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■Tate
The Russians are not the only ones coveting U.S. technology, however. In a highly competitive global economy, technology is re- quired for
U.S. technology and secrets are at greater risk today than they were at the height of the Cold War—the number of spies is multiplying, and many come dressed as friends. A comprehensive counterintelligence strategy that focuses on security awareness is urgently needed.
On 23 February 1994, Aldrich “Rick” Ames and his wife, Maria, were arrested by federal agents on charges of spying for the Russians. A career intelligence officer working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for more than 30 years, Ames is accused of accepting more than $2 million from the Russians over a ten-year period. Administration officials have called this case disaster for American intelligence.”
In fact, it represents only the latest skirmish in an
espionage campaign constantly being waged against the United States—a campaign in which secrets are the prize and human weakness the principal target.
This latest spy case shows that the Russian espionage threat did not end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Most of the former Eastern Bloc countries have down- scaled their intelligence efforts greatly, but in Russia, the former KGB sim-
ply was reorganized into an internal security arm aft*er foreign intelligence service. This service, along with Russian military’s intelligence organization, the Gf§n continues to target U.S. technology and other secrets”^ the chief of the Soviet counterintelligence branch ifl'a*C{ CIA, Rick Ames was supposed to neutralize these o'!e ’ nizations. In reality, he was working for them. av-
natio survival. As would expect, countries such1 China, Iran, Libya, North Korea, and t continue to mount intelligence operations against $
lited States, often trading the information gained for )re tangible wares, such as weapons or money.
In addition to these traditional espionage threats, how- er, one now must add some of our friends and allies, ance, Israel, Greece, and Japan also need technology d have demonstrated that they are willing to spy to get The rationale for their espionage against the United ates was summarized by former French spymaster Pierre arion in a 1991 television interview: “In political mates, we are really allied. But in economic competition, in chnological competition, we are competitors.”' The •ench espionage threat is taken so seriously that several .S. aerospace companies refused to bring their latest luipment to last year’s Paris Air Show out of fear that eir technology would be compromised.2 For the United
tates, all foreign intelligence services now must be con-
afdered espionage threats. r jt|, The need for new technology has spurred efforts by for- ^ gfgn nations to acquire it. One source is the U.S. military ‘cretsnc* one means f°r obtaining it is espionage. The high ^ flakes involved in these efforts were well illustrated by _ (Vie two most damaging spies ever detected in the U.S. favy: John Walker and Jonathan Pollard.
The John Walker spy ring was shut down by the Fed- ral Bureau of Investigation in 1985. It was one of the lost devastating espionage operations in history, com- 'romising U.S. naval communications over a 17-year •eriod. With the capability to exploit our secure commu- lications provided by the Walker spy ring, the Soviet Jnion was able to read classified Navy messages. Among >ther things, the intelligence gained from these messages ,’ave the Soviets the potential to nullify the acoustic ad- /antages of modem U.S. submarines, which have been a Cornerstone of U.S. strategic planning for the past 20 years.
Jonathan Pollard’s espionage operations on behalf of Israel also were terminated in 1985. Pollard was a naval intelligence analyst with broad access to U.S. intelligence and other classified materials. Betraying the trust of his Navy employers, he provided his Israeli handlers with thousands of classified documents, which included details of U.S. technical intelligence collection systems and capabilities. This information likely is still of great use to Israel today, both for the insights it provides into U.S. capabilities and as a commodity that can be traded to others for Israeli gain.
o f' 01
While these two cases were among the most serious during the 1980s’ “decade of spies,” there have been dozens of other less dramatic but still harmful spy cases and literally thousands of espionage investigations since then. Over the past few years, an impressive list of compromises has occurred, including sensitive satellite systems, electronic warfare capabilities, communications systems and vulnerabilities, new high-tech weapon systems, stealth technology, sensitive intelligence systems, classified war plans and contingency plans, strategic and tactical nuclear systems, and cryptographic systems. To this list, we now must add the information compromised by Rick Ames.
As a senior member of the CIA’s counterintelligence staff, Ames was in a position to do serious damage to U.S. intelligence and security programs. Through his alleged C11! treachery, Ames may be responsible for the deaths of sev- <t <r
eral CIA agents in Russia. He also could have sabotaged our efforts to prevent vital technology from being compromised. The actual damage done by this “Million-Dol- lar Spy” probably will never be made public, but it is potentially very serious.
With all the sophisticated technical means of collecting intelligence currently available, one might wonder why human spies are still needed. In fact, a well-placed and motivated human agent is still the most credible and cost- effective means of collecting intelligence. It is the job of intelligence personnel in foreign embassies and other official organizations to recruit such spies in the United States.
In the United States, more than 4 million people have access to classified information—so there is no shortage of candidates for foreign recruitment. There currently is no deficit in motives, either. Recent cutbacks in military budgets have resulted in personnel reductions, base and defense plant closings, and the cancellation of many new defense programs. Jobs and careers have been dislocated, lives have been disrupted, and individuals have been forced to scramble for alternate employment in a depressed economy. Such conditions can make the disaffected individuals rife for foreign recruitment and willing to volunteer their knowledge and services for money.
Regardless of their motives, it is people like the Walkers, the Pollards, and the Ameses—trusted individuals who volunteer to spy—who can do the most damage. These volunteers can provide high-quality, classified material to their foreign employers while continuing to work on the inside. They are in business because they want to be and are motivated to search for the material that their foreign employers want. It is against these spies that we must focus our counterintelligence efforts.
Naval Counterintelligence
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS, formerly NIS) is the primary criminal investigation and counterintelligence agency for the Department of the Navy. Countering foreign espionage is only one of many tasks assigned to this 1,000-agent organization, but this does not imply that NCIS takes its counterintelligence responsibilities lightly. In recent years, NCIS has developed and refined a series of counterintelligence measures designed to preempt prospective spies and seek out those who already are operating within the naval service. All of these counterintelligence programs have met with some measure of success, but it is only the more spectacular cases that ever reach the public’s attention.
The keystone of NCIS’s counterintelligence effort is the Security Awareness Program. Annual NCIS security awareness briefings are required for all naval personnel to raise the level of awareness regarding foreign intelligence activities and developments. These briefings include “Profiles of a Spy,” a discussion of observable behavior patterns that might be an indication of espionage activity. (See Figure 1.) It should be noted that NCIS and other counterintelligence agencies have to balance individual rights of privacy against suspicions of espionage activity when investigating an individual. In most cases, individuals have perfectly legitimate reasons for their activities
Proceedings / May 1994
and formal investigations are never started, but in a few cases, these indicators have led to disclosures of actual espionage.
These indicators are especially relevant to the Ames case. Ames and his wife lived a life-style well beyond his legitimate means as a GS-14 civil servant. They paid cash for their $540,000 home and then spent another $99,000 for improvements. They purchased a $40,000 sports car, which Ames blatantly parked in the CIA parking lot each working day. They had more than $450,000 in credit card bills. Why no one in the CIA thought that this open affluence was unusual for a $70,000-a-year government employee remains a mystery.
Figure 1: Profiles of a Spy
► Unexplained affluence
► Desire to work alone
► Unreported foreign travel
► Unreported foreign contacts
► Unauthorized removal of classified material from the work place
Augmenting this Navy-wide security awareness program is a program for providing specialized training in espionage indicators to selected individuals working in sensitive spaces. Called the Passive Listening Post (PLP)
Program, this approach essentially attempts to use command resources as trained extensions of NCIS, for detecting espionage activity within the command.
The covert nature of this program and Americans’ innate dislike of anything that smacks of “big brother” have led to a general misunderstanding of its intent. PLP sources are selected for their maturity and intelligence. They are not “political policemen” or ru- mormongers; they are asked to report to NCIS only on activity that may be indicative of espionage. This might include unexplained affluence or repetitive foreign travel by one of their coworkers, for example. If a program like PLP had been in effect on the Constellation (CV-64) and the Nimitz (CVN-68), the espionage activities of Jerry Whitworth and Michael Walker might have been detected earlier.
Once a suspect has been identified, the NCIS must begin the difficult and often frustrating task of investigating the case formally. At an early stage in its investigation, NCIS may brief one or more of the suspect’s fellow workers about the case and solicit their assistance in observing and reporting on the subject’s behavior in the work space. This Cooperating Witness Program requires command sanction and support to be effective and is not limited to espionage cases. It was used with considerable success in the case of Michael Walker, providing details of his operating methods on board the Nimitz that proved quite useful during his interrogation by NIS agents after his arrest.
NCIS may augment these observations with technical monitoring—for example, placing concealed video cameras in the suspect’s work space. This technique was used to observe Jonathan Pollard’s activity before he was arrested, and videotapes of Pollard loading his briefcases with classified documents proved quite damaging after he was confronted with his crimes.
In most cases, espionage is difficult to prove. There may be very little direct evidence that will stand up in court. Unless spies are caught in the act of illegally removing classified material from a secure facility or actually passing classified material to foreign intelligence
case officers, much of the evidence against them will be circumstantial.
Even circumstantial evidence can be useful, however, in eliciting a confession by the suspect during interrogation. The successful prosecution of Michael Walker, John Walker’s son, was based primarily on his admission of guilt during a series of NIS interviews, in which he gradually implicated himself in espionage on behalf of his father.
If a member of the naval service is suspected of contacting a foreign intelligence service to volunteer his services as a spy, NCIS or the FBI may take on the role of the foreign agent, setting up a classic sting operation to arrest the suspect in the act of passing classified government information. As an example of this type of operation: Former Navy Chief Petty Officer Craig D. Kunkle was arrested in Norfolk, Virginia, in January 1989 on charges of attempting to sell classified information to a Soviet representative. Kunkle met with a person he believed to be a representative of the Soviet Embassy in Washington on six occasions, beginning in early December 1988. At each of these meetings, Kunkle discussed his desire to pass classified military secrets to the Soviet Union for money, not realizing that the contact he was meeting was actually an undercover FBI agent.3
Such sting or “buy-and-bust” operations are used by NCIS when its investigation indicates that the suspect is working alone. If there is any indication that the individual may be operating as part of a group or may have a subsource for his material, NCIS may opt for a “controlled buy,” actually paying the suspect for classified information, to string along the would-be spy and to ensure that when he is eventually arrested, the other participants also are caught.
These measures, taken individually or in combination, target the spy within the naval service. Taking action against the foreign intelligence case officers themselves is a more complex and often more dangerous task. One method of compromising foreign intelligence officers is by using a double agent—an agent whom the foreign service thinks it has recruited, but who actually is working for the U.S. counterintelligence services.
One highly successful double-agent operation, conducted by NIS in 1986, was code named Station Zebra. It began when a U.S. naval officer assigned to the Naval Facility at Argentia, Newfoundland, was selected as the undercover agent in an operation to expose and curtail Soviet espionage efforts against U.S. antisubmarine warfare capabilities. Under NIS control, the officer walked aboard a visiting Soviet research vessel and offered to pass classified materials to the Soviets for money. She used classified documents, cleared by NIS for this operation, to demonstrate her access.
A few months later, this officer received a letter asking that she meet with a Soviet “representative.” During this and three other meetings with her Soviet case office^ she was paid $6,000 in cash and provided with secret writ-
Proceedings / May I'W'*
ing materials, an accommodation address to which she could mail her material, a camera and film for document photography, and a list of specific Soviet intelligence requirements regarding the naval facility and U.S. antisubmarine warfare capabilities. Her case officer was identified as Stephen Joseph Ratkai, a 25-year-old male with dual Canadian and Hungarian citizenship.
At their final meeting, Ratkai was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. During his interrogation, Ratkai admitted to his espionage activities on behalf of the Soviets and pleaded guilty to two counts of espionage. He was sentenced to nine years in prison by a Canadian court.4
Judicious use of double-agent operations can help neutralize the recruiting efforts of foreign intelligence officers and provide positive intelligence about specific foreign intelligence requirements. Because of the obvious risks inherent in such operations, double agents must be tightly controlled and monitored to ensure their own safety. NCIS double-agent operations have proved to be valuable defensive weapons in the espionage campaign, and they deserve our support.
Needed: A Counterintelligence Strategy
This overview of the espionage threat and the Navy’s response begs the question: Are we doing enough about it? The sheer number of foreign espionage threats arrayed against us can easily overwhelm our limited counterintelligence assets; we cannot compete on a one-for-one basis. We need to develop new approaches to the problem that take advantage of our edge in new technology.
One such approach was suggested by Senator John Glenn (D-Ohio) during Senate subcommittee hearings on foreign espionage activities in 1985. He proposed a “red team” analytical effort to determine what information foreign nations would likely target and where they Would go to find it. Playing the role of the foreign intelligence services, the “red team” could view U.S. technological developments from a foreign perspective, identifying key foreign technology requirements and then determining the most likely sources of such information from a foreign-intelligence viewpoint. This analytical effort could cue enhanced U.S. counterintelligence efforts around the organizations likely to be targeted by espionage, allowing us to focus our limited resources on specific threats.5
This is but one of many tactics that may be useful in coping with the threat, but more important than any single method of tackling the espionage problem is a requirement for a national counterespionage strategy and a campaign to carry it out. This need has been recognized by Congress. A report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, published after the Walker and Pollard spy cases, stated that “The Executive Branch should develop a national counterintelligence strategy that establishes national objectives and integrates the planning and resources of each agency to achieve these objectives.”6 Eight years later, this national strategy has yet to be articulated, but renewed interest in the espionage problem can be expected in the wake of the Rick Ames case. As we assess our counterintelligence posture, we should consider reexamining other aspects of our security programs, as well. There are three major components that relate directly to the espionage threat, and any effective counterintelligence strategy must address them all.7 These components are defense, deterrence, and detection.
► Defense must begin with our system for classifying and safeguarding sensitive material. Our current system, based on outmoded concepts that predate World War I, is no longer effective and simply cannot cope with the information explosion. Much information no longer may need to be classified, and programs to declassify old documents automatically do not seem to work. The result is a growing glut of documents that remain subject to the limitations and control of our information security system. To make the matter worse, personal computers, computer networks, and facsimile machines make it nearly impossible to control the distribution of this classified data.
These limitations were examined in 1985 by a special commission on DoD security chaired by retired Army General Richard Stilwell. The Stilwell Commission report made several recommendations to streamline the security classification and handling system.8 Unfortunately, not many of these suggestions were heeded. It is time to take a new look at our information security programs and devise procedures that can meet demands for access while protecting critical data.
I*
**oceedlngs / May 1994
83
► Deterrence is the second element in our strategy. To deter spies we must educate our personnel through an aggressive security-awareness program. A key part of such a program should include a discussion of "Profiles of a Spy,” which describes the warning signs of possible es-
pionage. The message implicit in any security awareness program should be that spies will be caught.
An effective program cannot be allowed to evolve into a required annual pro forma lecture that is simply an administrative checkoff item. It must be a dynamic and relevant program that motivates our personnel to take a personal interest in combating espionage.
► Detection is the third component of a counterintelligence strategy. To uncover spies within our organizations, we must develop a variety of new and innovative counterintelligence programs that inhibit espionage operations. Traditional ways to take the offensive against espionage, discussed earlier, should be used to develop new approaches that are in consonance with our individual rights of privacy and an increasingly high-tech environment.
An effective national counterintelligence strategy must include all three of these elements, but the key to these components is awareness. Analyses of recent spy cases— from John Walker to Rick Ames—agree that the spies’ actions, either on the job or in their private lives, should have aroused the suspicions of their coworkers. These actions—all found in “Profiles of a Spy”—were observable by people close to the spies and yet were never questioned. An aggressive and dynamic security awareness program might have elicited such questions, prompting further investigation.
“Eftimiades has written an important book on Chinese intelligence which is both well documented and well grounded in history.”
—The Honorable James R. Lii ley, U.S. Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, 1989-1991
The need to educate our personnel about the espionage threat is especially critical today. Tough economic
times and visions of a new global detente provide new motives for committing espionage. U.S. technology and | secrets are at greater risk today than they were at the height of the Cold War. New adversaries, new methods, and the seeming ambivalence of the post-Cold War environment make the protection of our technology and other sen- j sitive information especially difficult. A comprehensive strategy to protect our secrets is urgently needed. There | should be no doubt: the espionage campaign is real, and it represents a clear and present danger.
'Quoted in Daniel O. Scuro, “Votre Secrets, Monsieur?” Security Management, October 1992, p. 36.
Christopher Bums, ‘‘Was the Air Show a Spy Show?” Philadelphia Inquirer, 15 June 1993, C-l.
J“Ex-Sailor Accused of Trying to Sell Secrets to Moscow,” The Washington Post, 11 January 1989, p. 3. j
4Naval Investigative Service Command, Espionage, [1990], pp. 30-34.
5U.S. Congress, Senate, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Com- . mittee on Governmental Affairs, Foreign Missions Act and Espionage Activities of the United States, Hearings (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1986), P-21.
6U.S. Congress, Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Meeting the Espionage Challenge: A Review of United States Counterintelligence and Security Programs, Report, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986), p. 39.
7Capt. Esmond D. Smith, Jr., USN (Ret.), “The Spies Among Us: Trends in Mil- i itary Espionage,” American Intelligence Journal, Spring 1990, pp. 3-4.
' Keeping the Nation's Secrets: A Report to the Secretary of Defense by the Commission to Review DoD Security Practices, by Richard G. Stilwell, Chairman (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1985), pp. 47-63.
Captain Smith held the Chair of Military Intelligence at the Naval War College until his retirement in October 1992. He will receive his doctorate in humanities this month from Salve Regina University.
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Proceedings / May 191#