Word: polygraph
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...been sacked from two other jobs, Pillsbury's latest pink slip, issued for allegedly telling reporters that the Administration had begun supplying rebels in Afghanistan and Angola with U.S.-made Stinger missiles, disturbed civil libertarians. The firing was based partly on Pillsbury's answers to questions on a polygraph test. The case has also been referred to the Justice Department, apparently as a stern message about the Reagan Administration's resolve to plug leaks. Pillsbury's defenders suggest that he spoke out to influence policy, not jeopardize national security. Says Morton Halperin, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union...
Since the EEOC issued guidelines in 1980, grievances have risen from 4,272 in 1981 to more than 6,300 in 1984, and courts have become more sensitive to complaints. Last August, for instance, a judge in Buffalo found a polygraph expert guilty of harassing five women by making unnecessary adjustments of a strap across their breasts, touching their thighs and making lewd comments. The court also found the company liable, even though the expert was an outside contractor, because it knew of his actions and did nothing about them. The decision is being appealed...
...with his travels. The Secretary firmly told the President in private that he opposed a national security directive, signed by Reagan on Nov. 1, authorizing lie-detector tests for thousands of Government employees and private contractors who handle sensitive information. Questioned by reporters, Shultz said that he considers polygraph testing ineffective, that it often implicates innocent people and that trained spies can easily avoid detection. Asked whether he would ever take such a test, the Secretary replied, "Once." Face reddening, he added, "The minute in this Government that I am not trusted is the day that I leave...
Some Administration officials sniped at the usually circumspect Shultz for taking his defiance public and noted that Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger has agreed to take a polygraph test. But the White House hastened to head off a confrontation, explaining that the President's directive allows department heads to decide which of their employees must undergo lie-detector tests, and insisting that the plan was aimed at curbing espionage, not--as some critics suspect--unauthorized leaks to the press. Reagan told reporters at week's end that Shultz had been mollified and that the Secretary would not be asked to take...
White House Spokesman Larry Speakes said the polygraph questions will concern security, not an individual's personal life. Speakes denied that the stepped-up use of lie detectors is directly related to the spate of spy arrests this year. Those cases caused enough alarm about national security, however, that criticism of Reagan's latest resort to the machine has been notably muted...