NEW YORK - The Justice Department has uncovered no evidence to corroborate an Egyptian student's allegations that an FBI polygraph examiner coerced him into confessing he owned an aviation radio found near the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001,according to a report released yesterday.

At the same time, the judge who ordered the inquiry cast doubt on the polygraph as a valid investigative tool.

Government prosecutors welcomed the Justice Department's finding, and said no further action is necessary.

Robert S. Dunn, a lawyer representing Abdallah Higazy, subject of the report, labeled the finding "a craftily woven cloth of deceit and deception that was essentially a whitewash."

U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff called for the probe after prosecutors in January dropped charges of lying to investigators against Higazy, 30, a computer science student, who was detained as a material witness in connection with the attack on the twin towers.

Higazy was released in January after a pilot notified authorities he was the true owner of the radio.

A month later, a hotel security guard pleaded guilty to lying when he told the FBI that he found the radio in a locked safe in the room Higazy, a student at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, occupied during the terrorist attack.

The guard, Ronald Ferry, 48, was sentenced to six months of weekends in a halfway house.

After these events, Rakoff ordered a report on how the FBI had gotten the confession from an innocent man.

Higazy charged that he was pressured into giving false information after the FBI lie detector examiner threatened that the lives of his family in Egypt and his brother in upstate New York would become a "living hell."

In order to save his family, he said, he decided to confess falsely to owning the radio found in the Millennium Hilton Hotel.

He said he told the FBI agent administering the test that he gave three different versions of how he obtained the radio.

Higazy said he didn't inform his lawyer, or the government, about the alleged threat the day of the examination or the next day at a court hearing because he was afraid.

Justice Department lawyers pointed out that Higazy did not raise the issue until at least 11 days after he was allegedly threatened.

They also said assertions that the polygrapher, whose name was deleted from the report, shouted and banged on the table during the examination were belied by the fact Higazy knew his lawyer was right outside the interview room.

John J. Goldman is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.