Experts doubt claim of ‘truthful’ polygraph result from Kavanaugh accuser
Reports about the woman who claims Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her decades ago state that she took a polygraph test that deemed her to be “truthful.”
But experts interviewed by the Washington Examiner doubt the significance of that finding, and assert that such tests are unable to assess at all whether a person is lying or is truthful.
Thomas Mauriello, a former senior polygraph examiner who worked at the Defense Department for 30 years, said in an interview Monday that polygraph tests merely detect when a subject is experiencing a physiological reaction — like perspiration or an increased heart rate — to one or more questions.
The tests don’t, he said, determine whether a person is lying or attempting to deceive. Instead, the results have to be interpreted by the person administering the test.
“The polygraph is not a lie detector,” said Mauriello, who now works as a part-time professor at the University of Maryland’s criminology and criminal justice department. “Let’s make that clear. There is no such thing as a lie detector. It’s simply an investigative tool that will record physiological reactions when you’re asked a question and give a response.”
He said if a person being tested doesn’t have a physical response to a question, that’s not necessarily a guarantee that he or she is being truthful or honest. Mauriello said there are even medications called beta blockers that a person can take to prohibit such bodily reactions.
There is no evidence that Ford took any medication for the polygraph test and her lawyer, Debra Katz, did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner. But little is known about the polygraph she took.
The Washington Post first reported Sunday that Christine Blasey Ford, a 51-year-old clinical psychology professor in northern California, has come forward as Ford’s accuser, alleging that in the early 1980s, when she was 15 and Kavanaugh was 17, he and another young male attempted to assault her at a house party.
Ford “engaged Debra Katz, a Washington lawyer known for her work on sexual harassment cases,” said the Post report, detailing how Ford recently decided to go public with her accusation. “On the advice of Katz, who said she believed Ford would be attacked as a liar if she came forward, Ford took a polygraph test administered by a former FBI agent in early August. The results, which Katz provided to the Post, concluded that Ford was being truthful when she said a statement summarizing her allegations was accurate.”
The report included no other information about the test.
A subsequent story by the New York Times identified the polygraph administrator as Jerry Hanafin, whose website says he is a retired FBI agent based in Virginia.
According to the Times, Hanafin said the result of the exam was that there was “no deception indicated,” meaning Ford “was being truthful” when he questioned her for the test.
Experts said that the way the results of a test are assessed is largely subject to who is doing the evaluation, and that the way an examiner formulates his or her questions can produce varying results. In other words, whether a person “passes” or “fails” a polygraph test depends greatly on who conducts it.
“In cases like this, as surreal as it may sound, people can ask for second opinion,” said James Gagliano, a former FBI supervisory agent who now teaches homeland security and criminal justice leadership at St. John’s University in New York.
Gagliano said that as an agent in the FBI for 25 years, he was subjected to at least four polygraph tests.
Polygraph administrators, he said, aim to determine a subject's physical “baseline” by asking a series of innocuous questions like their name and favorite sports teams. He said then, an administrator may ask more "uncomfortable" questions and that the test could register a physical response, such as an increase in heart rate.
The results might show whether there was a physical response to any of the questions but that’s not a sure indicator that the subject is attempting to deceive; only that he or she had some physical reaction, said Gagliano, which could be for any number of reasons.
A polygraph “can no more detect lies as it can detect truth,” said Mark Zaid, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who focuses on national security issues and who in the past has unsuccessfully sued the federal government to prohibit the use of polygraphs when hiring Secret Service and FBI agents. "So, to say that the results reflect [Ford] telling the truth is an inaccurate description but it’s unfortunately how pop culture addresses it."
Kavanaugh has denied the accusation and said Monday in a statement that he was willing to meet again with the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions related to it.
Debra Katz, the lawyer representing Ford, said in an interview Monday on CNN that she would release the results of the polygraph test to the Senate Judiciary Committee, should they “wish to see it.”
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