Amid Surge in Popularity, Lie Is Put to the Polygraph

The demand to cast an ever-wider net of security across the country has created a rush to embrace technologies that have demonstrated a sometimes staggering propensity for snaring the innocent.

Since last year’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, hijackers, spies and snipers are seen as blending invisibly into airports, public buildings and city streets -- even infiltrating the very agencies that guard against attacks. With almost no one above suspicion, security agencies increasingly are looking for screening technologies that can peer into the thoughts of thousands or even millions of people.

Artificial-intelligence software that plucks terrorist needles from haystacks of unrelated data, facial recognition stations that see hijackers behind newly grown beards at airport checkpoints, and electronic identification systems for travelers are being implemented despite clear signs that the error-prone systems may do more harm than good, experts say.

The latest example in this trend is the 100-year-old polygraph. In a scathing report this month, the nation’s most respected scientific society, the National Academy of Sciences, debunked the use of polygraphs to catch spies and screen employees. The study called polygraph tests so flawed as to be “a danger to national security.”

But even before reviewing the rigorous assessment, a wide range of police and federal security agencies now say they have no plans to abandon the device. And unlike experimental, high-tech security tools that are not yet widely deployed, the “lie detector” is used daily by thousands of police departments and federal security agencies.

Security officials cite a lack of alternative technologies and, despite the report’s findings, an abiding faith that it is better to suspect many in order to detect one or two terrorists or criminals.

Always an Error Margin

“There’s always a margin of error,” said Wayne Jones, a recruiter for the San Jose Police Department. “But is it a good indicator? Yes. It’s not a fishing expedition.”

Experts view such widespread support for a discredited technology as a distressing sign of lowered standards of protection as the nation races to catch not only spies and terrorists, but those who might merely be contemplating a criminal act. It signals, they say, a growing disconnect between scientific certainty and security imperatives in the post-9/11 world.

“A key problem is the illusion of control. A lot of technology is marketed to make people think they know more than they do, and can do more than they can,” said Edward Tenner, author of “Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences.”

“Not only will these technologies be a distraction, but there is an even greater danger -- that terrorists may be able to work around them.”

Intelligence and military agencies use the polygraph extensively. In a growing trend, more than 62% of large police departments test job applicants and many test criminal suspects. It’s an effort borne of frustration. Security professionals are trying to satisfy public pressure to preempt acts of terrorism and other crimes. No technology can read minds.

But there is the polygraph.

Jones, of the San Jose police, credits polygraph testing of job applicants with saving his city from a Rampart-like scandal, in which crooked Los Angeles cops terrorized lawbreakers and innocents alike during the 1990s.

A Ringing Endorsement

“I put a lot of stock into it -- and I’ve been in the business for 25 years,” he said.

Jones’ remarks were echoed by police examiners from Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago and San Diego, as well as some with the CIA, Customs Service and Secret Service.

Yet the National Academy report could hardly have been more dismissive of the practice.

Overconfidence in the polygraph actually reduces security because many loyal employees are judged deceptive while most spies escape notice, the report noted.

“National security is too important to be left to such a blunt instrument,” said Stephen E. Fienberg, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and chairman of the academy panel.

The report found that polygraph testing designed to catch eight of 10 spies among 10,000 employees would also implicate an estimated 1,600 innocents--an error rate that renders the exercise meaningless. When a higher threshold is set to reduce false positives, eight of the 10 spies would go free, the panel found.

For 10,000 criminal suspects -- half who were presumed guilty -- the panel found that to detect deception in 80% of the criminals, examiners would also implicate 800 innocent suspects.

Yet many people on the front lines of crime and fighting terrorism are willing to tolerate high error rates to exploit an available tool to penetrate criminal intent -- and to reassure the public that what can be done is being done.

The LAPD, which faces a chronic shortage of officers, began polygraph screening for applicants in February 2001. This year, of 7,200 recruits, about 2,000 passed a written test, a preliminary interview and background check. Among that group -- the cream of the applicant pool -- barely more than half passed the polygraph test.

One-third were judged deceptive about drug use, thefts from employers and other matters of personal integrity. An additional 4% used techniques designed to defeat the device, according to city records.

“Among law enforcement circles it was kind of a joke that you could come to the LAPD and lie, and not get caught,” said Phyllis Lynes, a city personnel executive, citing one justification for the polygraph program.

“It’s not a perfect science, we know that,” she added. “People who have concerns that they had a false positive can bring it to our attention and we are very liberal about reviewing that.”

Police departments also argue that polygraph tests are augmented with traditional gumshoe detective work.

“We do the legwork -- people’s employment history, their financial history and background. We will talk to people who know them -- family members, friends and associates from years and years ago,” said Lt. Horace Frank, an LAPD spokesman.

Increased reliance on the polygraph also stems from a changed perception of safety in an America where seemingly innocuous young men fly jetliners into buildings. As the number of suspects viewed as capable of terrible crimes has swelled exponentially, security authorities understandably are scrambling ways to filter that vast pool.

They are loath to discard the one tool that has a long track record for the job, despite glaring flaws, in part because of the placebo effect: Some subjects of polygraph testing spontaneously confess or avoid committing crimes for fear of being detected.

“The polygraph is a wonderful prop for interrogation” of naive suspects, said David L. Faigman, a professor at the UC San Francisco Hastings College of Law and a member of the polygraph panel.

But he and other experts caution that the actual polygraph data is unreliable. U.S. security agencies have repeatedly experienced the disastrous effects of faith in the polygraph.

Study Born of Scandal

The National Academy study was prompted by the scandal surrounding Wen Ho Lee, who was a scientist at the Los Alamos nuclear lab in New Mexico. The Department of Energy weapons scientist was accused of spying for China, based largely on polygraph tests in 1998 and 1999 that were interpreted differently by DOE and FBI analysts. In a major embarrassment to both agencies, Lee pleaded guilty to a felony charge but was exonerated of spying.

Polygraph exams have proved equally bad at detecting some of the most damaging spies in U.S. history.

Aldrich Ames, a Soviet mole, became a top CIA official despite passing polygraph tests repeatedly. And Ana B. Montes, who this year pleaded guilty to spying for Cuba for 16 years, passed polygraph exams en route to becoming the Pentagon’s senior Cuba analyst.

Similar doubts about efficacy have been directed at FBI moves to mine public records in efforts to preempt acts of terrorism, and experiments by airports with facial ID systems -- which together have already cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Yet the effort to thwart terrorists is pushing such technologies ahead with little regard to their prospects for success. Some scientists compare the trend to historical blunders made in forensic techniques developed for criminal prosecutions.

Many forensic methods, from carpet-fiber and handwriting analysis to polygraph testing -- emerged from police investigative efforts with little or no controlled research to eliminate examiner bias and other factors that taint reliability.

“For centuries, clinical anecdotes and experiences suggested that bloodletting was an effective therapy” until controlled studies showed it to be useless or harmful, said Faigman, the UC professor. “Human experience is fallible. That’s why we have the scientific method.”

The seemingly anti-scientific approach of police and security agencies is what most troubles critics.

They warn that the justified sense of urgency that followed last year’s terrorist attacks may have dampened healthy skepticism about the potential of quick-fix technologies.

“The police like to show that they are effective, and there are a lot of dumb crooks,” author Tenner said.

“But the smart ones do much greater damage and they evaluate the technology you are using in order to subvert it.”

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Times staff writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in Washington contributed to this report.