Dr. Alan P. Zelicoff comments on polygraph screening in this Washington Post op-ed piece. Excerpt:
In 1999, in the midst of alleged leaks of nuclear weapons information from his department’s national laboratories, the secretary of energy, Bill Richardson, set out to show that he could be “tough” on national security matters. He sought congressional funding for a wide-ranging polygraph program to cover all employees with high-level clearances — about 15,000 people in all.
Congress agreed — despite the absence of any evidence that polygraphs have ever detected a spy operating anywhere in the U.S. government. But Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) managed to get the Senate to stipulate two important conditions — first, that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) review the medical and scientific literature to determine whether use of polygraph tests for screening was in any way worthwhile and, second, that the secretary report back to Congress after the NAS report was completed.
Late last year the NAS published its findings. It determined that the polygraph was not a worthless tool — indeed, that it was much worse than worthless. The report said that “available evidence indicates that polygraph testing as currently used has extremely serious limitations . . . if the intent is both to identify security risks and protect valued employees.” The NAS panel, made up of internationally respected psychologists and statisticians, further determined that the test was so nonspecific that even if the polygraphers managed to finally uncover their first spy, at least 100 innocent laboratory employees would have their clearances yanked because of the “false positives” inherent in the test. The NAS concluded: “Polygraph testing yields an unacceptable choice . . . between too many loyal employees falsely judged deceptive and too many major security threats left undetected. Its accuracy . . . is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
Spencer Abraham, the current energy secretary, was faced with a dilemma: If he did the right thing by openly recommending that Congress trash his predecessor’s polygraph program, he would embarrass his counterparts in the CIA and the Defense Department, where faith in the polygraph long ago reached cult status. If he kept the polygraphs, he would do so in the face of the academy’s clear rejection and more than 60 years of evidence that they waste taxpayers’ money while destroying the careers and lives of countless loyal Americans.
Abraham opted instead for a third course. In a memo to the national laboratory directors in late March, the secretary said he had decided to “defer” his decision on polygraphs until “after hostilities in Iraq had ended.” That wasn’t quite true. Just two weeks later, an official Energy Department “proposed rule” appeared in the Federal Register, in which the secretary gave it as his opinion that “DOE [the Energy Department] does not believe that the issues that the NAS has raised about the polygraph’s accuracy are sufficient to warrant a decision by DOE to abandon it as a screening tool. Doing so would mean that DOE would be giving up a tool that, while far from perfect, will help identify some individuals who should not be given access to classified data, materials, or information.”
There is supposedly an opportunity for the public to comment on the Energy Department’s proposal to do nothing. But there is little reason to believe the department has any intention of listening, given its willingness to dismiss all credible science on the issue without any explanation.