The psychology of Benedict Arnold. This article appeared in the May 2016 Smithsonian magazine: He was short, solidly built (one acquaintance remembered that “there wasn’t any wasted timber in him”) and blessed with almost superhuman energy and endurance. He was handsome and charismatic, with black hair, gray eyes and an aquiline nose, and he carried himself with the…
Article by Bernie Reeves in American Thinker, September 8, 2014: In the espionage business, uncovering secrets passed on to the enemy by a captured insider spy is critical to resuming normal operations. Until a thorough damage assessment is completed, intelligence agencies don’t know what data are secure, or if agents in place are safe. And while…
By John Irvin NOIR Team By all accounts, there’s nothing exceptional about former Canadian Navy Sub-Lieutenant Jeffery Delisle, certainly nothing that would suggest a future as a convicted insider spy. A high school friend described him as the “sort of person who just blended into the background.” [1] If he was notable in high school for…
The psychology of Gregory Allen Justice, a Boeing satellite engineer with a top secret security clearance passed over for promotion. This article appeared in the Daily Beast in August 2016: . . . . Among those satellites were sensitive military systems that Justice himself had worked on at Boeing for more than 15 years. Concealed in…
Dr. David Charney, author of the white paper, NOIR: A White Paper – Proposing a New Policy for Improving National Security by Fixing the Problem of Insider Spies, was recently interviewed by James Rosen, host of the Fox News program, “The Foxhole.” The interview is about 30 minutes. Dr. Charney said this was the best interview…
By John Irvin, NOIR Team On 17 December, 2014, President Obama ordered restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba and the opening of a US embassy in Havana for the first time in more than 50 years. The announcement was met with both favorable and critical responses from a variety of interested parties. Of the many…
Arthur Walker, who was part of the Walker Spy Ring that got caught in 1985, recently died in jail at the age of 79. He was a month away from a parole hearing. Unlike the notorious members of the ring, spy ring master John Walker and Jerry Whitworth who passed damaging highly top secret information…
By John Irvin and Dr. David Charney [NOTE: An edited version of this article was published by POLITICO on 25 March 2014 under the title, “Stopping the Next Snowden: The problem isn’t that he could. It’s that he wanted to“ The story is often told of how, during the height of the US/Soviet space race,…
Building a Better Mole Trap By Jeff Stein, Newsweek 6 September 2014 The continuing leaks of National Security Agency material by Edward Snowden so dominate the news that you don’t hear much these days about Cold War–style moles burrowing through the CIA, FBI and Defense Department on behalf of foreign spy services. Yet they keep surfacing,…
Examining the critical Spy-Handler relationship and why a NOIR can alter it to our advantage and create the opportunity for predomination By John Irvin “There are more spies in the United States today from foreign nation states than at any time in our history — including the Cold War,” stated former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.)…
By John Irvin NOIR Team In True Psychology of the Insider Spy, Part One of NOIR: A White Paper, Dr. David Charney postulates that the core psychology of the insider spy is an intolerable sense of personal failure, as privately defined by that person. It is this subjective experience that allows the would-be insider spy…
This excellent article was written by Anthony N. Bishop and published in CSO (Chief Security Officer) magazine in September 2016: The best IT security is not enough to protect against the determined insider The most important lesson American businesses can learn from the Montes case is that IT security measures will not be enough to prevent…
By John Irvin, NOIR Team When the Roman poet Juvenal wrote the line “Who will guard the guards themselves?” he was referring to marital fidelity. In common parlance it refers to the issue of ensuring the accountability of those already in power. However, the phrase also applies to problems facing the US government’s Insider Threat…
By John Irvin NOIR TEAM It would no doubt be like a dream for a 62-year-old former government employee, prolific author, and recognized environmental expert to live out his retirement years on a warm tropical island with a new bride. It would be like a nightmare to instead face a potential 50-year term in federal…
By John Irvin, NOIR Staff One of the most desirable ancillary benefits of the proposals put forth by Dr. David Charney, MD, in NOIR: A White Paper (accessible in its entirety on this website), is the potential for at least partially solving the problem of the so-called “non-prosecutable spy.” This is the individual who is…
Dr. David Charney, creator of the NOIR concept and author of NOIR: True Psychology of the Insider Spy and Proposing a New Policy for Improving National Security by Fixing the Problem of Insider Spies, was recently interviewed by the magazine, “Psychology Today” about NOIR. – (Psychology Today, November 2014) . . . . Of course,…
by John A. Irvin Sometimes being able to say I told you so just isn’t that satisfying. Sometimes it’s downright depressing. An article by myself and Dr. David Charney appeared over two years ago in the 25 March, 2014 issue of POLITICO Magazine titled “Stopping the Next Snowden.” It argued that the US government’s tendency…
The FBI has recently released two videos about the Glenn Shriver espionage case to alert other college students who are studying abroad to the possibility of being targeted for recruitment by a foreign intelligence service or entity. What are people who are recruited to spy (clandestinely directed by foreign handlers) against the US in for?…
By John Irvin NOIR Team The first part of this discussion [1] concluded with the fairly controversial statement that decades of counterintelligence (CI) focus on what have traditionally been considered the key motives for insider espionage, summarized in the acronym MICE (Money, Ideology, Compromise/Coercion, and Ego, further amended with the inclusion of disgruntlement/revenge, ingratiation, and thrills/self-importance) [2]…
The question “why didn’t you do it?” can be asked of those millions of individuals who possess security clearances and who have access to sensitive information who nevertheless have not engaged in insider espionage. Their names are immediately recognizable to most of the public: Robert Hannsen, Aldrich Ames, John Walker, Julius Rosenberg, Benedict Arnold …
Despite the use of increasingly advanced technical means, the deception, duplicity, and betrayal of espionage are a human problem that requires a human solution. By John Irvin, NOIR Team In all, around 3.6 million individuals were impacted by two breaches of Office of Personnel Management (OPM) electronic databases, one announced in June 2015 and the second…
By John Irvin The popular axiom “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” – attributed to none other than Benjamin Franklin – attests to the fact that taking action beforehand to prevent a problem from arising is considerably more cost-effective than being forced to dedicate greater resources toward fixing the problem in…
By John Irvin, NOIR Team What does a controversial psychology experiment that took place over forty years ago regarding the causes of conflict between prisoners and prison guards have in common with Dr. David Charney’s proposal for the creation of a controversial new US government counterintelligence organization to reduce the threat of insider espionage?[1] It…
The following article by John Irvin appeared under the title NOIR: Neue Strategien zur Erkennung von Insiderspionen in Vol.10, Nr.1/2016 of the Journal for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies [JIPSS], published by the Austrian Center for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies [ACIPSS].[1] ACIPSS was founded at the University of Graz, Austria, in 2004, “in order…
The one constant is the human mind, the way we think, which is ultimately the source of all acts of espionage. By John Irvin A friend drove up in the classic 1960s sports car he has just purchased at considerable expense to both his personal finances and his marital relationship. It was a genuinely beautiful…
Dr. David Charney’s proposed National Office for Intelligence Reconciliation (NOIR) was designed to better manage the problem of insider threat and insider spying. One criticism of NOIR has been that it would not work for all insider spies. However, it must be pointed out that it was never claimed to be one hundred percent effective.…
On Wednesday, February 5, 2014, David Charney, MD gave a lecture for the Smithsonian Associates at the International Spy Museum entitled, “What Makes Traitors Tick?” The lecture is based on his article, “True Psychology of the Insider Spy.”
The psychology and methodology of Brian Regan, an Air Force master sergeant turned TRW government contractor working at the NRO who tried to sell classified secrets to multiple countries. This article was published in The Guardian in October 2016: . . . . Whatever nostalgia he might have felt for his old school was tinged with…
By John A. Irvin (Based on comments made during The Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies panel discussion “Espionage and Intelligence in the 21st Century.”) World War II, and especially the subsequent Cold War, woke America up to the importance of continuous, institutionalized intelligence collection. Initially we followed the example of most other nations and focused…
Background on Delisle spy case — By John Irvin NOIR Team If it was former Canadian Navy Sub-Lieutenant Jeffery Delisle’s intention to free himself of the burden of his financial troubles and to take some decisive action to counter his sense of helplessness when faced with the collapse of his marriage, any relief he may have…
Dr. David Charney’s new white paper, NOIR: A White Paper – Proposing a New Policy for Improving National Security by Fixing the Problem of Insider Spies, is available not only in PDF form on our website, but you can also buy a nicely formatted printed book on Amazon or read it on your Kindle or on…
By John Irvin NOIR Team On the face of it, insider espionage and terrorism would seem to have little in common. The insider spy and his or her handler (traditionally, but not necessarily, a foreign intelligence service) strive to keep their activities as hidden as possible, while the definitive purpose of all terrorism is to…
Brian Kelley Memorial Lecture David Charney, MD attended the recent Second Annual Brian Kelley Memorial Lecture at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC on February 7, 2014. The speaker was William Nolte who talked about the future of counterintelligence following the disclosures by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden. He focused on…
(Newsweek/Jeff Stein) . . . Based on a best-selling memoir by Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a founder of Hamas, The Green Prince is an engrossing documentary on how Israel’s counterintelligence agency, Shin Bet, managed to turn him into a spy against his fellow Palestinians—and his own father. It opens with a re-enactment of…
By John A. Irvin NOIR Team When the prison doors shut on insider spy and former Canadian Navy Sub-Lieutenant Jeffery Delisle, he left behind four children and a budding relationship with a woman who loved him. Delisle had a history of marital and financial problems that included declaring bankruptcy and discovering his wife’s adultery, which…
“The foundation of a counter-insider threat program needs to start with recognizing there is a person at the other end,” says Keith Lowry, former Chief of Staff to the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Human Intelligence, Counterintelligence and Security at the Pentagon in this article on ZDNet: Fighting the person should be cybersecurity best practice When…