-Caveat Lector-
Published in Washington, D.C. 5am -- May 17, 1999 www.washtimes.com
Book Excerpt
Clinton wouldn't back Navy officer after laser attack
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By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
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Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times,
details the motives and dangers of the Clinton administration's national
defense policies in a new book, "Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration
Undermined American Security" (Regnery Publishing Inc.).
he phone rang in the middle of the night at the Canadian home of U.S. Navy
Lt. Jack Daly.
"The Kapitan Man is inbound about to enter the strait," the watch officer
told Lt. Daly over the phone from the joint intelligence center at Canada's
military base near Esquimault, on Vancouver Island.
The Kapitan Man for years had masqueraded as a merchant vessel but
actually was one of two Russian spy ships that tracked nine U.S. nuclear
submarines based nearby in Bangor, Wash.
Now the Kapitan Man was at the mouth of the 100-mile Juan de Fuca
Strait, heading into Puget Sound.
Lt. Daly's orders: secretly photograph it from above with a digital
camera as part of the crew of a Canadian helicopter.
It was 3:30 a.m. April 4, 1997. The mission would change Lt. Daly's
life -- and his opinion of the U.S. government and the Navy he loved.
He showered, grabbed his flight suit and headed for the base as reports
on the Kapitan Man's movements continued to flow from the Coast Guard.
Lt. Daly sat in a jump seat on the port side of the CH-124 helicopter,
hooked up to a safety line, as the aircraft took off about noon and flew
southeast from Victoria International Airport.
"We've got an outbound boomer on the surface," Capt. Pat Barnes, the
pilot, announced as they reached the water.
The huge, black submarine was the USS Ohio, which had dropped off an
ill crew member at its home port, Bangor. Because its missions are secret,
the nuclear sub was not supposed to be on the surface. It had just had a
direct encounter with the Kapitan Man.
"If we had launched five minutes sooner, I would have been able to
photograph both vessels in the same frame," Lt. Daly said.
Three merchant ships came into view, the Kapitan Man in the middle. At
Lt. Daly's direction, Capt. Barnes made a single circle over the
U.S.-flagged container ship President Jackson and then headed east for three
passes of the Kapitan Man.
After three circles, the chopper flew directly over the top of the
ship. It was about 12:30 p.m.
"As far as I knew," Lt. Daly said, "the camera was working and the
mission was successful."
'You better take a look'
Lt. Daly, a foreign intelligence liaison officer, was assigned to
Maritime Forces Pacific, a joint command staffed by about 1,500 Canadian
navy, air force and army personnel who defend Canada's West Coast and work
closely with the U.S. Navy.
In an informal debriefing back at the airfield, the crew reported
having seen someone on the bridge of the Kapitan Man holding what appeared
to be binoculars. A Canadian intelligence officer saw a man on deck, his
arms crossed over his head.
About 4 p.m. at Esquimault, Lt. Daly handed the digital camera to U.S.
Navy Chief Petty Officer Scott Tabor, who was trained in imagery technology
and analysis. Chief Tabor downloaded the images to an office computer.
About 5:30 p.m., Chief Tabor walked into Lt. Daly's office.
"Are you having any problems with your eyes?" he asked.
"Yeah, my right eye is bugging me," Lt. Daly replied. "I guess I must
have gotten something in it when I stuck my head out the door because of the
wind."
"Are you experiencing any kind of headache?"
"Yeah, I have a real bad headache."
"Well, I think you better take a look at this."
Chief Tabor handed him a photo. It showed a red dot of light on the
bridge of the Kapitan Man.
"I think you may have caught a laser beam in this picture," Chief Tabor
said. "I know this is supposed to be the running-light area, but the
signature of the light in this picture just doesn't look right to me."
'Definitive evidence'
The former Soviet Union often used lasers for military purposes.
During the Cold War, the Russians fired lasers at pilots. Air crews had been
warned to don protective eye gear, but pilots spotting intelligence ships
nevertheless were injured.
In 1998, Human Rights Watch obtained a declassified U.S. intelligence
report that stated: "Russia leads the world in the development of laser
blinding weapons."
But the use of a laser against a Canadian helicopter was not something
most officials in Washington expected from America's former enemy.
"I wasn't close to being convinced," Lt. Daly recalled.
The next morning, he awoke with a sharp pain in his right eye. Looking
in a bathroom mirror, he saw a large blob of blood in the white of the eye.
An eye doctor in Victoria found the eyeball was swollen.
That night, around 10 p.m., the phone rang. It was Capt. Barnes, the
chopper pilot, and he had eerily similar symptoms.
The next day, Lt. Daly's supervisor at the Office of Naval Intelligence
(ONI), Capt. Eric Meyers, ordered him to write a report.
White House and State Department policy-makers were alarmed because the
incident could upset U.S.-Russia relations.
And so the public knew nothing about it for more than a month. Until a
top-secret Joint Staff report was leaked to this reporter and The Washington
Times published a Page One story on May 14, 1997.
But by about 9 p.m. April 6, the entire military chain of command had
been notified. Gen. John Shalikashvili, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, ordered more information.
"A total of 30 frames were taken with frame number 16 showing
definitive evidence of an emanation coming from the bridge area of the
merchant vessel," the Joint Staff report said of Lt. Daly's photos. "Initial
medical exams indicated some eye damage to both the pilot and the U.S.
lieutenant, but none that is considered permanent."
(Lt. Daly would wonder later where that medical assessment came from.
More than two years later, he suffers from severe eye pain and headaches.
And Capt. Barnes not only has eye pain but had his flying career cut short.)
Protests, promises
At 1:30 a.m. Monday, April 7, the Joint Staff's deputy director of
operations talked to Thomas Lynch, the State Department's director of
Russian affairs. Mr. Lynch said State would "concur" with the Department of
Defense "if we had reason to detain the vessel."
After consultations that included Gen. Shalikashvili and Deputy
Secretary of Defense John White, the Coast Guard was ordered to detain the
Kapitan Man, set to depart that day at 6 a.m.
What wasn't said was that State had notified the Russian Embassy in
Washington that a search party would board the ship. The tip-off gave the
Russians time to notify their vessel so that any lasers on board could be
disposed of or hidden.
The National Security Agency later confirmed exactly that through an
intercept.
When The Times broke the story, State Department spokesman Nicholas
Burns confirmed that senior officials there and at the Russian Embassy had
discussed the incident before the search of the Kapitan Man.
"We protested this incident forcefully to the Russian government," Mr.
Burns said. "The Russian government in turn promised to cooperate with an
investigation."
He denied any restrictions were placed on the Coast Guard and Navy
search team: "We wanted there to be a full search, as did the Pentagon, as
did the Coast Guard."
Mr. Burns lied -- and a secret State Department document proved it.
An interagency group led by Robert Bell, President Clinton's top arms
control advocate at the National Security Council, met April 7 via the
Secure Video Teleconference System (SVTS).
"The nine-member boarding party has instructions to search public areas
of the ship for a laser," State Department official Jonathan Kessler wrote
in the secret memo on the meeting. "If the Kapitan Man crew is
uncooperative, a second SVTS will be convened April 7 to decide on a further
course of action."
The crew did not cooperate, and in a two-hour search the team "found no
laser or any trace of a laser," Mr. Kessler wrote April 8.
A member of the boarding party later said Russian sailors confronted
searchers in front of a locked compartment and denied them entry.
Free to go
During the second video teleconference April 7, "the conferees could
not agree on a course of action," Mr. Kessler wrote. "State and NSC
[National Security Council] opted to let the Kapitan Man leave Tacoma. DoD
(except for the Coast Guard) wanted to detain the vessel until tests are
completed on the helo crew."
At 12:15 a.m. April 8, the National Security Council set up a secure
conference call among Jan Lodal, deputy undersecretary of defense for
policy; James Steinberg, the NSC's executive director; Strobe Talbott,
deputy secretary of state; and James Collins, designated as the next
ambassador to Russia.
No military officials took part. The officials decided to let the
Kapitan Man go. The ship sailed later that morning.
Lt. Daly and Capt. Barnes were examined and tested for several days at
the Army Medical Detachment in San Antonio. Bruce Stuck, head of the medical
group, told Lt. Daly there was interest in his case "at the highest levels"
and that Mr. Clinton was briefed daily on his health.
Doctors discovered four or five faint lesions on the retina of Lt.
Daly's right eye; they believed the cause was a "repetitive pulsed laser."
Lab tests were unable to duplicate the light seen in the photo. One
possible explanation is that the Russians used a hand-held laser that
combined a visible-light, red-laser "pointer" -- such as is common in
lecturing aids -- with a dangerous, invisible-light laser.
Though Capt. Barnes had the same painful symptoms, no lesions were
detected. Doctors believe Lt. Daly may have suffered greater damage because
the laser's effect was magnified by the camera lens.
On April 27, three weeks after the incident, Lt. Daly and Chief Tabor
flew to Washington for a debriefing at ONI headquarters. Lt. Daly, reviewing
files, found that information he had relayed was reported inaccurately.
After lunch, Cmdr. Joseph Hoeing, an analyst, confided: "You do not
know the pressure I am under to sweep this under the rug."
"As soon as I heard those words," Lt. Daly recalled, "I knew I was in
trouble. The first thought that came to my mind was that this was a
cover-up."
Cmdr. Hoeing declined an interview. "That's a matter I'm not going to
discuss," he said of the Kapitan Man incident.
'A mystery'
The NSA intercept confirmed the Russian crew refused to allow Coast
Guard inspectors to look at all areas, and that the vessel could not have
been searched thoroughly within the two-hour limit.
Under later questioning from reporters, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth
Bacon said the boarding party was "granted access to every part of the ship
to which they requested access" -- except for "a library to which the crew
could not find the keys."
Mr. Bacon acknowledged it was possible the laser had been hidden in the
library.
But, the official spokesman insisted, Lt. Daly's injuries were "not
compatible with a laser having been used on the ship."
Pressed to explain his unusual statement that a laser had been fired
but not from the Kapitan Man, Mr. Bacon said: "I think you have to describe
this as a mystery."
The formal Pentagon report issued to the public concluded: "The
Department believes that the eye injury suffered by the American naval
officer is consistent with injuries that would result from exposure to a
repetitive pulsed laser. Available evidence does not indicate, however, what
the source of such an exposure might have been. Specifically, there is no
physical evidence tying the eye injury of the American officer to a laser
located on the Russian merchant vessel."
The cover-up was complete.
'Victims of a hostile act'
Lt. Daly believed ONI had bungled the investigation in ways that could
not have been accidental. The public report was rife with errors and
inaccuracies, and his efforts to get headquarters to fix them were
fruitless.
He was particularly upset because Defense Secretary William S. Cohen
said publicly that his eye damage was temporary.
Lt. Daly was ordered not to talk to reporters about the experience.
The report did not mention Capt. Barnes and his injuries at all. The
reason was clear: Place all the onus on a single person, discredit his
account and dispose of the matter with little or no consequence.
On Feb. 28, 1998, Lt. Daly transferred to San Diego as an intelligence
officer with Marine Corps Amphibious Group 3. The Foreign Intelligence
Liaison Officer program that launched the U.S.-Canada joint intelligence
effort, and of which he was a part, is being disbanded.
By the summer of 1998, Lt. Daly had been passed over for promotion. In
January he got a less-than-stellar evaluation. Worse, it was suggested that
he undergo psychiatric evaluation -- a tactic used against whistleblowers
who make waves.
Lt. Daly finally went public Feb. 11 in testimony before a House Armed
Services subcommittee.
"In essence, this incident left Captain Barnes and I as victims of what
could be argued was a hostile act in an undeclared war, an act of terrorism,
and at a minimum, a federal crime," he said.
'Betrayed and sacrificed'
Today the pain affects both eyes.
"Most of the time it's like a really bad toothache -- a constant ache
in the eyes themselves," Lt. Daly said in an interview. "On occasion, the
pain resembles someone sticking a needle in the corner of my eye."
Lt. Daly, who enlisted in the Navy in 1982, is bitter.
"I just want justice. I want to see somebody held accountable for the
way it was handled."
Why the cover-up?
"I firmly believe it was seen as jeopardizing our relations with
Russia," he said. "Bill Clinton has said he doesn't want to be the guy who
blew the opportunity for everlasting peace with Russia."
A real threat to national security -- Russian spying -- is ongoing and
ignored, Lt. Daly said.
"Why should the government lie to its own people when our national
security has been compromised?" he asked.
He thinks the Clinton administration set a dangerous precedent.
"The message to the Russians is: You can get away with an intentional
hostile act within U.S. borders and not only will your crime go unpunished,
your illegal acts will be denied and your getaway assisted by the U.S.
government.
"In fulfilling my duty as a naval intelligence officer," Lt. Daly said,
"I was betrayed and sacrificed so that our continuing relations with Russia
would not be jeopardized, despite their continued illegal activities in our
waters and on our soil.
"Secretary of Defense William Cohen not long ago stated to the press,
during the Monica Lewinsky debacle, that he didn't believe that President
Clinton would ever take risks with our national security. However, I am
living proof that he has."
http://www.washtimes.com/investiga/gertz2.html
Bard
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