many say the same about remote viewing but results matter.
If remote viewing would be a thing, spy networks would not be necessary and encryption would not matter.
If people believed remote viewing was real, law enforcement would say they had a psychic witness their suspect commit the crime.
The reason it's interesting is that the subjects of these fake tests thought they might work and thus they skipped them.
It's irrelevant whether they do anything. It's more important why they were skipped. What questions would the interviewer ask that they didn't want to risk answering?
> The reason it's interesting is that the subjects of these fake tests thought they might work and thus they skipped them.
This is just something you made up. Here's an alternative idea:
You are deciding whether to take a test. The test's results are 100% subjective. Anything you say during the test can be interpreted as a negative statement about yourself, and this determination will be made by the examiner.
Is taking this test a good idea? Why or why not?
polygraphs are federally banned for employment except for in the federal government, so that's more controversial circumventing the federal government's hypocrisy
you're blind if you want to pretend that this specific action is the top of a slippery slope when we're below the slope at this point, Congress isn't gong to do anything so why even act surprised. let's focus on the hypocrisy of polygraph being standard at all
I think many on this thread are missing the point. the fact that it had to be waived alone speaks volumes. Sure they're about as accurate as a coin flip as the top commenter said, but they are theatrics and what you do before, during, and after usually gives interrogators lots of clues about you that they wouldn't otherwise have observed.
If you're trying "tricks" to get past it for example, that's one data point. It's useful for things like clearance investigations because there is a counter-intel side to it, your comms, pattern of live and other things will be scrutinized.
it is essentially a "vibe" tool. Do you look too clam, too nervous,etc..
That said, people end up contradicting themselves when focusing too much on beating the polygraph too. Skilled interrogators throw questions that will cause that. Do you sound too prepared and detailed, answering questions with details most people won't remember? Are you too consistent, indicating recollection of prepared facts, instead of wading through unreliable human memory?
Even without a polygraph, your eye movements alone are hard to get under control unless you practice for it. That's why they baseline you first with simple things you're expected to lie on, and then more complex things that most people would at least partially lie about.
The accuracy of the polygraph itself is not too relevant. If you're hiring someone for a senior role at the FBI, a polygraph is the formality that opens you up to all kinds of legal trouble. it's purpose is to put the subject under legal jeopardy. A simple interrogation will do, but a polygraph introduces an adversarial evidentiary element into the equation.
In short, it gives the FBI in this case the option to say "this guy is acting shady, we can't trust him". Even if they're wrong, the sensitivity of the position requires passing on good candidates if they must. An investigator on their own would have to prove/justify their conclusion. a polygraph is their way out. They've seen spies, traitors, etc.. it's a way to filter people out with a somewhat justifiable cause.
The question you should be asking is why was it waived in this case just for those three staff members? If it is indeed unreliable, why not stop it entirely?
Millions of Americans have TS/SCI clearance, which had them pass a polygraph just fine. The government isn't losing a lot of talent who're fumbling a polygraph. This is a big deal. Any conversation about the reliability of a polygraph is a distraction.
It doesn't speak volumes. It just says that the people being hired had enough status that they don't have to go through what amounts to an initiation ritual.
Polygraphs appear to be another sad outcrop from the same pseudoscience formation as phrenology or witch-ducking; basically theatre to legitimise people exercising power in a way they were already going to do. The fact that it gets used speaks more volumes about the culture in intelligence services than the people who may or may not undergo the test.
Now that we have real time brain scanning techniques I bet there is something way more accurate than a polygraph out there now.
the FBI’s employment eligibility guidelines say all employees must obtain a “Top Secret” clearance in order to work at the agency following a background check.
The furor here is about Dan Bongino, and Nicole Rucker, Kash Patel's assitant
The article goes on to say that FBI employees at the level Bongino and Rucker are working at have "SCI" clearance on top of Top Secret. Back in the 1990s, it was exceptionally difficult to get TS clearance. SCI on top of that must have been even harder.
I guess this is no worse than Jared Kushner getting a waiver to work at the White House during Trump's first term, but holy cow, getting this kind of special treatment really does reinforce a big difference between classes, doesn't it? Any ordinary, non-rich person getting "alerts" on polygraphs would probably be immediately dropped from getting a Top Secret.
> Back in the 1990s, it was exceptionally difficult to get TS clearance. SCI on top of that must have been even harder.
I think you are exaggerating this as the other poster points out. Every US military cryptolinguist gets a TS-SCI clearance. So, while every student at Defense Language Institute was doing his/her language course, a background check was done, and the rejection rate in the 1990s was presumably tiny. And ditto for other military intelligence roles. A certain amount of military personnel getting the clearance were semi-native speakers of a language in demand who still had foreign ties (family or land owned in the old country) but they passed nonetheless, which must speak to a certain laxness.
Is Kash Patel's assistant rich? What does rich have to do with anything, that came out of nowhere. A more likely scenario is that these are political appointees and presumably an elected official wants to be able to get their guy in there no matter what
SCI is not above TS. It is a parallel system to restrict information within controlled silos. You can have SCI access with secret only.
> getting this kind of special treatment really does reinforce a big difference between classes
The Trump admin has always been an example of ignoring the elite political class and bringing in whoever he likes. Kash Patel himself came from a family of asylum seekers who fled India and he got his start as a public defender. Not exactly old money.
The guy he brought on as an assistant (without a polygraph) got his start as a beat cop from NYPD before joining the Secret Service.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of TS/SCI cleared government employees and contractors. There is nothing "exceptionally difficult" about any of this.
I think this is a misunderstanding a lot of people have about clearance.
The different clearance levels are not really an indication of different levels of vetting being done to a person. If you can get cleared for Secret, there's no particular reason you couldn't get cleared for TS. It's the same SF-86 form, the same investigation (well, not that I know, exactly. All I know is that it didn't look any different from my perspective), the same interview. There are some differences in how often you'll get re-interviewed, I think. It's not really anything so onerous that you have to ever think about it, really.
The different levels are much more about need to know, which is driven by potential impact of breach. You don't even have to go through the lower levels before you get to the higher ones. The selectiveness of giving people higher clearance levels is more about controlling exposure surface area.
On top of that, clearance level is kind of more about what meetings you'll be allowed in, what conversations you'll be allowed to participate in. SCI is more having ongoing access to data. Then there are additionally "caveats", which are clearances to specific programs. Each of these things are a different axis in the clearance system, not different levels of a linear system.
Contrary to somewhat popular belief, a polygraph is not required to obtain TS/SCI. You can do a polygraph and that's a whole additional designation, "TS/SCI with Poly," as you might see in various job ads.
The fact that these people can't pass TS is extremely telling and extremely concerning. Not being able to pass basically means the investigation revealed information that the person has a reasonable chance of being coerced into providing information. A simple example: maybe you have a mistress you're trying to hide; a foreign intelligence service could try to blackmail you into providing them information. Maybe you have a lot of debt, especially gambling debt; you'd be judged particularly susceptible to taking bribes, which would also set you up to be easily blackmailed.
But I know at least one guy who is a raging pothead who has had high level clearance for the last 20 years. They didn't care because he was open about it. If he was open about it with them, then it was clear it wasn't an issue he could be coerced over. I know people who had past criminal charges on their records. They were fine, too, for the same reason. It used to be you couldn't hold a clearance if you were gay, but nowadays, people are much more open and accepting of it such that it's not a reasonable attack vector for coercion.
Basically, it means you've got major skeletons in your closet and probably tried to lie about them if you can't pass for S or TS. If you can't pass for TS then you probably shouldn't have a position of public trust at all, even for just handling CUI.
> these people can't pass TS
Where does it say that?
Why would they need a waiver?
Some clearable people simple don’t want to bother with the process, understandably. This discretion exists in part to allow the government to make a risk/benefit judgment for people they deem critical in these cases.
Big companies make these kinds of exceptions for important hires all the time. This is no different.
Bull. Ducking. Shit.
You may not like it but that’s how it works and why. It has been this way as long as I can remember. Same deal when they need to read in someone who is “unclearable”. The process doesn’t exist for its own sake.
The other reality is that no one needs to fill out an SF-86 to enable them to do a thorough background check.
> Back in the 1990s, it was exceptionally difficult to get TS clearance. SCI on top of that must have been even harder.
Not really. I know a litany of people who had TS/SCI clearances in the 90s. It was literally a job requirement for entire divisions of the US govt.
According to this: https://news.clearancejobs.com/2022/08/16/how-many-people-ha...
The number of poepl that hold top secret clearance (assuming its the same thing...) is 1.3mil
Given the firings/retirement of a bunch of govt employees recently, it’s probably still higher than 1.3 million.
Most people just back into a clearance without realizing they need one, and bounce right through the process.
If you haven’t been convicted of a felony it’s basically falling-off-a-log easy to get cleared. The whole process is a charade.
Even for the 15 page "short form", required to get a "Secret" clearance, you had to list everywhere you'd lived for the past N years, N >= 10 as I recall and give a non-family person who could testify you lived there. You had to list all the organizations you belonged to.
Some fed contacted every single reference I gave, my old scoutmaster, and the minister of the church I was a janitor for during college. Top Secret was notoriously more difficult in terms of paperwork and scrutiny of your past.
The article about Bongino's waiver made it clear that TS was a requirement for FBI employment, an entire division of the government, although it wasn't clear if that was everyone, or just the higher level administrative staff.
> required to get a "Secret" clearance, you had to list everywhere you'd lived for the past N years, N >= 10 as I recall and give a non-family person who could testify you lived there. You had to list all the organizations you belonged to.
As a former federal government employee, all of this is also required as part of the standard background check. People will show up in a black sedan and interview your neighbors, all you past employers and people who knew you at each residence. This happened for me and I’ve never had any real security clearance (nor required it).
Just because it’s work doesn’t mean it’s rare. My father and most of his coworkers all had TS clearance in the 90s. It required flying out to Dallas (if I recall correctly) for the polygraph. Lots of work but very common.
I'm really confused by your response.
Divulging where you've lived for the past 10+ years, having agents contacting your references, etc for "Secret" is not very onerous or difficult.
Given that, your subsequent statement that "Top Secret was notoriously more difficult in terms of paperwork" seems to be pointless.
Thorough papwerwork is not the same as "exceptionally difficult."
I've been a reference interviewed in the processes before. It was not exactly rigorous. (It would have been hard to be, frankly... I had no knowledge of them doing anything shady, and they had no specific prior area of concern to try to grill me specifically on.)
This reminds me that I was interviewed for someone's US security clearance even though I wasn't a US citizen at the time.
I was confused that I wasn't even asked if I was a citizen, or that my friend listed me as a reference because I'm pretty sure he knew.
Bongino was a secret service agent..
TS is "more difficult" than S in the sense that is more difficult to win a lottery jackpot than the smaller prizes. It's not "more difficult" in the sense that there are higher expectations or you're held to a higher standard. If you fail a TS clearance investigation, you won't be able to have any position of public trust at all, even if it's just being in HR and processing government employees' health insurance elections.
N=7
There is an entire industry built around clearing people, your tax dollars pay them. Of course everyone you listed was contacted, that’s the whole point.
How is filling out an SF-86 hard?
Maybe what you meant was, justifying the reason to get a clearance in the 90s was harder. Perhaps that is true. Getting a clearance isn’t hard.
The fact that these are still used is a bit of a scandal. They are total bullshit. If they “work” at all it’s by convincing gullible people they work, so they might make someone slip up or confess thinking the magic machine will get them.
Of course things have improved. Decades ago they were trusted a lot more to the point that a lot of innocent people got prosecuted and guilty people went free based on polygraphs. These days they’re inadmissible in court, but they’re still used in the court of public opinion and in some jobs.