In chapter 2 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector  
(https://antipolygraph.org/pubs.shtml), Gino Scalabrini and I  
wrote: 
 
    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. 
   
The Cox Report is available on-line at: 
 
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1999_r/cox/  
 
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":  
 
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34437-2000Oct18?language=printer  
 
Pincus and Loeb write:  
 
  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.