IDENTIFYING THE TRAITOR AMONG US: THE RHETORIC OF ESPIONAGE AND SECRECY by

236 Pages·2003·0.75 MB·English

IDENTIFYING THE TRAITOR AMONG US:
THE RHETORIC OF ESPIONAGE AND SECRECY

by

Karen M. Taylor

BA Tulane University, 1993

MA Texas A&M University, 1996

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of

Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

University of Pittsburgh

2003
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH

FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

This dissertation was presented

by

Karen M. Taylor

It was defended on

May 20, 2003

and approved by

Ted McGuire

Lester Olson

Kirk Junker

John Lyne

Dissertation Director

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IDENTIFYING THE TRAITOR AMONG US:
THE RHETORIC OF ESPIONAGE AND SECRECY

Karen M. Taylor, PhD

University of Pittsburgh, 2003

This study approaches espionage as a knowledge-producing and knowledge-disseminating
practice similar to knowledge practices such as science. The study uses investigative tools
drawn from rhetoric of science studies and applies them to intelligence and, particularly,
counterintelligence work. The result provides new insight into the underdetermination of
evidence, the interdependence of disparate discourses, and the role of espionage in American
culture.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ESPIONAGE AND RHETORIC.........................................................................................2
American History.....................................................................................................8
Consideration of Significance Behind Popularity.................................................13
THE ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF INTELLIGENCE...................................15
THE LEGAL STRUCTURES OF ESPIONAGE RHETORIC.........................................22
ELEMENTS OF ESPIONAGE RHETORIC....................................................................26
1. Burden of Proof..................................................................................................27
2. Motivation..........................................................................................................30
3. Harms.................................................................................................................31
4. Texts and Relations Between Texts..................................................................34
5. Communication about Communications/Definitions........................................36
6. Typology of Cases.............................................................................................37
7. Impact................................................................................................................40
PLAN OF PROJECT.........................................................................................................40
Chapter 2, Aldrich Ames.......................................................................................43
Chapter 3, Wen Ho Lee.........................................................................................43
Chapter 4, Robert Hanssen....................................................................................43
A Note on Reading Strategy..................................................................................44
Aldrich Ames and the Conspiratorial World of Espionage.....................................45
OPENNESS AND SECRECY...........................................................................................46
THE SPY AS FOOL..........................................................................................................52
UNDERSTANDING the CONTEXT for COUNTERINTELLIGENCE
INVESTIGATIONS..............................................................................................57
ESPIONAGE RHETORIC AND PARANOIA.................................................................62
BUILDING TRUST in a CONTEXT of PARANOIA......................................................66
Trust through Code Systems..................................................................................68
Trust through Mutual Understanding Based on Shared Backgrounds..................68
Trust through Heightening Insider/Outsider Differentiation.................................69
EVIDENCE AND EXPLANATION in the Ames Investigation......................................76
Explanations Flawed Due to Delimiting the Data Too Broadly ...........................78
Explanations Based on the Mysteries of Technology............................................78
Explanations Based on Blaming the Victim..........................................................80
Explanations Based on the Insider/Outsider Dichotomy.......................................81
Obstacles Precluding Explanation due to Pressures from External Priorities.......82
LESSONS LEARNED.......................................................................................................83
The Problem with Lessons Learned: a Counter-Example for the Ames case in
which we visit the openness vs. secrecy question again............................87
PREVENTING ESPIONAGE...........................................................................................89
Strategies Relying on Symbolic Intervention........................................................90

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Strategies Reducing Opportunities........................................................................93
Strategies Relying on Organizational Culture.......................................................95
Wen Ho Lee and the Post-Cold-War Espionage Genre............................................98
Event One: China’s Miniaturization Success......................................................100
The History of Atomic Espionage.......................................................................102
Event Two: Satellite Technology Transfers........................................................105
ENTER THE COX REPORT..........................................................................................108
Appeals to Pathos.................................................................................................112
Appeals to Ethos..................................................................................................115
Audience Expectations........................................................................................116
ESPIONAGE IN THE CONTEXT OF SCIENCE..........................................................123
ENTER WEN-HO LEE...................................................................................................128
Enter The Media..................................................................................................131
Understanding the Significance of “Los Alamos” descriptor..............................137
The Lee case goes to trial....................................................................................147
Post-trial Analysis................................................................................................151
Robert Hanssen and the Excitement of Espionage...................................................165
ESPIONAGE AS COMMUNICATION.........................................................................168
BETRAYING THE TRAITOR.......................................................................................171
UNDERSTANDING MOTIVATION.............................................................................173
Explaining Motive in terms of Greed..................................................................180
Explaining Motive in terms of Religion..............................................................182
Explaining Motive in terms of Insanity...............................................................184
Explaining Motive in terms of Employment Problems.......................................186
Contrasting Examples for Simplifying Motive Explanations..............................187
CRITIQUING CONTRASTING ACCOUNTS...............................................................189
Television as a Constraining Medium.................................................................190
Newspaper Coverage as a Constraining Medium................................................192
PRIOR DISCOURSE CONSTRAINS SUBSEQUENT DISCOURSE..........................197
Narrative Conventions as Prior Discourse...........................................................199
Gender Conventions as Prior Discourse..............................................................200
Comparing Gender Roles Across Espionage Discourses....................................205
ROLE EXPECTATIONS AS EVIDENCE.....................................................................213
SECRECY’S ROLE.........................................................................................................216
Wrapping Up Espionage Cases........................................................................................217
CONCLUSIONS ABOUT ESPIONAGE FROM COMMUNICATION THEORY......217
CONCLUSIONS ABOUT COMMUNICATION THEORY FROM ESPIONAGE......227
CONCLUSIONS RELATED TO BROADER SOCIETAL QUESTIONS.....................234
TOWARDS FUTURE RESEARCH...............................................................................240
Bibliography...............................................................................................................................242

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Espionage is a popular topic to write about these days. Roughly three hundred million
spy novels are sold every year1, enough to merit a significant amount of shelf space at your local
Barnes and Noble. Clancy, LeCarré, and Fleming are only a few of the authors who have made a
living writing about espionage. The situations and the character of the spies vary widely, but all
share common themes of secrets and man’s relationships with governments (both his own and
foreign governments). And writing about America’s better-known spies, from journalists and
from biographers, has attracted many additional scribes. To take one example, the recent Robert
Hanssen espionage case resulted in a television drama, at least two books, and over 300
newspaper articles. Over sixty-five spy biographies and/or histories of real-life spies have been
published in the last three years alone. In a recent month (February 2003), there were at least 27
hours of espionage-related programming on television, ranging from history channel
explorations of civil war espionage to science-channel programming on the new unmanned spy
planes being tested in practice for the first time in Iraq today.
The popularity of the topic has a lot to do with the current political situation in the United
States. As part of the “War on Terror” President Bush has strengthened the role of intelligence,
both foreign and domestic. The CIA, NSA and FBI have all been hiring constantly since 9-11,
adding 3000 new agents to their combined ranks in the last two years. The powers of the
intelligence agencies have also been increased. The laws preventing the CIA from using known
terrorists as informants have been quietly revoked. The laws preventing the FBI and local police
departments from sharing information have been revoked, though less quietly. If it stands, a
New York District Court ruling will allow law enforcement agencies to spy on political groups

1According to Book Magazine, July 2001 issue.

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without need for a warrant or in relation to any particular criminal investigation. And agencies
which were never considered part of the work of intelligence previously have become involved.
Secrecy has grown more dramatically than under any other president. At the beginning of
Bush’s presidency, eight government agencies had original classification power. Today, eleven
agencies have classification power, and even more strikingly the number of individuals
employed by those agencies (and hence needing security clearances) has increased even more
dramatically, such that at the start of the 1990s there were more than three million individuals
with security clearances. The number of classified documents accompanying that increase in
personnel, inevitably must therefore increase still more rapidly. And inevitably, with a dramatic
increase in secrecy, an increase in instances of espionage is likely to accompany the change.
ESPIONAGE AND RHETORIC
Espionage is indirectly a topic that has been of interest to rhetoricians as well as to
popular audiences. Rhetoric has a long and glorious history of
championing open communication. In any situation where the
secrecy/disclosure polarity arises, rhetoricians can be relied upon to
argue eloquently the merits of open discourse. The tradition goes much
further back than Habermas. Ed Black makes reference to the paired images of rhetoric and
philosophy in Medieval art, Rhetoric with her hands open and outstretched and Philosophy with
a closed fist, grasping for Truth.
The secrecy/disclosure continuum shall be the central focus of my research, and in
particular the manifestation of this tension in its most dramatic form–espionage. Espionage is
dramatic in the sense of lending itself to literary conventions, as well as riveting public attention.
The term espionage carries with it as well associations with a number of closely related terms,
each of which has emotional connotations and needs to be defined in relationship to the key term
of espionage. The term espionage, as a sign, also necessarily references “silence” and “secrecy.”

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Espionage is a violation of secrecy, which in turn is preserved through silence. “Silence” here
becomes a normative term, the preferred value in this pairing of opposites.
As with any contrastive pair (individual/society, stability/change, public/private), the
middle ground between secrecy and disclosure is contested and hence the realm of rhetoric. The
ascendancy of one term over another changes according to contexts and audiences. The context
of World War II provides an example in which secrecy was relatively dominant, as reflected in
the popular phrase “loose lips sink ships.” The post-Watergate American audience in many
ways represents an example in which the value of disclosure is rated more highly than the value
of secrecy2. Entering into today’s context we seem to see the secrecy/disclosure pendulum
swinging back in favor of greater secrecy. The NSA, for example, has instituted a PR campaign
to encourage secrecy.
Secrecy and silence are longstanding themes in the discussion of democracy. Anna
Quindlen in Newsweek (4/21/03) notes, “In a democratic society, the only treason is silence.”
Mills and Bentham, theorizing how democracy can function most effectively, both note that
accountability (vital in a representative democracy) would seem to require first and foremost the
availability of information, in order for the public to make informed judgements. Jürgen
Habermas takes this requirement of complete openness as an ideal ethically and functionally. In
practice, complete openness has never been possible or even purely desirable. Sissela Bok notes
that secrecy in order to protect the right to privacy of individual citizens is as fundamental and

2For one manifestation, notice the amount and the type of information which formerly
would have been considered “private” and hence appropriately secret which today is routinely
exposed in the media. Other manifestations include the importance of “candor” or “sincerity” in
ethos for presidential candidates.

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traditional an ideal of our government as openness. The right to vote in private (that is, for your
vote to be secret) was safeguarded in the constitution and at every other juncture, in all the ways
possible. Similarly, secrecy regarding foreign correspondences has been a norm from the
beginning, though it was referred to as “discretion,” a euphemism still in widespread use.
This still leaves a question about the relationship between espionage and secrecy, which
we need to address before understanding why a rhetorician is tackling the topic of espionage.
What is a good working definition of espionage? Webster’s dictionary tells us that espionage is
“the art or practice of spying or using spies,” but this definition is circular. A better definition
can be found if we turn to the body of literature sociologists have built up on the topic.
Nachman Ben-Yahuda approaches espionage from the perspective of criminal sociology, and he
notes that “treason against a collective that is committed in secret tends to be labeled espionage”
(p. 105). This definition calls our attention to two of the words most necessary to understand
espionage, specifically “treason” and “secrecy.” This definition is derived from studying cases
across multiple societies that get labeled espionage. The definition also explains why covert
action also has been placed under the purview of intelligence agencies in the U.S., because both
espionage and covert action emphasize secrecy and the ability to pass as insiders while working
against the targeted government. But covert action is unlike espionage in many ways, and
therefore it will not be considered further in this project.
Espionage is a crime that today gets defined functionally in relation to the activities of
the various intelligence agencies. Understanding espionage necessitates understanding the
organizational context in which it occurs. Espionage could be most succinctly defined as sharing
intelligence outside of the authorized community. This definition begs a number of questions.
Who is this authorized community? This question will be addressed at greater length in the
Ames chapter. And what exactly is intelligence? This question is one which has no settled
answer. The legislation creating the intelligence community defines the term so broadly as to be

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meaningless, stating that intelligence is “any information relating to people, places, things,
events or actions of or related to foreign powers which might assist decision-makers in planning
future courses of action.” A clearer definition would need to reiterate the relationship between
intelligence and secrecy, and between intelligence and analysis. A recent debate attempting to
define intelligence can be found in the CIA’s in-house journal, in a January 2002 issue dedicated
to this question.
Espionage is a political crime, in the sense that it impacts groups, either governments or
businesses rather than individuals. Espionage is a political crime also in the sense that what
counts as espionage is defined by means of a process that is political, contentious, derived from
and derivative of power. Power enters into the definition of espionage at two points in
particular. Determining what information should be classified is a political decision. Since the
creation of the classification system, every new president has issued an executive order laying
out the new policy for what should be classified and how classified material should be handled.
For example, President Carter issued an executive order declaring a statute of limitations on
classified information, such that after 25 years information would be reviewed for release.
President Clinton’s executive order setting classification policy changed that to 15 years except
in agencies dealing with nuclear-related materials, and removed the need for review. Instead the
policy maintained that the information declassification was to be automatic rather than subject to
review, though reviews could be instituted and could conclude that declassification should be
pushed back by an additional 10 years. President Bush, in the recently-released Executive Order
#12958, revoked the automatic declassification, and stated that in Freedom of Information and
Privacy Act (FOIPA) cases the preference was to be in favor of maintaining secrecy. In other
words, if any argument could be made as to why release of information might be damaging
under any of the nine criteria, then the information must not be released. The political nature of
decisions regarding classification can also be seen in studying the Legislative branch’s

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