Fascinating article on psychopaths from the perspective of the CIA

It is telling that even a highly trained CIA agent could be taken in by such a manipulative, self-serving sociopath. What hope do we “normal” humans have against their methods? I feel sorry for the deceived agent – she is probably serving time for her part in this. I would hope the CIA takes into account just what she was dealing with — this article seems to suggest they recognize and (hopefully) train against such behaviors. Thanks for sharing that – fascinating!

I once read that a good majority of very successful business people have sociopathic tendencies – many are ruthless, driven, lack empathy or compassion and only consider what is best for themselves or the bottom line. This makes them highly competitive, non-emotional about hard decisions and able to envision results without worrying about the “little people” who might get hurt. Makes for a highly profitable company – but not a very good environment to work in.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by emilie18.

sept4, thank you for drawing attention to this very interesting article. It’s obviously a “keeper,” so I downloaded it to my Psych folder to read at my leisure some time in the future.

I notice that among other things it expounds on the vulnerabilities some people more than others suffer from that can draw them into the clutches of a manipulator. Greed. Financial problems. A desire for revenge. Dependency. And so forth. Homosexuality used to be one, as I recall from the cases of John Vassall, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and other notorious gay British spies of the past, though I hope that’s less true in today’s more tolerant times when they’re less prone to blackmail.

The case of Sharon Scranage was one I never remembered hearing of, but it was interesting that it took place in Africa. People are used to thinking of “espionage” as involving nations presenting communist threats like the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, even the Shining Path in Peru, or troubles in the Mideast from Iran, Iraq and other Islamic countries. Of course there have been problems in Africa as well, from communist-led Cuban interference in Angola to more recent Islamic violence in Nigeria and other African nations. But the fact that Sharon Scranage was manipulated in Ghana reminds us that we have interests to protect all over the world.

From a historical viewpoint it was good to be reminded of important names from the past, from Kwame Nkrumah to Flight-Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings. Ghana has not exactly been a hotbed of our traditional enemies, but Nkrumah, despite his virtues, was more a puppet of the authoritarian communist East than a friend to our free democratic West. (More manipulation on the part of those oppressors?) Nor has Ghana been especially stable since it gained independence. It seems to have settled down in recent years, but in Sharon Scranage’s time it still shared the fate common to so many tinpot Third World nations, who were jokingly said to measure their history in “RPM”: “Revolutions Per Minute”! And stability is in everyone’s interest, except when removing an occasional autocrat, as the CIA supposedly helped to do with the brutal Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. Even that was in the interest of stability, since the alternative was the threat of Cuban intervention on behalf of those disgruntled with the dictator. So I’m sure we had work to do in Ghana in the 1980s, as always.

Responding to Emilie’s observations, I do have sympathy with Sharon Scranage, and at least I can say she was treated leniently, despite the terrible damage she had done to American and other interests in Ghana. You can read some of it on Wikipedia’s article on the scandal. She was seduced in 1983 by a black Ghanaian guy named Michael Agbotui Soussoudis, who was about 36 at the time compared with her 27 years. He was no doubt far more sophisticated, described as a “playboy,” while Sharon apparently was merely a stenographer, despite having access to vital classified information. Having married and divorced an American woman, Soussoudis also had the right of residency in the U.S. After Sharon’s collaboration was exposed, she helped to lure him back from Ghana to the U.S. where he was arrested and imprisoned, But he had compromised many U.S. operatives in Ghana, who in turn had been imprisoned there, and eventually he was swapped for eight of these Ghanaians in a prisoner exchange. They were compensated by being resettled in the U.S., where they were no doubt better off than they would have been in Ghana. There were enemy Soviet connections behind some of this intrigue. Sharon was sentenced to five years in prison, but released after serving only eight months.

There are a couple of interesting remarks in the Wikipedia article. One is about how a CIA security officer noticed a clue early on that Sharon might be having an affair with this fellow, who was suspicious simply by reason of being black. Had she been serving in Russia, shouldn’t they be suspicious if she was having an affair with a Russian? But it wasn’t followed up on for far too long. Did the CIA fall down on their job of supervision?

Similarly, the article states: “it is unclear if the CIA had directed Scranage to form a relationship with Soussoudis, or if the relationship happened spontaneously.” I’m sure we will never be told. But if it was the latter, the CIA must be all the more culpable for sending her out on this mission without closely overseeing its progress. This Soussoudis guy was a formidable opponent, described as “handsome and debonair” along with his other powers of manipulation. You need to know who’s manipulating whom! You don’t send little David out to do battle with Goliath unless you know he’s got his little slingshot in his hand, along with his “five stones from the brook,” and you’re sure his aim is true. Otherwise the enemy is going to walk all over him.

Anyway this report is interesting material–no surprises about the nature of a psychopath, but lots of other informative details anyway.