Quote Originally Posted by Wana88 View Post
There appears to be an embedded (cultural?) tendency in the IC hiring process to suspect those with any kinds of "connections" to critical regions.
Yet profile examination of IC members convicted of espionage/treason since 1980 reveals the following variables: white males, christian (majority), jewish (one), anglo saxon, insecure, greedy, alcoholic, financial problems, large egos, disgruntled and could repeatedly pass a poly with flying colors (read: Walkers, Hanssen, Ames etc) The only two that stand out who had familial connections to the state they sold out to were Pollard (Israel) and Montes (Cuba). I think there were also a couple of Chinese descent as well.

Yet, to date, the IC continues to "suspect" those with critical skills. While the hiring process of the IC must be rigorous, potential hires need to meet some sort of "loyalty" criteria rather than trying to shed their ethnic baggage. The IC needs that baggage (language, time spent in region, cultural comprehension) to win the type of long war we indefinitely face.

Wana 88
That isn't even a valid argument due to the fact that you are basing your argument of a small subset of data that certainly cannot be verified as accurate. You're basing it off a description of spies who have been caught. These spies represent what percentage of actual spies working with the U.S. intelligence community? Oh yeah, you can't tell me that, therefore we can't verify whether the subset you base your assessment off of is actually representative of the entire population.

And personally, I think it should be even harder to obtain a TS clearance than it currently is, and less people should be having access to that information.