Every time a new espionage case is uncovered there is a knee-jerk reaction, with various government agencies scrambling to implement changes to prevent a recurrence. This was certainly true of the Department of the Navy in the wake of the Jonathan Jay Pollard fiasco. Fortunately, this time the changes actually strengthened security.
No one could have been more upset and angry over the NIS’s old system for storing information about double agents than Lanny McCullah, the assistant director for counterintelligence when Pollard was working at the ATAC. After Pollard’s arrest, McCullah immediately ordered the NIS’s file card system for former sources to be corrected. The changes were entered into the Department of Defense’s computerized Defense Central Index of Investigations (DCII). From that time forward, whenever anyone conducted a background check on the DCII, the name in question popped up.
The DCII was the military equivalent of the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, used by both federal and local law enforcement agencies to obtain information about arrests, convictions, and wanted persons. When a military agency checking the DCII received a hit on an individual involved in special operations, for example, the text response might read, “For further information, please contact the Naval Investigative Service, Code 22B.” A subsequent contact with the NIS wouldn’t provide detailed information, but it would indicate that the subject of the search had been involved in a counterintelligence matter. This new procedure was an immense improvement in screening against potential or actual spies. Had it been in place when Pollard applied for a job with the NIS, it would have snagged him.
Additional measures were taken to improve personnel screening. The day after Pollard’s sentencing, navy commands received the report that Captain Laurence Schuetz wrote up after single-handedly conducting the JAG’s administrative investigation, a monumental eighteen-month task that involved close to one hundred interviews. In the report, Schuetz submitted a list of recommendations and asked for comments from senior navy officers.
The first recommendation was that no disciplinary or administrative action be taken against most of the individuals identified in the JAG report. “No single error, omission, or lapse of judgment” on their part “allowed Mr. Pollard to commit espionage,” Schuetz wrote. He pointed out that most personnel who had erred were fulfilling their responsibilities in a manner consistent at the time with tradition and usage. Schuetz recommended that only two officers and a civilian receive letters of censure, which wasn’t approved by higher command. As a result, no one was held accountable for mistakes.
Schuetz also recommended that the director of the CIA be asked to “respond truthfully to interagency requests regarding personnel data of a derogatory nature.”1 The Department of the Navy addressed the problem with the CIA, which has agreed to share this type of information during background checks on personnel requiring a TS/SCI clearance.
Another recommendation was for the NIS to brief prospective commanding officers of all navy commands regarding past or present investigations, operations, or collection efforts that could affect those commands.2 Schuetz pointed out that the NIS had provided a counterintelligence assessment of Pollard resulting in his loss of clearance, then four years later hired him to work in the ATAC with an SCI clearance. “A sustained, pragmatic effort is needed throughout the Department of the Navy to counteract the pervasive tendency toward information loss,” Schuetz commented. “The turnover of both military and civilian personnel at most, if not all, navy commands ashore results in a short and often flawed corporate memory.”3 It was almost impossible to address the danger that a high turnover poses to intelligence security.
He also recommended that a “foundation of empirically sound research” be established to vet candidates for security clearances. The DIS had a terrible backlog of background checks, sometimes a year or more. In an effort to catch up, personnel doing the checks often missed or overlooked information, and the result was that many people who didn’t have a need to know obtained TS/SCI clearances. Slowly but surely, Schuetz’s recommendation was implemented.
He also suggested that the NIS open an investigation into TF 168 and their relationship with Pollard, the statements they made to investigators about this relationship, and whether they had adhered to Department of Defense directives regarding files on human intelligence sources. Schuetz came down hard on the task force, openly accusing them of withholding records and initially refusing to comply with his requests. He cited possible violations, including making false statements and destroying files without authorization. TF 168 denied they had withheld information. No investigation was opened; TF 168 was later disbanded.
Things changed quickly after 8 September 1987, when Admiral L. A. Edney, the vice chief of naval operations, sent a letter following up on Schuetz’s recommendations. The navy was going to do everything it could to stop another Pollard from slipping through the cracks. In part, his letter stated that commands had to be briefed on all NIS operations, investigations, and collection operations involving any naval command. Authorizing security clearances became the responsibility of the Department of the Navy’s newly established Central Adjudication Facility (DONCAF), and at the direction of the secretary of the navy, clearances were reduced by a third. When personnel lost their SCI access, the adjudication facility now had to be notified immediately.
Now a single organization, and not individual commands, was responsible for making decisions about security clearances. The only exceptions were the NIC, the DNI, and part of the Naval Security Group, which could grant access to personnel who needed to read SCI on a case-by-case basis. They still had to undergo a special background investigation for a top secret clearance first, and they still had to be indoctrinated into SCI programs by briefings and nondisclosure agreements. Authority to revoke SCI clearances, however, rested solely with the DONCAF. The facility established consistent standards that were applied throughout the Department of the Navy.4
In the immediate aftermath of the Pollard case, the ATAC implemented the following security steps:
• SCI materials were moved from individual analysts’ files into a central repository.
• Courier cards were held by the watch and inventoried at each shift change. Unnecessary cards were revoked.
• Non–watch standers could work in the ATAC from six in the morning to six in the evening on weekdays. Variations of the schedule and overtime on weekends or holidays required management approval.
• ATAC personnel were required to submit to periodic and random counterintelligence polygraph examinations.
• Random “baggage” inspections were instituted for personnel entering and leaving the NIC-1 building. These were later made universal.
The Department of the Navy directed that new security manuals be written and new security procedures be put into place. An espionage hotline was launched, and a separate hotline was put in place for the chief of naval operations so that questions about security issues could be answered immediately. In the naval intelligence and cryptology communities, a “passive listening post” program was implemented whereby employees watched suspected security violators, but it was later abolished because of privacy act concerns.
Among the other factors that led to the breakdown of the security system, which assisted Pollard in his espionage activities, were:
• Providing a set of NIS credentials
• Permanent certification of his clearances to DIA, CIA, and NSA
• Allowing him to carry his ONI courier card at all times
• Unchallenged access to intelligence libraries and librarians (NISC and DIA)
• Analyst sharing attitudes
• Availability of unfettered access to copy machines in secure locations
• Failure to challenge, verify, and enforce the need-to-know rule
• Portal security personnel were lax, with or without a courier card
• Failure to report suspicious activity
Although in the wake of Jonathan Jay Pollard’s arrest the Navy Department’s reforms helped to bolster security, it should be noted that in reacting to intelligence violations a bureaucracy can go overboard. The last thing the government needs is a hundred additional procedures and directives to observe every time a spy is flushed out of hiding. The problem of enforcing security should be addressed not by adding more layers of bureaucracy to an overloaded system, but by motivating personnel to follow those practices already in place, and monitoring them. The biggest danger to security is a complacency and a failure to report on the part of those who observe colleagues nonchalantly committing major security violations or engaging in suspicious activity.