Bill Gertz - Enemies: How Americas Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets--and How We Let It Happen

THE GAPING HOLES IN AMERICAS DEFENSES

I think that if I were asked to single out one specific group of men, one type, one category, as being the most suspicious, unbelieving, unreasonable, petty, inhuman, sadistic, double-crossing set of bastards in any language, I would say without hesitation: the people who run counter-espionage departments.

Sign on the office wall of an FBI counterintelligence official, circa 1988 (from the 1962 Eric Ambler novel The Light of Day)

O n March 7, 2005, agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement service, known as ICE, arrested a Philippines national for overstaying his visa in New York City. That immigration violation would soon reveal a much deeper problem.

The day after the arrest, FBI intelligence analyst Leandro Aragoncillo walked into the ICE offices at Twenty-six Federal Plaza in downtown New York City. He told the agents that the man they had arrested, former Philippines police intelligence specialist Michael Aquino, was his friend, and he asked whether he could do anything to help straighten out the visa problem. The ICE agents were deferential but cautious, making no commitments to Aragoncillo. The next day, Aragoncillo called back and asked how the investigation was going.

The phone call did it. The ICE agent in charge of the case smelled a rat. Anytime somebody tries to push their weight around like that, that sets off alarm bells, one federal agent later told me of Aragoncillos interference. The ICE agent contacted the FBIs New York field office, which in turn alerted FBI headquarters. That set off an ethics inquiry into the matter.

Within days, FBI investigators recognized that Aragoncillos intervention was more than a matter of ethics. He was a foreign spya mole operating right under their noses.

Investigators discovered that Aragoncillo, who had worked in the White House for almost three years before joining the FBI, had used his top-secret security clearance at both the White House and the Bureau to pass highly classified intelligence documents to political officials in the Philippines, his native land. The Filipino officials used the documents as part of a plot to overthrow the government of the Philippines.

On September 10, 2005, the FBI arrested Aragoncillo for betraying the United States and spying for foreign officials.

Just four months after Aragoncillos arrest, in January 2006, Michelle Van Cleave resigned from her position as head of the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, known by the initials NCIX. Van Cleave had been the most senior counterintelligence official in the entire U.S. government. Her resignation came quickly on the heels of the retirement of the deputy NCIX director Kenneth deGraffenreid.

Neither the arrest of Aragoncillo nor the departures of the nations two top counterintelligence officials had much impact. True, Aragoncillos arrest and indictment prompted a flurry of news stories in the fall of 2005; after all, it involved a mole operating in the White House itself. But the story soon faded away, to the point that when Aragoncillo pleaded guilty to espionage and other charges, in May 2006, it drew little attention. And the departures of Van Cleave and deGraffenreid barely registered at all. They seemed to be just two more small changes in the massive Washington bureaucracy.

But in fact these incidents, taken together, point to a much greater problemone that poses a grave threat to the national security of the United States.

The Aragoncillo case highlighted the fact that foreign governments and terrorist organizations are actively spying within the United States and stealing our most vital secretson our nuclear weapons, missile defenses, efforts to defeat global terrorism, intelligence sources and methods, cryptographic codes, sensitive foreign policy dealings, and much more.

Today, nearly 140 nations and some 35 known and suspected terrorist groups target the United States through espionage, according to intelligence officials. And since 1985, nearly 80 Americans have been caught spying for other countries. Over the past several decades, foreign agents have penetrated every U.S. national security agency except the Coast Guard. That includes the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department, the State Department, and the Energy Department.

Far from getting better since the Cold War ended, the enemy spying picture seems to be getting worse.

More than anything else, the Aragoncillo case revealed that the FBI remains highly vulnerable to foreign espionage. After the 2001 arrest of FBI turncoat Robert Hanssena spy for Moscow, and one of the most damaging moles in U.S. historythe Bureau instituted some internal security reforms. But the Aragoncillo case highlighted how little the reforms have actually accomplished. Computer controls designed to trigger alarms when someone like Aragoncillo stole classified documents did not tip off the FBI. If it hadnt been for an ICE agent questioning whether it was proper for an FBI analyst to help out someone involved in a visa violation, the FBI would not have looked into Aragoncillos case at all.

The intensity of foreign spying and the intelligence communitys failure to prevent espionage make the disarray at the nations top counterintelligence officeand the larger counterintelligence problems it underscoredparticularly disturbing. Counterintelligence is, quite simply, the process of identifying and catching foreign spies, either to neutralize them or to exploit knowledge of their activities for ones own purposes. (Turning foreign agentsthat is, convincing captured spies to work as double agents for the United States rather than go to jailis one of the highest objectives of U.S. counterintelligence.)

The 1947 National Security Act defines counterintelligence as information gathered, and activities conducted, to protect against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, or assassinations conducted by or on behalf of foreign governments or elements thereof, foreign organizations, or foreign persons, or international terrorist activities. An updated definition drafted by the Bush administration, but not yet formally adopted by the U.S. government, states that counterintelligence is information gathered and activities conducted to identify, assess, neutralize, and exploit the intelligence activities and capabilities of foreign powers, terrorist groups, and other foreign entities that harm U.S. national security at home and abroad. As the draft wording documents, foreign intelligence activities include everything from traditional espionagehuman spyingto technical collection, sabotage, influence operations, and manipulation of, or interference with, U.S. defense and intelligence activities.

In short, counterintelligence represents an absolutely essential line of defense against our enemies, including terrorist organizations. As former Senate Intelligence Committee staff member Angelo Codevilla has noted, counterintelligence is the queen of the intelligence chessboard. Unfortunately, the U.S. government has disregarded our counterintelligence capabilities and done little to repair the long-neglected and deeply fragmented counterintelligence apparatus.