Webster's Words

By Elaine Shannon/Washington

Former FBI Director William H. Webster, 76, who ran the bureau under Carter and Reagan and the Central Intelligence Agency under Reagan and Bush, has consented to lend a little of his luster to FBI Director Louis Freeh, who is struggling to dispel the taint of the FBI's worst spy scandal. As head of an inquiry into the intelligence disaster, Webster says sympathetically that decades of experience have taught him one thing: "There is no absolutely fail-safe setup that will quickly and immediately identify a good man or woman who goes sour. So our focus will be on shortening the distance from defection to detection."

He will explore the idea of routine polygraphs for FBI employees, as are administered at the CIA, but he doesn't believe that is the only answer. More promising, he says, are smarter computer-security systems that signal senior managers whenever an employee without a true need to know tries to access sensitive case files. "Invariably [double agents] are apt to wander into areas where they don't belong," says Webster. "We may not always recognize them when they belong--but we can when they don't belong." In the old days, he recalls, a librarian would report anyone asking for files that they didn't need to see. Says Webster: "We need to have some kind of electronic librarian. Machines can be taught, and I think we can build in a level of uncertainty that makes people in this game hesitate, and that will cut down on their effectiveness."

--By Elaine Shannon/Washington