‘Faceless clerks’ the new breed of spy

Press, 16 January 1986, Page 16

‘Faceless clerks’ the new breed of spy

The cloak and dagger spies — “HUMINT” — provide only a tiny fraction of United States’ intelligence information. This is increasingly done by computers, with a massive amount of material coming in from satellites and listening posts, and from overt reports (such as Parliamentary hearings and media accounts) being processed by thousands of faceless clerks. Some reaction has set in against this. Foul-ups in the invasion of Grenada, for example, were attributed to the fact that the United States apparently had no agent on the ground there. In other cases, the United States is now discovering that some of those faceless clerks have been passing information to other countries for many years. Charges have been laid against 14 people in recent months after various investigations. The Federal Bureau of Investigations director, William Webster, said on television last month that agents had opened a “substantial number” of new cases based on information supplied by the K.G.B. defector-rede-fector, Vitaly Yurchenko. The tally so far: • John Walker, aged 48. Private detective and former United States Navy communications specialist. Arrested last May after he dropped classified documents at the side of a rural road for his Soviet contact to pick up. Pleaded guilty. Will be sentenced to life in prison. • Michael Walker, aged 23.

John Walker’s son. A navy seaman, arrested aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Nimitz. Admitted passing sacks of classified documents to his father. Plea bargain will give him 25 years.

• Arthur Walker, aged 51. John Walker’s brother; a retired navy lieutenant commander. Has admitted passing confidential documents to John Walker from the defence contracting firm for which he worked. Sentenced to life imprisonment and a fine of $U5250,000.

• Jerry Whitworth, aged 46. Former navy chief radioman, and friend of John Walker. Facing charges of receiving ?U5332,000 from John Walker for navy secrets, including communication codes.

• Samuel Morison, aged 40. Convicted for passing secret satellite photographs of a Soviet aircraft carrier under construction to Britain’s “Jane’s Defence Weekly,” while working as a United States Navy intelligence analyst. Sentenced to two years in prison, but free on bond pending appeal.

• Sharon Scranage, aged 30. Worked as a clerk for the C.LA. in Ghana. She admitted passing secrets to Michael Soussoudis, then her lover. Sentenced to five years in prison.

• Michael Soussoudis, aged 39. A Ghanaian, and first cousin of Ghanaian leader Jerry Rawlings, he was arrested in July during a

visit to the United States and charged with obtaining information from Scranage. Sentenced to 20 years, but exchanged virtually immediately for eight men arrested in Ghana on charges of working for the C.I.A.

• Jonathan Pollard, aged 31. Drove fast into the Israeli Embassy with his wife last month, exited shortly afterward, was arrested and charged with espionage. A former civilian intelligence analyst with the Naval Investigative Service, he is being held without bond pending trial.

• Anne Henderson-Pollard, aged 25. Arrested the next day and charged with possessing unauthorised classified information. She worked for a public relations firm, and was said to be taking classified documents to the Chinese Embassy for a sales pitch.

• Larry Wu-Tai Chin, aged 63. A retired C.LA. analyst, charged with spying for China for more than 30 years.

• Edward Howard, aged 33. Fired from the C.LA. in 1983 for occasional drug use. Has fled the United States. Accused of selling United States intelligence secrets to the Soviet Union. Believed to have been named by Yurchenko.

• Richard Miller. Former F. 8.1. agent accused of passing secrets to his blonde K.G.B. lover for payments which allegedly included $U565,000 in cash and gold. He is facing a second trial after a

Federal jury deadlocked last month. The lover, Svetlana Ogorodnikova, and her husband Nikolay, pleaded guilty to espionage charges and are serving prison sentences.

• Ronald Pelton, aged 44. Also identified by Yurchenko. A former National Security Agency communications specialist, arrested last month and admitted contacting Soviet agents. Yet to come to trial.

• Thomas Cavanagh, aged 40. A former Northrop Company engineer, he was sentenced to life imprisonment last May after confessing that he had tried to sell secret plans for the Stealth bomber to F. 8.1. agents posing as Soviet spies.

In the 19605, when the C.LA. was at its heyday, it had some 9000 agents around the world. After cutbacks — a result of perceived excesses — that number came down to fewer than 4000 by the mid 19705, according to the best reports available. Now, the United States intelligence community spends more than SUS2O billion a year on intelligence gathering — the exact figure is secret — but more than 87 per cent of that goes on “technical” collection. The various agencies employ hundreds of thousands of people with access to secret documents. The C.LA., though, is estimated to control no more than 10 to 15 per cent of those “assets” — money and people combined. With billions of words pouring in

from intercepts, photographs raining down from satellites and spy planes, and reports coming in daily from embassies, the problem is making sense out of all the information.

Critics say the task is impossible.

The other problem is maintaining security with such a huge work force.

The security agencies use liedetectors, but admit that security clearances and updates have often been scrappy because of sheer numbers. With those working for defence contractors included, the number of Americans with access to classified information is estimated to be some four million.

In the Defence Department alone, some 2,400,000 people have access to classified material, according to a study by Editorial Research Reports. About half a million have access to “Top Secret” reports, and 15,000 to material in even higher classifications known as “sensitive Compartmented information.” One result of the recent scandals is that the security agencies are cutting down hard on security clearance levels, reducing access — without prejudice — by many employees.

Another is a drive to redefine the “Top Secret,” “Secret” and “Classified” stamps and reduce sharply the number of people with access to those stamps. The principle is that when everything is restricted, the “Top Secret” gets mixed in with the lowly “Classified” in bar-room gossip and the value of a “Top Secret” stamp is debased.