In fiscal year 2002, Department of Defense examiners ran 8,512 counterintelligence-scope screening polygraphs. Of those, 267 produced a significant response, volunteered substantive information, or both. When DoD wrote the report, none of the 267 had been denied access or had access withheld. Twenty were still open.

That is also the last year DoD published such figures. The Annual Polygraph Report to Congress stopped after fiscal 2002. What follows leans on a 24-year-old snapshot, the only federal outcome data of its kind in public view.

What does “failing” a polygraph actually mean?

There is no federal outcome called “failed.” DoD Instruction 5210.91, through Change 2 effective 30 March 2020, permits five opinions. Most cleared workers sit a screening exam, so the words they hear are “no significant response” or “significant response.”

The status most people mean by “failed” is unresolved: data insufficient, or one or more relevant question areas do not merit a favorable opinion. Our breakdown of CI-scope versus full-scope polygraphs covers which programs require which.

Can you lose a clearance on the polygraph alone?

Not on the chart alone, as a matter of adjudication. SEAD 4, Appendix A, paragraph 1(c): “No adverse action concerning these guidelines may be taken solely on the basis of polygraph examination technical calls in the absence of adjudicatively significant information.” Read the first three words and the last seven.

A technical call is the chart-reading opinion. Adjudicatively significant information is everything else. Unreported foreign contact, past drug use, mishandling of classified material: a disclosure stands on its own, as actionable as it would have been in an interview with no instrument in the room.

SEAD 4 establishes thirteen adjudicative guidelines, A through M, and none is a polygraph guideline. In a guideline adjudication a polygraph reaches you only by developing information that maps onto one of the thirteen, weighed under the whole-person concept against nine factors.

Access is a different decision, and there DoD says what the folklore leaves out. The first policy statement of DoDI 5210.91, paragraph 4.a: “Personnel who refuse to take or are unable to successfully complete the polygraph examination may be denied access to information identified in Reference (f).” That reference is 10 U.S.C. 1564a: Top Secret, special access programs, intelligence information. No admission is required. Enclosure 3, paragraph 2.g bars unfavorable administrative action “solely on the basis of either a refusal to undergo a PSS examination or an unresolved PSS examination, except as provided in sections 6 and 7 of Enclosure 4.” Those two sections authorize denial of access, assignment or detail, and temporary suspension.

SEAD 2, effective 1 September 2020, names three exam-room behaviors that “may result in an additional review and a potential adverse security determination”: refusal without reasonable cause, failure to cooperate, and purposeful non-cooperation including confirmed countermeasures. Intelligence Community Policy Guidance 704.6 lists the same three. Neither list is exhaustive, so the absence of a significant response proves nothing.

The same SEAD 4 also says “any doubt concerning personnel being considered for national security eligibility will be resolved in favor of the national security,” and disclaims creating “any right to administrative or judicial review … enforceable by a party against the United States.”

What happens after an unresolved screening exam?

Section 7 of Enclosure 4 reaches only the class section 6 defines: positions requiring a screening polygraph for initial eligibility for Top Secret, SAP or other sensitive intelligence or operational information, or for assignment or detail to the CIA or another IC element. An issue-specific, criminal or exculpatory exam falls outside it, and those were over a quarter of DoD’s FY2002 volume. Inside the class you are advised and results go to the requesting agency. Only if that agency finds they raise a significant question about your eligibility or continued access must you be given “an opportunity to undergo additional examination.” The retest is conditional, not automatic.

Meanwhile the Component Head may temporarily suspend access “and deny the individual assignment or detail that is contingent on such access,” on a written finding that access “poses an unacceptable risk to the national security.” Then the sentence to memorize, and its scope: “Such temporary suspension of access may not form the part of any basis for an adverse administrative action or an adverse personnel action.” It walls off the suspension. It says nothing about the assignment just denied.

A written finding therefore exists, but nothing entitles you to read it. Paragraph 7.d requires written notice of the determination, not of the finding; 8.b confines copies to the determining authority’s office and the responsible security office. Paragraph 8.a sets the appeal clock at 30 days from notification, and the Component Head’s determination is conclusive. Our guide to what a suspension does to your pay and access covers that window.

How long does an unresolved result take to clear?

The best published answer is the FBI’s, not a defense contractor’s. A March 2018 DOJ Inspector General review of unresolved results, covering fiscal 2014 through 2016, found the span between opening an investigation and reaching a decision “often lengthy, taking an average of nearly 1 year (357 days).” Individual investigations ran 9 to 940 days.

That is an FBI figure from the FBI’s own program, and nothing in it binds a DoD component or a contractor to the same pace. The sample was small and not drawn to be representative: 90 case files, 12 applicants and 78 employees, timeliness computed from 53 of the 78. The review followed a Senate Judiciary Committee chairman’s letter.

The finding that matters most runs opposite to what readers fear. The OIG wrote that “FBI employees generally continued to retain access to sensitive information, systems, and spaces while an investigation and adjudication were pending.” Its complaint was that people kept working. Note the caveat: that was a departure from the FBI’s own rules, not a protection anyone can invoke. Bureau policy generally bars SCI access for employees who have not passed a polygraph in a set period, and the review found staff who failed repeated exams holding access “without required risk assessments.”

Does it matter whether you already have the job?

Enormously. The same review found the FBI “did follow its policy of not offering employment to applicants whose initial polygraph or retest examination results were unresolved.” Same result, opposite outcome, decided by whether you were already inside: no offer is not an adverse eligibility determination, so no procedural machinery attaches. Watch the word, though. In 32 C.F.R. Part 155 an “applicant” is any cleared private-sector person, incumbent or new hire, and ignoring a Statement of Reasons loses that case by default. Our piece on how interim clearances get denied covers the adjacent problem.

Why is a significant response so often nothing?

Screening polygraphs are the weakest application of the instrument. The National Research Council’s 2003 review of the science, commissioned by the Department of Energy, found accuracy “insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies,” while also finding that specific-incident tests “can discriminate lying from truth telling at rates well above chance.”

The FY2002 DoD report shows what that means in dispositions. Of 8,512 CI-scope examinations, 8,245 drew no significant response. The remaining 267, 3.1 percent by our calculation, produced 247 favorable adjudications, 11 pending adjudication, 9 pending investigation, and “no one received adverse action denying or withholding access.” Three caveats, each load-bearing. That is a snapshot taken on the reporting date, not a set of final outcomes, and nothing comparable has appeared in the 24 years since. The report’s footnotes exclude the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, and CIA personnel sit outside 10 U.S.C. 1564a altogether, so a full-scope exam for NSA, CIA or NRO puts you in the population these numbers do not cover; no federal source publishes a failure rate for those agencies. And the flagged cases are described overwhelmingly by what people admitted, not what the charts showed.

What if you work for a contractor, not the government?

What follows is our reading of what the sources cover and what they do not. Every job-protection sentence we could source attaches to federal and military personnel, and to the access decision rather than the employment relationship.

One protection is current and narrow: DoDI 5210.91 walls a temporary access suspension off from any adverse personnel action, for government personnel. The line people quote most is not current. DoD told Congress in FY2002 that personnel who declined a CI-scope exam were “retained in their position or transferred to other positions … of equal pay and responsibility.” That was DoD restating paragraph D.8 of the cancelled 1984 directive, which required a Component to keep such a person “in a position of equal pay and grade that does not require such access.” Its successor dropped the guarantee; section 6 now says only that such personnel “may be denied access, assignment, or detail.” We searched the current DoDI 5210.91, DoDD 5210.48, SEAD 2 and SEAD 4 for “equal pay,” “equal grade” and “retained in”: no hits.

We found no federal source obliging a private contractor to retain an employee whose position requires access they no longer hold. Executive Order 12968, Section 5.1, makes a determination that an employee “does not have, or no longer has, a need for access” discretionary and “conclusive.” And 32 C.F.R. 155.2(e)(1) excludes from the contractor appeal program any clearance “withdrawn because the applicant no longer has a need for access.” A denial or revocation of eligibility, by contrast, triggers seven review rights under Section 5.2(a), including counsel “at their own expense” and an appeal panel of at least three members.

Print the next three subsections too. Section 5.2(c): this section “creates no procedural or substantive rights.” Section 5.2(d): where an agency head personally certifies that a procedure cannot be made available “without damaging the national security interests of the United States by revealing classified information,” it “shall not be made available,” and that certification “shall be conclusive.” Section 5.2(e) preserves the power to deny access where those procedures cannot be invoked consistently with national security.

And the escalation route contractor readers are usually pointed at may not exist for them. A Statement of Reasons carries a 20-day answer clock, and you must specifically request a hearing in that answer or you will not get one. But read one subsection past the carve-out above. 32 C.F.R. 155.2(f): the program “does not apply to cases for access to sensitive compartmented information or a special access program.” SCI and SAP billets are where a screening polygraph is required in the first place. If SCI or SAP access is what you lost, no SOR is coming and there is no DOHA hearing; that appeal runs through the granting agency under ICD 704, or on the DoD side through the paragraph 7.d appeal inside 30 days. Ask your security officer which determination you received before you start any clock.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I be fired for failing a polygraph?

Not for the chart alone as a guideline adjudication: SEAD 4 bars adverse action concerning its thirteen guidelines based solely on technical calls absent adjudicatively significant information, and DoDI 5210.91 bars a temporary access suspension from forming the basis for an adverse personnel action. Access is the separate question, and paragraph 4.a permits denying it to someone “unable to successfully complete” the exam. No source we found requires a private contractor to keep you in a billet you cannot fill.

The examiner told me I failed. Is that the official result?

No. The examiner’s field analysis “does not constitute an official result”; the result is official only after the quality control authority reviews the data.

Does the Employee Polygraph Protection Act protect me?

29 U.S.C. 2006 does not apply to the United States Government at all, and carves out tests administered “by the Federal Government, in the performance of any counterintelligence function” to employees of Defense Department contractors. That exemption covers tests run by the government, and it is not the only one. Section 2006(d) lets a private employer request a polygraph during an investigation of economic loss such as theft, embezzlement, espionage or sabotage, where the employee had access, the employer has reasonable suspicion, and a signed statement naming the incident reaches the examinee beforehand; 2006(e) and 2006(f) cover security-service firms and controlled-substance handlers. Whether those conditions were met decides a company-run test.

Is a second session a bad sign?

Not on its own. DoDI 5210.91 builds a second examination into the sequence when the requesting agency finds an unresolved screening result raises a significant question. In FY2002, 372 DoD examinees required more than two test series, but a series is a set of charts, not a sitting, and several routinely happen in one day. The figure closest to a genuine callback is 87 examinations of 8,512 that took more than one day.

What to do with the next 30 days

The gap between what people fear and what the documents describe is wide, and mostly filled by the fact that nobody publishes the numbers anymore. Write down the examination date, the exact words the examiner used, and whether anything was given to you in writing. Establish which determination you are facing, because the appeal route and the clock both hang on it. The 30-day window starts at notification, and no one is obliged to hand you the finding behind it. If the case is still open a year from now, that is unremarkable by the only published benchmark there is.