Donald W. Meyers reports for the Daily Herald of Provo, Utah. Excerpt:
PROVO — The FBI shouldn’t try to hook senators up to lie detectors to find intelligence leaks, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch said.
Hatch, R-Utah, said the FBI’s request that members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence submit to polygraph examinations violates the separationof powers doctrine in the U.S. Constitution.
“Under the separation of powers, we cannot put up with this, especially from an agency that we oversee,” said Hatch, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The committee oversees the FBI, CIA and other intelligence-gathering agencies.
Last week, the FBI asked members of the intelligence committee to submit to lie detector tests to determine if any of them were leaking information on what U.S. intelligence agencies knew before the Sept. 11 attacks to the press. Sen. Richard C. Shelby, the ranking Republican on the committee, urged members not to submit to the test.
Hatch said he and other senators are refusing to take the test. If senators agree to take the test, it would make overseeing the FBI’s actions that more difficult, he explained.
“If they come in and say they’re going to polygraph you, how can you oversee them?” he said.
Hatch said it is unlikely information came from the intelligence committee. He said the leaked information was already published by the time the intelligence committee found out about it.
The polygraph tests were part of an investigation House and Senate intelligence committee leaders requested to find out who was talking.