desperate measures
Jeff Sessions reportedly wants every National Security Council member to take a polygraph test
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, hellbent on determining the source of White House leaks, has reportedly proposed submitting every member of the National Security Council staff to lie detector tests. It's not clear whether the polygraph tests would actually ever be conducted, but Axios reported that Sessions has mentioned his idea to "multiple people, as recently as last month":
Sessions' idea is to do a one-time, one-issue, polygraph test of everyone on the NSC staff. Interrogators would sit down with every single NSC staffer (there's more than 100 of them), and ask them, individually, what they know about the leaks of transcripts of the president's phone calls with foreign leaders. Sessions suspects those leaks came from within the NSC, and thinks that a polygraph test — at the very least — would scare them out of leaking again. [Axios]
A person familiar with Sessions' idea told CNN that it wasn't clear if Sessions would fire staffers based off their polygraph test results, or simply use the testing to make potential leakers think twice.
Sessions first floated the possibility of polygraph tests after complete transcripts of President Trump's first phone calls with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull were leaked to the press. Because only a small handful of people had access to that information, Sessions is hopeful he can use the calls to determine the leakers.