WHY DO PEOPLE BECOME SPIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000301750013-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: June 13, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2010/01/06: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000301750013-0
RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
NBC Nightly News STATION WRC-TV
NBC Network
DATE June 13, 1985 7:00 P.M. CITY Washington, D.C.
Why Do People Become Spies
ROGER MUDD: On our Special Segment tonight, a question:
Why do people become spies? A former FBI agent charged with
espionage today testified in court he got involved because he had
what he called a James Bond fantasy. Traditionally, people got
involved in espionage because of politics. But as John Dancy
reports, it's the popular image of adventure and wealth that is
motivating modern spies.
CHRISTOPHER BOYCE: Nobody these days is spying to help
the Soviet Union or to further their ideology, because their
ideology is pretty much bankrupt.
JOHN DANCY: Christopher Boyce is one of a new breed of
spies. Like the Walkers, he had access to top secret codes. He
sold them to the Soviets and went to prison for life. Not for
ideology, but for money and a chance to be somebody.
ADMIRAL BOBBY INMAN: In looking at those cases that
have come to light over the last 15 years, I don't know of a
single case where ideology played a role at all.
DANCY: When Mata Hari spied for the Germans, and Riley,
the so-called Ace of Spies, worked for the British, and
the Rosenberg's sold atomic secrets to the Soviets, they did it
for ideology. They were believers.
American counterintelligence had always used an acronym
to explain why people spy, MICE: money, ideology, compromise,
ego. But by the 1970s the "I" in MICE, ideology, had been
replaced by the "M," money. Money and fantasy, the spy mystique,
adventure, excitement.
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RAY CLINE: The profile is Mr. Everyman, Mr. American.
The weaknesses of the ordinary American are what make people spy
and what leads the KGB and the GRU to their sources.
DANCY: When he was a KGB agent, Stanislav Levchenko
tried to exploit those weaknesses that would allow him to recruit
a person to spy for the Soviet Union. Levchenko, here in shadow,
has been threatened with death. He says his work was harder
because there is no profile of a typical spy.
STANISLAV LEVCHENKO: In intelligence business there is
no such profile. Because if there would be such profile, then
counterintelligence work would be very easy, and you just can
prevent any kind of cases of espionage. Anybody can be Soviet
agent.
DANCY: Journalists are favorite targets. The KGB twice
tried to recruit former Newsweek correspondent Arnaud de
Borchgrave in the '50s and '60s to spread disinformation, Soviet
propaganda.
ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE: I was wined and dined and
massaged by Mr. Kazansky, who was Minister Consul of the Soviet
Embassy, who told me I was already one of the world's most
important journalists, I could become one of the world's most
famous journalists.
I said, "How?"
He said, "By simply developing a social conscience."
I said, "What does that mean?"
He said, "Denouncing the evils of the CIA and American
imperialism, and I think we can help you."
In other words, they were trying to use me as a conduit
for disinformation. And I reported that to the CIA at the time
in Paris.
DANCY: Most spies these days are what the KGB calls in
walk-ins, volunteers.
Christopher Boyce and Andrew Dalton Lee, whose story was
told in this movie, "The Falcon and the Snowman," volunteered to
commit treason.
[Film clip]
DANCY: For two years Boyce sold secrets he had access
to as code clerk at TRW, a defense contractor. A child of the
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turbulent '60s and '70s, Boyce wanted to make a political
statement, ideology, and saw himself uniquely qualified to do it
because of his job, ego.
BOYCE: My first political awareness, growing up, of
government was Kennedy being assassinated, and then the race
riots, and then the war and the napalm on television every night,
and then Richard Nixon dragging the government through the mud.
And when he went down is when I started. And I thought that I
would use the KGB to bash the CIA.
And, you know, with hindsight, I have to look back and
concede now it's like drinking cyanide, but it was treason.
DANCY: Friends and acquaintances now say John Walker's
ego and lifestyle, like Boyce's, made him ripe for recruitment as
a spy. But there was no way to predict it.
We now have psychological profiles to identify in
advance serial killers and child molesters. But what the
government doesn't yet know, and has to find out, is at what
point human weakness leads someone to commit treason.
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