Handbook of intelligence studies / edited by

STAN A. TAYLOR
Although this case has not yet been tried as of this writing, it appears they sought work with
sensitive national security information primarily so they could provide that information to
China.
These may be the only cases in which people sought employment with national security
related agencies primarily to betray their country. If so, only five out of 153 traitors might
have been detected during pre-employment vetting. It does not appear that many future traitors
seek work with classified information so they can then commit treason. Nevertheless, Chin, the
Pollards, Montes, and the Mak brothers were all vetted before they were given access to
classified information and should have been stopped at that stage. Clearly, most traitors enter
the path of treason once they are into their careers. This does not prevent pre-employment
vetting from detecting character flaws, but it does make it much more difficult to do so.
No statistics have been made public by the government as to how many applicants for
clearances are denied access because of something detected at this stage. Obviously, those who
enter this work in order to betray their country can disguise their motives and avoid detection
during pre-employment vetting.
In-service security monitoring
Each agency also monitors its own employees during their careers. Many require periodic
polygraph tests during which the employees are asked questions about their lifestyles as well as
questions about foreign contacts and about classified material they have handled. New and
younger employees tend to be somewhat intimidated by these periodic lie detector tests. Older
ones know that “most of the devices now available, like the polygraph, detect not the lie but
anxiety about the lie.” 5 Moreover, the results of polygraph tests are no better than the training,
experience, and quality of the person who administers them. Other aspects of employee
lifestyles – dramatic changes in financial worth, changes in spending habits, aberrant sexual
practices, etc. – are also observed independently and may provide questions for future polygraph
sessions as well as act as warning signs to counterintelligence officers.
When in-service monitoring is not successful, national security is weakened. A discussion
of failures to detect treason while it was being committed should not detract from the many
cases where it was detected and stopped. Open source information does not always reveal
the extent to which professional counterintelligence techniques and hard work resulted in the
capture of a traitor, often before the information was ever revealed.
A quarter of the 153 individuals in the PERSEREC data base were caught before information
was transmitted and only 20 percent of them spied longer than five years. These facts attest
to either successful counterintelligence or to poor tradecraft on the part of the traitors –
probably a little of both. Taylor and Snow expressed amazement at “the poor level of tradecraft,
even abject stupidity, displayed in many cases” of traitors appearing in their database. 6 Younger
spies, enlisted military personnel, and others with no training in intelligence tradecraft were the
most likely to make foolish mistakes that led to their capture. 7 But even those with intelligence
tradecraft training (Walker, Ames, and Hanssen, for example) made serious errors while committing
treason, often brought on by overconfidence after long years of successful betrayal.
Nevertheless, the record of practicing traitors being overlooked during in-service monitoring
is one of the most discouraging aspects of counterintelligence. The failure of in-service
monitoring can be illustrated in any of a number of cases, but nowhere more dramatically than
in the case of one of the most famous and most damaging spies in American history – Aldrich
Ames. Because of his father’s long employment with the CIA, Ames began working as a
document clerk for the agency while still a college student in Washington, DC in 1967. He
240