Posted on 01/21/2023 3:31:12 PM PST by Libloather
EAGLE PASS, Texas – Border Patrol is failing to hire agents fast enough to replace thousands of soon-to-be retirees, and current and former employees say overly aggressive and unaccountable polygraph examiners are disqualifying more than half of otherwise-qualified candidates.
"We're losing a lot of people, including those who have prior military service, who have active security clearances, and they fail a CBP polygraph," Jon Anfinsen, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, told Fox News. "It doesn't make any sense."
Polygraphs or lie detector tests are generally inadmissible in court cases, and federal law bans most private companies from using them to screen employees. But taking a polygraph has been mandatory for prospective Customs and Border Protection agents for the past decade.
The failure rates are staggering.
About two-thirds of CBP applicants who took a polygraph failed, The Associated Press reported in 2017. The FBI and Secret Service's failure rates were about half that, according to the same report.
That means, statistically, applicants aiming to join the agency responsible for protecting the president can more easily pass a polygraph requirement than those aiming to protect the border.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
On the side - has anyone polygraphed Hunter yet?
Bob Gately, the late polygrapher for the Miami-Dade Police Department, told me that prospective recruits were seldom without an illegal-drug history.
(i.e., told me, “with regret”).
They are not admissible in court because they are not very reliable by themselves. It is way too easy to get a false positive result (subject concealing something) from a nervous subject.
That does not matter very much if the only consequence is throwing out another job applicant. It is much more serious if the consequences are being fired or going to jail.
I have taken polygraph exams as a requirement for a government contract. I passed, of course. The trick? I was relaxed, confident, and did not have any of the adverse activities in my background for which they were looking. Easy.
It occurred to me that a trained sociopath or natural psychopath could easily beat a polygraph test, no matter what was in their background. They would either believe the lies they were telling, or they simply would not care enough to show any reaction that could be measured by the machine. Certain drugs could probably mask or distort the biometrics to the point where the operator could not interpret them correctly.
They asked a question during the interview: "Are you using any drugs or other countermeasures to alter your responses to questions?" It must be a sore point.
Why would anyone bother to subject Hunter to a polygraph anyway? With his known drug habits, I expect that the biometric readings from such a test would cause the operators to walk away mumbling curses.
Just read an article by Dr. Thomas Sowell, where checking criminal records actually helped blacks obtain jobs. When they were banned, businesses wouldn’t risk hiring a potential criminal so black candidates were avoided.
Got polygraphed once. In between questions I got a head rush, and practically sent ink stripes up the wall. Didn’t get the job, but on reflection it was probably a blessing.
Cartels have a vested interest in getting their boys on the inside. I wonder if that's part of the problem?
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