I'm always amazed at how many doors are left unlocked in Congressional offices (and state capitols), not just unlocked, but wide open after hours. During the day it's a common practice to prop the door open so as to be welcoming to the public and visitors, but then as everyone goes home and the last staffers are running back and forth on errands you wind up with offices totally unattended with doors wide open. Most of the members' internal office doors are usually unlocked too, and some of those guys have very expensive mementos and personal belongings siting out on desks and bookshelves.
It's nice to think that 99% of the American public has respect for boundaries and personal property, but I'm not surprised that someone determined to start picking things up has been successful. The Capitol police should probably be looking at new after-hours employees like temporary or fill-in janitorial staff. The regular janitors are some of the best people I've ever met, they are well known by staff and most of them are looked as co-workers, but someone new who discovered the easy-pickens would be the top suspect in my book.
Some years ago, I read a
great book by a former KGB agent about his life as a spy in Washington.
These were a few observations which stick with me after reading that book:
- The ruling class in DC lives in its own little bubble without much concern for security except as it relates to their political careers.
- The class which cleans their offices, serves their meals and drives their taxicabs is increasingly made up of third worlders. While most have just moved to the DC area to make money, many of them can be recruited by spies for a pittance to provide information as easy as delivering trash bags filled with discarded technical drawings from an intelligence agency.
- Our own media stationed in DC are also primary sources for this type of intelligence and, indeed, to recruit third worlders to do this work. One of key sources for this KGB guy was a press woman who knew key left wing organizations who could reach out to these foreign nationals.
- One of the key things which the KGB spymasters learned from this trash can intelligence was that military equipment designs which we threw in our trash cans was more advanced than what the Russians could even do. Eight years of the Reagan administration had really taken its toll on Russia and had widened the gap. The 1988 election was seen as the point of no return. If Russia could not change the direction of the United States politically, they would have no hope to catch up militarily or even avoid financial insolvency.
We all know what happened after that. The KGB agent used the friends he made in the American media to immigrate and eventually write a book which would have blown the whistle on them. That is, if anybody had bothered to read it.