What is the FBI doing? Since the start of the Trump administration, the FBI has ramped up their use of polygraphs, or lie-detector tests. Used in the past to suss out whether employees can be trusted with secret information, the FBI under Director Kash Patel has a new application for polygraphs: Sniffing out whether employees have ever said anything mean about their boss, the controversial right-wing figure himself.
"The use of the polygraph, and the nature of the questioning, is part of the F.B.I.'s broader crackdown on news leaks, reflecting, to a degree, Mr. Patel's acute awareness of how he is publicly portrayed," reports The New York Times. "The moves, former bureau officials say, are politically charged and highly inappropriate, underscoring what they describe as an alarming quest for fealty at the F.B.I., where there is little tolerance for dissent. Disparaging Mr. Patel or his deputy, Dan Bongino, former officials say, could cost people their job."
Lie detectors, of course, are regarded as junk science, so it's a little insane that the FBI deploys them to the degree it does in the first place. But it's especially wild that they're trying to use them to sniff out who is loyal to top officials vs. who feels allegiance to the Constitution and to defending the laws of this country, which is really what these agents ought to be concerned with. (Regardless, lie detectors won't be able to get them very far on either front.)
