Secrecy News: olygraph vs. National Security; Doctrine for Joint Spec Ops
Secrecy News: Polygraph vs.
National Security; Doctrine for Joint Spec Ops
About
Secrecy News
SECRECY NEWS is an email publication of
the Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
Project on Government Secrecy. It provides
informal coverage of new developments in secrecy,
security and intelligence policies, as well
as links to new acquisitions on the Federation
of American Scientists web site. It
is published 2 to 3 times a week, or as events
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As a technology for counterintelligence security screening, the
polygraph has been a spectacular failure. It is hard to recall
the last time that polygraph screening uncovered an actual spy,
and easy to think of spies who had no difficulty escaping its
clutches.
But U.S. government polygraph policy continues to penalize
innocent individuals, and those who presume to challenge that
policy.
Alan P. Zelicoff, a distinguished physician and expert on
biological weapons arms control, was driven to resign his
position as Senior Scientist at Sandia National Laboratories
last year as a consequence of his outspoken criticism of
polygraph testing.
For his diverse technical contributions, Zelicoff had been
awarded Sandia's Meritorious Achievement Award on several
occasions as recently as 2002.
But after publishing an op-ed in the Washington Post last year
criticizing the Lab's polygraph policy, he was suspended and
accused of "insubordination."
Zelicoff was banned from working on a counterterrorism software
tool he had invented to facilitate rapid reporting of disease
outbreaks. When he continued to speak out on the polygraph, he
was suspended a second time. Finally, he quit.
The polygraph won, but the Lab, and the nation that turns to it
for scientific expertise, lost.
"As the only senior [Sandia] scientist who had also practiced
medicine, I knew that continuation of polygraphs was going to
be a disaster for individuals at Sandia and elsewhere in the
DOE complex," Dr. Zelicoff wrote recently. "And indeed it
was."
Convicted spy Aldrich Ames offered an impudent but rather perceptive
commentary on the polygraph in this
2000 letter he wrote to FAS from Allenwood federal penitentiary,
where he is incarcerated.
In recent years, CIA polygraph examiners have added a new
question to their standard exam, which is also asked in some
official background investigations: Do you have friends in the
media?
DOCTRINE FOR JOINT SPECIAL OPERATIONS
"I have done a lot of things since I've been here in three years
with respect to the special operations capabilities of the
country," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a March 4
interview with Reuters.
"Special operations forces" are small units with specialized
capabilities that operate clandestinely in hostile or
politically sensitive environments in order to achieve
military, diplomatic, or other objectives.
"We've increased their budget, we've increased their numbers,
we've added conventional forces to take over some of their
responsibilities that they might otherwise have been engaged
in," Secretary Rumsfeld said.
"We have changed their authorities so that now the Special
Operations Command is not only a command that is in support of
other commands, but that on occasion will be a command that
will be supported by other commands. We have connected the
United States Marine Corps to the special operators for the
first time in any significant way."
"And we have given encouragement to them."
"The Defense Department has worked closely with the CIA, going
both ways on any number of occasions over any number of years
in any number of situations.... [In other words,] we've taken
them for cooperative arrangements, they've taken some of our
people sometimes. They may be doing something where it
requires some competence that we have distinctively, so we've
worked very cooperatively with them," Secretary Rumsfeld said.
Military doctrine governing interagency (and multinational) special
operations has been newly revised and presented in "Doctrine
for Joint Special Operations," Joint Publication 3-05, Joint Chiefs
of Staff, December 17, 2003.
