To Catch a Spy: The Art & Future of Counterintelligence w/ James Olson

[Music] good evening members guests teachers and students my name is sandhya bayu i am director of development at the world affairs council of greater houston it's our hope that you and your families are doing well and staying healthy now more than ever it's important to stay informed about what is happening not only in our city but around the world world affairs council of greater houston brings those global experts right into your home to find out more about information on different events that we have hosted in the past or have scheduled to plan ahead with please visit our website at wwac houston dot o r g now under the program to catch a spy the art of and the future of counterintelligence with james olsen james olson served for over 30 years in the directorate of operations of the central intelligence agency mostly overseas in clandestine operations in addition to several foreign assignments he was chief of counter-intelligence at the cia headquarters in langley virginia currently is the professor of practice at the bush school of government and public services at texas a m university he is author of the gashes 5 the art of counterintelligence and the fair play the moral dilemmas of spying my colleague ronan o'malley is joining our dialogue tonight with mr james olsen mr olsen and ronan a virtual welcome to both of you i think maybe one thing i do first is i would just want to say thank you jim for your service i think uh as a country rightly we we thank military veterans and active duty military people but i think a lot of people don't realize the incredible sacrifices and true lifetime commitments that our intelligence officers and agents you know like yourself make to the nation and what really requires not just of you but often of your of your entire family uh where you might have to go in the world and what you may or may not have to do it's it's a true dedication and a true duty so thank you um and maybe just to open things up i think counterintelligence is something a lot of people hear about but i suppose two things maybe you could explain how you would define the true purview of what falls under that um you know umbrella so to speak because i think it's much bigger and broader than a lot of people expect so if maybe you could let us know how exactly you define counterintelligence and really kind of why it is so vital for the nation i'll be happy to do that again ronan counter intelligence really is all the steps that we take any country takes to protect its people and secrets it's technology from the efforts of foreign technology foreign espionage services to steel votes and we are under attack united states so counterintelligence is really really important here our job is to frustrate the efforts of these foreign intelligence officers and to identify those americans who are cooperating with those foreign services and stealing our our secrets and and i suppose um kind of the 1980s and the 1990s some of the the bigger cases that made a lot of headlines with the aldridge ames or rick hansen the years after that counterintelligence got a i think a lot more attention from congress a lot more funding a lot more personnel but perhaps unfortunately can you talk about where you think we are now because say particularly after 9 11 a lot of the funding and personnel and basically the systems and and support for for all our intelligence systems cis agencies went much more towards counterterrorism yeah that's true after 9 11 there was a redirection of assets resources count intelligence had been kind of a boom industry after hanson after ames we were getting more people coming into the field we had a better standing within the hierarchy but after 9 11 and this is understandable a lot of people thought that we needed to move our priorities into counter-terrorism into the rogue nations into proliferation into counter-narcotics and those are all the undertakings but unfortunately sometimes that was at the cost of counter intelligence and i saw kind of a diminution in the resources going into counterintelligence and that disturbs me because the threat has not lessened even though the soviet union is no more the level of spying on the united states now by foreign countries is higher than it's ever been and we need to take that more seriously than we are and and as you you you know beautifully point out in the book there are at least 80 nations we know of that have have spied or are currently spying on the united states besides the obvious like china and russia you know cuba iran north korea there could be places people like ghana one of your case studies as relates to ghana or it can even be you know friendly nations or allied nations such as israel with the james pollard case um maybe just because it is such an enormous enormous subject and and you kind of highlight three of the core and most threatening nations regarding the united states for counterintelligence um but you above and beyond can you explain why china is absolutely the number one threat both in the last many years and and for the foreseeable future going forward yeah i'd like to be very clear about this that china is in a class by itself the magnitude of chinese spy against the united states is several times greater than anything we've ever seen before the russians haven't gone away their level of spying is actually higher than it was during the cold war against america but the chinese are absolutely assaulting our country through espionage through covert action through cyber and they're frankly overwhelming our defenses their attack is multifaceted we can't just stop the loss of defense technology because they're going after anything that affects their efficiency in their industry they're going after agriculture technology medical technology anything that gives them a step forward economically militarily politically medically agriculturally they try to steal you know it makes sense because they have figured out as our other adversaries have that the united states is the leader in all these technologies or many of these technologies and it's a lot cheaper and faster for them to steal what we're doing than to do the r d themselves and so we have become the target the magnet for anybody trying to get a jump ahead in the technology now the chinese still go after the traditional espionage targets the political and military secrets but we should not make no mistake about it the thrust of massive chinese spy in the united states is our technology are trade secrets and they are very good at it and we're right now losing that counter intelligence war and i think you know as you you noted throughout the book uh you know china's what they have taken and continue to try and take is is incredible across all industries uh i know you didn't mention the person's name maybe for particular reason but you noted one high-level military official saying in essence every single modern chinese military system has some component or more than some components based on american military systems that's true that's true i can't think of a major chinese weapons system that is not based on stolen american technology and i think the other thing you bring up and it's it's it's a difficult subject it's not something we like to talk about but it's perhaps you know in reality if you're hiring a lawyer or a doctor or professor it obviously you want to have the inclusion and not worry about people's backgrounds but when it comes to you know sensitive military or or you know any any sensitive issues that nation needs to protect perhaps you know better job should be done with regards to assessing people's backgrounds and could you maybe talk about china that just in terms of students about you know about one-third of all the students united states foreign students are from china over 300 000 and there are cultural connections that people can play upon but also the other thing we may not realize is a chinese uh national united states or chinese american who's been in the united states if they still have family back in china that family can be a form of pressure and be pressured by the chinese government we talk about the threats basically that that are maybe unique for say the chinese spying apparatus that maybe aren't as prevalent in other nations sure i think you put your finger on it ronan the chinese do use their students in the united states very very aggressively as you said over 300 000 chinese students united states and where are they they're mostly studying science engineering things that have military applications and i'm not saying that all chinese united states are up to no good are working for chinese intelligence but how many does it really take to begin seeing our our secrets what the cycle is take some patience but the payoff is tremendous if you can get a student in the united states from china in a high-tech field and that student graduates from a high quality american college of engineering and then goes out into the workplace and gets sponsorship from an american company that person will get a green card pre status and five years of a green card can mean citizenship and five years of citizenship will mean that this person is eligible for a top secret code word us government security clearance so this is certainly something that chinese intelligence not overlooked and if they are willing to make that kind of investment they can plant people all through the american high tech sector even into the government through national laboratories and they will have a gold mine the other category that you referred to are chinese americans and the overwhelming majority of chinese americans are loyal american citizens but the chinese play the ethnic card very very seriously and so they look for chinese americans who are positions of access and they're hoping that these chinese americans will still have some lingering sympathy some cultural affinity for china as you said they still may have relatives on the mainland and they can be used to influence also the decisions of these people the first place they look will be for ethnic chinese now they have not limited that however they've become much more brazen in the recent past and there are several non-ethnic chinese spies that the chinese have recruited in the united like glenn duffy st and kevin mallory and candice claire born ron hanson these were people who simply were enticed by very clever insidious chinese entrapments and ended up harming our country greatly by passing intelligence to the chinese and and we'll come back to it later but maybe just uh briefly it's hard to do it briefly but um i suppose maybe to touch upon russia and a lot of it there are some excellent i highly recommend this book it is very very interesting uh but there's you know excellent case studies at the end some you know fascinating case studies regards to the russians all that but i think one thing you point out that's clear that we had to approach month with the fall of the of the soviet union there were high hopes for better cooperation for the united the kgb st and then its predecessors that came yeah those came afterwards it did not stop and in particular you say we absolutely should not trust putin and he has a true distance like the united states i mean i hate to be so pessimistic but could you talk more about your perspective on russia well i spent most of my career working against russia i know the kgb very very well i recall tracking vladimir putin when he was still a tenant colonel in the kgb in east germany we knew already back then what he was we knew that putin was a ruthless killer we knew that he had no scruples whatsoever we also knew that he was very smart in essence very very dangerous and he has not changed he is bringing his intelligence background into the presidency and the level of russian spying inside the united states now is higher than it was during the height of the cold war putin is obsessed with america and he is very keen on stealing our secrets influencing our elections having a stake in what's going on in the united states we i think would underestimate him to our peril if we did not take him very seriously as i said say in the book ronan i think you're referring to this we united states would be naive in the extreme to think we could ever have a good faith negotiation with vladimir putin because he is completely untrustworthy and i think also if note in in the book you point out that really since the 1950s 1960s unlike perhaps the chinese components that might rely upon cultural ties or familial ties almost all the americans who have been involved with uh sadly spying for the russians or the soviet union since that time it has almost always been motivated by money correct it's that's true in the 50s there were still some fellow travelers people who were still kind of attracted to the allure of the communist ideal but beginning in the 60s that was all gone nobody believed in that anymore and sadly it turned out that way too many americans can be bought and you're absolutely right that overwhelmingly the motivation now for americans to betray us is money and look how much rick aims made from the russians we estimated at close to three million dollars and we may be underestimating it so they paid well but they got a lot of really damaging intelligence in return i think uh one of the great kind of surprising chapters probably a lot of people read this book is you lay out the three most effective kind of uh intelligence services in your time in cia and perhaps even since then china and russia are number one number two but probably you might be surprised that number three especially you say as you say your book pound for pound was cuba can you talk about why cuba was so effective and perhaps also they are one of the exceptions where people like anna montes and others there was the ideological component and if someone is ideologically spying for another country why it makes it that much harder to catch them sure cuba is a major counterintelligence threat to the united states and has been ever since castle took over i worked with a lot of cuban sources in my career i know cuban intelligence for what it is it is better than the kgb ever was is more disciplined it uses better tradecraft it's more impermeable to penetration by us casper did a very good job of creating an intelligence service that is world class now i point out in the book that i rank cuba number three as a counterintelligence threat but i rank it number one in terms of obnoxiousness because the cubans were the bane of my existence when i was doing counterintelligence at the cia and you take people like philip agee who worked for the cubans or anna montez later or kendall and gwendolyn myers you take the wasp network you take the fact that the cubans doubled 38 of our ages people we thought had recruited on the mainland were actually working for human intelligence that was a major major failure of u.s counterintelligence and i take it very personally i have no love for cuba and when castro died in 19 or 2016 we all hoped that they would go the way of eastern europe and communism would collapse and there'd be kind of resurgence of democracy and that we could liberalize that country help them get back on the right track it didn't happen you know raul held it together and we got the yes canal today is just a hard line of communists as raul or fidel ever and the cuban d.i the intelligence service still hasn't been dead against the united states and it's based on hatred uh and they are extremely extremely troublesome to us so we should never estimate underestimate the cubans as a counter intelligence threat and in your book you you go through you know wonderfully your ten commandments for counterintelligence intelligence services and and kind of you know what really needs to be done to kind of produce the best the best agents the best officers they're also a lot of uh i suppose highlights in there that would reply to any industry or company that has sensitive documents or sensitive operations um then not particularly directly uh part of the the united states government but can you talk about one thing that i suppose a lot of people might not want to hear but the reality is over and over you point out throughout the book that polygraphs more often than not have have certainly proved their weight at least in terms of assessing you know people for being a double agent or someone working for another government i'm a believer in the polygraph it's not perfect but it is a very valuable counterintelligence tool and we use it in a multiple variety of ways in screening new employees it is extremely effective in finding people who are unsuitable i know all the countermeasures that was part of my job as chief of counter intelligence but i can't beat the plastic thing even if i tried because it is effective if the polygraph is showing deception indicated di as we call it in my experience it's a 95 plus percent probability that there's deception going on now they're going to be some mistakes they're going to be some false positives and i regret those but we are much stronger as a result of using the polygraph than it would be otherwise more people are rejected for employment because of behaviors that came out on the polygraph than our surface during the background investigation we also use the polygraph in determining the bone of feed a's of people we have recruited as sources for united states intelligence so you're probably asking yourself ronan all right and how did those 38 cubas beat us and the truth is is that the cubans are doing some things that we don't fully understand yet in the counter polygraph area but also so we were so hungry so eager for having sources on island cubans that we overlooked problematic polygraphs lack of production all the other signals that should have indicated that we were dealing with doubles so it'd probably be an overstatement to say that the cubans beat the polygraph consistently there were other factors involved but we need to look very very carefully into what they were doing i would hope that we would have a cuban source someday who can tell us exactly what they're doing now anna montez the cuban spy from inside the defense intelligence agency told us that the cubans coached her on how to beat the polygraph simply by telling her to tighten her sphincter while she's being questioned we should try that sometime i don't know if that works it sounds uncomfortable for starters i'll try it the next time i have a polygraph and and maybe just quickly you you also note that there may be scenarios where if someone truly is say a sociopath with no conscience like like aims or something like that they could beat it or could you talk about there might be cultural reasons why someone comes from a culture where lying is not seen as as grave a concern or if personal responsibility is not a big issue that could be a factor too yeah that's a good point there are some people out there sociopaths as you refer to them who don't really have a sense of right or wrong if it's good for them it's it's their truth those people tend to be very very difficult subjects on the polygraph because they don't feel guilt they don't have a sense of lying as wrong and you're right that there are some cultures and i don't want to be too specific here where deception is actually a value where it is pursued where right and wrong are a lot less clear than they would be for an american for example and so some nationalities traditionally have been very difficult for us to polygraph and i'll point out that the chinese are in that category and larry wu taichin beat the polygraph we know other cases of chinese who have been successful in getting through polygraph screening some of that is probably a cultural difference some of it is because some of these tests have been done in english not the native language so the words don't have the same impact always as they would for a native speaker a lot of explanations but we do an awful lot of research on the polygraph and i for one would like to see its use expanded i know that's unpopular with civil libertarians it's intrusive it's an ordeal we all hate it but it does work and i suppose related to that various parts of your book um it's an excellent resource i would say for for any of our college students or people maybe in their 20s or even 30s who are considering a career in intelligence uh services or any of the different agencies uh you you do a great job pointing out what are some of the ideal qualities in a cia officer or someone for the fbi or the you know any other agencies but is is there is there a bit of difficulty sometimes especially for people like case officers who have to work kind of you know under an assumed name in an odd part of the world that one of the most necessary things is to have a high moral character but same time then when you get into your field work you have to turn around and lie incessantly and and is that also an example of why in the book you say uh intelligence work is not innate it's a learned uh a learned discipline yes it is kind of an anomaly isn't it that we are looking for people with strong character people who are honest reliable but then we train them and send them out the field to lie cheat to steal to save steel but we have we got to be find people who know where the line is to not use those skills against us we want people who are manipulative by nature but not against our own people so we're recruiting people who who could go wrong and we've seen that people like rick aims and bob hanson and others have used those skills for a very nefarious purpose i will both summarize by saying that the number one quality that we look for now this applies to dia to all the law enforcement people fbi military elsewhere are people of character we entrust the people we recruit with some very sensitive secrets in some cases we train them in skills that could be horribly misused in the wrong hands so we've got to be even more careful than we are now that we're getting the right people i make this point repeatedly in the book ronan as you've seen that when you look at all the spies who betrayed us i've looked at over 200 of them in the majority of the cases there were warning signs there were things even in their application process that should have raised flags it should have prevented us from hiring people like that i have kind of a shorthand immodest axiom that i've created in screening people for employment and sensitive jobs to united states government i say when in doubt keep them out and all too often we are granting waivers we are accepting people that have equivocal behaviors in their background and i don't understand that we don't need to do that we have no shortage of applicants for these jobs who don't have that baggage who don't have those warning signs so i think it's a big mistake for us to compromise in the character issues of people we hire i'm looking at things like drugs and alcohol and financial irregularities and abusive relationships there are people getting into the government now who should not be getting into the government i just believe it's there and perhaps another aspect um you know as you you point out in in the book there are the those i suppose elements that are said beyond just the realm of government institutions government agencies especially defense contractors um say like booze allen with snowden had worked for the cia but then was a contract with booz allen um could you talk about i mean in some ways did it surprise you not necessarily what snowden did but the volume of of information and data that he was able to steal i mean it was just he didn't even know what all he'd taken they're literally thousands upon thousands and thousands of documents um is there perhaps too much access permitted at at different levels i mean i know he might have taken people's passwords but is that an issue too it's a huge issue the availability of data now has of course mushroom with the computer age with databases and you can take one bad apple like a snowden or unfortunately a position of accessing volumes and volumes of sensitive information we've got to do a lot better job of compartmenting that information and monitoring who's accessing what who can download what what's being taken out of the office in any given day but it is a huge huge problem snowden did devastating damage to our country's security he affected our liaison relationships he revealed some very sensitive methods of collection he put some people in jeopardy around the world he had no right to do what he did and i'll go on record right now saying that i have no sympathy whatsoever who holds snowden up as some kind of a of a hero someone who performed a service for the american people he had recourse other ways of making his concerns known but as as the bottom line with no snowden is is that he really grievously harmed u.s national security it's no coincidence for me that when he was on the run where did he go first to china we squeezed dry by chinese intelligence and where is he now in russia being squeezed right by by putin and so yeah there are other people like him unfortunately government secrets are too widely spread to contractors to think tanks there are an awful lot of people out there with access to us government secrets who are not under the us government regime directly and i believe that in too many cases our corporate contractors are not as attuned to counterintelligence as they should be and that they've become lacks over the years i think we need to scrutinize them a lot more closely than we have in the past and i i suppose related that one of the one of the great case studies you gave gave was also what a lot of people probably heard of chai mac uh who've been here for years i suppose proof of the chinese patients are literally being made to wait and work with people for not just years but even decades uh that case he was working for power as an engineer for power paragon a defense contractor working on science pulsing systems for uh nuclear american yuko submarines and other aspects probably one of the most dis disturbing parts of your account was to read about once he was caught and the trial and the prosecutor said that the the witness testimony by power paragon by the defense contractor almost seemed like defense testimony and i suppose you talk about that fact that they do not want it to appear that so much information was leaked or could have been leaked because they're terrified of losing you know billion dollar contracts and and that puts puts them in opposition of maybe not wanting report or or or fine trouble yeah i'm glad you brought up shia mac because he is a classic case study in how chinese intelligence operates and i would recommend that case to anybody who's really interested in understanding better how this all works he's a chinese american he went through the the channels we talked about earlier came over as a student he got his u.s citizenship and he went to work for paragon with access to extremely sensitive submarine technology and he was approached on the basis of his ties back to china his love for his native country so it was just the way they operate now china also is a very greedy person he took some money but i think his primary motivation was trying to help mother china and he did serious damage now paragon itself in court of course was not necessarily interested in exposing all this dirty laundry about someone like john mack was able to work in place for as long as he did how there were so few controls over what documents left the office who had access to what who downloaded what so chimack was a black mark for for paragon also the government was somewhat complicit in not wanting to have to reveal its sources and methods in court so these cases are often complicated in their prosecution by the unwillingness of the government to talk about the sources that they used in covering the case or in doing the investigation a time act was convicted but it was a difficult prosecution and i was disappointed that paragon was not more on board with pushing hard for a a harsher sentence for for one of his own employees who was in fact not sufficiently supervised by by paragon and maybe just a last question we have a large number of audience questions that will turn to you um but we we discussed some of it but could you talk about especially encounter and intelligence more broadly maybe some of the cultural legal difference disadvantages uh for american intelligence first what the the chinese the russians might have their disposal uh whether it be regards to probable cause for getting warrants or um you know something like the fact that you note over and over in your book the grave uh extents you went to protect a source even if it meant actually having to give up real information for one right there are a lot of differences a lot of legal differences a lot of moral differences a lot of cultural differences in how we operate as compared to our adversaries the russians for example have no real intelligence ethics they will do anything that they can if it advances russia's security interests also their laws allow them to do invasive kinds of investigative work that we can't do now we've got to go through the fisa process we've got to show probable cause and the standard is relatively high so there are some barriers for us being able to do the kinds of investigative work early in the counter intelligence case that we would norm normally like to be able to do it's not automatic for example that you can just pick out an employee in the government and get access to that person's tax records or credit card records or travel records or employment records you cannot do physical surveillance you cannot do technical surveillance until you convince convince a court that there is probable cause i'm glad it's that way i'm proud that our country has those constraints we are not a police state we would never want to be a police state and it is a balancing act isn't it where we have to allow our counterintelligence people we have to allow the fbi the ci nsa and others to do their jobs to get the access to the information that they need to protect our country but at the same time we are very very attuned to the need to protect the privacy and the civil liberties of our citizens i would not want it to be any other way but it sometimes makes our job tough to be a counterintelligence officer could be frustrating when i was in counterintelligence team we had lawyers in every other cubicle looking over our shoulders just to make certain that in our zeal to do our jobs we did not overstep the law or civil liberties i mean to me it seems like uh counterintelligence officers are kind of like the offensive lineman of the intelligence world they're absolutely vital you have to have them but nobody talks about them until there's a mistake and thought of it that way but i think that's a good analogy yeah counterintelligence work can be thankless you can be underappreciated your successes become your favors because when you catch an american spy what do you get hit with okay it was your job to prevent something like that so that was a failure on your part and then secondly what took you so long why did it take you nine years to catch rick aims why did it take you 14 years to catch ana motez those are valid questions so we've got to do a better job but the fact that we have these constraints on us does mean that sometimes our investigations take longer than they they ordinarily would and uh now i'm just going to turn to some of the audience questions i might combine some just for certain gets as many as possible um uh michael p i want some people's last names in case i'm not sure if they want their last name said asks how does the us protect its trade secrets when countries like china require technology transfers condition access to their enormous market and then related to china michael h asks what do you recommend to end what you said what would you recommend to end our losing s counter espionage war with china okay yeah the chinese are very clever they realize that american companies are looking for markets they're looking for profits and the chinese market is made available to them but often with conditions and sometimes those conditions are sharing of technology sharing of trade secrets and in their eagerness to make sales to do business with china unfortunately some of our american business leaders have gotten too far out in front in sharing information with the chinese the chinese are very good about pulling that information out and even making it a condition of cooperation building a plant moving your laboratories setting up your databases that they have access to so they are constantly looking to use these lucrative trade deals for advantage in steaming trade secrets okay how would we stop that we've got to be a lot more aggressive in how we deal with china as a counterintelligence threat and i would say that the most important thing that we can do is to be more offensive and my ten commandments of counterintelligence the first commandment is be offensive we can't sit back on the defense and protect our secrets that way we've got to go after them for every american who is spying against us there are people in the chinese mss and the russian svr and the cuban di who know the identity of those americans so our job and intelligence is to go out and recruit those people buy them if necessary we call that hanging out the shingle spreading the word american intelligence is open for business and we have deep pockets so come our way and if you can reveal to us the identity of american americans who have betrayed us the payoff will be huge will be considerable the second thing we have to do ronin and this is a particularly important topic for me one that i preach all the time we've got to resurrect a double agent as a counterintelligence tool we've got to have more aggressive more frequent double agent operations if i were back in charge of counterintelligence i would be flooding the chinese with american volunteers or people who have been approached come under our control and allow themselves to be recruited and then we will run them back against that that service we will learn the identities of their personnel we will learn their mo we will learn what the requirements are we will tie them up we will take their money double agents are gold in counterintelligence and to catch us by i actually say that i consider double agents the caviar of the counter intelligence business because in my experience there was nothing more delectable than a good juicy double agent operation and we need to do more of them than we're doing now and i think maybe you could just follow up a bit in the book you note counter tells them work more broadly is very important and alice all that is important but far and away the majority of foreign agents who have been caught have been because of either penetrations people you put into their services or defectors or double agents could you talk about really why above and beyond they're absolutely the most important asset right if you're exactly right ron the best counter intelligence is penetration and i ask my students in my intelligence classes to single out if they can american spies that we have caught when there hasn't been a source somewhere back in the sponsoring intelligence service it's a relatively small number and we don't always publicize the fact that we had a source for source protection and you made the point earlier in your discussion of the differences between american and say russian intelligence operations we are deeply committed to source protection if someone has put his or her life on the line to cooperate secretly with the cia we are honor bound to protect that person and the russians the chinese the cubans the other adversaries we face don't have that same moral limitation if one of the people they recruited gives them the identity of one of their citizens spying against them they wrap it up and source protection be damned i mean one of the frustrating frustrating things about rick ames is that every time he told him who an american spot was someone working for american intelligence from inside russia they would they would go arrest that person they put ricket in real danger but it was more important for them to hit that person take that person out of circulation and to execute that person than it was to protect rick and the other sources but we're different we will go to every possible extreme to protect our sources and i think that's a good thing i think it's a moral thing and maybe two uh questions are a bit related uh uh betty asked what types of information do our allies uh secret services seek to get from us maybe give some examples of that and then um someone else asked i'm trying to get through these questions um i suppose do we have to be you know cognizant of of smaller countries services because um they might be someone you might think of say as cuba or something like that but uh could would they pass along information say to russia or to china well the the number one in piece of information that foreign intelligence services across the board are looking for is technology they want our technology they'll go after other kinds of secrets also but technology is the name of the game for them and the question are asked what kind of technologies nuclear warheads machine tools submarines phased array radars thermal imaging devices unmanned aerial vehicles the list goes on and on we've also made a point earlier i'd like to reiterate it that they're looking for things in other areas in my home state of iowa the chinese were caught trying to steal hybrid corn seed corn seeds that was developed far beyond what the chinese were capable of doing it would greatly improve their yields of their corn crop if they could steal that proprietary technology so they were out in the fields of iowa digging up corn seeds okay we've had cases right here in houston where the chinese were downloading massive quantities of cancer research because it was better than what they were capable of doing themselves and it is a cheap way to do any kind of research steal it and so it's it's pretty much across the board and just kind of it's been fun that ask a question smaller services yeah sorry and i suppose yeah the i suppose the threat that a smaller service in the book you mentioned hungarians giving information kgb back in the cold war or cubans giving information say to the russians or the chinese yeah well the east european services who were under russian control i wouldn't characterize in small services because they were extremely well developed very professional and a major counterintelligence concern in our world and it may sound cynical but you have a few friends in the intelligence business because with very few exceptions everybody spies on everybody else that makes sense because what we do matters and we're the repository of all this technology and so everybody is in the business of stealing from america large countries and small i would be directing double agent operations again then just to test our so-called trends because some of these people who are involved in flying against the united states are nominal friends of the united states that doesn't prevent them from when the opportunity arises to steal what they can get their hands on there are some countries that we consider close allies and don't get me started because many of them have been caught with their hand in the cookie jar even our dear friend israel took the risk of running jonathan pollard as a spy against the united states okay so it's uh it's pretty much across the board the only real exceptions are what we call the five eyes the five anglophone countries united states uk canada australia and new zealand by formal agreement we do not spy on them and they do not spy on us but every everybody else is fair game pretty much and we the united states can't get on our high wars and condemn these countries these small countries trying to spy against the united states because which country is the world's leader in spying on france the united states and one of the embarrassing things one of the devastating things that snowden revealed was the extent to which the united states does spy on friends you recall how upset the french and the germans were when they realized what nsa was doing inside their countries but i think we all need to be adult we need to grow up everybody does it and when you catch that fringe spying on you don't let it affect the bilateral relationship call them out on it snap their wrists even hard but don't break off liaison don't break off the diplomatic relationship because we do the same thing to them that they're doing to us it's the nature of this business and here's a question i think from one of your former students it says i think slava it asks professor hi professor olson it's great to see you again i was a student in your cold war intel class yes i understand human intelligence is still irreplaceable can you comment on the challenges that counterintelligence faces today in light of advances in cyber technology well that's a great question slava and we touched on it in class extensively of course technology has changed the game dramatically it's changed the game in how we collect intelligence against our adversaries and also the threats that can be directed against us the capability of stealing large amounts of intelligence has expanded so greatly now because of databases and thumb drives and disks i used to be worried when i was on active duty in the cia about a disloyal employee who could stick a classified document in his or her clothing and walk out with it now they go out with a thumb drive and they've got the entire files and so that's really complicated our job spying overseas is also much more difficult now because of the technical tools that are available to our adversaries face recognition document scanners tagging listening devices it's a whole new world so we've got to be constantly changing our tradecraft to deal with those threats on balance though it's good for us because what distinguishes united states intelligence from the rest of the world is not because we necessarily have the best case officers that we do the best human intelligence and we do a good job that other countries do as well but what distinguishes us is our technology our technology puts us in a classified right by ourselves we can do things with the help of technology that we only could have dreamed of in the past and we couldn't do that without this beautiful marriage that exists between the united states intelligence community and the high-tech american corporate sector sector our contractors are invaluable to us and so they're giving us things that are one and two generations ahead what the public has access to to enable us to stay ahead of our adversaries what the united states can see from the sky with the united states can intercept in the way of communications anything electronic is nothing short of mind-boggling and it's mostly highly classified but i think americans would be very proud of our country if they knew how we use technology successfully to help protect the american people it's been a beautiful beautiful process but it's never going to replace the human spot i really want to emphasize that i think that was the gist of slava's question there's always going to be a need for that person that human being sitting inside the councils of that foreign country who knows what their intentions are who knows who the personalities are who can give us that inside flavor for what's really going on in the minds of their leaders so i'm not worried about ever seeing human disappear it's always going to be there those of us who aspired for careers in human intelligence are not going to be put out of business technology is good yes but it does not supplant what we spies on the ground continue to do let me just i also add that within the greater world of intelligence my true love has been and will always be the subspecialty of counterintelligence spy catching and if there are young people out there who feel attracted by that kind of a difficult profession protecting our secrets protecting our people look into it we're losing we need reinforcements so come join us i'm an intelligence officer i'm always recruiting so i'm not going to miss out on this opportunity spread the word that we are looking for high quality young men and women who would like to serve our country in the intelligence community it's an unbelievably rewarding career my wife meredith and i served undercover for 31 years we would do it all over again if we could but one difference ronan if we were starting all over again and we'd love to meredith and i would both try to get into the china program at the cia and learn mandarin and become chinese counterintelligence expert because that is the future and present threat to our country if you ask any counterintelligence professional in any country any western country what's the number one threat the answer is always the same china china china that's great and um and hopefully they're always students watching it's one of my favorite parts about the council and i know a lot of our students have gone on to serve uh with different agencies for the united states i'm happy to say um could you uh briefly these i know charge you these questions briefly but uh karen asks what has been done to keep interference uh in the november elections at bay and it is the administration cooperating with these endeavors yes i can't speak to what the administration is is doing because there may be things going on behind the scenes not aware of but shame on us if we're not taking it seriously because putin did interfere did attempt to interfere even more than he did in our elections and that's unacceptable and so we need to be doing everything we possibly can to make certain that doesn't happen again i don't know what food's objectives were i don't think he changed many votes i don't even think that was his objective i think his hatred for america his obsession with america is such that he just wanted to disrupt he wanted to show that he could do it he wanted to corrupt our process for the sake of harming america that's the nature of this man and he will do it again if we give him the chance so i'm hoping that there are very smart people in the united states intelligence community today including in the white house and in the congress who are taking this threat seriously he gave us fair warning in the last election of what he's capable of doing we've also seen what he was capable of doing in terms of cyber in the ukraine in estonia in georgia and so shame on us if we don't strengthen our defenses and allow that to happen again and i'm confident that we will do that okay just i'll combine two questions uh chris had asked a question about what we can do support say your work at the bush school and other places and then ricardo asks uh similarly do you um what what about the general public and general awareness training since a lot of spines shifted to cyberspace social media misinformation um what can be done to kind of for the u.s public to augment the internet intel community well thank you for allowing me to put in a good word for the bushville we're very proud what we're doing there with george bush built we are following through on of uh sending our top-notch young people into careers in national security and specifically in intelligence so if anybody out there is personally interested or knows a young man or woman who would like to serve our country in the intelligence community please ask that person to take a look at the bushville website i think you'll like what you'll see and if you're attracted to a professionally focused practitioner based intelligence studies program i would venture to say that we may be a good choice for you the bush school is trying to expand its intelligence studies program not here for that purpose but if anybody is interested in assisting us in that endeavor there are opportunities available also through our website the the bush school i think is serving our country very very admirably in sending our young people into careers of protecting the american people i can tell you for someone like me who was honored privileged to be able to serve our country in the cia for 31 years there could not be a better second career of working with these aggies and helping to send them in behind meredith and me into similar type of careers it was just indescribably rewarding grown in and i would like to thank you and the world affairs council of houston for inviting me to be with you the office this evening and have the opportunity to share my passion for our country's security for counterintelligence i'm very gratified to so many people were interested enough to tune in and i thank them for that because i think the first line of defense for our country is an informed public and by listening in this evening i hope you have learned some things that may be helpful for you and having a better grasp of what's going on in there out there in the the counterintelligence arena it's a it's a dangerous word for america we face multiple threats but one of the most serious is is that foreign intelligence services are here in our midst and it's not just china russia and cuba it is a pervasive threat to our country's security when we lose our technology we're losing market share we're losing jobs we're losing trade and so the cost to our country is in the billions and billions of dollars every year not only that but by allowing this to happen we are undermining severely our country's national security that's the reason i wrote this book the book was intended for anybody who's interested in spy books but also to try to inform the american public of what's really going on in this often misunderstood world of counter intelligence i've also been gratified that i've learned that the book is being used in several u.s government training classes and that was a secondary market that i had hoped to have for this book of counterintelligence professionals either current or or future and lastly just maybe if you could mention it quickly just to relate to what you're saying uh jacqueline asked what college majors would you recommend to a student who's interested in maybe getting involved in counterintelligence it's very hard to major in what we do but the majority of the majors that we would see would probably be political science history economics international studies we love engineers we love scientists we love people with cyber backgrounds in fact the cia is so vast and covers so many different areas i can speak of the entire intelligence community in the same line that there are probably no majors we wouldn't be interested in i just didn't come into my office not too long ago from texas a m and she said mr olsen i'd love to serve our country but i'm an ag major i can't imagine to see i would have any interest in agriculture i said are you kidding agriculture is strategic food supplies international commodities markets obviously we have to follow agriculture very closely so she's been hired she's on track the important thing is to have just a good solid critical education and then you're probably going to need a graduate degree or military service something beyond a bachelor's degree and no matter what your major is coming into the bush school you will leave with a solid grounding in national security and so we are sending people into careers in intelligence in large numbers every year also into counterterrorism non-proliferation law enforcement diplomacy international organizations so it's very evident that we have been able to live up to the mandate given to us by our namesake george bush when he told us that he wanted to create a school which prepared our best young people for careers of public service uh and i'm very very proud to be part of that even in a small way well i want to thank you all so much for joining us for enlightening engaging conversation and i highly recommend jim's book sorry about the the sunlight coming to my blinds it looks like it's not a it's not part of the the setup scene or thing but to catch a spy excellent book um truly engaging and and entertaining and enjoyable read but also eye-opening a lot of ways and if you have any curiosity about the world of intelligence especially counterintelligence great book and highly recommend any students you might have potentially thought about the intelligence services especially counter intelligence service to maybe check out the book or maybe i'll go ahead and tell them to email uh jim at texas a m and and most importantly i want to say you know jim thank you so much for for you for your basic your entire you know life service to the country and yourself and your message your wife and cia for all those years as well and thank you to all of your colleagues who cannot say who they are exactly what they're doing if they're still serving or may have already served so truly i want to say thank you very much for your service and what you've done for our country it's it's vital and it's ongoing and it never stops thank you very very much ron that's very kind you say that and it was an honor uh to be able to have served i wish i could do it all over again well i'm glad i'm glad we had you thank you very much and we look forward to hopefully seeing you all again related to russia on our program bill browder on june 18. thank you all right bye-bye

Channel: World Affairs Council of Greater Houston

Views: 15,698

Keywords: WACH, World Affairs, World Affairs Council Houston, cia, james olson, bush school, counterintelligence

Id: s1e7eQuizRE

Length: 64min 45sec (3885 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 04 2020