President Clinton, in signing H.R. 4205, the National Defense
Authorization Act for fiscal year 2001, took issue with the
act's expansion of the Department of Energy's polygraph
screening program to encompass some 20,000 employees and
contractors:
...I am deeply disappointed that the Congress has
taken upon itself to set greatly increased polygraph
requirements that are unrealistic in scope,
impractical in execution, and that would be strongly
counterproductive in their impact on our national
security. The bill also micromanages the Secretary
of Energy's authority to grant temporary waivers to
the polygraph requirement in a potentially damaging
way, by explicitly directing him not to consider the
scientific vitality of DOE laboratories. This
directs the Secretary not to do his job, since
maintaining the scientific vitality of DOE national
laboratories is essential to our national security
and is one of the Secretary's most important
responsibilities. I am therefore signing the bill
with the understanding that it cannot supersede the
Secretary's responsibility to fulfill his national
security obligations.
The President's complete statement may be read on-line at:
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/10/31/9.text.1
These remarks seem to be President Clinton's first public
pronouncements on polygraph policy. Better late than never.
The President is correct in stating that Congress'
greatly increased polygraph requirements "would be strongly
counterproductive in their impact on our national
security." He might also consider that if polygraphs are
strongly counterproductive in the Department of Energy,
they may be counterproductive elsewhere in government, too.
George Maschke
AntiPolygraph.org
excellent site, your links to recent publications have proven invaluble to my research. I have some remaining questions about the CI polygraphs slated for use in the Department of Energy. With the recent expansion of the 2000 NDAA sec. 3154, thousands more top scientists will be sugjected to the indignity of the polygraph. What speculation exists on the reactions of these scientists? As of yet, I have been unable to locate any mention of a scientists' movement in reaction to the latest modification of DOE Polygraph policy. Are the scientists at the national labs so disheartened that they are no longer reacting?
E. Pay,
Regarding scientists' reactions, see Dr. Alan P. Zelicoff of Sandia National Laboratories' letter to Senator Richard Shelby, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who pushed to add some 5,000 DOE employees to the number to be subjected to polygraph "tesing":
http://antipolygraph.org/articles/article-006.shtml