| http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/010611/usnews/spy.htm
To Tell the Truth As it ferrets out its own moles, the FBI can take a lesson from a CIA spy hunt that went too far By Kevin Whitelaw and David E. Kaplan Theirs is a job of deception and concealment, of gaming and lying, and doing it over and over. So Edward Curran knew in the fall of 1994 that his new position as the CIA's chief spy hunter carried a special peril. A career FBI man, Curran was instantly marked an enemy in a hostile camp. The bureau had just arrested Aldrich Ames, the most damaging spy in CIA history, and officials suspected there were other moles. A panicked Congress ordered the FBI to help clean up the CIA's mess. The task fell to Curran, who sensed the nation's premier spy agency was consumed by mistrust. Routine polygraphs became grueling interrogation sessions. The polygraphers treated their colleagues "like criminals," says Curran. "This might be great in a prison but not with civil servants." The crackdown turned up serious security problems. But innocent people were also snagged, raising the question of whether the agency used the decidedly wrong medicine for a cure. As many as 100 people–including some of the nation's top spies–found their careers paralyzed: Many lost coveted transfers overseas; others were pushed into dead-end jobs; still others quit in frustration or were forced out. "No organization can afford to have that many experienced officers tied up in limbo," says Frederick Hitz, the CIA inspector general for much of the 1990s. Says a former station chief: "The effect was devastating." Today, the dragnet at the CIA offers a cautionary tale as other federal agencies embark on their own sweeping spy hunts. The FBI has launched an agencywide mole hunt, sparked by the February ar- rest of veteran counterintelligence agent Robert Hanssen. And the Department of Energy, after unproven spy allegations against physicist Wen Ho Lee, is turning to the polygraph to shore up security at its labs. In all, thousands of federal employees will be tested, or "fluttered," on the box. Despite the obvious need to safeguard the nation's secrets, security inquiries can inflict lasting damage when they are not properly managed, as the CIA crackdown makes clear. The investigation helped plunge morale to depths from which the agency has still not recovered. And the exodus of talent hampered intelligence operations and left relative novices in key posts overseas. Interviews with three dozen current and former officials illuminate several problems: The FBI was slow to review cases; investigators gave short shrift to considerations of due process; and, most important, they placed far too much faith, despite its dubious scientific validity, in the so-called lie-detector test. "Because it was a convenient tool," concedes a CIA security official, "there probably was an overreliance on the polygraph." Unmasking spies. The ghost of spy hunters past still haunts the CIA. In the early 1970s, legendary spy hunter James Jesus Angleton turned the place inside out trying to unmask suspected Soviet agents. Angleton's crusade was so destructive that, after he was forced out, the CIA's counterintelligence office became a dismal backwater. "For a long time, it was just not a place where up-and-coming officers wanted to serve," says Hitz. Soon, enforcement of security rules waned; minor violations were winked at. "The attitude was that if you fail your polygraph," says Curran, "nothing will happen to you." That attitude, in large part, was blamed for the CIA's failure to detect Ames. But his arrest transformed the slack security office into a den of pit-bull investigators. Employees now were required to submit four-page financial disclosure forms, and the polygraph became the coin of the realm. "If they can't pass a CIA polygraph, fire them," former CIA officials recall Rep. Norman Dicks, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, barking at the time. Everyone knew of the polygraph's flaws, shortcomings so glaring that the test results are inadmissible in most courts. A tabletop box that monitors pulse, breathing, and skin moisture, the machine measures stress, not truthfulness. Even veteran polygraphers concede there is a 10 percent to 15 percent "false positive" rate. That's where the machine registers a "significant physiological response" on a truthful answer. "The polygraph is not really a lie detector," says former CIA director James Woolsey. "You have cases in which truthful people look like they're lying and where lying people look like they're truthful." Many times during the exams, officials say, fears unrelated to counterintelligence or criminal behavior clouded the results. Horror stories about bad polygraph sessions soon raced through the agency. No matter. CIA brass were under pressure to crack down. Security officials tapped into a classified database, combing through six years of old polygraph exams searching for inconsistencies. From that review came the "A to Z list"–a roster of some 300 employees with unresolved problems. CIA officials managed to clear about 85 percent of these initial cases, but every month, an additional 20 to 25 names were added to the list. The polygraph sessions got tougher. More than half the CIA officials examined failed routine follow-up tests, a rate by far the highest among all U.S. intelligence agencies. "After Ames," says retired CIA polygrapher John Sullivan, "we took a harder look at some behavior that in the past we might have let go." Polygraph boosters insist the machine is valuable as part of a larger counterintelligence program. The real value of the test, some say, is intimidation–its power to prompt confessions from subjects. But after Ames, many CIA employees felt polygraph examiners went too far. One CIA case officer fielded a polygrapher's questions about her sex life, including how often she and her boyfriend had sex, and what positions they used. A decorated station chief remembers being interrogated for six hours a day for five days–far beyond that recommended by outside polygraphers. "By then," the man says, "you even react to your own name." CIA officials are skeptical about these claims, but say they can't discuss individual cases. Inexperienced examiners presented another problem. Polygraphy is widely thought to be more craft than science, requiring skilled operators who, in intelligence work, must also understand the murky world of espionage. At the CIA after Ames, such expertise was in short supply. Agency brass had effectively dismantled the career service for security officials in the mid-1990s, causing many veteran polygraphers to quit and leaving novices to grill veteran officers. "If you say you have given classified information to foreigners, some [polygraphers] go bananas," says Paul Redmond, a veteran CIA counterintelligence officer who played a key role in catching Ames. "You might be trying to recruit or leverage your information, but try explaining that to someone who has no overseas experience." There was also potential for abuse. Attorney Roy Krieger, who has represented over 50 CIA employees, told Justice Department investigators of a case in which a polygrapher's supervisor ordered him to "make sure [the examinee] doesn't pass." In other cases, Krieger alleges that polygraphers accused truthful people of lying just to test their reaction. At the same time, the FBI was getting into the act. After Ames, Congress passed a law requiring the CIA to inform the FBI of any active counterintelligence investigation. An FBI-CIA agreement meant that any time an employee had trouble on three polygraphs, the case was referred to the FBI for a full criminal investigation."[The statute] was interpreted much too strictly," says Jeffrey Smith, former CIA general counsel. In all, as many as 100 cases were referred to the FBI, often based on little more than failed polygraphs. "The vast majority of referrals really didn't strike me as very serious allegations of espionage," says Raymond Mislock, an FBI official who saw many of the referrals. "In a different era, they would have been handled as [less serious] security violations." After Ames, however, they forced case officers into what they called "polygraph limbo"; their careers were effectively frozen. Assignments overseas were delayed or canceled and access to sensitive data restricted. Worse, the FBI became swamped with sketchy referrals that took months, even years, to resolve. Evidence was rarely sufficient to convince a judge to authorize wiretaps or search warrants. "They were putting cases on pending inactive status," says Curran. "Meanwhile, this guy was waiting for his promotion or transfer." Throughout the process, the CIA actively discouraged employees from seeking legal help. One case officer under suspicion was told that only guilty people need lawyers. But those caught in the crackdown have found few resources within the agency. "Inside, you really have no place to turn," says one official. Outside, lawyers complain of hurdles in obtaining security clearances so they can defend their clients. Shaky evidence. The CIA's crackdown yielded some important results. The sweep not only turned up unauthorized contacts with Russian spies but also undeclared trysts with foreigners and financial irregularities. Employees who committed the most serious violations were fired or forced to resign. Among them was Harold Nicholson, a career case officer later convicted of spying for Moscow. But evidence against others was ambiguous. One longtime case officer who had flunked a polygraph test earlier in his career was reinvestigated after Ames, and demoted. Put through multiple polygraph interrogations, he says he became so frustrated that he fumed to the operator that "the only hostile foreign intelligence agency I thought I worked for was the CIA." (As did others, the agent insisted on anonymity.) A distinguished record didn't help. In fact, some of the CIA's best operatives were most vulnerable precisely because they operated in gray areas. "The people who are out there running around the back alleys of the world that we ask to take risks on behalf of the nation," says Smith, "they're often the ones who have trouble on the polygraph." One former operative–one of the CIA's deepest-cover spies–fits that description. The man had a successful public career overseas for three decades. Working without the diplomatic protection given most CIA officers abroad, he made contacts ranging from Colombian drug dealers and Asian guerrillas to top officials in Europe. He became close enough with these sources to alert his handlers to planned assassinations and drug shipments. Too good. But after Ames, those relationships raised questions. "He fell under suspicion because he was producing good information on hard targets when nobody else was," says Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism director. Other sources say a messy personal relationship raised questions. Two interrogations and several lengthy polygraph exams proved inconclusive. "He had to get intimate with these people," says Phil Giraldi, a former CIA station chief in Rome. "You get inside their heads, which means this kind of stuff gets into your head." The CIA finally decided the man had to resign. "Much of what I was submitting was highly respected up to the very end," he says. "Just the thought that I could be an agent for another power–that they had created a Frankenstein–was too much for the organization to digest." Those kinds of stories eventually persuaded CIA officials to make significant changes. The frequency of routine tests is now calibrated to an employee's access to sensitive information. Polygraph examiners most familiar with the agency's secret operations division are now assigned to test covert officers. The CIA has cut the number of questions on the exam from six to four, reducing the so-called bringback rate by half. Today, officials say, the CIA's list of referrals to the FBI is no more than "a handful." Such improvements are welcome, but for CIA officers who sometimes risked their lives for their country, the lack of due process was galling. "These were very dedicated and honest individuals who flew helicopters, ran black ops, and came under fire," says attorney Michael Kelley, a former CIA official who helped several colleagues sue the agency. "These people deserved a fair chance." CIA veterans are watching with interest now as the FBI and the Energy Department proceed with their inquiries. The FBI's polygraph program may eventually include many of its 11,000 agents. And the Energy Department may test up to 20,000 employees. Both agencies are likely to encounter the same problem that befell the CIA: guarding national security without sacrificing individual rights. "The very nature of these two things may be incompatible," says Kelley. Stephen Block, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represented five CIA employees, warns that a balance must be struck: "It will require gutsy leadership not to destroy lives and careers while this is going on." |
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