Posted on 07/12/2005 11:42:21 AM PDT by Kaslin
A former top CIA official has raised the likelihood that an al-Qaida operative has penetrated a U.S. intelligence agency - simply by applying for a job.
Pressures on intelligence agencies to quickly boost staffing - especially with Arabic-speaking hirees - are making it increasingly likely that they will hire a terrorist spy, according to former CIA chief of counterintelligence Michael Sulick.
The agencies have been criticized for failing to hire enough qualified personnel. As a result, intelligence agencies stepped up attempts to attract new recruits. But this scramble to hire, coupled with the small number of security analysts who vet applicants, have made the agencies vulnerable to inadvertently hiring a terrorist.
It has already been reported that as many as 40 possible terrorists may have tried to infiltrate intelligence agencies in recent months, as CIA expert Barry Royden disclosed at a national counterintelligence conference this past March.
The potential spies were caught at the job application stage, but job seekers with the language skills and overseas experience that make them attractive candidates for an intelligence job are often difficult to screen for security.
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Sulick points to two Americans U.S. officials have linked to al-Qaida: Iyman Faris and Jose Padilla.
Faris, a naturalized citizen from Pakistan, plotted with al-Qaida to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. Padilla, a former gang member and convert to Islam, allegedly set out to explode a "dirty bomb" in an American city.
Both men, considering their backgrounds, would probably have failed if they'd attempted to land a job in U.S. intelligence. But another American, John Walker Lindh, might well have passed muster, according to Sulick.
Lindh - dubbed the "American Taliban" - came from a well-to-do California family, had a solid academic background and no criminal record.
"If the U.S. hadn't captured him in Afghanistan, if he'd simply returned to the U.S. after his secret training and indoctrination, his knowledge of Arabic and Middle East travel may have made him an attractive candidate for U.S. intelligence," Sulick writes.
"That others with similar experience will infiltrate intelligence agencies is a real risk."
A single terrorist infiltrator in a major intelligence agency could damage national security far more than Soviet spies did during the Cold War, according to Sulick, because the U.S. and the Soviet Union never actually went to war.
"Now, however, our nation is at war. Imagine the damage al-Qaida could do with the help of an infiltrator such as FBI spy Robert Hanssen or CIA traitor Aldrich Ames, each of whom passed a wealth of classified material to the Russians."
Sulick concludes: "Senior officials must resist political pressure and exercise patience in investigating each applicant thoroughly."
Is it true -- as I read a couple of years ago -- they won't hire Arabic-speaking Jews/Israelis for political reasons?
Duh. One was named Valarie Plame in Vanity Fair Magazine.
Don't they give them frequent polygraphs? Might be a good way to catch AQ types, like a mosquito magnet...
Duh. One was named Valarie Plame in Vanity Fair Magazine.
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If the CIA commissioned Joe Wilson that means he was an employee, right?
Now here is a wild idea...
Hire arab speaking people. Give them office supplies, etc necessary to do their jobs. Put tracking devices on those items.
Trail them and see who they talk to.
Anyone who suggests otherwise should be drawn and quartered.
And any applicant who clearly and egregiously fails the security vetting: automatic 20 years prison.
What -- other than NewsHacks?
I hope they didn't just discover this.
I think we should all be very concerned regarding our security, in light of the fact that over 40 individual were found wandering around a United States Air Force base last week in North Carolina, all were in the country illegally, most with fraudulent papers and documents.
This should have been big news and heads should have rolled, but it wasn't and heads didn't roll. The fact is we are inundated with people in our country that should not even be here.
Here's another way to look at it. Linh was able to penetrate Al Qaeda all the way to Osama. That means that CIA could have done it, if they had anyone willing to go and live in the dirt for a couple of years, and immerse himself in the target culture.
Thats probably the catch; someone with a "solid academic background" isn't going to want to do that. He wants a nice life. Who can blame him?
If CIA is ever going to penetrate these groups, they need to attract a different kind of agent.
"Faris, a naturalized citizen from Pakistan, plotted with al-Qaida to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. "
Oh a Paki plotting a terrorist attack!!!What a surprise!!!
Two Words: Racial Profiling!
Why is it, that when I think of the CIA, FBI, or INS I hear the Three Stooges theme song in my head?
"Honey, why are you always typing and talking on the phone in the tub?"
Has anyone heard of giving applicants a Polygraph?
They should be able to screen out the fanatic Islamists pretty easily, one would think.
I like your thinking!
I'd say let's go further: take the top-most, meanest, most grandly mullah-esque of all the al-quadian terrorists on hand down at Gitmo, feed him some pheno-barbitol laced tabouleh, and then surgically implant some homing devices. When he wakes up, give him some coffee and tell him: "Ya know, either your smarter'n us, or you're telling the truth. In either case, Kofi sez we gotta let you go."
Then drop him some place in Afghanistan....
I'll bet they kill him first.
"Has anyone heard of giving applicants a Polygraph?"
I had read where some of the terroists they are holding in Gitmo passed the polygraph tests, but they had enough info on them to know they were lying.
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