Putting More Energy into Counterintelligence
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday , July 10, 2000
The Department of Energy's attempts to improve
counterintelligence awareness training at the nuclear weapons
laboratories have "failed dismally." Its polygraph program has
yet to gain "even a modicum of acceptance." And its claims about
fixing counterintelligence are "nonsense."
So the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence opines in
a report released last month on counterintelligence capabilities
at Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National
Laboratories, citing a culture at all three facilities that is
"profoundly antithetical toward counterintelligence and
security."
Weapons scientists at the labs take umbrage at such strong
rhetoric, having played no small role in winning the Cold War.
But the HPSCI report minces no words, bearing the indelible
signature of its principal author, Paul Redmond, the
straight-talking former CIA chief of counterintelligence.
Redmond's conclusions about the lab's cultural problems seem
predictable enough from someone with his background in spy
hunting, as does his support for polygraph testing. But his
report is interesting precisely because, in many other ways, it
isn't predictable at all.
He is harshly critical of the initiatives emanating from DOE
headquarters but nonetheless credits the department for having
made "a good but inconsistent start in improving its CI
[counterintelligence] capabilities."
He faults headquarters for producing CI training materials that
were "bureaucratic, boring, turgid, and completely insufficient,"
yet he lauds Edward J. Curran, a career FBI counterintelligence
expert now serving as DOE's counterintelligence chief, as "ideal"
for the job "because of his extensive CI experience at the FBI,
his rotational assignment at the CIA, and his persistence and
determination."
And far from signing off on every last "reform" initiative coming
out of Congress, Redmond quotes Curran as opposing the new
National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), created by
Congress last year expressly to improve security and
counterintelligence at the labs.
Given the NNSA's semi-autonomous status within the DOE, Redmond
writes, Curran believes "he will have only a policy role and no
actual authority" over the labs' counterintelligence programs.
As for the DOE's polygraph program, Redmond is an ardent
proponent of the "lie detector" but concedes that there are
"rational" reasons for scientists at the labs to oppose being
polygraphed, since the tests invariably produce "false positives"
– indications that people are lying when, in fact, they are
not.
The real culprits here are officials at DOE headquarters, Redmond
argues,who initially proposed an overly broad polygraph program,
appeared to flip-flop in scaling it back, and never succeeded in
"explaining the importance and utility of the polygraph program"
as a counterintelligence tool.
Curran to Redmond: Flattery will get you nowhere
Unfortunately for Redmond, the only participant in this raging
debate over counterintelligence at the weapons labs blunter than
he may be Curran himself.
In a recent written rebuttal, Curran emphasizes a point Redmond
makes but does not underscore – DOE's current CI program
began with President Clinton's issuance of Presidential Decision
Directive NSC 61 in February 1998. That was 13 months before the
still contentious allegations of Chinese espionage at Los Alamos
broke in the press and touched off a political furor among
Clinton's Republican critics in Congress.
The report of the HPSCI's Redmond panel, Curran said, "is poor
counsel."
Redmond's criticism of DOE's CI awareness training, Curran said,
ignores virtually all of the department's substantive work,
including 100 interviews with weapons scientists aimed making CI
training more meaningful to them.
The department has also used foreign defectors to lecture
scientists on ways in which foreign intelligence services can be
expected to target them when they travel abroad. And all
traveling scientists, Curran said, are now briefed about CI
threats before they travel to sensitive countries, and debriefed
when they return.
But Redmond's "most illogical guidance," according to Curran,
came in his conclusion that DOE officials must "sell" the need
for improved CI, not to mention the department's polygraph
program, to scientists at the labs.
Curran said 600 lab scientists have now taken DOE's polygraph
"without one false positive result." The current program, which
involves far fewer scientists than originally proposed, Curran
added, takes into account 105 written comments and 87 oral
comments from lab employees last year.
"The research and knowledge involved in manufacturing nuclear
weapons is vital to U.S. national security," Curran said. "The
need to protect this information from unauthorized disclosure is
self-evident, and the secretary of energy should not be placed in
a position of asking 'Mother, May I' of the department's
laboratories when he is implementing measures he deems
appropriate to protect U.S. national security."
Resisters beware
Curran took a similarly hard-line stance in testimony last month
before the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying polygraphs are
necessary to unmask spies like former CIA officer Aldrich H.
Ames.
His words were warmly received. At the end of the hearing,
Committee Chairman Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) asked him to send the
committee documentation of polygraph resistance at the labs.
The exchange rang alarm bells at the labs, where some scientists
at Los Alamos's X Division, its nuclear warhead design facility,
have signed an open petition to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson
that says, "We believe that the vast majority of X-Division
employees cannot justly be subjected to polygraphing."
One scientist at Livermore asked in a widely disseminated
email,"Is there any reason to think that the signatories to the
polygraph petition will be part of a list of resisters to
security measures that Ed Curran will submit to the United States
Senate? If so, this has ominous overtones."
Fueling the fire
One of those leading the charge at the labs against polygraph
screening is George W. Maschke, a former military intelligence
officer and captain in the Army reserve who now works as a
translator at the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The
Hague. While not a weapons scientist, Maschke is in regular email
contact with numerous lab employees, many of whom have read his
critique of DOE's counterintelligence polygraph, "The Lying Game:
National Security and the Test for Espionage and Sabotage" .
Maschke, 36, is a fervent polygraph opponent, to say the least.
He wanted to become an FBI agent specializing in counterterrorism
but failed the bureau's pre-employment polygraph. While most of
those who fail the test get hung up on questions about past
recreational drug use, Maschke said the bureau concluded he had
committed espionage: an FBI polygrapher told him he was lying
when he denied ever passing classified information to
unauthorized individuals.
"I was one of the very few spies they've ferreted out," Maschke
said.
Maschke's main beef with the polygraph, he said, is that it's no
more scientific than astrology. It's too easy for real spies to
beat the test through simple countermeasures, he said, and it's
so inaccurate that relatively large numbers of truthful subjects
will inevitably be falsely accused of lying – so-called
"false positives."
Congress remains unpersuaded
In the wake of the latest security scandal at Los Alamos
involving two missing computer hard drives containing top secret
nuclear weapons data that have since been found, the House voted
recently to dock the pay of any Los Alamos employee who refuses
to undergo a polygraph test. The House Armed Services Committee
went even further, passing legislation requiring polygraphs for
any lab scientists with access to unclassified but "restricted"
data, which would mean thousands more employees would be subject
to the test.
Vernon Loeb, a Washington Post staff writer who covers national
security issues, writes his biweekly IntelligenCIA column
exclusively for washingtonpost.com. His newspaper column, Back
Channels, is also carried by this Web site. Loeb answers
questions from readers in monthly online discussions. He can be
reached via e-mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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