Why foreign spies may get 'excited' over government shutdowns

Last week as the partial government shutdown stretched past the month-long mark, former U.S. intelligence officials were getting uneasy. Every day that the U.S. government wasn't paying its own workers provided an opening for another government to make its own offer.

Several ex-intelligence officials told ABC News that financial distress is often a factor when intelligence agencies target individuals for recruitment. It is possible, they said, that the strain caused by withheld pay during shutdowns could make America more vulnerable to predatory spies for foreign intelligence services like those from Russia or China.

"If I was a rank-and-file undercover intelligence officer for one of those services, I'm excited," Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican and former undercover CIA officer, told ABC News on Thursday, the day before President Donald Trump signed the measure ending what had been the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history.

Hurd said he believed the government workers impacted by the shutdown "care for and love their country" so much that he was personally not concerned the foreign spies would succeed, but he said "the actions of the [U.S.] government shouldn't introduce this vulnerability... It's a self-inflicted wound."

Friday marked the second missed payday for an estimated 800,000 affected workers. The agreement reached late that day re-opened the government for three weeks and will provide back-pay for those who have missed paychecks, officials said, but Trump warned the government could shut down again after this compromise if the political stalemate over a border wall continues. And though the president may be more likely to attempt to use emergency powers to break the deadlock over the wall, the threat of more $0 paychecks looms for federal employees.

Many of the 17 organizations that make up the U.S. intelligence community were mostly immune to the effects of the shutdown, protected only because their budgets were already secured. But several organizations that play key roles in national security, like the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and Department of State were affected, requiring tens of thousands of workers to stay home or work without pay.

The base salary at those organizations can range from approximately $35,000 at the Transportation Security Administration, which falls under DHS, to approximately $50,000 at the FBI.

“The people we go after… we’re looking for that disgruntled person, that person who was passed over for a promotion, people who aren’t being paid, people who aren’t being respected by their government,” said Darrell M. Blocker, a former longtime CIA station chief and current ABC News contributor. If he were a foreign intelligence officer during a shutdown, he said, he would "be in heaven, knowing I could lift someone’s financial burden or be someone’s shoulder to cry on."

Dean Boyd, a spokesperson for the National Counterintelligence Center, which advises the wider intelligence community on espionage threats, downplayed the center's concern.

“We are always mindful of the counterintelligence and security environment we operate in and the risks to federal employees, data, and facilities from adversaries,” he said in a statement last week prior to the compromise. “We continue to support our federal partners in building their counterintelligence capabilities and awareness through insider threat programs, information sharing initiatives, training and other ongoing efforts.”

Marc Raimondi, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice National Security Division, told ABC News during the shutdown that the division was "not worried about” counterintelligence threats “at this point," noting that workers would receive the back-pay. A spokesperson for the State Department declined to comment for this report.

Nada Bakos, a former CIA analyst whose duties included evaluating foreigners for potential recruitment, stressed that missing two paychecks was "not going to cause a rational human being to commit espionage. It's just not."

But, she said, "if there's somebody on the verge of it, that could push them over the edge."

According to Bakos, there's always a complex psychological angle to recruitment of which financial distress would be only a part. Declassified CIA files show that, for a time, the agency relied on the acronym MICE to explain why people agree to spy: some combination of Money, Ideology, Coercion and Ego.

"There's the whole psychological component to this,” she said. “It's never all that cut-and-dry.”

Neither was the impact of the shutdown, as it didn’t just affect workers’ bank accounts.

A State Department foreign service officer based in Europe, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told reporters previously that because of the shutdown, "morale [was] pretty rock bottom. … And this is among a really dedicated, really patriotic bunch of people who are unfortunately getting these messages that what they’re doing is not important or that they’re not valuable enough to have somebody figure out how to get them paid.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo disagreed, saying mid-shutdown that morale was "good" and that employees “understand that there are squabbles in Washington, but their mission remains, their duties continue, and they’re executing them.”

Brett Bruen, a former foreign service officer, told ABC News that State Department officers are taught when they join that foreign intelligence agencies will be looking for their “weaknesses, whether its emotional, romantic, financial or ideological.” The financial stress of a shutdown, he said, could only add to anyone’s existing weaknesses.

Bob Anderson, a former high-ranking FBI counterintelligence official charged with catching spies in the U.S., said that in his experience, there’s no telling what one factor could push an individual over the line. Newfound financial distress “doesn’t mean people are going to betray the U.S., but it’s just one more area you’re opening up for targeting by a hostile foreign service.”

“99.9 percent of the hundreds of thousands of federal workers are going to do their job, and it doesn’t matter what happens. They’re not going to betray their country,” he said. “But all it takes is one.”