Polygraph story includes local sheriff

              Sheriff Robert J. Pickell

FLINT JOURNAL REVIEW

GENESEE COUNTY

THE FLINT JOURNAL FIRST EDITION

Sunday, June 10, 2007

By Kim Crawford

Journal Staff Writer

If you've read the news about the spy scandals in the CIA and the FBI in recent years, you've almost undoubtedly seen critics or pundits insisting that the U.S. "has never caught a spy by use of the polygraph."

Such statements are dramatic, yes. But they're just not true, notes John F. Sullivan, retired CIA polygraph examiner.

In reality, he says, polygraph examinations have caught spies and double agents and prevented thousands of people with criminal backgrounds and other security risks from becoming employees in the some of this country's most secret and sensitive jobs.

In a new and controversial memoir and history of the lie detector in the CIA called "Gatekeeper," Sullivan gives a candid and sometimes shocking look at the use of the polygraph.

The book contains several glowing references and accounts about the polygraph skills of Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell. Pickell worked with Sullivan in the CIA for several years in the early 1990s.

The author conducted more lie detector tests as a CIA employee than any other Agency employee. He retired in 1999 after a career that spanned more than 30 years.

Sullivan writes that he considered his job as a "gatekeeper" in that he and others polygraphers attempted to keep out unsuitable and criminal job applicants and expose misconduct by CIA employees and agents.

But although CIA polygraph examiners had many successes in that regard, officials in the Agency have never trumpeted them. That's something Sullivan feels should have been done.

Polygraph testing is far more effective, thorough and inexpensive than background investigations, Sullivan notes, yet one never hears critics calling for the doing away of such investigations.

Sullivan, like Pickell and some other polygraph experts, do not maintain that the machine is some sort of foolproof, God-like truth machine, but rather a tool that must be used correctly. The polygraph examiner must not only use it and interpret its results correctly, but must also have the skills to conduct the interrogation that goes hand in hand with the testing.

While Sullivan believes the polygraph is a necessary and valuable tool for U.S. intelligence purposes, his history provides some troubling accounts of its abuse and misuse by unethical examiners; how U.S. case officers have been reluctant to accept polygraph tests that showed their spies are really double agents; and that sometimes CIA officials themselves have ignored test results that raised troubling questions about employees such as infamous mole Aldrich Ames, who betrayed his country's secrets for cash.

"Gatekeeper" is a book that has come at a high cost to Sullivan, since he says former employers aren't happy about it.

As a result, there is virtually no chance of his being able to continue to do classified consulting work for the government.

But it's a book that will be of interest to the real-life intelligence wonks, readers who are fascinated by the nonfiction stories of spies like Ames and FBI traitor Robert Hanssen.

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