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New York Times,
Monday, July 12, 1999
LIARS NEVER BREAK A SWEAT
By Robert L. Park
College Park, Md - Los Alamos National Laboratory has recently
begun using polygraph tests to screen all of its nuclear weapons
scientists. The "lie detector" tests were ordered by
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson after allegations that China
had obtained critical design information concerning our most advanced
nuclear weapons.
The object is to convince Congress that strong measures are being
taken to protect our weapons secrets. It's a sham. The screening
will not uncover any spies, but will damage our weapons research
programs and could leave us more vulnerable to espionage. Overreliance
on polygraph screening can lead labs to shortchange traditional
security checks.
In 1983, at a House hearing on legislation to bar the use of the
polygraph for screening job applicants, I found myself seated
next to Gen. Richard G. Stillwell, who was the Pentagon's point
man for a plan to subject more than a million Defense Department
employees to polygraph screening. Dr. Jack Gibbons, director of
the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, who later became
science adviser to President Clinton, was explaining to the committee
that there was not a shred of scientific evidence that the polygraph
had any validity for screening. The polygraph responds to nervousness
or excitement it can't tell a lie from a lover's quarrel.
General Stillwell grew increasingly agitated. Finally he could
contain himself no longer. Although he had no idea who I was,
he leaned over to me and snorted contemptuously, "I wish
these scientists would leave intelligence to the experts."
Well, let's see how the intelligence "experts" have
been doing. Aldrich H. Ames, the notorious C.I.A. turncoat, took
scores of polygraph tests and passed them all. Although he was
arriving at work intoxicated and living on a scale usually reserved
for professional basketball players and rock stars, nobody thought
to investigate the source of his sudden wealth after all, he was
passing the lie detector tests. Interviewed by a reporter in prison,
Mr. Ames said his Russian handlers had laughed at his worries
about polygraph exams. Just relax and cooperate with the examiner,
they told him, because lie detectors don't work. And they didn't.
Remember the 1988 case of Larry Wu-Tai Chin, a career C.I.A. analyst
who was a spy for China? He also fooled the polygraph repeatedly.
Indeed, the tens of thousands of polygraph screening exams administered
by the C.I.A., the F.B.I., and the National Security Agency have
yet to uncover a single spy.
But the polygraph doesn't just fail to expose the guilty; it frequently
stigmatizes the most innocent. "Straight-arrow types are
most vulnerable because they are unaccustomed to having their
veracity challenged," explained David Lykken, a psychology
professor at the University of Minnesota and a leading scientific
expert on the polygraph. The polygraph merely records changes
in blood pressure, respiration and sweat. Accomplished liars like
Mr. Ames don't respond at all. Based on overwhelming scientific
opinion, President Ronald Reagan signed the Employee Polygraph
Protection Act of 1988, which prohibited private industry from
using polygraphs to screen employees. Shamefully, Federal employees
were exempted from the law.
The 1971 Oval Office tapes captured President Richard M. Nixon
explaining why he had ordered polygraph screening for the White
House staff: "Listen, I don't know anything about polygraphs
and I don't know how accurate they are, but I know they'll scare
the hell out of people." They should be scared; polygraph
examiners are drawn mostly from the police and the military and
rarely have a background in either psychology or physiology. Yet,
with as little as six weeks of training, they are licensed to
pass judgment on what lies in people's souls.
How can the weapons labs expect to attract and retain talented
scientists when they know that the whim of a polygraph examiner
could cast a permanent shadow over a career? A group leader at
Los Alamos could not find one scientist at the lab who believes
that the polygraph works. Most are furious. Younger scientists
in particular say they would never have taken the job under these
circumstances. One joked ruefully that the testing would make
it easy to pick out the spies five years from now: "there
won't be anyone else still working here."
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Robert L. Park is a physics professor at the University of Maryland
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