[pre] In an article on page A02 of today's (1 Dec. 2000) Washington Post entitled, "CIA Shuts Chatroom, Suspends 10, Fires 4," staff writer Vernon Loeb reports on CIA's disciplinary actions against employees who participated in an unauthorized computer chatroom. Loeb writes in part: One senior intelligence official responded that senior CIA management felt compelled to take action because the organizers of the hidden chat rooms deliberately deceived their superiors. "The issue here," the official said, "is violation of trust," not just some "off-color" e-mail. The entire Washington Post article may be read on-line here: [url]http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7159-2000Nov30.html[/url] Senior CIA management needs to realize that trust is a two- way street. These CIA employees were disciplined for deliberately deceiving their supervisors, yet these same supervisors feel at liberty to deliberately deceive every CIA employee through the polygraph screening process. As Loeb's anonymous senior intelligence official piously observed, "the issue here is violation of trust." Writing to the Federation of American Scientists from the federal penitentiary at Allenwood, Pennsylvania, convicted spy Aldrich H. Ames offered some insight into why the polygraph is so attractive to senior bureaucrats: Most people in the intelligence and CI business are well aware of the theoretical and practical failings of the polygraph, but are equally alert to its value in institutional, bureaucratic terms and treasure its use accordingly. This same logic applies to its use in screening potential and current employees, whether of the CIA, NSA, DOE or even of private organizations. Deciding whether to trust or credit a person is always an uncertain task, and in a variety of situations a bad, lazy or just unlucky decision about a person can result not only in serious problems for the organization and its purposes, but in career-damaging blame for the unfortunate decision-maker. Here, the polygraph is a scientific godsend: the bureaucrat accounting for a bad decision, or sometimes for a missed opportunity (the latter is much less often questioned in a bureaucracy) can point to what is considered an unassailably objective, though occasionally and unavoidably fallible, polygraph judgment. All that was at fault was some practical application of a "scientific" technique, like those frozen O-rings, or the sandstorms between the Gulf and Desert One in 1980. The entire text of Ames' letter can be read on-line here: [url]http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/polygraph/ames.html[/url] It will be recalled that Ames passed two CIA polygraph "tests" while spying for the Soviet Union and later, Russia. For more on the CIA's use of the polygraph in the Ames case, see pp. 11-16 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector (503 kb): [url]http://antipolygraph.org/lie-behind-the-lie-detector.pdf[/url] AntiPolygraph.org is working to hold those people in the intelligence and counterintelligence business who knowingly continue to rely on unreliable polygraph "testing" accountable for their actions, and to warn employees and prospective employees about the trickery which is being practiced against them through the polygraph process. We have recently learned from Al Zelicoff at Sandia National Laboratories that it is Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) who is responsible for the insertion of language into the Fiscal Year 2001 Defense Authorization Act that makes polygraph screening mandatory for an additional 5,000 Department of Energy employees and contractors, raising the total number of affected persons to some 20,000. Dr. Zelicoff's unanswered letter to Senator Shelby about polygraph screening may be read on the AntiPolygraph.org website at: [url]http://antipolygraph.org/articles/article-006.shtml[/url] Those 5,000 additional employees to be polygraphed might want to ask Senator Shelby the question I asked Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson on 12 October 2000: What is the Department of Energy's policy regarding those employees and contractors who, because of their understanding of "the lie behind the lie detector," are unsuitable candidates for polygraphic interrogation? The entire letter, which I also copied to Senator Shelby, among others, may be read on-line at: [url]http://antipolygraph.org/articles/article-005.shtml[/url] The Secretary never responded. Neither did Senator Shelby. George Maschke AntiPolygraph.org [/pre]
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