Fewer employees at Energy Department to undergo lie-detector tests

The Energy Department has decided to significantly reduce its reliance on polygraph tests, based on recent scientific studies questioning their validity, a department official announced Thursday.

Current policy requires employees for approximately 20,000 Energy Department positions to periodically undergo lie-detector tests, Kyle McSlarrow, deputy secretary of Energy, testified at a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing. But by the end of the year, the department will publish a draft rule in the Federal Register, proposing to limit tests to roughly 4,500 positions where employees would have access to extremely sensitive or top secret information, McSlarrow said. The move would mark a 78 percent reduction in those required to take the test.

Under the suggested policy, all counterintelligence workers will still need to undergo polygraph screening, as will employees working in the headquarters Offices of Intelligence, Special Access Programs and Field Intelligence Elements. "These positions would continue to be subject to mandatory screening because they involve routine access to highly sensitive information, such as foreign intelligence information," McSlarrow testified.

The new policy will apply to all Energy Department employees and contractors, McSlarrow said. "We will make no distinctions between political appointees or career service professionals."

Energy officials decided to change the policy in response to recent scientific reports, including one from the National Research Council, which concluded that lie-detector tests are often misleading and of limited use to federal agencies.

"Polygraph testing yields an unacceptable choice for Energy Department employee security screening between too many loyal employees falsely judged deceptive and too many major security threats left undetected," the National Research Council report said. "Its accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening."

But the tests can be "useful for achieving such objectives as deterring security violations, increasing the frequency of admissions of such violations, deterring employment applications from potentially poor security risks, and increasing public confidence in national security organizations," the report noted.

Historically, the Energy Department has relied on polygraph tests to screen workers because of the sensitive and security-related nature of its work. The department runs nuclear weapons labs, for instance.

"On the one hand, we must attract the best minds that we can to do this cutting edge scientific work," McSlarrow said. "On the other hand, we must take all reasonable steps to prevent our enemies from gaining access to the work we are doing, lest that work end up being used to the detriment rather than the advancement of our national security."