A bill passed by the Senate last month would require U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to administer polygraph tests to all applicants for law enforcement positions within the agency.
The move was prompted by reports (originally in the New York Times) and testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee that Mexican drug trafficking organizations were attempting to infiltrate the Customs and Border Protection agency by sending drug traffickers to take the entrance examination.
The CBP argued that polygraph testing of job applicants offered the most effective response, a Senate Committee report on the bill explained.
“According to CBP, less than one percent of applicants who are cleared by a polygraph examination subsequently fail the required single scope background investigation (SSBI) [for a security clearance], while roughly 22% of applicants who are not subjected to polygraph investigations fail the SSBI.”
“Because SSBIs cost an average of $3,200, CBP believes that expanding the use of polygraph examinations would cut down on failed investigations and create a more streamlined and cost-effective process for bringing new applicants on board.” See “Anti-Border Corruption Act of 2010,” Senate Report 111-338, September 29, 2010.
The bill has been referred to the House of Representatives, where it remains pending.
Polygraph testing of CBP applicants already seems to have paid some dividends. Last week, one job applicant was arrested following a polygraph test in which he confessed to an unrelated crime, the Florida Sun-Sentinel reported October 21.
But CBP reliance on the polygraph is unwise, said critic George Maschke, because “polygraphy is highly vulnerable to countermeasures, and members of criminal enterprises seeking to infiltrate CBP will likely fool the lie detector.”
A lack of sustained federal funding, deteriorating research infrastructure and networks, restrictive immigration policies, and waning international collaboration are driving this erosion into a full-scale “American Brain Drain.”
With 2000 nuclear weapons on alert, far more powerful than the first bomb tested in the Jornada Del Muerto during the Trinity Test 80 years ago, our world has been fundamentally altered.
As the United States continues nuclear modernization on all legs of its nuclear triad through the creation of new variants of warheads, missiles, and delivery platforms, examining the effects of nuclear weapons production on the public is ever more pressing.
“The first rule of government transformation is: there are a lot of rules. And there should be-ish. But we don’t need to wait for permission to rewrite them. Let’s go fix and build some things and show how it’s done.”