By Fax Transmission to: (202) 224-3416

November 6, 2000

The Honorable Richard Shelby
United States Senate
110 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Shelby:

I am writing to register my grave concern over the inclusion of a provision, in the FY01 Defense Authorization Bill, that will massively increase the scope of polygraph testing at the nuclear weapons National Laboratories. It is my understanding, and that of Gen. John Gordon, Director of the Nuclear National Security Agency at DOE, Senator Domenici's office, the office of Representative Heather Wilson, and the entire senior management of Sandia National Laboratories, that the disturbing new polygraph testing provision was introduced and advanced by your office.

Though I am a Senior Scientist at Sandia National Laboratories, working in the Center for National Security and Arms Control, please be advised that this communication is made solely on my personal behalf, and in my capacity as a private citizen, enlightened by training in medicine and physics, who is deeply troubled by the extremely harmful public consequences that shall inevitably flow from the new legislation's promotion of polygraphy as a counterintelligence tool.

The FY01 Defense Authorization Bill (DAB) was originally reported by the respective Armed Services Committees (Committee Reports S.106-292 and H.06-616) of both houses, and then approved, without expansion of counterintelligence polygraph testing at DOE's National Laboratories. The Bill's Conference Report (106-945), however, included the provision originating from your office that greatly increases the scope of polygraphy at the Laboratories. In particular, Subsection (c)(1) of Section 3135 of DAB effectuates a new statutory requirement according to which the personnel of "programs using information known as Sensitive Compartmented Information" will now be subjected to testing.

This new, and late-added, polygraph testing requirement will subject approximately 5,000 individuals across the DOE complex to what is a highly specious counterintelligence methodology. The new requirement will, undoubtedly, yield a great number of "false-positive" test results, which will have devastatingly adverse effects on test subjects, while also directly disserving the fundamental objectives of counterintelligence and national security.

Numerous papers appearing in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and published under the auspices of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), have confirmed the almost complete inability of the Counter-Intelligence Polygraph (also known as the Control Question Test polygraph, or CQT) to identify spies, and the role of the CQT in derailing promising scientific careers. The OTA review of polygraphy, which evaluates counterintelligence polygraphy procedures still actively in use today, is the most comprehensive scientific review of counterintelligence polygraphy published to date, and includes contributions from U.S. Government intelligence agencies and independent scientific publications. The OTA report concludes:

The American Psychological Association (APA), moreover, has summarized the consensus of psychology professionals on the question of the validity of the CQT as follows:

Personnel at the National Labs are quite familiar with the research that has discredited the validity of the CQT. Accordingly, any trend in the direction of widening the scope of CQT polygraphy at the Labs is justifiably a source of enormous frustration, and even anxiety, for these already under-appreciated professionals. In a recent review of the effectiveness of the new security infrastructure at the Labs, and of the problems associated therewith, Sandia Vice-President Lynn Jones recently noted that staff felt that the single most destructive new measure has been polygraph testing. Lab employees describe the tests as "insulting," "counter-productive," and "wasteful." One Lab employee has even noted that "if one wanted to conspire to destroy the labs, the best way to do so is by using screening polygraphs to ëprove' the loyalty of Lab staff."

Up to now, you have distinguished yourself as a champion of the interests of the scientists who so often make enormous sacrifices in order to enter the ranks of the National Labs. As recently as June 21, 2000, on the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, you revealed a sophisticated understanding of the inextricable link between national security and protection of the rights of National Lab scientists, when you participated in the following exchange:

It therefore came as a most unpleasant surprise that it was your office that inserted the new polygraph testing provision into the Authorization Bill. Especially disturbing was the fact that your office's introduction of the new provision at the closing stage of drafting represented by Conference Committee review virtually foreclosed all possibility of meaningful debate and discussion regarding the legal and policy implications of extending CQT requirements to new classes of personnel.

While it is perplexing that you should initiate an expansion of polygraph testing at the Labs, with what I believe is a full awareness of the demoralizing and career-damaging effects this will have on large numbers of personnel, it is also puzzling that you have seemed willing, through this initiative, to give the appearance that you may be unaware of the overwhelming body of evidence refuting the scientific validity of the CQT, and demonstrating the CQT's counterproductive effects on national security. Those of us who have come to admire your work as a very senior Senator, and as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, cannot help but question whether, in all this, you may have allowed your own best judgment to be overridden by the self-serving arguments of polygraphers based in the Agencies that your committee oversees, who have been known to pad their own careers and paychecks by pushing for an expanded use of their arbitrary testing tool.

Already the National Labs are experiencing an exodus of the very "best and brightest" you have previously sought to protect, and every Lab director will tell you that their problems with recruiting (perennially difficult in the era of the rise of Silicon Valley) have become ever more problematic since the implementation of last year's relatively limited polygraph program. Among the ranks of National Lab scientists, now beset with broader testing requirements, cynicism is already flourishing, and careers are being ruined. While it is too late to reverse the particular damage done in the current legislative session, it is not too late to begin an effort aimed at fostering a robust security environment through genuinely effective means. A public acknowledgment of your responsibility for changing the Defense Authorization Bill in Conference (perhaps, initially, in the context of an interview given to one of the Capitol Hill news organs), and a formal pledge to seek removal of the expanded requirement for polygraphy in the next Session of Congress, would be excellent harbingers of such an effort, and would, at the same time, help to restore your office's credibility within the National Laboratories.

I would be delighted if, in the coming weeks, I might hear from your office that you are willing to undertake these measures, or, at least, to confer with me and other concerned parties about ways in which the current situation may be remedied. In meantime, I thank you for your attention, and offer you any assistance that I am able legitimately to provide in this direction.

Respectfully Yours,

Alan P. Zelicoff, MD
801 Morningside Dr. NE
Albuquerque, NM 87110