In Case You Missed It: Truth, Health & Jobs

In case you missed them yesterday, below are three of the many subjects covered yesterday at Bob McCarty Writes:

• Officials at the National Institute for Truth Verification issued a news release yesterday, citing two posts I published last week about the U.S. military’s use of portable lie detectors in combat. Read all about it here.

• President Barack Obama met with a group of what the White House calls “health care reform stakeholders.” Click here to learn more.
  

• President Barack Obama’s 2010 budget proposal makes it appear he’s ready, willing and able to bury Americans in new taxes, place the nation’s energy security in peril and put six-million American jobs at risk. Details here.

If Not for Memo, Torture Might Not Be Issue (Part 2)

By Bob McCarty

Despite the overwhelming success of the Computer Voice Stress Analyzer® while it was used by the U.S. military from 2002-2008, a small group within the Department of Defense bureaucracy — namely the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment (formerly known as the DoD Polygraph Institute) — has used its position and influence to block the use of this portable lie detector in combat zones by the military services. According to a man with a “chip” in the game, their actions are “doing great damage to our national security by keeping it from the war fighters who need it the most.”

Today, I offer a dozen pieces of evidence that reach across DoD to make a solid argument supporting CVSA® as a better tool than the Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System, a cousin to the traditional polygraph, that was designated the “only approved credibility assessment technologies” in the Department of Defense when Under Secretary of Defense James R. Clapper Jr.’s signed a memo to that effect Oct. 29, 2007.

Read all about it in the second in a series of copyrighted articles at Bob McCarty Writes.

If Not for Memo, Torture Might Not Be An Issue

The question of whether members of the U.S. military and intelligence communities should be allowed to use waterboarding and other forms of torture during interrogations might be largely irrelevant today if not for a memo signed by Under Secretary of Defense James R. Clapper Jr. Oct. 29, 2007.

On that day, Clapper issued a memo granting “Operational Approval of the Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System (PCASS)” and designating the polygraph and its cousin, the PCASS, as the “only approved credibility assessment technologies” in the Department of Defense. And that's where the problems begin.

Click here to read the complete copyrighted story, If Not for Memo, Torture Might Not Be An Issue, at Bob McCarty Writes.

Will Military Continue Stonewalling on Lie Detector?

Nearly two weeks have passed since I published a post (”Is Tech ‘Turf War’ Putting U.S. Troops at Risk“) about my attempts to learn about the effectiveness — or lack thereof — of the military’s use of the Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System. Today, I wonder if officials at U.S. Central Command will continue the Army’s practice of stonewalling me when it comes to answering questions about the use of the hand-held lie detectors in combat zones.

The subject is important to me, especially when I consider a note received from an active-duty member of the Special Operations community who’s obviously familiar with the issues at stake:

“The bottom line is that the upper levels of command owe us a product that works. The CVSA has been tested under combat conditions and truly works! What more proof do they want?”*

To read the long and twisted chronicle of this former Air Force public affairs officer's attempt to get answers from the military, click here.