Lisa Friedman of the Tri-Valley Herald Washington Bureau reports. Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — Federal lawmakers and lab weapons scientists said Tuesday they are disappointed with Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham for disregarding an 18-month, $800,000 study by the nation’s top scientists that found polygraph testing does not work.
“It shows how bankrupt they are,” said Livermore thermonuclear bomb designer David Dearborn. “They’re under pressure to do something — they want to do anything — and so they keep this test that (the National Academy of Sciences) says doesn’t work. It’s gross stupidity.”
U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, said she was shocked by Abraham’s formal decision this week to continue subjecting nuclear weapons scientists and intelligence analysts to lie detector tests.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. said, “This is definitely not the more focused polygraph policy I had hoped DOE and the NNSA would develop.”
Both Tauscher and Domenici, who represent districts that are homes to Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories, respectively — where thousands of employees have been and will be ordered to take lie detector tests — urged Abraham to reconsider his stance.
Tauscher on Tuesday wrote a letter to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter asking for a hearing on the issue.
“Polygraph testing can be useful for specific investigative purposes, but cannot be effectively used on a widespread basis,” Tauscher said. “I continue to fear that the widespread use of polygraphs only promotes a false sense of security and does nothing to foster good science at the labs.”
The Energy Department requested the National Academy of Sciences study and Congress ordered the agency to consider its finding in deciding whether to keep or change its longstanding policy of using polygraphs as a way to ferret out spies and other national security breaches.
In its 310-page report, a panel of scientists found that the research supporting lie detector tests is weak, and the tool tarnishes innocent workers as spies while letting actual saboteurs slip through undetected.
“The DOE has essentially disregarded congressional direction,” said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists.
“There might as well have been no National Academy of Sciences study because it led to no change in policy,” he said.
Energy Department spokesman Jeanne Lopatto defended the agency’s decision to reject the report.
“Congress’ requirement was that we take it into consideration and we fulfilled that requirement,” Lopatto said.
In its proposed rule, the Energy Department said it had no choice but to keep using the test, particularly now “when the United States is engaged in hostilities precisely in order to address the potentially disastrous consequences that may flow from weapons of mass destruction falling into the wrong hands.”
The agency, officials wrote, “is under a particular obligation to make sure that no action that it takes be susceptible to misinterpretation as a relaxation of controls over information concerning these kinds of weap-ons.”
Scientists were annoyed that officials justified Abraham’s decision using based on the “the current national security environment” and the war on terrorism. Said Dearborn: “If you like people who come up with non sequiturs, that works. But what the polygraph was for was to find people engaged in spying, and it’s ineffective for that.”
Stephen Fienberg, who chaired the NAS panel, acknowledged the Energy Department’s political bind.
“It’s a high-anxiety time,” Fienberg said. But, he added, “I think this is a misguided policy. It ignores the content of our report, it actually makes erroneous statements about what we concluded and didn’t conclude.”