The Nation - News from Dec. 4, 1987

A House-Senate conference committee agreed to require that diplomatic security personnel with access to top-secret material in U.S. embassies submit to lie-detector tests. “These are the people who hold the keys to the deepest secrets of our nation,” said Rep. Daniel A. Mica (D-Fla.), author of the amendment. He said that an inspection trip to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow led to the introduction of the amendment. The provision, opposed by the State Department because it considers polygraph tests unreliable, was agreed to as members of the panel opened work on reconciling two versions of the annual State Department authorization bill previously passed by the two chambers. The bill authorizes spending of nearly $4 billion for the State Department, the Agency for International Development and the U.S. Information Agency.