[Note: This series explores the ramifications of the new Insider Threat Program, an initiative ordered by President Barack Obama to identify and stop future leaks and security violations within the federal government, and specifically the intelligence community.  Mandated in 2011, the program demands that federal employees report overtly suspicious behavior by co-workers, such as frequent travel overseas or unreported foreign contacts, but it also requires employees to ‘profile’ their co-workers with behavior analysis techniques they are relatively untrained in.  The Insider Threat Program does not help prevent leaks; in fact, it diminishes esprit d ’corps, encourages ‘witch hunts,’ and ultimately results in the exact type of decreased loyalty that can lead to susceptibility to foreign services and anti-government groups.  This series is an adapted form of a thesis that Kit wrote for her Counterintelligence degree.]

Part 1 is here.  Part 2 is here.

The Insider Threat Program offers standard behavioral patterns that can often indicate a security leak.  Those given access to classified information are taught these, and expected to report blatant problematic conduct or suspected actual breaches.  ITP also, however, offers much more fluid and even inconsistent criteria as well.  Taylor and Landay write that the program “gives agencies such wide latitude in crafting their responses to insider threats that someone deemed a risk in one agency could be characterized as harmless in another.”[1]  The lack of consistency leads to unclear standards and confusion for employees—especially those who may transfer to another agency or department.  Even though so-called minimum standards have been established by the President, he also directly instructed agencies to look for individuals who may be involved in potential espionage.  The intentionally vague directions result in what Taylor and Landay call a “hodgepodge of interpretation,” and directly lead to witch hunts, where innocent people are investigated for innocent actions that were misinterpreted and reported by overzealous or even vindictive co-workers.  Richard J. Evans writes that the Gestapo of Nazi Germany was used in much the same way.[2]  Canadian historian Robert Gellately also notes that the end result of the Gestapo’s tactics was “the creation of widespread fear and the belief that the state was all-seeing, an attribute fictionalized by George Orwell” many years before the ITP was ever conceived.[3]

Some of the most baffling criteria for ITP reporting come in the behavioral profiling section of the training.  The Department of Education’s (DOE) training materials state that someone “going through certain life experiences…might turn a trusted user into an insider threat.”[4]  While this is actually a true statement, the DOE actually claims that “stress, divorce, financial problems, or frustration” are enough to take a normally stable, loyal employee and turn him into someone who would leak classified information.  Coupled with the USDA’s admonition that spies are “mentally disturbed,” the simple mathematical equation becomes more sinister: Getting a divorce can make someone mentally disturbed, and therefore should be reported.  A senior Pentagon official mentioned in the McClatchy Report’s article stated that “The argument can be made that the rape of military personnel represents an insider threat.  Nobody has a model of what this insider threat stuff is supposed to look like.”[5]