My little scam in April '85 went like this: Give me $50,000; here's some names of some people we've recruited.

The U.S. is, so far as I know, the only nation which places such extensive reliance on the polygraph. It has gotten us into a lot of trouble.

The betrayal of trust carries a heavy taboo.

You might as well ask why a middle-aged man with no criminal record might put a paper bag over his head and rob a bank. I acted out of personal desperation.

To the extent that I considered the personal burden of harming the people who had trusted me, plus the Agency, or the United States, I wasn't processing that.

Foreign Ministry guys don't become agents. Party officials, the Foreign Ministry nerds, tend not to volunteer to Western intelligence agencies.

The FBI, to its credit in a self-serving sort of way, rejects the routine use of the polygraph on its own people.