PENTAGON'S POROUS SECURITY SHIELD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100510002-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 29, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/23: CIA-RDP9O
ON -, w= Q
Pentagon's Porous
Security Shield
Some of the Soviet Union's most
valuable spies walk right through the
guarded gates of U.S. defense plants,
lunch bucket and security pass in hand.
So said witness after witness
as the Senate Permanent In-
vestigations Subcommittee in
mid-April probed the govern-
ment's handling of security
clearances.
Investigators-and some
convicted spies-maintained
that the system was in sham-
bles, with clearances too easy
to get and too easy to keep.
The problem was blamed in
part on the sheer size of the
task. Four million Ameri-
cans-90 percent of them de-
fense workers-hold clear-
ances allowing access to
classified projects. The Penta-
gon's backlog of unprocessed
U . S FT ignPLl) FFPOP.T
29 April 1985
applications: 280,000, with 26,000 new
ones arriving each month.
Christopher Boyce, serving a 68-year
prison term, sold secret documents from
his employer, TRW, a Central Intelli-
gence Agency contractor. Boyce said he
got clearance because investigators nev-
er talked to his friends: "Had the investi-
gators asked any of those friends what I
-00552R0001 OO51OOO2-4
thought of the U.S. government, I would
never have gotten the job."
William Holden Bell, a former
Hughes Aircraft engineer convicted of
espionage, told Senate investigators his
clearance was 28 years old and was
never updated when he began selling
secrets. Bell said a recheck would have
revealed that he had developed finan-
Boyce shows top-secret workplace where he stole secrets.
cial and personal problems.
FBI officials reported that
Soviet spies are "more numer-
ous, sophisticated and aggres-
sive than ever before," and
k the backlog of espionage pros-
World War II.
Government officials said
the problem could be eased-
but not erased-with more
money, more investigators and
better agency coordination.
Yet experts noted that even
the most rigorous security cur-
tain can be breached at times.
The FBI recently charged one
of its own special agents with
selling secrets to the Soviets. ^
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/23: CIA-RDP9O-00552ROO0100510002-4