Based solely on distortions made by examiners during my polygraph at the NSA in March of 2000, the FBI had initiated an investigation of me for possible espionage with Taiwan. The investigation took close to a year, and cost quite a bit of money and valuable time and agent resources. The case was found to be baseless, and was finally closed with a phonecon between myself with the FBI's Honolulu office nearly a year after the investigation had started! If only they had called me earlier, I could have cleared up the matter with them, and saved the taxpayers $$!



As for the "distortions". I served 20 years as a military linguist (Mandarin Chinese). Two years before retiring (still on active duty) I attended a seminar in Taiwan. My command knew all about it (they even wanted to pay for it due to the language training value). Anyway, I had to go to the Taiwan Coordination Counsel in Honolulu to apply to attend the seminar, get a visa..etc. During one of the trips I got to chatting with the Officer-in-Charge. It's not often I got to practice my chinese with a native speaker. Anyway, he ended up suckering me into translating for free (Chinese to English) a 20 page directive just faxed in from Taipei which set forth new rules for americans wanting to work in Taiwan. I guess he was too cheap to pay a actual translation service!



He asked me if I would be interested in working for them part time. Since I was still on active duty, I had to decline. The job would have entailed acting as a liaison between the local community and the Taiwan office. Pretty innocuous, and a valid need on their part. They can easily communicate with me since I am bilingual, and of course, being an american, I can communicate better with locals coming into their office. But not so innocent according to the ever vigilant dickhead polygraphers at the NSA who see a spy behind every bush...



During my polygraph, the examiner claimed I was being "deceptive" on the "foreign contacts" question. I told them all about the above contact with Taiwan. They evidently didn't buy it, convinced their polygraphic contraption was indicating I was spying for taiwan. I failed the test, and an FBI investigation was initiated!



I post this as an example of how information volunteeered during a polygraph can be distorted. It is amazing, and a bit funny, that they would waste the FBI's resources and time on such nonesense!



TC