Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants lie detector tests for National Security Council staff to find the leakers that have tried to damage the Trump administration according to a report.
Sessions’ idea is to do a one-time, one-issue, polygraph test of everyone on the NSC staff. Interrogators would sit down with every single NSC staffer (there’s more than 100 of them), and ask them, individually, what they know about the leaks of transcripts of the president’s phone calls with foreign leaders. Sessions suspects those leaks came from within the NSC, and thinks that a polygraph test — at the very least — would scare them out of leaking again.
Such an action demonstrates the level of frustration that Sessions has with those who would jeopardize national security by releasing sensitive information just to meet their own personal agendas.
But, whether lie detectors can find, or even limit, leaks in the NSC is questionable. Experienced intelligence officials have been beating the polygraph for years and are expert at covering their tracks.
Sessions seems to understand that it’s extremely tough to successfully prosecute leakers, especially when they are career intelligence professionals who are skilled at covering their digital tracks.
