Page 17 - DFCS NEWS MAGAZINE 2020-1

Sombolay admitted in post-conviction debriefings that he was desperate for money and saw Desert Shield/Desert Storm as an opportunity to make some.
He was also disgruntled toward the Army and wanted a measure of revenge against the organization because his college degree from an unaccredited African university was not recognized when he enlisted in the Army. He was an enlisted soldier instead of a commissioned officer, which is what he believed he should have been.
While Sombolay did not have a security clearance himself, he disclosed that had he not been caught, he had planned to find junior enlisted soldiers with problems, financial or personal, who had security clearances, then recruit them for their access and bring them into spying with him.
Ms. Huff shared that motivations for spying are unique to a particular spy. There is no reliable ‘profile’ of potential espionage offenders.
Most people think money is the number one reason someone would betray our nation. However, money is a symptom of other personal needs or
validation.
“Spies value money not just for what it can buy, but for what it
symbolizes—success, power, and influence. It is a balm for injured self-esteem... A desperate attempt to fulfill complex emotional needs,” per Dr. Michael Gelles, “Exploring the Mind of the Spy.”
Some of the most common motivations are: Need-greed; disgruntlement; dissatisfaction; revenge; ego; power; control; relationship needs (love/friendship/respect); acceptance; convictions/ideology; and ethnicity, to name but a few of the complex reasons for betrayal.
This espionage case is just one of many successful neutralizations by American counterintelligence. Ms. Huff stressed that in today’s world of technological advancements, human intelligence operations are still vital because a human penetration provides something technology cannot: Intentions. All the intelligence disciplines must work together to detect security vulnerabilities and intrusions.
When asked about preventing espionage, Ms. Huff advises that there is no way to prevent this crime any more than you can prevent any other type of crime. All the detection measures imaginable can be put in place to detect someone exceeding their access to documents, physical areas, safes, computers, etc., but all it takes is for the spy to memorize the information and leave a secure area with the secrets in his/her head.
To illustrate this point, neither Ron Pelton, a former National Security Agency officer who sold secrets to the KGB, nor Ana Belen Montes, the senior Cuba military analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency and a spy for Cuba, took documents, disks, or equipment from their work areas. They memorized key information and passed undetected through some of the most stringent physical security measures in place.
As Victor Cherkashin, a senior KGB officer wrote in his memoir, Spy Handler, “...human contributions are by far the most important component of intelligence gathering. And as long as people are involved, security threats can never be completely eliminated.”
Captured and Convicted Spy U.S. Army Specialist Four Albert T. Sombolay
SUMMER 2020 / DFCS News Magazine / 17