LOW-LEVEL WORKER CALLED VALUABLE SPY

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP91-00901R000500230018-2
Release Decision: 
RIFPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 14, 2016
Document Release Date: 
November 30, 2000
Sequence Number: 
18
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
November 28, 1985
Content Type: 
NSPR
File: 
AttachmentSize
PDF icon CIA-RDP91-00901R000500230018-2.pdf67.98 KB
Body: 
Approved For Release 20A? 44?ibq~A-g$F91-00901 R000500230018-2 PRT' E APPEARED 28 November 1985 Cy PAGE-AL, Low-level worker called valuable spyr- By Vernon A. Guidry, Jr. wagon Bureau of The Sun WASHINGTON - Low-level em- ployees with broad access to secrets can do more harm than high-rank- Ing spies, according to retired Adm. Bobby Inman, who once headed the National Security Agency and later was No. 2 at the Central Intelligence Agency. The most. recent of a raft of spy - cases Involves Ronald W. Pelton. who left the NSA in 1979 and short- ly thereafter, the government charges, approached the Soviet Em- bassy here with an offer of NSA se- crets. Admiral Inman, relying solely on press reports, said In a telephone in- terview Last night that it appeared Mr. Pelton was a low-level employee of the agency, but that such a fact was not reassuring. For one thing, the admiral said. "every spy case hurts. There are no such things as ones that do no damage." For another, he said, low-level employees with access to secrets are frequently better spies than those with access to policy-making coun- cils. Spies in policy-making councils may offer reports colored by their own bias, he said. He said the better spy might be someone such as a communications technician with access to documents of other hard information. "the guy who'll give you actual copies of r{iies- sages, the sole most valuable source. particularly if you can sustain it over a long time." The depth of the damage a spy can do, he wilt, Is determined by the breadth of, access to secrets, and that is not always a matter of how senior the spy Is. More broadly, he said. U.S. coun- terintelligence agents are facing "a whole new, tougher environment" in their attempts to catch spies moti- vated mostly by money who do little to tip their hands in conventional ways. Admiral Inman said last night in a telephone interview that "you have to wonder how counterintelli- gence deals with this." In many recent cases, it was the would-be spy with U.S. secrets to sell who allegedly made the Initial approach to the Soviet Union. The tip-off appears to be finan- cial distress, but in a society where you've got 4 million people with (se- curity) clearances, how do you track that? I haven't begun to come to grips with the scale of that problem." he said. In these situations, traditional ploys - such as watching opposing agents to see whom they are at- tempting to recruit or being alert to conduct tt[atcould lead to blackmail - are not enough, he said. Whememployees quit intelligence agencies or are fired, counterintelli- gence officers lose their edge. he said. if the employee served long enough to retire, then you've got a string on them," the retired admiral said. You can always call them 1 back: you can do other things. But if j they've resigned, that's the end of the string. They become just like any other U.S. citizen. but they're walk- ing around with a lot of knowledge." Si-.;.u,ice is maintained on places where the Soviets are known to bring American spies, such as Moscow's embassy in Vienna, Aus- tria, where. Mr. Pelton apparently, went twice. Such surveillance is not foolproof, Admiral Inman said: "It's pretty hard to identify every Ameri- can who goes in and out." He said he expected there would be more cases coming from agencies that generate America's secrets, as well as those charged with finding out the adversary's secrets. Approved For Release 2003/04/02 : CIA-RDP91-00901 R000500230018-2