Security Lapse?

When gloating Iranian students brandished a document purporting to show that two of their American hostages are spies for the CIA, one perplexing question arose: How could such a document be discovered? Prudent security procedures decree that "sensitive" cables 1) should not contain the real names of clandestine operatives; 2) should not be duplicated; 3) should be among the first documents to be destroyed in the event of an attack on the embassy.

In Tehran, none of these procedures seems to have been carried out. Security may simply have become lax, one well-informed observer charges, and top-secret cables may have been widely distributed among the embassy staff. Says an intelligence expert: "The problem is that everyone squirrels away in his office some of the stuff they invariably have to have on a day-to-day basis. As long as a project is active, the tendency is to keep a copy for yourself."

When the takeover of the embassy began, embassy employees may not have moved quickly enough to destroy sensitive files. The locked filing cabinets were designed to withstand only a ten-minute attempt at forced entry or 20 minutes of lock picking. By the time the documents were released, the invaders had had three weeks to work on the locks. Says a former CIA man of the Tehran employees: "They got caught with their pants down."

Such sloppiness has angered Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who has ordered U.S. embassies to use more care in safeguarding their secret files. One measure that has been largely abandoned is the dependence on thermite grenades for quick incineration of secret documents. U.S. outposts are now instructed to rely on shredding machines. But no matter what technology is chosen, the vigilance of those handling it is the real key to protecting U.S. secrets. Observes an old embassy hand: "Vance's new rules will last until people forget about them."

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