Propaganda Whiz

Late last year, as Thanksgiving was giving way to Christmas and Crazy Eddie was gearing up for his Fourth of July sale, George Shultz put his foot down. He drew the line. He took a stand.

On November 1, President Reagan had issued a national security directive on combatting espionage. In it, he called for widespread polygraph testing to cut down on the flow of sensitive information into the hands of enemy agents and enemy journalists. The directive made all Federal employees with access to such information, including Cabinet officials, subject to random lie-detector testing. After the directive was made public, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger '38 said that taking the test "wouldn't bother me a bit." But Secretary of State Shultz would have none of it. "The day in this Government I am told that I'm not trusted is the day that I leave," he told reporters.

Shultz' public threat to resign forced the Adminstration to back down from the testing plan, and the Secretary was hailed for his principled position. Even Anthony Lewis '48 of The New York Times, one of the most consistent and forceful foes of the foreign policy Shultz oversees, was moved to wax eloquent about Shultz' role in the affair. He called it "a reaffirmation of the role of personal character in public life."

All of which made it surprising to read last week that the good Secretary has no qualms about the drug-testing plan the President is now proposing for federal employees. Reagan wants to establish a mandatory testing program for key government staffers, as well as a "voluntary" one for all Federal employees.

The President, you see, "will seek to remove drugs from schools, the workplace, athletic programs, and from all elements of society, "his spokesman Larry Speakes said the other day. That's a pretty big undertaking. And how does he hope to pull it off? "The President will seek to form a partnership with government, industry, schools and the American public," Speakes said. That's a pretty big partnership. And to show that he means business, the President himself underwent a urinalysis during his recent hospital visit.

But even as they announced the Chief Executive's bold plan to use "the full power of the Presidency" to counter illicit drug use, Mr. Reagan's spokesmen were forced to make a humbling admission: that there are no plans underway to increase funding for drug-treatment centers already overwhelmed by the increased abuse of crack and devastated by previous cutbacks in federal subsidies. But that should come as no surprise. For years, while his wife has toured the country spouting anti-drug rhetoric, Ronald Reagan's budgetary priorities have overlooked drug-abuse prevention and rehabilitation programs.

But that's another question for another day. What is bothersome now is the growing use by employees in this country of drug-testing, of which the President's plan is but the latest example. Nearly one-quarter of America's largest private employers now require drug-testing of their employees, and the number is growing. And now Reagan wants the Federal government, the nation's single largest employer, to get into the act.

There are a number of constitutional and ethical arguments against widespread drug-testing, be it mandatory or "voluntary," as well as some practical ones. It is thus difficult to understand why, for instance, a man with a proven sensitivity to such matters as George Shultz sees nothing wrong with such testing. Why is being asked to submit to a urinalysis any less noxious, any less a questioning of his integrity, then being asked to take a lie-detector test?

The answer is simple. There is no difference. Shultz says drug-testing is "a different concept" from polygraph testing. Reagan is trying to skirt the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures--it's right there, in the Fourth Amendment--by making the tests "voluntary." Both men, though, should know better.

The current anti-drug hoopla began last March, when a presidential commission looking into organized crime issued a report on governmental drug-enforcement policy. In the report, commission members called for widespread mandatory drug-testing for all government employees. Preserver and Defender of Our Liberties Edwin Meese immediately defended the constitutionality of the proposal. But civil liberties groups, members of Congress and employees unions attacked the idea just as quickly, and the Administration did not follow up with any specific proposals.

But the recent drug deaths of two prominent athletes and the increased media coverage of crack abuse revived and intensified anti-drug sentiments. Baseball commissioner and former Olympic impressario Peter Ueberroth, for one, has turned the elimination of drugs from his sport into a personal crusade. (It won't be long until he begins to take bids from companies wishing to become the "official urinalysis of Major League baseball.")

As the hysteria about drugs heightens, though, we would all do well to heed the words of Judge H. Lee Sarokin, who recently ruled that 16 New Jersey firemen suspended after failing surprise urine tests had to be reinstated, at least temporarily: "No matter how important war against crime and drugs, constitutional rights must not be sacrificed to win those battles."

The idea now being spread by reckless and overzealous advocates of drug-testing is, to paraphrase, that those who have nothing to worry about. Hence, therefore, ergo, rampant drug-testing cannot be a violation of anyone's Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

This sort of reasoning is indicative of a more general misunderstanding of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Whenever some bad guy "gets off" because his rights were violated, the cry goes up among members of the Dirty Harry School of Justice that surely something is rotten in Denver when "animals" are afforded such noble protections. But what is forgotten is that the stringent proscriptions of the Constitution are there to protect the innocent. The Constitution protects the liberties of the guilty so as to safeguard those of the innocent--those who have nothing to hide.

According to the argument that drug-testing does not violate the Fourth Amendment because it will neither harm nor infringe upon the rights of the innocent, it follows that there should be nothing wrong with violating other liberties of those who are not guilty of wrongdoing. Surely, then, no harm will be done if the police illegally search someone's house--that person has nothing to hide. Ed Meese believes there is a causal connection between pornography and violent crime. Perhaps federal employees should have their briefcases searched for copies of Penthouse. How could that violate their right to privacy? After all, those right-minded, god-fearing citizens who do not read the stuff should have nothing to fear if they have nothing to hide.

Practical arguments against drug-testing are at least as compelling. Reagan says that his testing plan will be "voluntary." Those found using illegal drugs will be directed to counselling, not punished. But what about those who refuse to take the test? "I'm sure it would be noted," said a White House spokesman. And if it "would be noted" who did and did not take the test, what would be the real reaction toward those who took the test--and failed?

This leads into the second practical argument against testing. The tests are far from infallible. Shultz explained that he had no misgivings against drug-testing as opposed to polygraph-testing because "Drug-testing is a much more reliable scientific tool. It is a definitive test. It's relatively non-intrusive." True, false, false. Drug-testing is more reliable than truth-testing. The polygraph test, with an accuracy of some 50 percent is about as accurate a measure of honesty as coin-flipping. But drug tests still have a margin of error of 2-11 percent. With 1.1 million federal employees, that adds up to some 110,000 people whose careers would be curtailed by the erroneous results of an unneccessary drug test. Even if they were later to be vindicated, their negative test results would undoubtedly "be noted" in the back of their superiors' minds. The cloud of suspicion would surely hover over them for the rest of their lives.

And non-intrusive? The test, in order to be valid, must be taken in the presence of a witness. How much more intrusive can it be, how much more unreasonable can a search be, how much more a violation of one's fundamental personal rights can it be than to be forced to urinate in the presence of some silent, bureaucratic stranger?

So what to do about the growing use of drugs in society and the workplace? The best solution is to be found in a plan that has come out of San Francisco. An ordinance passed there last November by the Board of Supervisors prohibits random urine-testing except when an employer has reason to believe an individual presents a clear danger to the safety of others. The law exempts only police officers, fire fighters and those who work on emergency vehicles, such as ambulances.

"The constitutional proscription against unreasonable search and seizure is not limited to only those who are suspected of criminal behavior," wrote a judge in another New Jersey drug-testing case. "Instead," he continued, "all searches...must satisfy constitutional reasonableness standards." The San Fransisco law, which requires reasonable suspicion of a specific individual's substance abuse--and a concomitant threat to the safety of others--best satisfies such standards. As George Shultz, a former college dean, should know, those who have nothing to fear because they have nothing hide lack also one other thing. They have nothing to prove.