Did they fail the polygraph? Or were they told they failed a sham polygraph in the hopes that they would confess their crimes afterwards? The police do this tactic often; if you are suspected of a crime, never consent to a polygraph not done by a neutral party no matter how not guilty you are, or you will probably "fail."
(Polygraphs are pseudoscientific BS in the first place, but I know there are some cases where you must undergo them for whatever reason.)
Yes, its all part of the game. The failures are real, but the reasons might be BS. In any case, you have to do another poly and now the stakes are higher. Its hard to understand the stress around the process without experiencing it. Passing the poly is a very important step in be able to get/keep your clearance so you can actually work. Otherwise you need a new profession. I miss the work itself but I dont miss the process.
EDIT: I'm not aware of any polys leading to discovering enemies of the state. Its all self-elected information from my understanding, in line with your suggestion.
You may remember the Aldredge Ames spy case some years back. Supposedly, his CIA polys revealed some strange results but rather call him on it and investigate it further, they shuffled him off to the FBI, still holding his clearances and accesses where he continued to pass classified information to the russians for several more years.
Polys are not the end-all for detecting bad guys but if you choose to ignore it anyway, it certainly becomes useless.
I think thats basically an indictment of the system. They are so unreliable that even the practitioners dont believe what it says as a scientific tool.
I hadn't heard of the Ames poly history but I just looked it up and its interesting because apparently he had the same mindset that I do about polys in general [1], and basically when the poly tech said during the interview that they were getting some weird results, he essentially told them the same thing [2] and they were like "yeah youre right" lol.
Actually I just found one of the primary sources on this [1]. Its pretty interesting and not what I said above.
In his original 1986 poly, he popped on one question but basically smooth talked his way out of it so it never was something that required followup (i.e. they were sufficiently convinced he was a good guy). In the 1991 poly it gets more interesting because the entire poly was partially a ruse because he was _already under investigation_. Due to timing, the interviewer didn't get coached to dig in on specifics around financial issues, and so they followed a bog-standard interview which Ames passed. The really interesting quote around this is how the postmortum basically says this was a bad poly because they didnt play enough mind games to get him nervous in the first place:
In its review of the Ames polygraphs, the CIA IG report quotes several current and former polygraph examiners who stated that the Ames case should not be considered to be a polygraph "chart interpretation" problem. Rather, they say, the fundamental problem is that the 1986 and 1991 polygraph charts were invalid because the examiner in each case failed to establish a proper psychological atmosphere in the examination sessions. A former polygrapher noted that without proper preparation, a subject has no fear of detection and, without fear of detection, the subject will not necessarily demonstrate the proper physiological response. Consequently, they surmise, the Ames polygraph tests were invalid because the process was flawed by examiners who had not establish the proper psychological mind set in Ames because they were overly friendly. As a result, Ames's physiological reactions were unreliable.
Interesting because I thought the exam had to follow a script, to the letter. I would have believed that "setting a proper psychological atmosphere" would have showed up at step #1 or #2. Apparently not.
(Polygraphs are pseudoscientific BS in the first place, but I know there are some cases where you must undergo them for whatever reason.)