Monday, Aug. 29, 1983

Wired Up

If top Administration officials take lie-detector tests, they will undergo an experience familiar to accused criminals, suspected leakers and candidates for sensitive jobs both inside and outside Government. The subject is hooked up to the machine with rubber belts placed across the stomach and chest, electrodes attached to the fingertips and a blood-pressure cuff wrapped around the arm. The sensors measure pulse rate, blood pressure, breathing and perspiration as the subject answers a series of yes-or-no questions. Explains Sergeant Michael McFadden of the Washington police department: "There's always a fear attached when somebody lies, and that causes a physical reaction that can be read." Professional polygraphers say their tests are reliable in more than 90% of the cases if interpreted by a competent examiner. But University of Minnesota Professor David Lykken, author of A Tremor in the Blood, says the tests are accurate only two-thirds of the time and are far more likely to be unreliable for a subject who is telling the truth. "They have no more place in the courts or in business than a psychic or tarot cards," he says. Congress has ordered the Office of Technology Assessment to make a study of polygraph reliability and has placed a moratorium on the use of lie detectors by the Defense Department until the study is completed. Polygraph tests are generally not admissible as evidence in federal courts or in the courts of 25 states. To civil libertarians, questions about the polygraph's accuracy are almost beside the point. Asking a person to prove his or her innocence to a machine, they feel, is inherently demeaning. Says Fred Okrand, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Southern California:

"Lie detectors are an affront to human dignity."

Recalls a Government official ordered to submit to a polygraph during the Abscam investigation of congressional bribes and shown to be telling the truth: "It was the most humiliating experience of my entire Government career." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.