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In 1995, a "walk-in" approached the Central Intelligence Agency outside of the PRC and provided an official PRC document classified "Secret" that contained design information on the W-88 Trident D-5 warhead, the most modern in the U.S. arsenal, as well as technical information concerning other thermonuclear warheads.
Thus began an ongoing investigation of suspected Chinese espionage within the Department of Energy, according to chapter 2 of the report of the House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China, more commonly known as the "Cox Report." But in the very next paragraph, the Cox Report notes:
The CIA later determined that the "walk-in" was directed by the PRC intelligence services. Nonetheless, the CIA and other Intelligence Community analysts that reviewed the document concluded that it contained U.S. thermonuclear warhead design information.
The Cox Report does not disclose how the CIA determined that the "walk-in" was "directed by the PRC intelligence services." Nor does the Cox Report offer any insight into why the PRC intelligence services would provide the CIA with documents that could reasonably be expected to compromise their own sources and methods.
Could it be that the CIA determined that the "walk-in" was directed by the PRC intelligence services because a CIA polygrapher found portents of prevarication when he gazed into the polygraph charts? As previously noted (p. 16), hundreds of CIA employees were unable to pass their polygraph screening exams in the wake of Aldrich Ames' arrest in 1994, and the 1995 "walk-in" incident occurred squarely in that wake. If the CIA did terminate its relationship with the "walk-in" based on the voodoo science of polygraphy, then it committed a blunder of monumental proportions.
Support for our speculation on the role of polygraphy in CIA's determination that the "walk-in" was a double agent appears in today's (Thursday, 19 Oct. 2000) Washington Post in an article by Walter Pincus and Vernon Loeb entitled, "Spy Probe Shifts to Missiles":
Because of the CIA's belief that the walk-in was a double agent, a full translation of the documents seemed less pressing. "He failed an agency polygraph," one intelligence official explained. The CIA's suspicions about the informant also slowed the FBI's already limited investigation at Los Alamos of Wen Ho Lee.
The only "evidence" thus far publicly provided for CIA's conclusion seems to be that he "failed an agency polygraph." However, because polygraph "tests" are easy to beat (see chapter 4 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector), and foreign intelligence services are likely to know this, and because these "tests" also have a built-in bias against truthful persons (chapter 3), the fact that the walk-in "failed" seems to be pretty good evidence that he was not, after all, a Chinese double agent.
The FBI does not believe that the defector was a double agent. Pincus and Loeb report:
The CIA concluded several years ago that the defector who supplied the documents was a Chinese double agent, casting doubt on the information he delivered and delaying its translation from Mandarin to English. But the FBI, which has interviewed the defector in the United States, believes that he is legitimate. The CIA now says the evidence about the defector is "inconclusive," but agrees that the information he handed over has proven accurate, a senior government official said this week.
This seems to be yet another case where the U.S. Government's reliance on unreliable polygraph "testing" has caused serious damage to America's national security. It's high time that those responsible for our reliance on the voodoo science of polygraphy be held accountable.
George Maschke
ps: I'll be without Internet access for the next 3 weeks, but replies are welcome. I'll respond when I return.