FBI using lie detectors to test Trump administration loyalty
Marking a significant escalation in the use of polygraph tests, agents are being questioned over their previous statements on Mr Trump's pick for the top job, as well as whether they have leaked information about him to the media.
More broadly, the tests are being used to find employees who may have betrayed their country or shown they can't be trusted with secrets.
At times during interviews and lie-detector tests, the FBI has asked senior officials whether they have said anything negative about Mr Patel, two people told the New York Times.
In one instance, officials were forced to take a lie-detector test as the agency worked to find out who had told the media that Mr Patel had demanded a service weapon, despite not being a field agent.
Dozens of officials are thought to have been asked to take lie-detector tests, though it is unclear how many were quizzed about their loyalty to Mr Patel.
The FBI confirmed earlier this year that it had begun using polygraph tests to try and source the origin of leaks about the agency.
'We can confirm the FBI has begun administering polygraph tests to identify the source of information leaks within the bureau,' the bureau's public affairs office told Reuters in April.
Polygraph tests are not used to uphold evidence in a court of law but are regularly used by national security agencies as part of investigations and background checks.
James Davidson, a former agent who spent 23 years at the FBI, said the increasing use of tests to question employee loyalty undermined Mr Patel's credibility as director.
'Loyalty is to the Constitution'
He told the NYT: 'An FBI employee's loyalty is to the Constitution, not to the director or deputy director. It says everything about Patel's weak constitution that this is even on his radar.'
However, former polygraphers also said the question asking about Mr Patel may have been a 'control question', which is used to provoke a physiological response from the subject, regardless of whether they are being truthful.
Mr Patel was installed as the next FBI director earlier this year in a narrow vote in the Senate. He is viewed as a key ally of Mr Trump, having refused to commit that he would not investigate officials he viewed as opponents of the president.
The crackdown on leaking is part of a wider trend within the Trump administration, which has taken steps to prosecute those responsible.
The US Department of Justice has already made it easier for prosecutors investigating leaks to demand records and testimony from journalists.
'Low confidence'
Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, warned former senior advisers could be prosecuted for leaking Pentagon information.
Mr Hegseth, alongside the US president, railed against Pentagon officials last month after it was reported that strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities had not been as successful as initially thought.
The defence secretary said the Pentagon assessment had been made with 'low confidence' and confirmed that the FBI was looking into the leak.
Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, pledged in March to 'aggressively pursue recent leakers' in order to hold them accountable for unauthorised disclosures.
Ms Gabbard had also said she was willing to work with the justice department and the FBI 'to investigate, terminate and prosecute' the leakers who she referred to as 'criminals'.
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Daily Mail
8 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Beach city scraps 10,000 new homes and plans F1-style track instead that locals rage is 'dumb' and 'desperate'
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The Guardian
10 minutes ago
- The Guardian
The heartbreak of watching a parent fall for fraud: ‘Dad, this is a scam – have you given her money?'
Bomba wasn't the first, but she exploded in our lives like a digital grenade. She's not real, I told my dad – then in his early seventies. I was in Australia at this time, where I've lived for the last 13 years. Physically speaking, he was still in California – but within himself he was adrift in a rapidly sinking lifeboat, floating in a morass of debris primarily of his own doing. But it must be said before I go further: my dad isn't the bad guy in this story. Not this time. At times, he was the bad guy in other people's stories– but that is another story. If she's not real, he countered, then how is it that we've spoken on the phone? That we video-chatted? I'll admit that threw me. In most catfishing stories the catfish goes to great lengths to avoid video chatting. But my dad being the unreliable source he was, I wasn't entirely sure he was being truthful about that detail. It was a heartbreaking thing to have to break down for my dad. My dad – who had once been a handsome, charismatic Lothario with swagger, with game – now had to be told by both of his daughters that this chic Bomba was 100% not real, not into him, not what or who she says she is. He didn't believe us. Bomba had presented herself, via Facebook, as a widow living in Naples, Florida. She and her late husband had been in the gemstone business, and she was a millionaire. A lonely millionaire at that, looking for love and companionship. She's not real, Dad. I begged him to understand. But I've seen her bank statements. Why would she show you her bank statements? Because her money is tied up in Europe, she can't access it, but she wanted me to know she has it. Dad. This is a scam. Have you given her money? Did she ask for money? Dad? DAD? Needless to say, he didn't believe me. The thing about my dad and money is that he had lived a life of great abundance and great scarcity. He'd been born into 1950's Midwestern high-society, the son of a department store titan, and then – as many of his cohort did in the sixties and seventies, he 'dropped out.' He spent most of his twenties and early thirties in the Motown music scene – he was a talented saxophone player – and in that scene he became addicted to heroin and other substances. He was a low to mid-level drug dealer himself and I am pretty sure there are things I still don't know about that time. What I do know – because I lived it – is that, while he was never what you'd call 'straight' – he did straighten out. He began the long process of untangling himself from heroin after I was born, but he'd never kick his dependence on alcohol and weed – and that taste for opioids would come back for its pound of flesh. He aimed higher. He got 'good' jobs. He started businesses. He achieved as an athlete, and was the basketball coach at my high school. For a period of time he, and those around him, flourished. 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Like clockwork, the scammers told my dad that in order to receive his winnings he had to cover the costs of the paperwork, transfer fees, insurance, and other vague items – that bill was around US$10k, give or take. He paid it. Then he was told that because they'd be delivering the $580m dollars in cash to his doorstep, he'd need to cover yet more bank fees, and the cost of the delivery itself, and various other dubious requirements – to the tune of another $10k or so. He paid that, too. When the money didn't arrive and the scammers went quiet, my dad finally understood he'd been scammed (or so we believed). The FBI got involved, only to tell him that his money was, essentially, unrecoverable. They told him the obvious: don't give them anything more and stop contact. This is where things get really weird and where my dad's fragmenting mind and broken spirit came into stark relief. Now that my dad knew he'd been scammed he was understandably furious. 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At one point, a plan was made to meet in a park after dark where, apparently, they were going to give him money. To this day I'm unsure as to whether my dad did, indeed, go to a park at night, wander around in his painful gait, confused, ashamed and angry, his pants too big for his dwindling frame – an image that cuts me to the bone. I was so angry with him. He was honest with me about not having cut communication – and then he relayed the fact that they were, again, asking him for money. It was, essentially, to cover the same kinds of fake costs that he'd already paid. But this time, he was sure they were going to make him whole. So he gave them the rest. All of it. Every last cent. In the last week of his life he was texting friends and family asking for $300 to send to the scammers for the petrol they said they needed to drive him his millions. In the last days, he was, quite literally, penniless. A few days after my dad died the scammers found my sister and me. We typed our outrage into the ether, screamed into the void, told them that they had blood on their hands – but we know that there was not a single person on the other end of that message. There are whole fleets. My dad was likely talking to multiple people – many of whom are probably living their own tragedies, in service of traffickers. Knowing that our experience wasn't uncommon was a cold comfort. We knew we weren't the only adult children grappling with the devastating fallout of financial scams. The scammers my dad encountered were not sophisticated, he suspended his own disbelief wilfully. But many scammers are sophisticated – their scams don't have spelling errors and inconsistencies. With AI, they are getting harder and harder for people to detect. Especially people who aren't tech savvy. As their children and loved ones, talking to them about changing their passwords and not clicking on links feels like the epitome of taking a knife to a gun fight. Financial scams aren't the only scams – I've come to see the other 'scams' that, over time, chipped away at my dad. Fox News convinced him that all of his many troubles could be blamed on immigrants, feminism, China … others. The Maga cult that conned him into thinking that Donald Trump would usher in a new era of success aimed at those who most needed it. The big pharma scam that told my dad that he could manage OxyContin – even though he'd told them he couldn't. These days, I've come to fear that the entire American project is a scam. The call is no longer only coming from shadowy figures on Facebook, it's coming from inside the house – the White House – with the President himself hawking gold bibles and bizarre coins and EFTs. My dad fell for all of that, too. There is a character in my new novel, Mother Tongue, named Eric. Eric has fallen for the Maga scam, for the Fox News scam, the Christian Patriarchy scam … but he goes down a far, far darker path than my dad did. Creating Eric was cathartic, as was creating his daughter, Jenny – who, like my sister and me, felt the sting of knowing that her father's view of the world, of women, of humanity, was so painfully distant from her own – and that it was a worldview that, if realised to its fullest potential, would cost her dearly. When I first began to draft the character of Eric, I thought I was writing about something rare, drawn from the distinct and precise experiences I'd had with my own dad. By the time I finished, it was clear that I was writing about something many children are grappling with when it comes to their susceptible parents, and my heart breaks for them, too. Mother Tongue by Naima Brown (Pan MacMillan, $16.99) is out now
BBC News
10 minutes ago
- BBC News
EU and US agree trade deal, with 15% tariffs for European exports to America
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