Very recently, the author of the present  paper, Stone (2003) described obtained MMPI scores that can be attributed to two, uncovered, traitorous, U.S. Citizen spies.  Both sets of MMPI scores (i.e., from William H. Martin and Ronald W. Pelton) basically appeared to be well within what clinical psychologists usually regard as normal or average limits.  In other words, neither one of these sets of MMPI scores could be believed to be at all predictive that those individuals, who the scores can be presumed to psychologically describe, would end up some several years later as traitorous spies.  In addition to suggesting that psychometrically measured mental ill health should not at all be expected for spies, Stone (2003) also suggested that the MMPI was never designed to be a tool to test for possible future spying proclivities.  He indicated that tests designed to help identify or predict success or failure for security clearance granting might be expected to perhaps be a more appropriate testing tool when evaluating individuals regarding future spying risks.  In fact, Stone (2003) mentioned that maybe the Personnel Security Standards Psychological Questionnaire [PSSPQ] would be preferable to the MMPI in such an evaluation situation.  The PSSPQ was developed by Stone (1987) and continues to be available from him.

     Dr. Stone has been asked several times in the past as to whether the PSSPQ has ever been administered to any individuals who later have been found to be spies or whether this test has ever been administered to anyone who already has been caught and convicted of commission of espionage against the USA.  The present paper represents an attempt to describe a situation that seeming meets both of these questions.  As was mentioned in Stone (2003), it was indicated that in the past couple of decades, some ‘highly placed’ officials, in our Country’s intelligence agency community, were aware of this psychologist’s research interests in espionage and spying behaviors and because they regarded this research work as having importance, sometimes they contributed some data to his traitorous spy database.  It was in this type of status that the psychometric data described in the present paper was obtained 

     The caught/convicted spy who produced the psychometric data  (i.e., test scores) that are presented and are analyzed in this paper was Ronald W. Pelton.  To refresh the memories of readers, a brief description of Pelton, that has been taken from Nash (1997, p. 381) follows:

         "Pelton, Ronald W.
          U. S. Spy for Soviets (1942-   )

          Pelton worked for the NSA in a minor capacity, joining that ultra-secret agency in 1965. 
          He resigned in 1979 and in the following year he established contact with the KGB.  Pelton
          delivered whatever secrets he had stolen from NSA files to the Soviets and continued his
          contact with them for the next five years, receiving small sums for his information.  The 
          Soviets at the time may or may not have found Pelton’s information useful but it was 
          customary for the KGB to continue liaisons with any American citizens who might later be 
          useful to them, keeping  them on the dole, promising more money in greater sums to come, 
          always to come.  Pelton was one of these.  He was finally unearthed by federal agents, 
          tried and convicted in 1986. Pelton was sent to prison for life."

A couple of addition comments can be made.  Other published information suggests that Pelton was unusually intelligent and it is believed that he was gifted with some kind of ‘photographic memory.  Also, it is usually believed that when at NSA he worked on a number of rather significant and highly important and sensitive projects.  Pelton seemingly was regarded by the press as being one of the more important spies who were uncovered during 1985, the so-called “Year of the Spy.”

     While Pelton was convicted (in 1986) and then incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary in Allentown, Pennsylvania, it was not at all unusual for a few counterintelligence personnel from the relevant intelligence agency, who had historically been involved with his case from the very beginning, to continue to periodically ‘visit’ Pelton during his incarceration.  The major reason for and such visitation seems to be to acquire any new pertinent information that he (i.e., Pelton) might suddenly recall and/or decide to reveal and share with the intelligence community.  Prior to one of these scheduled visitations, the author of this paper was asked as to whether he might be interested in having Pelton be requested to respond to any of this author’s psychological research instruments that were being focused upon psychological aspects of espionage and spying.  This ‘invitation’ was made during the first several years of research involving the PSSPQ (Stone, 1987). [It should be noted that a great deal of information is available on the Internet that directly pertains to the PSSPQ; anyone interested in going to this information the following Web Page addresses are initially suggested:

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/psspq.html

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/individualsales.html

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/hrandsecdirectors.html

Links to a number of other additional PSSPQ related Web pages are provided in the above noted Web Sites.]

     What was accomplished was that a packet containing two psychological assessment instruments was prepared for delivery to Ronald Pelton, who was then an inmate in the U.S. Penitentiary, located at Allentown, Pennsylvania.  It is this writer's understanding that Pelton's cooperation in this matter was entirely voluntary on his part.  In this packet were two instruments.  The first instrument was the PSSPQ along with a blank answer sheet.  The second instrument was a copy of the Automated Social History, that was initially copyrighted in 1984 and was published by the Anderson Publishing Company, also accompanied by an appropriate blank answer sheet.  This second instrument was selected as it was one of the then available computerized social history paradigms that had just appeared on the market and which appeared to be well thought-out and d carefully developed.  Also, the present author had shortly before had incorporated use of this instrument in his forensic psychology testing battery and was, at that time, somewhat liking the breadth and quality of personal history information that was obtained using this instrument.  One special reason why this second instrument was selected for administration to Pelton was that questioning by the instrument includes just about all of the areas focused upon that are specified in the the Director of Central Intelligence Directive 1/14, which then was the authority for adjudication standards in the granting of Top Secret – Special Compartmented Information (or TS-SCI) security clearance status.   Along with these two instruments, some special instructions to Pelton were, in writing, communicated to Pelton; these instructions requested that he respond to the two instruments as he believed he would have if he had been requested to respond to the instruments in 1980.  The year, 1980, was selected for these instructions as it was the year following the year that he resigned from the NSA and it was the year in which he first established his contact with the KGB that lasted for the next five years.  These special instructions then asked Pelton to attempt to answer the psychological questionnaires at about the time when he first became connected with the KGB in a spying venture that went on for the next several years.

     The above described packet of tests and special administration instructions are believed to have been delivered to him most likely in December of 1986.   Apparently, he responded to the materials promptly as  return of the instruments along with their completed answer sheets occurred also in that last month of 1986.
 

     Basically, what was obtained from Pelton with the Computerized Social History technique was a printed-out narrative that was supposed to represent his social history.  When much of what was commu;nicated in this narrative product was compared to what was known about Pelton’s history, as gleaned in the ‘open literature’ news stories that had appear in the popular press, it appeared that Pelton, when responding to the Computerized Social History, had simply lied about a number of points, such as his alcohol and mind-altering drug use, his indebtedness amounts,  church attendance, etc.  In the language of psychometrics, he appeared to respond to this instrument while influenced by a “fake-good” response bias.

     Actually, it was expected that Pelton would attempt to distort any accurate self-accounting of himself, especially since he had been instructed to respond as he thought he would have responded had he been asked to “take” these tests back in 1980.  It was believed that the same response bias, that he clearly demonstrated with the Computerized Social History, would also be demonstrated with his response to the PSSPQ.  However, the present author (who was the developer of the PSSPQ) had previously found, in conducted research, that the LIE Scale of the PSSPQ was less correlated with measured intellect than was the Lie Scale on the MMPI, which apparently is ‘seen through’ by persons of high intelligence.  Ronald Pelton’s T scores (i.e., mean = 50, SD = 10) for PSSPQ subscales were seen as follows:

                           Scales                                                                      T-Scores

                    Loyalty                                                                                 39
                    Close Relatives & Associates                                            42
                    Sexual Considerations                                                         45
                    Cohabitation                                                                         46
                    Undesirable Character Traits                                             39
                    Financial Irresponsibility                                                     41 
                    Alcohol Abuse                                                                      44
                    Illegal Drugs & Drug Abuse                                               43 
                    Emotional & Mental Disorders                                          46
                    Record of Law Violations                                                    39
                    Security Violations                                                               17
                    LIE Scale                                                                              67

For those readers who are unfamiliar with PSSPQ score interpretations, the undesirable, unhealthy, or “bad” direction is for scores is their degree of elevation, the higher the score, the more “bad” it is, at least for evaluation for security clearance granting.  All of Pelton’s ‘clinical’ scales scores (i.e., for the first listed 11 scales) can be regarded as being low, many are very low.  However, his T-score for the LIE Scale was substantially higher.

      One way to examine this difference in scores is to note that the average T-score value for the first 11 scales was 40.1, whereas his LIE Scale score was 67.  The ratio of the latter to the former is 1.67.  The higher this ratio, over a value of 1.0, it can be suggested that the test-taker was increasing prone to want to “fake-good” his/her appearance on the PSSPQ.  On the first listed 11 ‘clinical’ scales, an attempt at positive direction dissimulation is very easy, as the more favorable scoring direction of their items can be regarded as being just about completely obvious, even to those being of low-average intellect.  However, the 10 items that comprise the LIE Scale all went through a very thorough development and item-selection process; each was selected because it was believed that their scoring direction was not at all obvious.  In fact, it was believed that their scoring directions were all ‘hidden’ which would render the true purpose of the items as being non-transparent.  Research by Stone (1987) has shown that with the [old] MMPI, its Lie Scale correlated –0.41 (p < .0001) with measured intelligence, whereas the PSSPQ’s LIE Scale only correlated –0.17 (p >  .05) with the same intelligence measure.  This and other findings and indications have continued to sugggest that the LIE Scale had was non-transparent and had very poor face validity.

     As mentioned earlier in this paper, it was suggested that it was understood that Pelton possessed a rather high intellect and that with such high intellects, the ‘hidden’ aspects of even LIE Scale item might be questioned.  The elevation of Pelton’s PSSPQ clincial scales scores (which he suggested he would have shown in 1980) very obviously reflect an obvious “faking-good” response bias, whereas his score on the LIE Scale did show some perhaps significant elevation, which would suggest, at the very least, that some of the LIE Scales’s items did ‘fool’ him, i.e., they did their job!  It is believed that if Pelton were of lower intellect, perhaps at about the average level, his T-Score for the LIE Scale would have been appreciably higher than the 67 score which he did show.
 

     One of the first questions that Dr. Stone was asked following his scoring of Pelton’s responses to the PSSPQ items was whether the results would have revealed that he was a real or even potential spy.  No, the results produced no such understanding and it would be impossible for results from this test to do so.  The PSSPQ was designed and developed to determine whether the involved test-taker had a favorable or unfavorable chance of ever being granted a high-level security clearance were he/she ever processed/adjudicated for such.  With this understood, then Pelton’s PSSPQ results would have, to anyone familiar with PSSPQ scorings, would have formed the basis for some very real caution and reservations regarding Pelton’s chance of ever being again granted TS-SCI access, a very high security clearance indeed.  A skilled interpretation of his PSSPQ scoring would suggest that he was being generally overall deceptive in his responding to the PSSPQ, and as such, his scoring configuration was best to be regarded as being non-valid, and in a very suspicious fashion.

      What can be comfortably inferred is that Pelton was motivated and able to respond to just about all of the items that comprise the instrument’s 11, so-called, clinical scales in a fashion that is frequently described as being in a “fake-good” direction.  When he encountered the 10 items that comprise the LIE Scale, his ability to see through these purposely constructed (and hopefully) non-transparent items can be believed to be significantly less capable than with the instrument’s 62 other items.  This inability to see through a number of the LIE Scales items, even though he was motivated to want to “fake-good” his response to them, resulted in a score for this scale that can be inferred to rather heavily represent a moderately strong, overly-positive deceptive response style.  To be rather blunt about Pelton’s response to the PSSPQ, it can be comfortably stated that it appears to have attempted to lie about himself when attempting to respond to the bio-data type questions that comprise the PSSPQ.  With such an impression of him, the overall interpretation of his scoring results, from the PSSPQ and from nothing else, would most likely include a recommendation that would not support his being granted a high-level security clearance.

     The developer of the PSSPQ (and writer of the present paper) was very pleased with what kind of interpretation(s) can be made from Ronald Pelton’s scoring configuration as this could be regarded as being an important validity test of the instrument, based upon an N of one.  This single case test supports a contention that the PSSPQ is a psychological testing instrument that can significantly assist in a very proper decision to non-approve an individual who is being considered for high-level security clearance access.

     As an addendum type note to the above, it is interesting to compare the results from Pelton’s PSSPQ results to the MMPI results, allegedly produced by Pelton back in 1965 (i.e. see Stone, 2003).  All of his MMPI clinical scales scores were, like with the PSSPQ, all very normal and non-diagnostic.  However, his MMPI Lie Scale T-score was much closer to the average, than was seen with the PSSPQ LIE Scale; in fact, it was 50, the very same as the average score for this deception detecting scale!  This should not be overly surprising, even to clinical psychologists who ‘swear by’ use of  the MMPI in just about any psychological diagnostic or prognostic situation.  The PSSPQ was designed for this particular type situation and the MMPI (along with most of the other widely used personality measuring instruments) were designed mainly to identify the possible presence of specific mental illness tendencies.
 

Nash, J. R. (1997).  Spies: A Narrative Encyclopedia of Dirty Deeds & Double Dealing from  
   Biblical Times to Today.  New York:  M. Evans & Company, Inc. 

Stone, L. A. (1987).  Manual: Personnel Security Standards Psychological Questionnaire 
  (PSSPQ). Harpers Ferry:  Probity Press.

Stone, L. A. (2003).  MMPI scores from two, major, traitorous U.S. citizen spies.  Psychology of 
  Espionage Reports. 3, [Which can be found at:
   http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/twospiesmmpis.html.]