From: Steven Aftergood <saftergood@fas.org>
Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 13:33:56 -0400
Fwd Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 09:51:07 -0400
Subject: Secrecy News -- 05/24/02


SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2002, Issue No. 47
May 24, 2002


**	ANNUAL POLYGRAPH REPORT PUBLISHED
**	FREEDOM OF INFORMATION IN JAPAN, MEXICO
**	PENTAGON REPORTS ON SECRET 1960s BIO EXPERIMENTS


ANNUAL POLYGRAPH REPORT PUBLISHED

The Department of Defense this week released its Annual
Polygraph Report for 2001, reaffirming the Department's
commitment to polygraph testing as an instrument of
counterintelligence and criminal investigations as well as for
security screening.

The Report provides a fresh set of anecdotes in which polygraph
tests helped resolve criminal cases or uncover security
violations, and sets forth an ambitious research program
intended to bolster the technology's widely disputed
credibility.

The latest Report, obtained today under the Freedom of
Information Act, is available here:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/polygraph/dod-2001.html

In recent years, polygraph testing has become the target of
increasingly focused and sophisticated criticism, notably from
George Maschke and his colleagues at Antipolygraph.org.  See:

http://www.antipolygraph.org/

Yet agency reliance on polygraph testing has hardly diminished.
  Most recently, the FBI indicated that it would ask at least 200
workers at Fort Detrick and Dugway Proving Grounds to take
polygraph tests as part of the search for the elusive anthrax
terrorist.  See "Anthrax Probe Turns to Polygraph" by Megan
Garvey and Eric Lichtblau in the May 22 Los Angeles Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-000036059may22.story

A noteworthy critique of the polygraph was offered by Aldrich
Ames in a November 2000 letter that he wrote to the Federation
of American Scientists from Allenwood Federal Penitentiary in
Pennsylvania, where he is serving a life sentence for espionage.
  See:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/polygraph/ames.html


FREEDOM OF INFORMATION IN JAPAN, MEXICO

The National Security Archive has just published updated
resources on new freedom of information laws in Japan and
Mexico.

See "Japanese Government Information: New Rules for Access":

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/foia/japanfoia.html

and "Mexico's New Freedom of Information Law" featuring the full
text of the law in Spanish and English:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB68/


PENTAGON REPORTS ON SECRET 1960s BIO EXPERIMENTS

The Defense Department disclosed this week that it had conducted
experiments involving the use of active nerve agents and
biological toxins on military personnel in the 1960s in order to
study U.S. vulnerabilities to such substances.

"Project SHAD, an acronym for Shipboard Hazard and Defense, was
part of the joint service chemical and biological warfare test
program conducted during the 1960s. Project SHAD encompassed
tests designed to identify US warships' vulnerabilities to
attacks with chemical or biological warfare agents and to
develop procedures to respond to such attacks while maintaining
a war-fighting capability," according to the Defense Department.

See the newly declassified data on the Project SHAD web page here:

http://deploymentlink.osd.mil/current_issues/shad/shad_intro.shtml

See also "Sailors Sprayed with Nerve Gas in Cold War Test, Pentagon
Says," by Thom Shanker with William Broad in the May 24 New York Times
here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/24/politics/24NERV.html


******************************
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

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_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web:    www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email:  saftergood@fas.org
voice:  (202) 454-4691