Security Awareness Bulletin. Number 4-94,

Abstract : This issue of the Security Awareness Bulletin is devoted entirely to the U.S. Senate Select Committee report on the case of Aldrich Ames. When the report was issued in this unclassified form on November 1, we recognized that this is something that security educators everywhere need to have in hand as soon as possible. Therefore, we have gone ahead with this special edition less than a month after our 3-94 issue on Acquisition Systems Protection. As described by its authors, Part One of the Senate Committee report presents in chronological order a factual summary of the case, beginning with the start of Ames's career at CIA and ending with his arrest. It does not include all the information available to the Committee, but summarizes the key facts as the Committee perceives them. For the sake of readability, we have omitted the reference citations to other source documents found at the end of many of the paragraphs in this case study. Mainly due to size constraints, we were not able reprint the several appended items in Part Two of the report. However, Part One is followed by a selectively edited version of the Conclusions and Recommendations in Part Two that are pertinent to the Defense community. The message here for our security professionals is that the conditions and organizational climate in the Central Intelligence Agency that prevented the early identification of Aldrich Ames as a high-risk employee, and later as a spy, may exist elsewhere. No organization is immune to complacency and the 'it can't happen here' mentality.