The personnel problem.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: Central Intelligence Agency employee corruption

THE PERSONNEL PROBLEM

Edward Lee Howard was hired by the CIAin 1981, and in 1982 was selected by the directorate of operations for assignment to the most sensitive post of all Moscow. During his training he was told the identities of CIA personnel in Moscow and of at least one important Soviet official who was spying for the United States. But in 1983, after being confronted with disturbing results from a polygraph test, Howard admitted having used drugs and committing some petty thefts, such a sstealing money from vending machines and from a woman's purse on an airplane.

He was fired. He became a heavy drinker (hemay have been one previously), committed an assault with a deadly weapon, and told two CIA employees he was thinking of defecting. The employees reported this threat to higher-ups at the agency. Yet Howard went unwatched until a year later, when he was identified through information supplied by the Russian defector, Vitaly Yurchenko. Even so, Howard was allowed to escape to Moscow, the Soviet official who had been our spy was executed, and several CIA agents were expelled from Russia.

Edwin P. Wilson was hired by the CIA in 1955. Heworked for the agency for the next 16 years and then was hired by the Navy for one of its secret spy operations. He then became involved in the weapons business, in which he was associated with two old friends who rose to high positions in the CIA: Thomas Clines and Theodore Shackley. Shackley became the number-two man in the directorate of operations, and also was rumored to be in line to be director of the entire agency.

Yet Wilson was a terrible man. He becamewealthy, and bought a large estate in the fanciest part of...