The (Spy) Doctor Is In

A CIA-connected psychiatrist has radical ideas for luring back turncoats

- Jeff Stein

Not much time seems to pass without learning of yet another turncoat in the CIA or other intelligence agencies. In February, feds charged Monica Witt, a former Air Force counterintelligence sergeant and later defense contractor, with passing extremely sensitive secrets to Iran. Over the past two years, two former CIA operatives were arrested independently on charges of spying for China.

Just more spy vs. spy stuff, fodder for books and movies? No. Those last two reportedly contributed to what was described as a “catastrophic” wave of arrests and executions of 18 to 20 CIA assets in China. Witt, who defected to Iran in 2013, allegedly provided her handlers with the names and sources of U.S. agents involved in clandestine activities.

As long as there are spy services, of course, there will be defectors. The CIA, FBI and Defense Department have spent years studying why good intelligence officers go bad, without, evidently, finding an effective way to stop them from selling out, much less persuade them to surface themselves. Now, David Charney, an Alexandria, Virginia, psychiatrist who has spent hours interviewing traitors who got caught, has come up with a radical tactic: forgiveness—of a sort—if they turn themselves in.

“You have to offer them something that really would make a difference in their lives,” he says of turncoats who come to regret selling secrets to the Russians, Chinese or other adversaries. “And I came up with the one thing that I thought would make a difference: no jail.” The moles would, of course, face confiscation of their ill-gotten gains, heavy fines, a lifetime monitoring of their finances and perhaps relocation with a new identity, under a very strict watch. “All kinds of bad things,” Charney said during a recent lecture to insiders in Washington, D.C., “but no jail.”