Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 14, 1994 TAG: 9407140090
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LLOYD CUTLER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``Lisa Foster recalls that during that same week, Foster told her that his heart had been `pounding.' Records reflect that on Friday, July 16, he went to the White House medical unit to have his blood pressure taken, which was recorded as 132/84. On the same day, Foster called his sister, Sheila, and told her he was battling depression for the first time in his life and did not know what to do about it. Sheila Anthony described Foster's voice as tight and strained. She asked him to let her contact a psychiatrist and set up an appointment for him. Foster told her that he was hesitant to see a psychiatrist because it could jeopardize his White House security clearance. Sheila Anthony said that she would discuss this concern with the psychiatrist before making any appointment.''
Foster never saw the psychiatrist. Four days later, he took his own life.
Tragically, Foster's hesitancy was justified. Since returning to the White House Counsel's office, I have learned that for positions requiring security clearance, government questionnaires still ask whether a prospective employee has consulted a psychiatrist. If the answer is yes, the FBI and other security checkers insist on the subject's consent to see the psychiatrist and obtain full disclosure of his or her conclusions.
To my personal knowledge, and most likely to Vincent Foster's when he was deputy White House counsel, many security checkers consider that consulting a psychiatrist is a blemish which requires further exhaustive investigation into the subject's mental stability and vulnerability to blackmail.
I have had to decide, as Foster probably did, whether someone's admission of more than one set of psychiatric consultations was a basis for denying that person a security clearance. Some security checkers believe that it is, and it takes courage to overrule them.
Such a view might have been understandable a few decades ago, when psychiatric consultation was exceptional. But it makes little sense today, when most health plans - including the plans the government offers to its own employees - cover some degree of psychiatric consultation, and when millions of Americans take advantage of this benefit.
Surely consultation would have helped Vincent Foster to be a more effective public servant, rather than more of a threat to national security. Education about their illness and the potential for treatment is extremely useful to the severely depressed, because it offers an alternative to suicide.
I have even heard of a case in which a security checker asked a prospective employee whether he and his spouse had ever consulted a marriage counselor - a question that is not on most government-employment questionnaires. When asked why this question was being asked, the checker said in order to find out from the counselor whether the employee had had a secret affair and might therefore be subject to potential blackmail.
I would have thought the government would want to improve the mental health of its employees. Psychiatric consultation usually improves mental health. In the vast majority of cases, it is not an indicator of the severe types of mental disorder that could endanger the national security.
Our security processes need to be more tolerant of visits to mental-health professionals. They should not instill the kind of fear that made Vincent Foster hesitate to consult a psychiatrist who just might have saved his life and preserved his effectiveness as a valued public servant.
Fortunately, this serious question - illustrated by the above paragraph of the Fiske report - is now under a government-wide review begun before the report was published.
If it leads to a broader acceptance of the idea that an occasional series of psychiatric consultations is not a risk to national security, then Vincent Foster's tragic death will at least have taught us a valuable lesson.
Lloyd Cutler is White House counsel.
The Washington Post
by CNB