FBI Director Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Three Senior Staff
59 comments
·November 15, 2025puppycodes
tucnak
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.
general1465
> 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?
andy99
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 :)
0x53
Thankfully, it is illegal for private companies to do that.
05
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..
nerdsniper
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”.
fnordlord
Unpopular because it’s a bad idea. You’re now hiring better liars and scaring away humble talent.
themafia
> 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."
KaiserPro
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.
Ms-J
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.
YZF
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.
bigyabai
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.
s5300
[dead]
estearum
No, polygraphs are bad lie detectors/truth detectors.
They are perfectly fine as detectors of areas of interest for investigators to probe deeper.
itronitron
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.
themafia
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.
ajross
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.
CGMthrowaway
Good writeup of what happens in an FBI pre-employment polygraph: https://www.andrewwatters.com/hall-of-shame/FBI-SACU/FSL/pol...
tru3_power
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?
bragr
Well the FBI prosecuted a guy who provided training on how to beat it.
expedition32
Have you ever had paid sex with an underage girl?
BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP
The cesspool that has been opened in the US the last few years is both mesmerising and appalling.
bediger4000
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.
HeinzStuckeIt
> 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.
CGMthrowaway
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
kevin_thibedeau
SCI is not above TS. It is a parallel system to restrict information within controlled silos. You can have SCI access with secret only.
gishh
> 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.
KaiserPro
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
bediger4000
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.
crystal_revenge
> 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.
Scubabear68
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.
gishh
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.
moron4hire
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.
majormajor
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.)
moron4hire
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.
jghn
It'd matter more if polygraphs weren't completely bogus pseudoscience in the first place
trehalose
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?
jghn
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.
majormajor
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.)
sigmarule
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.
exasperaited
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?
tptacek
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.
bogomipblips
[flagged]
dragonwriter
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.
gadsnprch
Many say the same about remote viewing but results matter.
general1465
If remote viewing would be a thing, spy networks would not be necessary and encryption would not matter.
idiotsecant
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?
thaumasiotes
> 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?
yahoozoo
Bongino use to be Secret Service, tasked with protecting Bush then Obama, for what it’s worth.
3eb7988a1663
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.
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.