Cloak, Dagger and Debt

How much damage can a little debt do? Plenty, if the debtor happens to have access to government secrets.

Take the recent case of Leandro Aragoncillo. This career Marine had reached the heights of government, working on the staffs of vice presidents Al Gore and Dick Cheney. He also worked as an intelligence analyst for the FBI.

Aragoncillo had another job on the side. In 2007, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for spying on behalf of politicians in the Philippines. One of the suspected factors in Aragoncillo’s decision to spy was the “significant” debt that he was carrying, according to government documents. Although the charges stemmed from his time in the FBI, his career trajectory made him one of the few spies ever to work inside the White House. 

Among spies, Aragoncillo is not alone. According to an unclassified government study, money is the motivation in more than 50 percent of the spy cases that have been examined.

The best known case of a spy in debt is that of the CIA mole Aldrich Ames, who performed espionage for the Soviet Union. His 1984 divorce from his first wife left him in a significant amount of debt. The high-end lifestyle of his new partner gave him further money concerns. After his capture, he confessed that he had been feeling financial pressures and worried about bankruptcy.

The information that Ames turned over to the Soviets allowed them to identify and deal with a number of CIA operatives in the USSR. The Ames case is considered one of the greatest security breaches in American history. It started with a little debt.

As a result, debt among government workers in sensitive positions is enough of a concern to attract special attention. That makes it a point of interest in determining government security clearances.

“Amount of debt determines, in part, how stressed and desperate a person is as a result of financial problems,” reads an online NASA document. “However, what caused the debts and how one deals with these financial obligations tells more than amount of debt about a person’s reliability, trustworthiness, and judgment.”