America's number one line of defense is going to waste time and resources hunting down disgruntled federal employees. Meanwhile, DOGE and the oligarchs will pick the bones dry of America's wealth.

Not all government employees with security clearances are polygraphed. Many federal employees have a SECRET clearance and no access to sensitive compartmentalized information and they are not polygraphed. However, USIC personnel with TS-SCI security clearances at CIA, DIA, or NSA, do undergo an initial polygraph examination. At CIA and NSA, the polygraph examination is twenty questions (ten for Counterintelligence and ten for Lifestyles). DIA did not require a Lifestyles polygraph examination. USIC personnel are then subjected to periodic examinations every five years. I was polygraphed seven times in my career, initial and then periodic. If anyone has been polygraphed 15 times they must either be twice as old as me or they were investigated several times.

Hi Snoofy: Unfortunately, some of us were compelled to take them because of our careers. I dreaded taking each of them, but I survived all of them. This Trumpf junta tactic of using polygraphs to detect leakers is just blatant fascism and has nothing to do with national security.

#8 and 10: Like you wrote, polygraphs are not lie detectors, they merely detect changes in sweat, breathing, blood pressure, or pulse rate when answering questions. Interviewees are given the questions and answer them 'Yes' or 'No' before being strapped into the apparatus. Test questions are administered to establish a baseline for the subject. A competent polygrapher can resolve an issue with the subject that the machine detects. This happened to me many years ago when a routine question I answered caused me some anxiety which the machine detected. After I was unstrapped, the polygrapher then asked me about that issue. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why that question bothered me internally. The polygrapher worked with me, understood my anxiety, and then re-worded the question which I answered. I was then re-strapped into the apparatus and that re-worded question no longer stressed me.

The polygraph is just another "tool in the kit," like neuro-linguistic programing (NLP) or standard interrogation techniques. No one is convicted on the basis of a polygraph, but they can be denied a job.

Years ago in Iraq, my colleagues located and rendered Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ineffective. One of AMZ's deputies was caught and standard interrogation techniques worked on the EPW-- no torture or polygraphs were necessary. Some of these techniques, like NLP, are quite effective. None of these techniques should be used to ferret out leakers or so-called "enemies of the state."