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From
http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue345/item8167.asp
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The CIA Must Come Clean
by Melvin Goodman
Thursday, February 10, 2000
Comments: 55 posts
Can the United States Do Anything About Chechnya? : Melvin Goodman urges the
United States to talk tough and act tougher in dealing with Russia.
Glasnost and the United States : Melvin Goodman insists that if the Cold War
loser can open its records, so can the winner.
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With the honorable exceptions of Adm. Stansfield Turner and Judge William
Webster, a succession of CIA directors has presided over -- and contributed to -
- the demoralization of the country�s leading intelligence agency.
In the 1980s, William Casey politicized the intelligence analysis of the CIA
and orchestrated the Iran-contra scheme that embarrassed the Reagan
administration. Robert Gates failed to get confirmed as director in 1987
because the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence did not believe his denials
of knowledge of Iran-contra, particularly the diversion of funds to the
Contras. When he was finally confirmed in 1991, he attracted more negative
votes than any previous director.
Casey and Gates participated in slanting intelligence analysis and were
directly responsible for the agency�s poor analytical record in dealing with
Soviet issues throughout the 1980s, the greatest corporate intelligence failure
in the history of the CIA. And now John Deutch and George Tenet have become
entangled in a clear case of double standards that threatens to compromise
whatever credibility the agency retains within the intelligence community
itself.
Deutch and Tenet: CIA misfits
George Tenet
In placing the most sensitive secrets of the CIA, those dealing with covert
action, on an unprotected computer at his home, Deutch endangered the lives of
CIA personnel and their agents. In accessing the Web via America Online, one of
the frequent targets of computer attackers, he exposed the agency's most
sensitive information to foreign spies. In failing to report these
transgressions to the Justice Department and to the Senate Intelligence panel,
the CIA has demonstrated once again that it refuses to be held accountable for
its actions.
In behaving so carelessly Deutch displayed wanton arrogance of power. He
unwittingly created a counter-intelligence threat reminiscent of the activities
of Aldrich Ames from 1985-1994. In refusing the protection and counsel of the
CIA�s Office of Security that governs the professional lives of every agency
employee, he showed contempt for the craft of intelligence.
The old-boy network demanded that one director of central intelligence protect
another member of the fraternity. Tenet protected Deutch from questioning by
the CIA�s Office of Security and then failed to inform the Justice Department
of Deutch�s mishandling of information.
By not reporting the security breach to the Justice Department for more than a
year, Tenet allowed the one-year time limit on appointing an independent
counsel to lapse. This is reminiscent of the CIA�s failure in the 1980s to
report its activities with �individuals supporting the contra program who were
alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking.�
In fact, Tenet was so cavalier about the security charges against Deutch in
1996 that, the following year, he recommended that Deutch serve on a special
commission on weapons proliferation, which would have involved granting
additional security clearances to the former director. The Pentagon even
allowed Deutch to keep his security clearances to work on defense contracts.
Low security standards and poor intelligence
Tenet has dismissed any comparisons between the actions of Deutch and Wen Ho
Lee, the scientist charged with downloading nuclear secrets to an unsecure
computer. Of course, there are comparisons.
Both disregarded security requirements, but Deutch was required to set an
example for the 90,000 employees of the intelligence community, most of whom
have access to secrets and computers. Ordinary employees in the intelligence
community are subject to penalties for mishandling classified information, but
the director of central intelligence can place sensitive material on a home
computer and even surf the Internet, including high-risk pornography sites.
There are many sources for the kind of information Lee controlled but few for
the comprehensive information on covert action that Deutch possessed. Lee may
have compromised facts; Deutch jeopardized not only facts but also lives.
It is the obligation of the director of central intelligence not only to set
high standards in the area of security but in the quality of intelligence
provided to the president, and Tenet has failed in that realm.
In the summer of 1998, Tenet provided the White House with spurious clandestine
intelligence that was used to justify the bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in
Khartoum, Sudan. Numerous investigative reports make it clear that the missile
attack was a mistake. Government sources have admitted this privately, but it
is time for Tenet to say so publicly.
Last year, the CIA departed from its proper mission regarding intelligence and
engaged in strategic targeting in the Kosovo war. As a result, it was directly
responsible for the destruction of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Tenet never
has explained how this mistake occurred, let alone why the agency was involved
in the targeting process.
Alarmist warnings
More recently, Tenet�s briefings to Congress indicate that the agency is
resorting to worst-case analysis to describe the threats that confront the
United States. Ever since the CIA inexplicably failed to monitor five nuclear
tests in India in 1998, the agency has become more alarmist in assessing the
nuclear capabilities of the so-called rogue states.
Without new data, CIA analysts have begun asserting that Iran and North Korea
are moving closer to a nuclear capability that would threaten the United
States. And when the CIA suddenly doubted that it could verify the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, many senators decided to switch their votes and
oppose the treaty.
Ironically, it was Deutch who had removed the agency�s capability for satellite
imagery analysis. The defeat of the CTBT is the Clinton administration�s
greatest diplomatic embarrassment in the past seven years and a major setback
in the field of counter-proliferation. If the CIA genuinely cannot verify a
test ban, it would be the first time in 30 years of arms control that the
intelligence community could not be relatively certain of its verification and
monitoring capabilities.
The sudden incapacity of the CIA to monitor a disarmament treaty smacks of the
politicization of intelligence and revives the suspicion that, once again, a
CIA director has put the nation�s strategic intelligence at the service of a
political agenda.
Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in
Washington, DC, is a co-author of the forthcoming National Insecurity: U.S.
Intelligence After the Cold War (Temple University Press) and the editor of The
Cold War: Lessons Learned (Penn State Press). He is a regular commentator for
IntellectualCapital.com.
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