A recent firestorm of controversy erupted after a young man, an Air Force Reservist aged 21, allegedly revealed classified information to a closed chat room of uncleared, mainly teenagers. Among the teenagers were some from other countries, but that was not all. Someone in this group took the classified material the leaker divulged and spread it further on social media. A whirlwind of chaos developed as Russia claimed it was a provocation, America claimed some disinformation was manufactured from it, and pundits fell over themselves trying to understand what just happened.
As a consequence, there are calls in our government for ‘tighter controls’ over classified access coming from Congress, from our military leadership, and hosts of commentators from the civilian world.
Few understand how authorized access works. Some outsiders imagine that only wizened gray-beards (an actual expression) have access to the most sensitive of secrets in our government. Not true. Access is granted on a need-to-know basis. Let’s make sure we understand this. After lengthy background checks, which include intense checking of personal medical, financial, legal, travel, residential and other records by professional investigators, information is developed on the applicant for a clearance. In short, the applicant’s loyalty, integrity, discretion, morals, and character is divined through sifting through formal records. Then interviews of many who know the person begin. Meanwhile, problems that might be perceived from an applicant’s records and interviews are collated, and further investigated for clarification. Finally, the subject of all this investigation is interviewed to determine any concerns that might have arisen from such research. This is how it should work, but of course, human nature being what it is, this isn’t always true.
the case of Ana Montes
Consider the case of Ana Montes. She spied for 17 years for Cuba’s intelligence service, the DGI. She rose, during those years, to a highly respected GS-14 for the Defense Intelligence Agency. She had access to all classified information in her area of expertise, which was Central America, specifically Cuba. When arrested in 2001, she was in her 40s. She was recruited to spy for Cuba in 1985. What made her spy? This is the question which has vexed counterintelligence agents since time immemorial. She was a ‘true believer’. The American social observer Eric Hoffer contended that some people come to identify in a system of beliefs so deeply they will sacrifice everything, family, freedom, and word of honor, to serve it. So it was with Montes. Her absolute belief was America had so oppressed Latin America that she could only rectify this grave assault by betraying the trust America gave her through her clearances. She firmly believed only espionage, not our free press, nor public protest, nor work with legislators in America would work to change our foreign policies. What does this tell us about our clearance granting system?
It is not that Montes was too young. Her sister and brother both entered Federal Service with the FBI at similar ages. Montes was able to defeat any self-reflection. She saw nothing wrong with her attitudes toward the American government. She maintained distance from others by a noteworthy aloofness and rigid, doctrinaire workaholism. Indeed, she worked diligently for America by day, and Cuba by night. Montes revealed her true feelings to no one. Even her mother, with whom Montes shared a close relationship, could not imagine her daughter would betray a free country to a dictatorship. Montes was motivated by something no physical record would reveal, nor interviews of family, friends, and associates. Only an intense understanding of her beliefs could suggest her betrayal, or awareness of her inappropriate actions. Of these latter, unauthorized actions, there were warning signs. People saw them, and reported.
No one doubted Montes’s job-related abilities. She’d briefed a President, senior military and State Department officers, not to mention received major awards from no less than the CIA. Never did anyone think the genesis of her betrayals was when she’d studied a year abroad in Spain. Later, she made a new friend who traveled with her abroad to Mexico. It was this last person who learned of her disgust with American ‘persecution’ of Nicaragua and Cuba. This friend was a recruiter for Cuban intelligence.
It took colleagues alert to her behavior later in her career to bring her down. One mentioned she seemed to abandon her job in the middle of the grave 9/11 crisis. Her phone use during this ‘crisis time’ was strange. Her judgmental attitude toward those who would contradict her was even stranger. She seemed an advocate for Cuba in policy documents and discussions, not as a neutral reporter of facts. Later, she was discovered to attend briefings for which she had no authority to be present. Her presence at various places where she claimed to have traveled was never questioned, either. Until someone finally did. Was she an agent of influence, and not a fair observer? Where was she, if not where she claimed in her pre-travel arrangements?
All of these problems came about because she was a senior government official. She was never questioned about her presence at a meeting, or absence from the country she claimed to visit. Indeed, she was being guided all along by Cuban spies eager for her to get them more and more information, even outside her area of expertise. They met when she travelled to Mexico, then reappeared in Cuba with a different passport, the easier to meet her handlers.
So, age has nothing to do with a cleared person’s abilities. Maturity does. Some people never leave their rigid fundamental belief systems. This is why we have investigations, why we pay attention to investigate even senior cleared persons, and question their activities. Mainly, we need to make everyone know to report anything that seems questionable, discreetly, to our investigative support personnel. Your report could be the first in a chain which reveals a spy among us.
