{"id":4150,"date":"2004-03-11T15:00:28","date_gmt":"2004-03-11T20:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/?p=4150"},"modified":"2021-03-20T15:12:22","modified_gmt":"2021-03-20T20:12:22","slug":"the-polygraph-vs-national-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/2004\/03\/11\/the-polygraph-vs-national-security\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Polygraph vs. National Security”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n

Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy<\/a> comments<\/a> in his Secrecy News<\/a> e-mail publication: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE POLYGRAPH VS. NATIONAL SECURITY<\/p>

As a technology for counterintelligence security screening, the polygraph has been a spectacular failure. It is hard to recall the last time that polygraph screening uncovered an actual spy, and easy to think of spies who had no difficulty escaping its clutches.<\/p>

But U.S. government polygraph policy continues to penalize innocent individuals, and those who presume to challenge that policy.<\/p>

Alan P. Zelicoff, a distinguished physician and expert on biological weapons arms control, was driven to resign his position as Senior Scientist at Sandia National Laboratories last year as a consequence of his outspoken criticism of polygraph testing.<\/p>

For his diverse technical contributions, Zelicoff had been awarded Sandia’s Meritorious Achievement Award on several occasions as recently as 2002.<\/p>

But after publishing an op-ed in the Washington Post last year criticizing the Lab’s polygraph policy, he was suspended and accused of “insubordination.”<\/p>

Zelicoff was banned from working on a counterterrorism software tool he had invented to facilitate rapid reporting of disease outbreaks. When he continued to speak out on the polygraph, he was suspended a second time. Finally, he quit.<\/p>

The polygraph won, but the Lab, and the nation that turns to it for scientific expertise, lost.<\/p>

“As the only senior [Sandia] scientist who had also practiced medicine, I knew that continuation of polygraphs was going to be a disaster for individuals at Sandia and elsewhere in the DOE complex,” Dr. Zelicoff wrote recently. “And indeed it was.”<\/p>

See his account of the episode in “The Polygraph Vs. National Security,” March 11, here:<\/p>

http:\/\/www.fas.org\/sgp\/eprint\/zelicoff.pdf<\/a><\/p>

Convicted spy Aldrich Ames offered an impudent but rather perceptive commentary on the polygraph in this 2000 letter he wrote to FAS from Allenwood federal penitentiary, where he is incarcerated:<\/p>

http:\/\/www.fas.org\/sgp\/othergov\/polygraph\/ames.html<\/a><\/p>

In recent years, CIA polygraph examiners have added a new question to their standard exam, which is also asked in some official background investigations: Do you have friends in the media?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy comments in his Secrecy News e-mail publication: THE POLYGRAPH VS. NATIONAL SECURITY As a technology for counterintelligence security screening, the polygraph has been a spectacular failure. It is hard to recall the last time that polygraph screening uncovered an actual spy, and easy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[316,70,315],"class_list":{"0":"post-4150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-polygraph","7":"tag-alan-p-zelicoff","8":"tag-polygraph-screening","9":"tag-sandia-national-laboratories","10":"anons"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4151,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4150\/revisions\/4151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antipolygraph.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}