Dr. Alan P. Zelicoff, M.D., speaks plainly in this op-ed piece published today in the Albuquerque Tribune:

Politicians will create uninformed, dangerous policies unless scientists are willing to talk truth to power, despite possible risks to their funding

Alan Zelicoff
Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Somewhere in the bowels of the Department of Energy lies the answer to a mystery: Why did the U.S. Department of Energy suddenly discontinue its seven-year polygraph-test program for employees at the national nuclear weapons laboratories?

This decision was revealed without fanfare in the Code of Federal Regulations just a few days ago.

The birth of this peculiar policy began with willful ignorance of scientific data – carefully presented by the National Academy of Sciences and 40 senior scientists at Sandia Labs. They unanimously concluded that the polygraph was worse than worthless as a security tool. The vapid political response was thoroughly bipartisan.

From her seat, at the time, on the House Intelligence Committee, Albuquerque’s Republican Rep. Heather Wilson advocated strongly for the polygraph program, joined by her colleague Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, then the ranking member of the sister committee in the Senate. Chiming in simultaneously – hoping to not be seen as weak on security, was then-DOE secretary and now New Mexico’s Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, who was in the running for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination.

All were complicit in the classical bureaucratic blunder of confusing doing something with doing something useful. But it served their short-sighted purpose of selfishly protecting political power and the multibillion-dollar cash flow to the labs.

Laboratory management shared in the malfeasance, effecting none of the oversight responsibilities it routinely applies in much less consequential matters. Sandia’s president was publicly silent until he was embarrassed into action, when CBS News revealed that polygraphers were going beyond their legal authority by demanding private medical and psychiatric information from lab employees.

Thousands of lab employees had been subjected to feckless questioning from polygraphers. No spies were identified, yet staff morale collapsed and countless lives were ruined by false characterizations of “deception,” as if polygraphers eight weeks of training somehow made them infallible mind readers.

Most of the mislabeled scientists have suffered in silence, yet these outcomes were wholly unsurprising to Sandia researchers, who predicted them all in 1999, – along with Sandia’s squandering of millions of dollars – while warning of unaddressed vulnerabilities of lab computer systems. Those holes remain open even today.

The labs have traditionally provided high-level policy-makers with an unbiased assessment on difficult technical issues – not necessarily the answers officials wanted to hear. So this disheartening history begs an uncomfortable question: Because the scientific evidence of the uselessness – indeed, self-deceptiveness – of polygraphs was squarely on their side, why weren’t scientists at the labs more outspoken? To be so is their raison d’etre, the one thing that distinguishes them from contractors who never question anyone sending money.

It’s different now. I’ve been contacted by dozens of lab staff who bemoan their loss of scientific independence and describe a culture at diametric variance with the Sandia motto of “Exceptional Service in the National Interest.” The culture is one of fear: fear of challenging senior managers who, in turn, fret over any reduction in the unbridled flow of congressional largesse; and the mongering of fear, exemplified by the frenzied attempt, rooted in a once-successful Cold War mentality, to persuade federal planners that yet another generation of thoughtlessly unusable nuclear weapons should be funded.

To be sure, some advances have come out of the labs. Promising research has been done to advance nuclear reactor safety which, though years away, will mitigate the energy insecurities that are the source of many troubles now facing us.

But at budgets of $2.5 billion per year per lab, are these adequate returns, when universities might do the same at much less cost? No one has openly voiced this question in Washington, but it is much on the minds of lawmakers as deficits balloon and homegrown technology meets new international competition.

Soon enough the labs will be scrutinized, and the result may not be pretty. It may be true that scientists finally prevailed in persuading DOE to end its damaging polygraph program, in spite of the dangers of speaking truth to power. But I suspect the course change has other origins.

Laboratory employees will have to speak firmly and loudly on the basis of scientific integrity, or they will be relegated to the caste of Beltway bandits.

That can’t be good for the labs, New Mexico or the nation.

BBC News reports on a call by the charity, Barnado’s, for lie detector testing and GPS tracking of pedophiles in the UK. Excerpt:

Children’s charity Barnardo’s is calling on the government to use lie detector tests and satellite tracking to monitor sex offenders.

It claims pilot studies in the UK have shown promising results.

One such trial found up to 80% of cases showed lie detector tests revealed new information about the offenders’ intentions or behaviour.

Barnardo’s says this helps probation staff assess the risks they pose when they are released from jail better.

Barnardo’s make the claims in its new report, entitled A Risk Too Far? which is published on Tuesday.

It also says such measures will be more effective than the introduction of the proposed Sarah’s Law, which would allow parents to learn of registered sex offenders living in their area.

This is because it believes such a law would drive sex offenders away from supervision and into hiding.

‘False comfort’

This proposed legislation is named after eight-year-old Sarah Payne, who was murdered by paedophile Roy Whiting in 2000.

Barnardo’s chief executive Martin Narey said: “Barnardo’s is committed to protecting children from harm, but we feel that a Sarah’s Law would offer a false comfort to parents and could put children in more, not less, danger.

“That said, the current arrangements for the safe supervision of dangerous offenders need to be strengthened and public confidence restored.

“Our report outlines how the use of polygraphs and satellite tracking could radically improve the effectiveness of supervision.

“All the indications are that polygraphs can be effective in helping control behaviour.

“I have personally seen their use on sex offenders, spoken to the probation staff who have used this technology in a pilot [study] in the North East, and been impressed by the officers’ conviction that it significantly improves the rigour of supervision.”

But human rights group Justice questioned the effectiveness of lie detector tests.

“We’re very doubtful as to any evidence that’s been produced to show that it’s a reliable method,” the group’s policy director Eric Metcalfe told BBC News.

“In our view, this kind of measure has more of a headline effect than actually being demonstrated to be genuinely effective.”

Eric Metcalfe has it right about lie detectors. Regarding British proposals for polygraphing sex offenders, see Dr. Drew C. Richardson’s 21 May 2005 letter to the Telegraph. Barnado’s express concern about policy measures that would provide a false comfort, yet only a false comfort can result from relying on such a widely discredited procedure such as polygraphy. Make-believe science yields make-believe security.

Ted Haggard, the recently resigned and disgraced pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, reportedly faces polygraphic interrogation by a triumvirate of inquisitors. In “Dobson, 2 ministers to offer counsel,” Carol McGraw of the Colorado Springs Gazette reports:

The three men chosen to oversee the Rev. Ted Haggard’s spiritual restoration are well-known in conservative Christian circles and are old pros at such work.

James Dobson, the Rev. Jack Hayford and the Rev. Tommy Barnett have been tapped by New Life’s overseer board to “perform a thorough analysis of Haggard’s mental, spiritual, emotional and physical life.”

That includes a polygraph test and extensive investigation, according to the Rev. Larry Stockstill, chairman of the overseer board.

…

Last Friday, 3 November 2006, Mike Jones, a male prostitute who went public with allegations that Ted Haggard had been a client over a three-year period, failed a polygraph “test” administered by John J. Kresnik for radio station KHOW’s Peter Boyles show. Nonetheless, Jones stood by his statements, and in a press release the following day, New Life’s overseers announced, “Our investigation and Pastor Haggard’s public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct.”

As they pursue their inquisition for Haggard’s “spiritual restoration,” New Life’s overseers would be wise to eschew reliance on pseudoscientific lie detectors, which are inherently biased against the truthful, yet easily manipulated through the use of simple countermeasures.

Retired FBI polygraphers Jack Trimarco and James H. Earle, Ph.D., seem to be at odds over whether John J. Kresnik should have polygraphed Ted Haggard accuser Mike Jones, who says he had a migraine headache at the time and had slept only two hours the night before. Katie Kerwin McCrimmon reports for the Rocky Mountain News in “Expert Says Polygraph Flawed”:

A national expert on polygraph tests said today that the accuser in a sex scandal should never have taken a polygraph test this morning because he had only slept a couple hours and was complaining of a headache.

Mike Jones has accused Colorado Springs evangelical leader, the Rev. Ted Haggard, of paying him for sex several times over the past three years. Jones volunteered to take a polygraph test this morning. The results, which were announced live on Peter Boyles’ morning show KHOW radio, showed deception when he was asked about the sexual encounters.

Aurora polygraph examiner John Kresnik conducted the test for free. He is willing to do a second test, but urged Jones to wait a couple of weeks until he can rest and the controversy dies down.

While the polygraph test was not conclusive, a nationally recognized audio forensics expert, Richard Sanders, compared voice mail messages with Haggard’s voice for KUSA 9News and said it’s highly likely that Haggard is the person on voice mail messages that Jones saved.

Jack Trimarco, a former FBI agent for 21 years and former Inspector general for the U.S. Department of Energy, said subjects taking polygraph tests need to be rested and physically well or the results can be suspect.

Trimarco, who is now a private polygraph examiner based in Beverly Hills, California, said he would have re-scheduled the test once he learned that the subject was not in peak condition.

What’s more, he said a test in such a high-profile case should have been conducted under perfect conditions.

“Knowing that this is going to be a high-profile test, everything has got to be done correctly. It has to be video-taped and another examiner should be there so there is an immediate quality control,” Trimarco said. “It’s really the way things are done on really important cases.”

Trimarco handles high-profile cases routinely and will appear on the Dr. Phil Show next week to sort out conflicting polygraph tests.

Another retired FBI agent, James Earle, of Colorado Springs, said in his experience, after conducting nearly 12,000 tests over the past 27 years, that results are usually quite accurate. He said the examiner should have been able to tell that Jones was exhausted and adjust for that in the scoring.

“If they were really exhausted, it could be a factor. But, it’s not going to invalidate the test,” said Earle, who used to supervise polygraph tests for the FBI throughout the western U.S. Earle has a doctorate and just finished a term as a vice president of the National Polygraph Association. He also served as president of the Colorado chapter.

Dave Montero reports for the Rocky Mountain News in an on-line article titled, “Haggard’s sex accuser fails polygraph:”

A former male prostitute who accused Colorado Springs pastor Ted Haggard of engaging in gay sex over the course of three years failed a polygraph test administered Friday morning in Denver.

The polygrapher, John Kresnik, said the results “indicated deception” but he also believed the results may have been skewed because the accuser, Mike Jones, was suffering from a migraine and didn’t get much sleep.

“I’m disappointed with myself,” Jones said on Peter Boyles’ morning talk show on KHOW radio after taking the 90-minute polygraph. “I feel like I’ve disappointed a lot of people. I initiated it and I’m willing to accept the consequences of it.”

However, Jones said he “would not back down” from his original accusations. He also said — at the prompting of Kresnik — he would be willing to take two more lie detector tests after he got some sleep. Jones said he only got two hours of sleep.

The reason for the two tests, Kresnik said, was because there are two separate accusations being made — that Haggard sought gay sex from Jones and also asked Jones to be the middle man in an attempt to get methamphetamines.

Jones said he never got drugs for Haggard, but said he knew people who could get drugs. Jones said Haggard liked the drug because it “enhanced” the sexual experience.

Sitting in the radio station studio, Jones looked weary and his lips drew tight when Boyles played tape snippets of Haggard denying the allegations.

Kresnik said he asked six questions on the polygraph test and there were two relevant questions — both involving sexual contact with Haggard. Kresnik said those were the ones Jones failed.

“All I can do is call them as I see them,” Kresnik said.

KUSA-TV reported Thursday night that a voice analysis expert compared a voice mail recording provided by Jones to a recording of Haggard’s speech and that they matched.

Jones said he felt sorry for Haggard, who stepped down from his position as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and took leave from his post as pastor of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs.

Haggard, 50, initially denied the allegations, telling 9News Wednesday night that “I’ve never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I’m steady with my wife. I’m faithful to my wife.”

But KKTV in Colorado Springs reported that New Life Associate Senior Pastor Ross Parsley told a meeting of church elders Thursday night that Haggard had met with the church’s overseers earlier in the day and “had admitted to some indiscretions.”

Parsley told the elders that Haggard had said some of the allegations were true, but not all of them.

Left unexplained is why, if he thought that the results would be unreliable, did polygrapher John J. Kresnik, Ph.D. administer a polygraph “test” to a man with a migraine headache who had slept for only two hours the night before?

Philip Devine, editor of South Africa’s Business Report Online, offers a critical assessment of polygraph “testing” and gives a nod to AntiPolygraph.org in a 3 November 2006 editorial article titled, “Big fat liar”:

Big fat liar
November 3, 2006

By Philip Devine

The use of ‘lie detector’ machines in South Africa is not often something that makes the news, but when it does the device is viewed as a holy grail of truth. Some myths surrounding the use of these devices need to be destroyed.

The machine is not a lie detector, it helps to administer a polygraph test. It can’t detect a lie any more than the average person can detect a quark or neutrino. But people persist in believing it can and many operators of such equipment like to maintain the image of a machine that can root out lies, because it provides a suitable psychological edge, without which the it would be more difficult to administer the tests.

Mxolisi Zwane, the executive chairman of Premier Foods, was determined that polygraph testing would help him unmask the source of a story published in a local daily. In August he ordered all his board members to undergo a polygraph test, so that he could find out who among them was the untrustworthy source – if they even existed there.

It is not known if the board ever underwent testing, or agreed to it, because Zwane and his spokespeople at Premier became incredibly tight-lipped after Business Report published the story surrounding the controversy at the milling company.

And besides, if you were one of the members of the Premier board, would you want to subject yourself to a test that is only between 80 and 90 percent accurate? And that’s according to some of the polygraph’s biggest proponents.

That means in a group of 100 people, as many as twenty of those would be fingered for being deceitful, when they are in fact completely innocent. Not fantastic odds to submit yourself to when your job and reputation is on the line.

Also being questioned here, is the legality of polygraph testing. Our dispute resolution body, the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) even admits that when its comes to polygraphs that “to date, there is no known device, which measures physiological or psychological activity, [that is] capable of directly recording deception.”

In fact, polygraph testing seems to be more of psuedo- human science than science itself.

In South Africa our courts do not accept that polygraph tests are reliable and admissible and state that although admissible as expert evidence, polygraph results standing alone cannot prove guilt.

I would suggest that the best thing anyone could do with regards to polygraph testing is to read a copy of antipolygraph.org’s publication, The Lie Behind The Lie Detector, and arm themselves against the use of such tests as a means of forcing consent or workplace abuse. And that’s the truth.

Philip Devine is the editor of Business Report Online

On 31 October 2006, AntiPolygraph.org posted the FBI file (736 kb PDF) of William Moulton Marston, the father of the so-called lie detector test; an explanatory note is available on the message board. The popular tech website Slashdot.org has published an announcement of the news submitted by AntiPolygraph.org’s George Maschke, in response to which numerous comments (100 at the time of this writing) have been posted.

The Associated Press reports that Representative Jim Gibbons (R-NV), who is running for governor in Nevada, is willing to take a polygraph test to prove that he did not make a sexual advance against cocktail waitress Chrissy Mazzeo, who had earlier voiced her willingness to take a polygraph test to prove the truthfulness of her accusation. While polygraphs may make for titillating political theater, they are a poor way of determining truth in such situations. To begin with, polygraph testing has no scientific basis. Moreover, they are easily fooled through the use of simple countermeasures that polygraphers have no demonstrated ability to detect. Who’s to say whether one or both parties know the lie behind the lie detector?

Dr. Alan P. Zelicoff, M.D. comments on the U.S. Department of Energy’s recent decision to scale back its polygraph screening program in an Albuquerque Journal op-ed article titled, “DOE Quietly Backs Away from Voodoo of Polygraphs.” In 2003, Dr. Zelicoff was forced out of his job at Sandia National Laboratories because his work to disprove the polygraph embarrassed too many important people at DOE and the national labs:

DOE Quietly Backs Away From Voodoo of Polygraphs

By Alan Zelicoff
Science Consultant

The U.S. Department of Energy has quietly slipped a new “rule” of great significance into the Code of Federal Regulations: The program of lie-detector “screening” at the premiere national laboratories has been rescinded.

This change reflects an unflattering judgment on positions staked out by a bipartisan collection of political and lab leaders.

First proposed in 1999 by Gov. Bill Richardson — then secretary of energy — during the uproar over alleged spying at the national labs, the lie-detector policy elicited the derision of scientists everywhere. The American Psychological Association, the Federation of American Scientists, the Senior Scientists at Sandia National Labs and the National Academy of Sciences uniformly rejected the [sic] Richardson’s contention that polygraphs would improve security.

The expedient (though hardly inexpensive) attempt to paper over extraordinarily damaging security lapses with polygraphs has failed catastrophically.

On those rare occasions when bad policy-making is repudiated, winners and losers emerge. The winners this time are obvious:

*Applicants for jobs at the labs, who will no longer have their careers ruined by flunking a thoroughly disproved test for “deception.”

*The labs themselves, as they may once again be able to attract top students who have routinely shunned opportunities simply because graduates from top universities realize that any institution that used the polygraph wasn’t exactly a place to build a serious scientific career.

The losers include Rep. Heather Wilson, the then-responsible lab managers, Richardson and agencies that continue to rely upon polygraphs.

Wilson, D-N.M. [sic; editor's error: Wilson is a Republican], originated the DOE polygraph legislation in 2000 as a member of the House Intelligence Committee. She repeatedly touts her “science and engineering training at the Air Force Academy” as her guiding philosophy. Yet, Wilson ignored all the the scientific literature provided to her on the uselessness of polygraph screening.

Her judgment appears as self-serving rather than the stuff of principled leadership. Since her re-election in this election — perhaps the closest of her career, may be the ticket to a Senate seat, voters should examine her rhetoric and record.

Ex-Sandia President C. Paul Robinson and Director Dori Ellis, charged with maintaining the health and scientific integrity of employees, couldn’t stop the polygraph program. But by putting into place an independent community-based oversight committee — routine at the labs in all processes involving human subjects — the illegal excesses and undermining of careers could have been mitigated. (Testimonials of many lab employees are on my web site: www.zelicoff.com.)

Instead, Robinson and Ellis disciplined lab scientists who called for oversight with career-busting disciplinary suspensions based on “insubordination.”

Richardson announced the polygraph program as his own idea when he headed the DOE. When he visited the national laboratories in 1999, he quite literally waved his hand dismissively in answer to staff questions. “The polygraph is easy to pass if you’ve nothing to hide. I’ve had one. It’s no big deal,” the future governor said, offering a fool’s gambit to some of the country’s best scientists, who weren’t buying his argument then anymore than they do now.

By seeking to maintain his then vice-presidential prospects in the face of security snafus at the DOE, Richardson may be exhibit “A” in incompetent national security policymaking. Perhaps voters’ memories will be long enough to recall Richardson’s malfeasance when he makes another run for national office in 2008.

The agencies that continue to worship the screening polygraph as a counter-intelligence tool — the CIA, and the NSA and others — come out looking silliest by far. Hundreds of perfectly loyal Americans possessing desperately needed skills in Arabic, Persian and other languages have passed through the exacting application requirements for employment in the intelligence community only to have their hopes dashed by “failing” a polygraph.

In the end, it is the American people who pay the biggest price: countless millions spent on feckless technology that has a dismal record of catching spies, yet eliminates the very people we need to protect our freedoms.

Seven year after the Sandia senior scientists’ recommendation, the DOE has reluctantly admitted that it made a mistake by placing reliance in the polygraph. Might other agencies follow? Only an inveterate optimist would so conclude.

–
Alan Zelicoff, former senior scientist in the Center for National Security and Arms Control at Sandia National Laboratories is a writer, consulting physicist and physician residing in Albuquerque. His latest book is: “Microbe: Are We Ready for the Next Plague?” published by Amacom.