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 hen
things are so complicated that no living person can unravel them,
it sometimes pays to consult the dead. So, following the example
of Senator Clinton, who consults Eleanor Roosevelt on the really
tough issues, I decided to ask the legendary counterspy James Jesus
Angleton about the Condit/Levy affair. Here are his thoughts, perhaps
a bit garbled because the ouija board needed some oil (and I used
the last of it for the spaghetti con aglio, olio e pepperoncino):
Why has nobody noticed that Condit sits on the House Intelligence
Committee? All those guys are prime targets for foreign agents,
because they know things about our sources and methods, the crown
jewels of the intelligence business. The Russians, the Chinese,
and all the others, need to know what we know about their operations
against us, and if they can find someone on an intelligence committee
that they can recruit, they will go all-out to do it.
Now consider Condit's vulnerability. It's enormous. He's carrying
on multiple liaisons, he may have fathered a child or two out of
wedlock, his career can be wiped out by disclosure. Let's say a
foreign agent discovers this (not hard, as we have learned), and
arranges a conversation with Condit in which the congressman is
offered a hard-to-refuse deal: You tell me what the CIA and the
FBI know about my country's operations, and I'll remain silent about
Chandra and the others. If you don't give me what I need, I'll
talk to the newsies.
Meanwhile, they tap his phone, both because Americans talk about
sensitive information on the telephone, and because they need to
keep close tabs on his problems. Let's say Chandra, besotted with
the guy, heartbroken at the thought of leaving, desperate to maintain
the affair, tells him on the phone that if he doesn't do the "right
thing" by her, she's gonna go public.
What would you, the top agent of your country here in Washington,
do? You've got this fabulous source, maybe even better than Ames
or Hanssen, and he's also a terrific agent of influence, because
he votes on policy, and not just intelligence policy. He's about
to be ruined by this lovelorn sweet thing. You'd solve his problem
for him, wouldn't you? And you would certainly not tell him about
it. You'd just do it. Condit might have suspicions, but he wouldn't
know anything. He could even pass a polygraph.
"Do you know what happened to Chandra?"
"Absolutely not." And it's the truth.
Do you think the D.C. cops were alert enough to ask him the tough,
counterintelligence questions? Do you think FBI counterintelligence
has been brought into this case? Do you think any of these investigators
has considered the possibility that her computer was penetrated
by a skilled espionage agent — a trained hacker — and
wiped clean, shortly after she was dealt with?
I doubt it. Americans don't think this way, even though we've got
tons of evidence that Washington is overrun with foreign-espionage
agents, and we know that the intelligence community has been repeatedly
penetrated by our enemies, and for the past many years the very
idea of serious security has been laughed at by the highest officials,
starting with the president himself. Clinton's White House was
wide open.
All of this is speculation, of course, I don't know anything that's
not in the papers, and it's hard to read the papers from here.
Most of the time we read Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. But if I were
conducting an investigation, I'd look very hard at the espionage
angle.
That's Angleton's take. Yes, he was always very paranoid, all counterspies
are very paranoid. But he was also very smart, and we sometimes
need smart paranoiacs to walk us through these complicated things.
Sometimes they're right.
And even when they're not, it's a great story, isn't it? He's authorized
me to negotiate a movie deal.
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