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Topic summary

Posted by George W. Maschke
 - Feb 03, 2002, 02:37 PM
Department of Energy polygraph program chief David M. Renzelman told a self-serving lie to the National Academy of Sciences about the outcome of DOE's 23 December 1998 polygraph interrogation of Dr. Wen Ho Lee, when he falsely claimed that DOE did not report the "test" as "truthful." Here's what Mr. Renzelman told the NAS regarding Lee's polygraph "test" at the first public meeting of its Study to Review the Scientific Evidence on the Polygraph on 26 January 2001:

Quote...I would like to mention that you've been led to believe that several spy cases in the news have had dual calls or what have you. And let me tell you that the one that was referred to by, by Senator Bingaman, that it was reported as being truthful, and then later as untruthful, that's not the case. That was subjected to quality control, which this gentleman instituted in DOE in, I believe, the month of January 1999, was it? When it came to quality control, it was determined this test is not finished. I made that determination, for him. And then I sent that test down to DoDPI [the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute] and I asked the director of DoDPI and his staff to review that test. They said, unanimously, "That test is not finished." I went to Ken Shull who's the director of the FBI polygraph program, and he said, "You're right." And they ran it again. Then it was finished. The news reported that test as truthful. DOE did not report that test as truthful.

(Mr. Renzelman's remarks, transcribed above, begin about 13 minutes into a RealPlayer audio file that is available on the National Academy of Sciences website.)

But the May 2000 Final Report of the Attorney General's Review Team on the Handling of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Investigation, better known as the "Bellows Report," flatly contradicts Mr. Renzelman's claim that "DOE did not report that test as truthful."

The Bellows Report states at p. 634:

Quote(U) After the polygraph examination was over, SA [redacted] and SA [redacted] talked to the polygrapher and were told that Lee had not only passed the polygraph but "blew it away." [redacted] 8/18/99) SA [redacted] said the polygrapher "convinced me we were barking up the wrong tree." (Id.) [DOE counterintelligence chief Edward J.] Curran said that "everyone" was in "a state of shock" that Wen Ho Lee had passed the examination. (Curran 2/9/00) SAC Kitchen asked him: "What are you going to do now, big guy?" (Kitchen 9/10/99) At DOE HQ, Curran and his staff were asking themselves the same question: "Our reaction, when we heard he passed is 'What the hell do we do now?' [redacted] 2/23/00)

A picture of DOE polygrapher Wolfgang Vinskey's scoring of Lee's polygraph "test" is even available on CBSNews.com at:

http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,157338-412,00.shtml

Clearly, DOE's polygraphers did "report that test as truthful," even if "quality control" later decided to designate it as "not finished." (The FBI later characterized the outcome as "inconclusive, if not deceptive.") In any event, when "the news reported that test as truthful," "the news" got it right. And Mr. Renzelman lied about it.

Shame on you, Mr. Renzelman.