Bill Richardson
Department of Energy
Washington, DC

Dear Sec. Richardson:

We the undersigned, all being Q-cleared employees of the Applied Theoretical and Computational Physics Division (X-Division) at Los Alamos National Laboratory, ask you to reconsider your apparent recent decision to begin extensive polygraphing of Q-cleared employees here, and at our two sister labs, Sandia and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.

Although it is not certain yet whether Q-cleared employees with routine access to Secret Restricted Data (SRD), but not routine access to Top Secret information, will be required to undergo polygraph testing, we are sufficiently concerned by rumors of such new policies to write to you now, in order to express our dismay.

We believe that the vast majority of X-Division employees cannot justly be subjected to polygraphing. We believe that Q-cleared personnel may be polygraphed only in those rare cases where they demonstrably have access to Top Secret material, or upon a showing by the Government of probable cause, as required by the fourth amendment to the U. S. Constitution.

We are opposed to unwarranted blanket polygraphing of Q-cleared personnel.

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