Sometime shortly after the 1st of the year .... just after she tanks the rest of these investigations over the Christmas news hole
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"Lowell said Barry Colvert, a former FBI special agent gave Condit the exam and determined he had been truthful. The lawyer said Colvert had 35 years experience with the FBI, had conducted 3,000 polygraph exams and taught other agents about polygraphs. The probability of deception, Lowell said, was less than 100th of 1 percent."
"In 1998, based on the findings of a lie-detector test conducted by Mr. Colvert, former Teamsters President Ron Carey denied under oath before a union watchdog agency any wrongdoing regarding suspected fraud in his re-election campaign.
Mr. Carey swore he never embezzled any money from the union to help finance his campaign and knew nothing of a scheme to do so. Mr. Colvert said at the time Mr. Carey had passed his test with flying colors and there were no "indications of deception."
A year later Mr. Carey was indicted on charges of perjury and making false statements during the investigation of his re-election, and currently faces a federal trial. He was ousted as president of the union after court-appointed investigators determined he was guilty of "extraordinarily serious misconduct" and had lied concerning his knowledge of the scheme."
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Joshua Marshall redeems himself with an intriguing exegesis of the resume of Barry Colvert, who conducted the in-house lie-detector test of Gary Condit. ... It turns out Colvert performed a similar stunt for ex-Teamster president Ron Carey, another Marina Ein client. ... (7/14)
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(July 14th, 2001 -- 5:09 AM EST // link) Regarding the Condit lie detector test, here's some other morsels to keep in mind.
In his post tonight Mickey Kaus notes that Aldrich Ames, the notorious CIA spy, passed a number of lie detector tests. So clearly the technology is not infallible.
But this only scratches the surface of the story.
The polygraph expert retained by Condit attorney Abbe Lowell is named Barry Colvert, a former CIA lie detector expert. One of the bullet points on Colvert's resume is that he did the interrogations of Aldrich Ames. Now I don't know if the tests Ames beat were administered by Colvert. But it seems like a definite possibility. So it's not just that Ames beat a lie detector test. It may be that he beat this expert.
But there's more. A lot more.
Back in January 1998 when former Teamsters' head Ron Carey was trying to fight off an indictment and expulsion from the union over the campaign donation-swapping scandal, he decided to take a lie detector test to clear himself. He passed the test.
The test was administered by none other than Barry Colvert.
Now this is a little painful for me to say, because I always liked Ron Carey, but the bottom line is that he was eventually indicted. So Colvert's results look a little iffy in retrospect.
More striking though is the way that test was apparently administered. Read this snippet from a January 21st, 1998 AP story and see if it doesn't sound very similar to what Abbe Lowell said today about the test Colvert administered to Gary Condit.
Barry Colvert, an agent for 35 years who interrogated Aldrich Ames and other high-profile spies, asked Carey two crucial questions about the scheme. "I did not find any indication of deception in either of those primary questions," Colvert said. He added that, "If the readings were close and flat, I wouldn't have rendered that opinion."
Colvert's questions and the questions posed to Carey by his attorney, Reid Weingarten, were limited to charges that about $ 735,000 was donated by the Teamsters to generate contributions to Carey's re-election campaign.
Carey was not asked if he knew that other labor leaders, including AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka, allegedly had funneled prohibited donations to his campaign.
Sounds similar, doesn't it? Highly restricted questioning ... "two crucial questions" ... "the primary questions" etc. And apparently no follow-ups on the factual nitty-gritty of the case. (Carey seems to be the only other high-profile case Colvert has handled since he went into private practice in 1997 -- I base this on a Nexis search on Colvert's name which revealed no mentions beside Carey.)
And then there's one more detail.
My understanding is that, at approximately this time, Carey had under contract a PR consultant by the name of Marina Ein. (I do not know whether she was still working for Carey in January 1998 -- but I know she was shortly before that.) And as you'll remember, if you're following the case, that's the same Marina Ein who is now working for Gary Condit.
What does this all mean? I'm going to let the information speak for itself. But it does make you wonder.
-- Josh Marshall
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