Imagine my surprise this morning when, less than two weeks after the release of my new book, THE CLAPPER MEMO, International Security Assistance Force officials issued public statements regarding the alleged effectiveness of portable polygraph devices in Afghanistan.
First known as the Portable Credibility Assessment Screening System and later changed to Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System, this portable polygraph technology was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq for the first time in 2008. One year later, DoD officials stonewalled me for nearly a month after I asked questions about the effectiveness of PCASS during its first year in operations. The stonewalling led me to launch an investigation that would result in publication of THE CLAPPER MEMO early this month.
As of this posting, the ISAF announcement (shown in the graphic above and as text below) appears online only as a status update — but not as a news release, per se — published this morning on the ISAF Facebook page:
Screening System Partnership Helps Identify Insider Threats
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (May 14, 2013) – A US Department of Defense screening tool that helps assess the truthfulness of individuals is being lauded as a key component of Afghan and US efforts to preemptively identify and neutralize potential insider threats.
In a program that began in late 2012, US Forces-Afghanistan is training Afghanistan Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior personnel to use the Preliminary Credibility Screening System tool to assess people during security screenings.
The PCASS consists of physiological sensors, a small computer, specialized software and a testing procedure that can render an initial assessment of the truthfulness of individuals. Combined with other assessments, the PCASS significantly increases the ability to quickly identify potential threats before they act.
Two Afghan women from the MoI recently completed the training program, which expands the reach of the program by allowing female security personnel to screen female subjects while abiding by Afghan cultural custom.
Crucially, the announcement ignores the “elephant in the room” that is the hundreds of casualties resulting from “Green-on-Blue/Insider” attacks on U.S. and coalition troops during the past six years and, more precisely, during the five years since the initial deployment of 94 PCASS units to Afghanistan and Iraq at a reported cost of $7,500 each. If PCASS works so well, why have so many of these attacks taken place?
In addition, the ISAF announcement ignores what I learned from interrogators with vast experience in hostile environments.
Rather than laud PCASS as ISAF officials have done, a Green Beret I interviewed shortly after his retirement from the Army told me Special Forces operators would “rather go back to the stubby pencil and taking an educated guess” than use PCASS. In addition, the combat veteran — identified in the book only as “Joe” for security reasons — offered more words quite damning of PCASS which I share below in an excerpt from THE CLAPPER MEMO:
One of the major flaws in the technology that cause Joe and others to discount PCASS can be found in polygraph training, Joe said, that involves mock scenarios where subjects are given roles to play prior to undergoing a polygraph exam.
“If you can trick yourself into thinking you’re a bomber,” Joe said, referring to a 2006 PCASS study conducted at Fort Jackson, “then why can’t you trick yourself into thinking you’re not and trick that machine?”
Because Joe used an alternative to PCASS to set a record by conducting approximately 500 interrogations of enemy combatants, suspected terrorists, criminal suspects and third-country nationals seeking employment on U.S.-manned installations while he was stationed in Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar, I tend to believe him more than I do the many government bureaucrats with whom I spoke during the past four years.
I also tend to believe a former member of the Navy SEALs who spoke with me on the condition I not reveal his identity. He cited the memo that deemed the polygraph the only authorized credibility assessment tool for use by DoD personnel — and inspired the title for my book — as a contributing factor in his decision to retire from the military much earlier than he could have. And that wasn’t all he said.
When it comes to the bureaucrats who forced warfighters like him to stop using the non-polygraph alternative that had proven so effective in the field, he said they “should face charges and do time” for their actions.
RELATED: Coincidence or not, this new development surfaced only five days after the Defense Intelligence Agency responded to a PCASS-related Freedom of Information Act request I submitted almost 10 months ago!
To learn the “rest of the story,” order a copy of THE CLAPPER MEMO in paperback or ebook versions from Amazon.
Bob McCarty’s first nonfiction book, Three Days In August, is also available in ebook and paperback at Amazon.
