Release Ivins’ Lie Detector Test
Check out this WSJ article chronicling Bruce Ivins’ reactions to the anthrax investigation as it moved forward (h/t Hmmm). The article notes that many of his actions might be natural responses to the attack itself–or they might be efforts to cover up his own involvement in the attack.
Most interesting, though, is confirmation of a detail alluded to by Ivins’ lawyer, but never confirmed. Ivins took–and apparently passed–a lie detector test just after the attack. The FBI never asked him to take a second one, not even when they were having other scientists do so.
That winter, the FBI asked Dr. Ivins to take his first and only lie-detector test, according to a law-enforcement official. The polygraph was part of the bureau’s vetting of investigators. The FBI hasn’t released the results. Dr. Ivins retained his role in the investigation.
[snip]
By this time [spring 2002], all of the scientists in the bacteriology division were under the FBI’s investigative microscope, people working there at the time said. One after another, they submitted to a 3½-hour polygraph test. Dr. Ivins "was in the safety zone" because he had already passed his polygraph, Dr. Andrews said. Dr. Ivins was never tested again, a law-enforcement official said.
I understand lie detector tests can be really unreliable and some people can game them. But we’re talking about a guy who, even by his own admission, was an emotional basket case. No wonder the FBI didn’t mention the lie detector test when it applied for search warrants on Ivins, nor did it mention the test in its press conference the other day. Either the apparent results of his test refute their claim he was emotionally unstable, or they suggest he wasn’t the culprit.
Chuck Grassley has asked the FBI for details on any lie detector tests Ivins submitted to.
Was Dr. Ivins ever polygraphed in the course of the investigation? If so, please provide the dates and results of the exam(s). If not, please explain why not.
It’ll be interesting to see how the FBI gets around the fact that the polygraph seems to poke a pretty big hole in their case against Ivins.
EW,
Excellent point. I guess it ruins a good story when ever you have to use things like facts.
They’ll claim that he was so psychopathic that he no longer had any concept of truth or fiction. Sorry to be so depressed, but the prospect of WWIII and the end of the earth in under a decade do that.
Explains why he didn’t make the suspect list years ago.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…..909/564561
Follow the anthrax trail to SAIC (CIA’s spelled backwards), and note the connections to Admiral Bobby Ray Inman and Cycorp:
http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bi….._BOBBY_RAY
Fall 2001:SAIC is commissioned by the Pentagon to create a replica of a mobile WMD “laboratory”, alleged to have been used by Saddam (was there ever such a thing – or was the “replica” created to fix an image in the mind of the military and later the public?) . The Pentagon claims the trailer is to be used as a training aide for teams seeking weapons of mass destruction in Iraq….even though Afghanistan had not yet been invaded. The primary designer/advisor of the replica? Stephen Hatfill.
Early 2002: As soon as the replica is completed, Stephen Hatfill becomes a “person of interest” to the FBI in the anthrax case. They begin to hound his every step -without ever bringing any charges or even declaring him a suspect. With suspicion for such a horrendous crime thrown on him, Hatfill is put in a position of never being able to creditably reveal any potentially damning information on the activities of SAIC or the Pentagon to light.
March 4 2002:SAIC fires Hatfill as a ‘liability.’
March 2002: the Bush administration awards SAIC a massive defense contract, potentially worth at least $1 billion.
http://www.mail-archive.com/ct…..07176.html
I readily admit to stocking up on tin foil the last week, between this and the Suskind bombshells so I guess I’ll float this that just occurred to me.
Could iot be that Hatfill was a party to all of this in a way that provided good cover and the financial award was a payoff for a job well done… the losing of his job and everything a ploy?
and how was he making a living in all this time.
probably irrelevant but it just flashed across my suspicious brain.
Maybe I’m late to that party.
LOL
SAIC in turn, is linked to Steven Hatfill and Jerome Hauer. Mr. Hauer was a director at Emergent Solutions, parent co. of BioPort, which in turn is linked to Bruce Ivins.
Follow Jerome Hauer’s footsteps and see how many events intersect through him, not the least of which was ordering the White House staff to be put on Cipro on 9/11.
Got Foreknowledge?
Emergent Solutions/Bioport were creating the anthrax vaccine for US troops.
Who were its largest shareholders?
Follow the money…it leads straight to those with foreknowledge of the inside job. Chertoff’s “job” was purportedly to track all of the money related to 9/11 via “Operation Greenquest.” His REAL job was to cover the trail. Bush ordered Greenquest shut down.
9/11 and the Anthrax attacks were all one event…and Bin Laden played no part in either.
I like this bit from a WaPo article (h/t TpmMuckraker):
There are now over 100 people known to have had access to the strains. There were 4 mutations in the strains used, so that has narrowed it somewhat. But the FBI will not reveal their actual data or methods on genetic testing nor their data or methods
No spores were found in Ivins’ car or home.
.
There were many many sources worldwide of the anthrax strain and the testing the FBI did is not the most sophisticated and precise.
FBI isn’t really disclosing its forensic genetic data nor how Ivins was able to purify, and mil the anthrax to the poinot that it floated out of the envelop when mailed to Daschle.
His attorney also said, to either WSJ or WaPo that the FBI told him he passed a handwriting test and then Taylor conflated that he disguised his handwriting in the selective dog and pony show with pathetic questions.
From
New Details Show Anthrax Suspect Away On Key Day
From WSJ:
FBI Paints Chilling Portrait
Of Anthrax-Attack Suspect
Sophisticated anthrax weapon mailed >> pros, working as team.
Few good clues on envelopes, little evidence trail >>> pros.
Bungled, botched, misdirected FBI investigation and scapegoating driven from the top >>> political interference.
Now, convenient dead scapegoat, selective evidence released, resist calls for clean presentation of all information. >>>> political interference.
Is this just intentional noise and purposeful bungling directed from the top to divert, cloud and provide escape cover for the real culprits?
The trail is cold, and lots of evidence likely useless for forensics now.
Another “Mission Accomplished!!!”
Chertoff crafted the Patriot act prior to 9/11.
Gregory Nojeim, associate director of the ACLU’s Washington legislative office, said Chertoff’s tenure at Justice is the most troubling. Chertoff was one of the architects of the USA Patriot Act, which provided law enforcement broader surveillance authority.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..327_5.html
At the FBI’s insistence, the White House had already forced ICE to give up its Operation Greenquest program investigating terrorism financing — and forced Ridge to sign a memo pledging to keep his department away from similar investigations. But Ridge thought this spat was just silly; nobody was going to mistake ICE for the FBI.
Nevertheless, the White House told Ridge to back off.
http://www.madcowprod.com/01122004.html
Michael Chertoff, appointed by President Bush to head the Homeland Security Department, may have shielded from criminal prosecution a former client suspected by law enforcement of having funneled millions of dollars directly to Osama Bin Laden while in charge of the U.S. Government’s 9.11 investigation.
“But in a hint of the gravity of his legal predicament, he was represented in court by Michael Chertoff, the former U.S. attorney in Newark and counsel to U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato’s Whitewater investigation.” Link
Yes, the soon-to-be Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff represented a known bin Laden operative. Perhaps more troubling, Chertoff also headed the U.S.’s investigation into the September 11th attack. From the New Jersey Law Journal, August 4, 2003:
“The Sept. 11 investigation was supervised by Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff, head of the U.S. Criminal Justice Division, who is now a Third Circuit judge.”
More on Chertoff from the New Yorker, November 5, 2001:
“Since the September 11th terrorist attacks, Chertoff’s office has become the funnel for what is probably the most important criminal investigation in American history, as prosecutors and F.B.I. investigators pour in to seek the boss’s approval. What leads can we use from the search of a hijacker’s car in Portland, Maine? Where do the hijackers’ credit-card records lead?… For day-to-day decisions, Chertoff has the last word”
AND THE FINAL REPORT IS WHERE?
If you can game a lie detector test well isn’t that the kind of thing they should screen for before you get to work with Anthrax?
Just what do their psyche tests screen for anyone knows?
Do politicians get screened before they can join a classified committee?
Well that helps to answer one of the most burning questions doesn’t it? Why they didn’t focus on him early on and chose instead Hatfill. And that also explains why we need a forensic psychologist to give him a dx of sociopath. (psychopaths and sociopaths can fools a lie detector test by method of self delusion and deep denial-again they account for a very small segment of the population).
The picture of Ivins as highly anxious, with increasing paranoia and even possible delusions is counter to the “type” of personality more likely to fool a lie detector test. One is a killer whose emotion is tightly regulated for self gratification. The other is a picture of someone unable to regulate emotions. Hmmmm. Which was he?
So this makes that lie detector test very interesting indeed.
I suppose…just to play devil’s advocate, we could hypothesize that his alcohol history, and psych history might have skewed the lie detector test in some way, or he could have medicated his anxiety for the test. Psych drugs might change the readings, but I know they ask about meds, sometimes ask for the measure without psych meds and notice anomolies in heart rate.
But I suppose it a possibility.
But for my money, the sociopathic killer comments are the only way to dismiss his lie detector test. But it conflicts squarely with the assessments of his behavior near the end.
Very good information now you got me thinking Congress should be tested and the entire White House.
wavepac
Can you say more on this? I was just talking out of my non-shrink arse, of course, but that was my instinct–the specific set of psychological characteristics they’re pointing to as evidence he could have done it make it much less likley he could game a lie detector test.
Not that I want you to play Dr. Frist, diagnosis from afar, but if you can talk about what you really think was up with him, I’d love it.
Ah, we’ve got to stop meeting like this wavpeace. You are correct about the facts you relate on the polygraph, and it is a very small percentage of the population that can beat a poly that way. As much as I hate to admit it, and as often as I have argued to the contrary in one forum or another, polygraphs, if properly administered by true experts, are extremely accurate. In fact they are, given those parameters of being properly administered by professional experts, far more consistent and accurate than many forms of scientific evidence that is admissible in trials under the rules of evidence. Oh, and by the way, for those that don’t know the history of the polygraph, the absolute gold standard in the field is the FBI group at Quantico. They have historically been the best of the best. You cannot evaluate the credibility of a polygraph without knowing the credentials of the examiner, the setting of the test, the equipment used and physical stimuli utilized on the subject in that test, having a complete transcript of the test session and knowledge of the control questions and relevant questions asked and sequence thereof, and the actual charts produced. The FBI will have all of that, and I will bet it is all clean on Ivins.
(also to ew @ 15 & wavpeac @ 22)
I see what you mean about inconsistency. But, without wishing to impugn Ivins, it seems like it would all be consistent if ivins started out in life psychopathic or sociopathic (allowing him to pass the early polygraphs), but later became astable due to some combination of stress, alcochol, the anthrax vaccine, and/or the psychoactives his mental health care providers gave him.
Though really, I suppose all of that is neither here nor there as to proving he did the deeds. We really are grasping at awfully unlikely straws in an overabundance of generosity in our attempt to make the FBI “case” — such as it may be — make any sense at all. And it’s not really working, is it? Is my takeaway.
P.S. to ew. wrt the h/t: de nada.
It’s possible that it could have gone that way. But doesn’t seem very common. Kaczinski might be an example of that. But again, his history of mental illness went WAY back. It was obvious. It’s not like he just got sick one day out of the blue. There were signs in college that he was not well. He was very antisocial. I just don’t hear anything that corroborates that in Ivins.
And I really do wonder about the possibility of LSD being used. It seems really strange that he would report the metallic taste. I have lots of clients on psych meds, and never have had any of them complain of anything like that. Usually if they have a strange taste it is mild, and it goes away. Not coming and going. That seems very strange to me if it’s true that he was reporting such a thing.
Someone somewhere pointed out that the metallic taste is also indigenous to one of the anti-psychotic or whatever meds he was supposedly prescribed. FWIW.
Remember Jerome Hauer? We New Yorkers remember him well as the guy whose idea it was to spray carcinogenic insecticides, at eye level, from small pick up trucks, in residential city neighborhoods, to combat the almost nonexistent threat of “West Nile Virus” back in the Giuliani days. He was a NYC Government bio-terrorism expert who happened to be doing a bio-terrorism drill called “Tripod II” inside the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11. It turns out Hauer is old friends with Steven Hatfill, the other anthrax suspect. It turns out, they both lectured at the Council on Foreign Relations together not too many years ago on the topic of “Building a ‘BioBomb’: Terrorist Challenge.” Yep, Hatfill, who commissioned a report from the CIA on how to attack people using anthrax in the mail, back when he worked at Ft. Detrick.
According to a San Jose newspaper, Jerome Hauer told the White House to go on Cipro on the evening of 9/11/01. They did. (On the phone with me, he denied telling the White House that, for what it’s worth.)
Shortly thereafter, Hauer’s next job was at the National Institute of Health, where he was tasked with, guess what? Investigating the anthrax attacks. And who did he point the finger to? Not Ivins, not Hatfill, not any of the gang at Ft. Detrick, or S.A.I.C., Hatfill and Hauer’s old employer, the military contractor. No, Hauer blamed Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. Another Democrat reading from the neo-con hymnal.
(In the same way, when Dan Rather looked at the collapse of the towers on 9/11 and on live TV said it looked just like one of those controlled demolitions, Hauer happened to be right there alongside Rather, saying, nope, it’s clear to me right now that it was jet fuel that dropped those structures. He knew more than one page of the hymnal.)
When you hear the media go on and on about Bruce Ivins’ obsession with sorority girls, or his insanity, take it with a grain of salt. A man’s reputation is fragile and it’s the first thing attacked in a situation like this.
http://adap2k.blogspot.com/200…..r-911.html
I am going to repost this here in case you are too busy to get back to the last post you were cluttering up with generic repetitive crap.
Come on pal, people here are not stupid. You have been pushing your BS and repetitive, serial links a little much. If you have a cogent point to make, fine; but continuously acting as if you are some fucking oracle of knowledge and truth is asinine. Give it a rest. Consider this an official advisory.
“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
NPR’s Talk of the Nation reported Thursday that Ivans did indeed pass the lie detector test. It’s almost at the end of the interview.
http://www.npr.org/templates/s…..d=93381622
I wonder if Bruce is just meant to be guilty until Bush leaves office so that Bush can claim that they found the killer.
I’m sure the White House is in legacy mode and next to Ossama the Anthrax Killer not being caught would be the second biggest mark against our *cough* war president.
I’ve seen better frame jobs in the Rolondo Cruz case.
http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/77.php
Glenn Greenwald just did a radio show with Dr. Gigi Kwik Gronvall, an immunologist with the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh’s Medical Center, an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, and Associate Editor of the quarterly journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism.
GG
Okay, my perception of a sociopathic killer is someone who has an impulse control problem related to aggression. (yes anger) but is not in touch with fear and shame. The sociopath often has a lifetime history of law breaking and problems. (but not always) Sociopaths tend to lack empathy and compassion but can exhibit them when necessary to meet their own personal goals. Anti socials have more problems with the law because they lack impulse control. Sociopaths have some ability to regulate impulses and emotion. This is why they are harder to catch than the drug addicted criminal. They are able to think clearly, to plan their behavior and often can justify their behavior. Think of an effective bank robber. That’s a comical picture if you imagine someone with an anxiety disorder trying to complete the crime and get away with it.
There are basically two different ways the sociopath can fool a lie detector. One, would be by their ability to justify their problem behavior to such a degree that they feel no guilt, shame or cognitive dissonance. They believe that what they did was right and necessary and feel no shame about it. (abortion bomber) Another way that sociopaths can fool the test is that they just don’t feel guilt, shame or fear on the same level the rest of us do and so can regulate it more effectively. So they fool the test because they are so detached from the emotions about the behavior.
On the other hand Ivins seems to be exhibiting extreme problems in emotion regulation. First big symptom of this is suicide. Suicide is most often an emotion regulation problem. It suggests that he was unable to cope with the pressures and wanted out of the emotional pain. This is the opposite of detached. This is someone who cannot detach from emotion to get relief.
Now where alcoholism comes in, in my view is that sometimes a normal shame and fear feeling person has emotion regulation problems or trauma and begins to use alcohol to regulate the feelings. Then they develop alcohol dependence because regulating by numbing does nothing to process or regulate emotion, it just numbs it. MRI’s on alcoholics show that most of them have a smaller than normal “impulse control center” and research shows that years of alcohol abuse damages the “impulse control” center of the brain. MRI’s also show that the denial of alcholism is represented on MRI images in active alcoholics. That is that the the “shame” center of the brain goes “dark” when the alcholism is present. That means that the brain stops using shame to process behavior. So some alcholics exhibit a lack of compassion, empathy and guilt/shame because of this phenomenon. As a result when people stop abusing the drug of their choice, they are sometimes flooded with emotions of guilt/shame. (which suggests empathy for others due to their past behaviors) When this occurs is often increases the urge to use and can start the whole cycle of addiction over.
The only scenario that is plausible to me given the gov’t assertions against Ivins is that he was under the influence when given the polygraph. His end behavior suggests high anxiety, possible delusions or psychosis. These diagnoses all have a mood disorder component. It’s plausible that he was a hard core addict and when confronted with recovery became flooded with emotion and lacked the ability to cope. Otherwise his obvious inability to regulate emotion would have been present when he took the lie detector test.
However there are two problems with this. One, lie detector people (there’s a really cool word for that, but I can’t think of it right now), are trained to recognize this possibility, and would likely have asked for a blood test. (heart rate gives tell tale signs and I have seen them ask about drug use and even request a blood draw). The other problem with this is a lack of corroboration for this “alcohol problem”.
In order to be this impaired he would have either had a mood disorder underneath his alcoholism (which would make it harder for him to regulate with alcohol and drugs) and there would likely be reports that corroborate addiction. He would be exhibiting problems getting to work on time, co-workers would describe him as unreliable, there might be dwi’s or other outbursts over the years. Alcholism in someone as intelligent as he is, would be a slow burn over time. If he was a raging addict at a young age, he would not have had the success he did. If he slowly developed a dependence over the years, there would more likely be an underlying mood disorder. A mood disorder like anxiety disorder, is counter intuitive to a sociopathic killer who fools a polygraph.
As to his exhibiting the behaviors of a cool sociopath, his late stage behaviors are counter to that. Revenge killers are not necessarily sociopaths. For instance, batterers who kill themselves and family are not thought to be sociopathic. Instead they are thought to be borderline personality disorder, which has a huge mood regulation component. http://www.sciencedirect.com/s…..23f539a64d So a person can kill for emotional reasons, but these are not the ones that would fool the test. Does that make sense?
I am sure there are other experts who might be able to speak to this better than I did, but that’s my best shot. Something seems incongruent to me.
I suppose you could have a sociopath with a mood disorder, but this type of sociopath would not be able to pass a lie detector.
Was he a rage-aholic? We don’t seem to hear evidence of big public outbursts. The two symptoms that stand out to me are anxiety and paranoia.
This idea that he was a sociopathic killer would make more sense to me if he had refused treatment, or had disappeared instead of killing himself.
Sounds like Bush and Darth
How do you really know that he killed himself?
How can you actually verify any FACTS about the man?
No autopsy.
No discovery process.
No trial.
Why focus on this man…he’s not likely to have done it.
Let’s solve the crime…start with motive.
Well, at least you didn’t throw in a bunch of useless links to your serial list of the obvious this time; I guess that is a start.
Are you the site monitor?
Thought police?
Yes.
I’m posting in support of Blog Patrol Irregular bmaz, dfh class 1.
Sometimes even those who post here regularly- and who think of themselves- and even are generally recognized by other regulars here- as having earned the assumption that they always mean well and perhaps think they are making a positive contribution to this idea mash pit- are off song- sometimes- maybe even just a little- for some reason which is not self-evident.
That’s happened to me here…well a lot more than once. Sometimes blog patrol irregulars are kind- especially if the second double espresso kicks in and you post a self-epiphany.
On my earliest responding comment here- or close too- before Ms E Wheel moved digs to the lake- in my first Euraka Rant- after a little too long spent at another blog which succumbed to the hubris that blog patrol irregulars need to act against- think I had hit on relevation in the Flame Pleak [which I had…sort of…and if so it would have put me around six or seven hundred or revelations & ten times that many insights behind our host- and went into off on an extended soliloquy in CAPS.
Which got the knuckles I’d been dragging across the keypad rapped pretty hard- & not by the Blog Mistress [There’s a general understanding here to try to keep her brain free from having to clean up after aisle spills: that brain is, after all, the raison d’etre of this blog.] but by another poster- not Patrol Irregular bmaz but a someone- actually some severals- up to the same good work.
So plunger: Take what dfh first class bmaz is writing as at least an invitation to consider introspection. No harm in that- it may never happen again- and if it does there are sure signs of a concensus that you might not be contributing quite as much as you think. My personal favorite is if Freepatriot is roused to conclude that a particular poster of comments here has failed to meet a certain standard of forensic or social utility. By consensus Freep rides point on troll patrol in these parts- but has been known to be moved to put the odd stray hopelessly ill or injured beastie out of its misery.
Maybe there is a lot more we don’t know, but if I were diagnosing based on current evidence, I would just think he had a drinking problem, an anxiety disorder, and depression.
I would want to rule out schizoaffective disorder or for a more complex delusion, but we have no evidence of what the delusion might have been that would trigger him to kill people years ago. I would also want to rule out OCD.
He might not have killed himself, but right now, the only fact we have is that we’ve been told he did. So the best fact we have is “We don’t know if he killed himself”.
Good stuff- I endorse all that you’ve posted on this thread about polygraphs/lie detectors- especially your admirable caution in commenting on the particular subject of Bruce Ivins.
I would add a very few points to all that & by inference the comment by bmaz about Quantico’s standards etc.
Disclosure: This actually makes most of my points.
[1] I personally oversaw several hundred ongoing investigations & prosecutions & prosecuted over 140 I can recall where polygraph played some part & defended about half that many where the use of polygraph played some part.
[2] Importantly IMO- I cannot account for how many other cases I oversaw or had a court role in where the direct investigators either were not aware of or neglected to see the connection to actual use of polygraph, or lied or consciously misled the prosecution & defense lawyers & all the judges involved as to polygraph having been used- or in which the question was never asked- or in which the prosecution itself was involved in lying or consciously misleading.
[3] Bearing in mind that I was one tadpole prosecutor that grew into a medium large frog in an average sized pond with several hundred other tadpoles to bullfrogs, the pond being in a swamp with thousands of ponds a hundred of which were as large or larger- well, one gets the idea that there is a lot less reported about polygraph use than could be.
[4] I am encouraged to see support here for the assumption that the overall judgment and individual assessments of polygraph operators as to the veracity of a subject are not admissible in court. I won’t go into any particular detail why that is so: there is much quite readible case law which anyone can access through any one of hundreds of law & law school websites- & even starting with Wikipedia is perfectly sound.
But I will emphasize two points about the fact of such polygraphs “results” not being used in courts:
[a] there are a great many good and sound reasons for that, but they all boil down to the general rule against allowing into evidence any one else’s opinion, even experts’ opinions, on whether a witness is telling the truth on issues critical to the decision of the jury or judge.
[b] despite all those good & sound reasons, evidence which is downstream from the use of polygraph, evidence the production of which is connected to polygraph, even evidence of in the nature of “confession” which has derived from use of polygraph, gets admitted into trials a lot more than I think any involved in the criminal courts realize.
[5] The Big Point: To the horror of some, a necessary component of the use of polygraph is Confrontation. At its gentlest, that should be self-evident: when an operator asks a direct question about something important to the case that is ‘by definition’ a confrontation- or a component of a larger set of smaller confrontations which make up the “inputs” in the confrontation. The subject’s reactions on the machines tracking heart rate etc- and also style of response & carriage- are “outputs” in one sense- but become “inputs” for the larger purpose of confrontation- ie they can & typically are used later to confront with more particularity to the crime or circumstance being investigated. From what I’ve been told and heard testified to in court, it is not at all unusual for the process to culminate in the monitors being turned off and the investigating officers to come into the room with the polygraph operator & the subject & ask: “So how’d it go?” and for the operator to report to all “Well- unfortunately Fred failed”, followed by another confrontation by the investigators which is all on the record and usable much like Fitzgerald used the FBI interviews of Libby.
I am a believer in the sunshine principle but normally I would not think releasing particulars of a polygraph unless the subject consented- which isn’t going to happen here. The two arguments for releasing the one with Ivins that I like are that it might help deal with the hatchet job the FBI and DOJ are doing on his reputation- & it might tell us something about whether Ivins was the kind of nerdy true believing sheltered sort who could be taken advantage of by others- which the is picture I’m getting so far.
I agree with everything you say, especially as to why polys are not admitted in court. That is as it should be. And for those reading this that don’t understand what LabDancer was getting at, admittance of a poly result to a jury really kind of deprives the defendant of the provence of the jury in the first place by substituting a machine for their cognitive process on the fundamental question of guilt or innocence. That would not be right, and is a direction we do not want to head.
But, to repeat what I said @21 above, done by pros following defined and appropriate protocols, polygraphs can be very accurate. I actually think ivins and his attorney would agree to release all the information here if he were alive. And as stated in @21 above, there is a lot of data on a well run poly session. A lot. And, again, I will bet the info is a a lot more favorable to Ivins than it is the govt. If they ran a dirty process on him, that will be readily apparent. If they ran a clean process on him, that will be evident. And the physiological charts will speak for themselves.
I,ve noticed a bit of a snag in the thinking about the timeline and the polygraph. EW reports that Ivins was given the test “that winter”, but her timeline indicates that the Detrick personnel were brought into the case sometime in Oct. of 01. Still quoting from the WaPo article we learn that some in the lab were undergoing 3 1/2 hr polygraph interviews as part of the CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION. Yet Ivins did not, as he had already “passed” his polygraph during the VETTING interviews that presumably were set up to provide clearance for selected scientists to handle the evidence in the investigation. In short, Ivins was not interviewed in the same way (confrontationally?) as others later were, not for the same purpose.
(I hope the use of CAPS doen’t reek of hysteria or remind anyone of Jody.)
That is something we should have straight for the timeline; however, I don’t think it would affect, without a lot more, the idea that the poly is favorable to Ivins. Irrespective of the purpose of a polygraph, it should never be made any more confrontational than is has to be; the more confrontational the session is, the less validity the results possess. As long as they asked sufficient relevant questions about involvement in and knowledge of the mailings/attacks, this timing vagary should not be significant to the result.
I think you missed my point. I take your point about confrontation, and I’m not addressing whether the polygraph report is favorable th Ivins, or not (at least,not directly). I simply gathered that Ivins was not interviewed under polygraph about the mailings as others later were. This (correction) WSJ article describes Ivins being interviewed to be vetted to participate in the investigation, (in handling evidence?). Others were interviewed (I surmise) more extensively, concerning the mailings, and at a later date. We don’t know that such things, as his whereabouts on the relevant dates, weren’t also covered with Ivins, but we don’t know that they were.
It is my understanding that the screening for participation in the investigation was precisely for the purpose of insuring that they did not have the perpetrator involved in the investigation as they were aware that the person they were looking for may be a scientist with expertise in the field. In that regard, I think it a pretty sound assumption that sufficient relevant questions were asked, and it is crystal clear that Ivins produced clean charts on his polygraph. In the first place, if that was not the case, they would not have cleared him for participation; secondly, they would be shoving them down the throat of the public as proof of their case that Ivins is the lone gunman.
In reviewing a third atttempt on this issue, I noticed that I had made an error in confusing data from the WSJ article and EW’s timeline. She has investigators “working with Ft Detrick scientits to identify anthrax” almost immediately after the attacks. The WSJ reported that Ivins took only one test as part of the vetting process, but it places this testing at Dec. 01. I suppose I was assumming the Ivins was in that Oct working group; perhaps not. If not, then this conversation has been a waste of time.
Good conversation is never a waste of time.
Again, I bring up the factor of Dr Ivins mental problems.
The lie detector test could have just been inconclusive, and indeed the authorities might have determined that it was useless to have apply it again to this individual who was as someone say “a basket case.”
You can’t apply all the rules of logic to crazy people.
It is like saying “it is too risky to be a suicide bomber.”