A System in Need of Fixing

The most inexcusable breakdowns in national security occur when laxity makes a spy’s work easy. That happened in the CIA with the notorious Aldrich Ames, a Soviet agent and high-living drunk whose personal habits should early on have set off alarm bells all over the agency, if anyone had bothered to pay attention. Now comes a new espionage case involving three Americans, one of whom worked for seven years as a Pentagon lawyer with a “secret” clearance despite having a radical and overtly pro-communist past that even minimal checking should have revealed.

The lawyer, Therese Squillacote, was arrested along with her husband and another man, a former civilian analyst for the Army, in a sting operation that had FBI agents posing as South African spies. The three are accused of delivering Pentagon, State Department and CIA documents to East Germany, some of which were then passed on to the Soviet Union. If convicted on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage, they face maximum life sentences.

Defense Secretary William Cohen says the case will prompt a security review to try to determine why Squillacote went undetected for so long and what deficiences have to be corrected. But, he cautions, he has no intention of “Stalinizing” security procedures. Certainly any effort to revive the hysteria-driven internal security witch hunts of the early Cold War years must be determinedly resisted. Certainly the loyalties of 23,000 Pentagon employees should not be considered suspect. But certainly, too, the failure of screening procedures to identify as a possible security risk a longtime radical who made no secret of her hatred of America is evidence of a system in need of fixing. If someone with that kind of background can get a Pentagon secret clearance, what, it has to be wondered, might an undercover agent with a cleverly hidden past be able to do?