Roger Snodgrass of the Los Alamos, New Mexico Monitor reports on the newly revised Department of Energy polygraph policy in an 11 October 2006 article titled “DOE Curbs Polygraphs”:
The Department of Energy has published a new final rule for how it will use polygraph tests, claiming it will “significantly” reduce the numbers of people subjected to “lie detectors.”
During a press conference in Albuquerque last week, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the new rule would employ the best use of polygraph technology when the evidence suggests it would be appropriate.
“It would not be used in a routine fashion,” he said. “It would not be used as a sole determinant.”
In discussing comments to the proposed rule, the department related its struggle to find a balance between scientific findings and what it takes to be Congress’ direction to carry out a polygraph program.
In 2000, New Mexico’s U.S. senators requested an $870,000 study by the National Research Council to look into the department’s expansion of its polygraph program under then Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, in response to perceived security problems, like the Wen Ho Lee affair and the missing hard drives crisis at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The study found “little basis for the expectation that a polygraph test could have extremely high accuracy.”
The senators responded this morning with prepared comments about the new version of the rule.
“The final rule is in the spirit of the National Academy of Sciences recommendation, which is good,” said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-NM. “The test will be how the rule is implemented, but I believe DOE is right to move toward the use of polygraphs as a counter-intelligence tool rather than a widespread policy tool for screening employees. I believe the new rule meets the new course Senator Bingaman and I wanted in a new polygraph policy for the labs.”
Bingaman sounded a similar note in his response.
“This is a major improvement over what the DOE initially proposed. Polygraph tests have not proven to be useful as screening tools, and I believe that if DOE insists on using them they should be applied as narrowly as possible,” Bingaman said.
Scholars have traced the invention of the “lie detector” to William Moulton Marston, the comic strip creator of Wonder Woman, while he was a graduate student at Harvard University from 1915 to 1921. Wonder Woman had a magic lasso that caused those it encircled to spill the truth.
The principles of the lie detector, which measures blood pressure, respiration and skin response under various questions, have remained the same since 1938, and became a cornerstone of the FBI’s domestic counter-intelligence operations for decades.
Even after the polygraph policy was found to be scientifically unreliable by the National Academies of Science, DOE found it hard to abandon the practice.
As former Secretary Spencer Abraham concluded in April 2003, upon release of its “then-current intent,” to ignore the NAS study and go ahead with its polygraph program, “(I)t was appropriate at the present time to ‘retain the current system’ in light of the current national security environment, the ongoing military operations in Iraq and the war on Terrorism.”
The new rule eliminates the practice of testing for “general screening of applicants for employment and incumbent employees without specific cause.”
In addition, “The new rule requires a counterintelligence evaluation for applicants for certain high-risk positions and every five years for incumbents of those positions,” the department stated in a summary of its response to public comments. The old rule called for blanket coverage for all high-risk categories with no exceptions.
The polygraph will be required under five specified situations – such as if the employee is chosen for a random counterintelligence evaluation or required to take a specific incident polygraph examination.
AntiPolygraph.org News, an Internet blog that opposes polygraphs, reported DOE’s intention to reduce the number of employees polygraphed, but questioned whether the new policy “will actually reduce the number of polygraph examinations administered.”
The news item concludes, “It is a national embarrassment – and sign of gross incompetence in DOE management – that a department responsible for such weighty scientific matters as atomic weapons design continues to rely on such pseudoscientific quackery as polygraphy.”
The rule becomes effective Oct. 30, 2006.
It is available via the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy at http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2006/09/fr092906.html.
Thanks to Roger Snodgrass for mentioning this blog. A bellwether for whether the new polygraph policy will result in a significant decrease in the total number of polygraphs conducted will be whether DOE begins laying off polygraph operators.