FBI spy case to result in tighter internal security

Special agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation are still reeling from the disclosure that one of their own allegedly spied for Russia. On March 16 they heard from FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, who explained in a lengthy memo that the espionage case of accused traitor Robert Philip Hanssen would result in tighter internal security.

Security recommendations are forthcoming from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and former FBI and CIA Director William H. Webster, whose review the FBI requested. Freeh's memo, however, stated that "improving the internal security of the FBI is too important to wait."

In his quarter-century as an agent, Hanssen was never polygraphed. Freeh has now ordered lie-detector tests for a small group of Senior Executive Service staff and for those who are working (as Hanssen was) in national security jobs and haven't been wired to the sweat machines in the past five years. The order includes all those embarking on or returning from an overseas assignment, and some FBI file clerks and technicians will also be hooked up and asked about espionage. The FBI director further demanded that access to sensitive files be tightened and ordered a fast tally of all sensitive open cases.

Meanwhile, congressional criticism of Freeh's leadership has been nonexistent; even longtime critics such as Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, are polite. "Those questions and criticisms just seem to bounce off of him," Grassley said. He praised Freeh as "probably the best director since J. Edgar Hoover." Still, Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., have asked Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, for hearings on the Hanssen matter.

Freeh's political cachet, earned in almost eight years as FBI director, won him an invitation to stick around in the Bush Administration, along with friend and fellow Clinton appointee, CIA Director George J. Tenet. (At a classified Senate hearing on March 28, Freeh testified that the single most important development in the fight against terrorism was the mending of the relationship between the FBI and the CIA in recent years.) Freeh has boosted the rolls at the bureau, and since 1993 has raised the budget from $2.1 billion to $3.2 billion.

Freeh's memo on new security measures was not just intended to quell public criticism of the bureau over allegations that Hanssen carried out spy chores unfettered for half his FBI career. The director also wanted to calm restlessness in the ranks and reassure his 12,000 agents that they are still trusted. After Hanssen was arrested, the agents' representatives urged Freeh and Attorney General John D. Ashcroft to apply any new mole-hunting measures conservatively. The two responded that initially only 500 were to be polygraphed.

But that number may eventually grow. Several former FBI officials interviewed, including recently retired Deputy Director Robert M. "Bear" Bryant, say all agents should be subject to random lie-detector tests, and some predict that will eventually become policy. National Journal obtained another Freeh-approved communique--also dated March 16, but from the national security division--that tells employees to anticipate the likely expansion of "the pool of occupations and positions whose incumbents are required to submit to periodic counterintelligence-focused polygraph examinations."

That troubles career agents. Most know how inconclusive polygraph results can be in criminal investigations, and they aren't wild, one of them said, about a mechanical device that "gets inside our heads."

After CIA traitor Aldrich Ames was caught selling secrets to the Russians in 1994, new security measures at that agency included polygraph tests that froze the careers of about 300 employees whose exams were inconclusive. Some tests were later found to have produced "false positives." According to U.S. intelligence officials, a handful of people at the CIA are on administrative leave today because of "difficulty with the process."

That does little to assuage the concerns of FBI veterans. Albany, N.Y.-based senior agent John J. Sennett, president of the FBI Agents Association, represents the many agents who are voicing their distrust of polygraphy. They fear that FBI managers will, over time, grow less wary of lie-detector tests and could use them to resolve unsettled personnel issues, or even to ask "lifestyle" questions.

John Collingwood, assistant director in charge of the FBI's office of congressional and public affairs, said Freeh is sensitive to those concerns. The questions now being asked relate strictly to counterintelligence and espionage, he said, and officials do not expect or intend the polygraph exams to inquire about topics beyond those.

But the controversial tests probably won't catch spies, say experts such as former FBI counterintelligence chief Oliver "Buck" Revell. The success of polygraphy depends on the skill of the examiners, and both the test and the examiner can be beaten. "Hanssen would have passed most any test," Revell said.

Bryant says the polygraph is a tool the FBI must use judiciously and administer randomly. Given the typically high percentage of inconclusive tests and false positives, he added, Freeh was smart to order automatic reinvestigations for any employees whose polygraph results show anomalies. But if experts are right in saying that the tests show false positives 2 percent to 5 percent of the time-some say the figure is higher--scores of innocent agents could be sidelined into the "rubber-gun squad," and that would devastate FBI morale, says Richard J. Gallo, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association.

Intelligence expert John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org said increased internal security could be a threat to the soul of the FBI. "Morale is, unavoidably, closely connected to effectiveness," he says. The agents' hand-wringing over polygraphy extends to other possible checks, such as financial audits more intrusive than those used in the mandatory five-year reinvestigations of agents--which Hanssen passed. The specter of having their personal income and spending dissected by close colleagues makes some agents uneasy.

The FBI has a long tradition of trust among agents. Its motto, "Fidelity, bravery, integrity," was sacrosanct-- until Hanssen. Before his arrest on Feb. 18, only two agents had been accused of espionage in the bureau's 93-year history.

"There are people who I've been through life-and-death situations with, who I would trust with anything," says Bryant of his FBI years. Such complete trust is a medieval concept to others in the intelligence community. Former CIA case officer Nick Catrantzos, operations director at Control Risks Group in McLean, Va., said that at the CIA, trust among colleagues is never assumed. One reason is the inherent independence of spies who operate solo. Another is the history of betrayals by Ames and Harold Nicholson in the 1990s.

Some in the FBI are concerned that the post-Hanssen bureau could wind up institutionally akin to the CIA, with a culture that lives by Ronald Reagan's Cold War adage, "Trust, but verify." Rob Walsh, who recently retired after 31 years in the FBI, argues that agents couldn't function that way. "You need to believe that [that agent] is going to be at your back," he says. Revell praised the unique fraternity within the bureau, warning, "If that is lost, that may be the most significant consequence of the Hanssen case."

Since President Clinton appointed Freeh in 1993, organized crime has become increasingly transnational. Today, the FBI is "in incredible flux," says N. John MacGaffin, a former CIA official recruited by Bryant and Freeh in 1994 for a six-year stint at FBI headquarters. "It's going from being a reactive to a proactive organization," he says. In other words, the G-men have gone global.

Freeh's legal attaches ("legats") are reaching out to counterparts in former Eastern Bloc nations such as Russia. But as the FBI's counterintelligence operations expand and the bureau is taken more seriously as a player in the intelligence community, extreme steps-including polygraphy-must be taken to ensure internal security, said Catrantzos.

Sennett appreciates what's at stake and says his agents association won't get in the way. But something else may be forsaken in preserving national security secrets, he says. Agents already are "lamenting the passing of the days when they could take certain things for granted: that we were all in this together, that we all knew the secret handshake, and that we could all rely on that," Sennett says.

One government official, who dealt directly with the aftermath of the Ames case at the CIA and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the FBI probably won't fare as well internally as the spy agency did in the 1990s. Some of the best people at the FBI could get fed up with the hassle of background checks and leave for the private sector, Pike said. Asked to describe the FBI five years from now, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association's Gallo snapped: "All rookies."

Collingwood disagreed with such dire speculation, even though half of today's street agents have only five years' experience or less. He said the FBI would undergo "an internal-security evolution like has never happened." If that eventually means lie-detector tests for all 28,000 employees, some will be unhappy, but they will understand and respect the purpose, he said. And if the FBI loses some veterans, that's a small price to pay, MacGaffin said. "Isn't it better that a few agents choose to leave than we have another Hanssen?" he asked.

A quintessentially loyal G-man, Bryant said he'd be personally disappointed if he didn't hear agents grumbling about the inconveniences of stricter security. "You may lose some people," he says, "but the professionals in the staff at the FBI will take these issues and they'll deal with them. It just takes some insightful leadership."