Counterintelligence

James Olson: The Ten Commandments of Counterintelligence

The need for counterintelligence (CI) has not gone away, nor is it likely to.  The end of the Cold War has not even meant an end to the CI threat from the former Soviet Union.  The foreign intelligence service of the new democratic Russia, the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki Rossii (SVRR), has remained active against us.  It was the SVRR that took over the handling of Aldrich Ames from its predecessor, the KGB, in 1991.  It was the SVRR that ran CIA officer Harold James Nicholson against us from 1994 to 1996.  It was the SVRR that was handling FBI special agent Earl Pitts when he was arrested for espionage in 1996.  It was the SVRR that planted a listening device in a conference room of the State Department in Washington in the summer of 1999.  And it was the SVRR that was handling FBI special agent Robert Hanssen when he was arrested on charges of espionage in February 2001.

The Russians are not alone.  There have been serious, well-publicized concerns about Chinese espionage in the United States.  The Department of Energy significantly increased security at its national laboratories last year in response to allegations that China had stolen US nuclear weapons secrets.

Paul Redmond, the former Associate Deputy Director of Operations for Counterintelligence at the CIA, told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in early 2000 that a total of at least 41 countries are trying to spy on the United States.