Polygraph examinations performed by United States Federal Government agencies cost American tax payers billions of dollars annually, and have been proven to be ineffective at detecting deception.
The practice of completing mandatory polygraph examinations for applicants and long-time employees of the intelligence community should be eliminated in an effort to reduce overall operating costs. If comprehensive background investigations on applicants and long-time employees are not enough to determine the trustworthiness of the subject in question, then the entire security clearance process needs to be restructured to eliminate billions of dollars of fraud, waste, and abuse of American tax payer dollars.