Going Turncoat In America

January 13 marked what would have been the 273rd birthday of America's most famous traitor, Benedict Arnold. Arnold's betrayal during the American Revolution is so notorious that today his name is actually a synonym for the word traitor. But Arnold was by no means the only man to turn go turncoat on the U.S.A.

I was curious about treason in America beyond Benedict Arnold, so I turned to Richard Sale, longtime Intelligence correspondent for UPI and Pulitzer-prize nominated author of Traitors: The Worst Acts of Treason in American History -- From Benedict Arnold to Robert Hansen. Among other things, we discussed Benedict Arnold, Edward Snowden, and a few spies who got away with it.

Most people know that Benedict Arnold “betrayed America to the British,” but what exactly did he do that was so bad?
He was the most tragic of the traitors because he was a man of gigantic dimensions and other traitors are like fleas on a bear, frankly. He was a national hero before his fall. He had won major battles – more battles than Washington did – and was our best battlefield commander.

After the battle of Saratoga, where he played a key part, Washington sent him to Philadelphia. But he was wounded and already his star had begun to wane. There, Arnold fell in love with [and married] a woman who was a Tory (British loyalist). He was also indicted by a political enemy. The evidence was flimsy but it damaged him.

Washington gave Arnold a chance to redeem himself by putting him in command of West Point. He was living beyond his means. He was drinking very heavily and he began to deal with British Major John André. Arnold offered to surrender West Point to André. Washington, who was a great spymaster, uncovered the plot. Arnold escaped, but he basically spent his life drinking and was in constant pain and despair.

Besides Arnold, is there another American traitor whose story is less well-known, but equally infamous and damaging?

The most catastrophic was John Walker. Walker was basically a petty thief that produced a national catastrophe in the 1980s. He came from a poor family. His father was a cruel, dogmatic, abusive guy. Walker always vowed that he wouldn’t be like him. And he was right; he ended up being much worse.

After some time in jail, he joined the Navy. The key element in U.S. Naval defense at the time was nuclear subs and keeping them unseen in the ocean – so the Soviets could not find them. Walker was assigned to secret work on the USS Constellation, a ship that processed 2,000 top-secret messages every day.

Walker contacted the Soviet embassy in Washington and gave them a whole bunch of documents about U.S. communications. Understand that the dream of every counter-intelligence guy is to be able to secretly read the enemies communications. It’s like playing a hand of poker where you know the other person’s hand.

So Reagan staged this enormous naval exercise. The goal was to induce the Russians to turn on their air defenses, give signals that would identify their missile sights, their airfields, their concentration points, their emergency frequencies. But the Soviets didn’t react, and this stunned US officials. But you see, Walker passed them information so they knew in advance what we were doing. That was really, truly a major scandal.
 

There was an op-ed this week in the New York Times about Jonathan Pollard, an American spending life in prison for espionage. The piece is a response to a recent increase in popular support for his release. What’s your take on Pollard?

He was in the Navy and had all sorts of target information about installations inside the Soviet Union that he passed along to the Israelis, which was very dangerous, actually. He also passed along information about communications that were very, very sensitive. Former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger told me Pollard did much more damage than has ever been published. I think he deserves life in prison. I see no reason for that being rescinded.

What is the motivation for these turncoats? What makes a person take such an extraordinary step?
In the old days, people spied because of ideology but that’s no more. Spies today spy because they want money. They want to live well. They want to live exclusively. They want to have rich cars and luxurious homes – very commonplace ambitions, frankly.

What do you think about the actions of Edward Snowden and the fallout for the NSA?
The fallout is much ado about nothing to me. America has been spying on our allies for years, according to a senior CIA source I talked to in February of 1982. As early as World War II, the U.S. was able to break a “significant number, almost all,” of its allies' codes, including France, Canada and Britain, plus the codes of every important exile group. Some of the intercepts are in an office in Washington, (he told me which one) and "can be viewed if the proper arrangement were made." 

Things haven’t changed. All over the world and in every U.S. Embassy there is a joint CIA-NSA site to collect communications. And everyone one of our allies is doing the same collecting. So I don’t really quite understand what all the fuss is about.

What about the idea that the NSA might be spying on Americans, and Snowden’s choice to reveal what he knew. Do you consider that a traitorous act?
I believe I do, yes. I do. I just think that, to me, the real menace to U.S. privacy are the marketers who plot every visit to a website, every purchase to a store online and make a pattern of our habits in order to relieve us of our money. If it is proven that the NSA is reading our emails, my emails or yours, then that’s truly a violation of the U.S. Constitution and should be forbidden at all costs. But that has to be proven, and it hasn’t been.

If it is proven, does it vindicate Snowden?
It may. Sure, it would have to then.

So he goes from traitor to hero?
It’s difficult. I do not understand what his motive was, I don’t think it was to spread freedom throughout the land or that sort of thing, but his standing might turn out to be rehabilitated for all I know.

Any final thoughts?
There are two spies that we never got to the bottom of. One was a Soviet agent placed deeply inside President Carter’s election campaign and the other was a spy the Soviets placed inside TRW Inc., a defense contractor. Nobody’s ever been able to find those guys. Remember, the spies who get caught are the ones who fail.