Insider Threat: Intelligence Agencies Concerned

There has been much concern lately over the threat of compromised intelligence from individuals within the United States Intelligence community.

The national media has been complicit and irresponsible in publishing reports from these “rougue insiders” and this clearly has our agencies concerned.  As the attached article from Military.com points out, “Few spy cases have broken in the past decade and a half. In contrast, a proliferation of U.S. intelligence and military insiders have gone rogue and spilled secrets to journalists or WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group.”

The motivations for insiders giving up secrets are not always clear.  Some do it out of a sense of  patriotism, and some do it out of a political motive.  The motivations of past spies such as money, power and ego do not appear to be a factor in recent compromises.

With technology giving nefarious insiders the ability to easily steal and transmit large amounts of information globally, everyone should be concerned.

CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, recently stated, “that today’s intelligence community leakers were “soulmates” of traitors from the past: In today’s digital environment, they can disseminate stolen U.S. secrets instantly around the globe to terrorists, dictators, hackers and anyone else seeking to do us harm.”   Read more