No Risk

A gay analyst keeps his job

The Government has traditionally frowned on homosexual employees. Anti-gay discrimination peaked during the McCarthy era, when several hundred homosexuals were fired from the Central Intelligence Agency, Pentagon and State Department. But since then, gay activists have worn down the bias against them in all Government branches except the military and intelligence agencies, which still ban gays on the ground that they are more susceptible to blackmail, and hence greater security risks, than heterosexuals.

Now an unidentified mid-level National Security Agency employee has successfully challenged this policy. He won the right to keep his job as a technical analyst despite his homosexuality, but only after agreeing to lessen the danger of blackmail by disclosing his sexual preference to his family (mother, sisters and brothers). Franklin Kameny, a member of the Washington, D.C., Commission on Human Rights and a gay activist, calls the decision "a major breakthrough."

But old hands in the intelligence business were dismayed. At the CIA, said an official, homosexuality "is one factor deemed relevant" for refusing security clearance because of the "undue risk that the individual may be exposed to pressure by hostile intelligence services." The CIA keeps no statistics, but Kameny believes that "substantial" numbers of gays have been dismissed over the years, usually for lying about their sex lives during polygraph tests.

Although Kameny dismisses the idea that homosexuals are especially susceptible to blackmail, many intelligence experts disagree. Says Cord Meyer, former CIA assistant deputy director for operations: "The Soviets specialize in homosexual cases. They assign KGB agents who are homosexuals themselves to entrap our agents." Another U.S. expert cites the case of a homosexual British clerk with the naval attache's office in Moscow in the mid '50s, William Vassall, who passed Admiralty secrets to the Soviets.

Full disclosure helps, but that is only part of the problem. Says a former CIA official: "Homosexual agents tend to flock together. Once you get a homosexual cell, they take care of each other." His prime example is the case of Harold ("Kim") Philby in England, who led a small group of Cambridge-educated homosexuals who sold British secrets to the Soviets during and after World War II.

Even if society's mores on homosexuality are changing, argues the former CIA official, the U.S. intelligence community's should not. Says he of his old agency: "It's not a social club. It doesn't represent society. It's the most sensitive part of our national security." qed

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