-Caveat Lector-
Pentagon: Deutch Did No Harm
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 1, 2001 ; Page A10
A Pentagon investigation has concluded that former CIA director
John M. Deutch did not compromise U.S. national security by
storing classified information on unsecure computers while
serving at the Defense Department, a senior Pentagon official
said yesterday.
As he prepared to leave office last month, President Bill Clinton
pardoned Deutch for writing and storing hundreds of pages of
highly classified intelligence and defense information on
unsecure home computers as CIA director and, before that, as
undersecretary and deputy secretary of defense.
The pardon came one day after Deutch had agreed to plead guilty
to a misdemeanor for unauthorized removal and retention of
classified documents, and it caught prosecutors by surprise.
The new Pentagon report, which defense officials hope to release
today, represents a postscript to years of controversy over
Deutch's security lapses. Because his unsecure laptop, desktop
and home computers were linked to the Internet, the classified
material he mishandled was subject to possible compromise by
computer hackers.
In the damage assessment, however, Pentagon computer security
experts found no evidence that any of the information contained
in a 1,000-plus-page journal kept by Deutch on his computers and
stored on a portable disk had been compromised.
"There was plenty of classified stuff in there," the official
said. "But we've had the techies look for trap doors, and there
is no evidence that anything like that occurred."
CIA investigators have reached a similar conclusion, saying they
have no evidence that any classified CIA material mishandled by
Deutch was obtained by hackers or other unauthorized people.
A report by the Defense Department inspector general concluded
late last year that Deutch committed a "particularly egregious"
violation by using unsecure computers at home and in his Pentagon
office from 1993 to 1995 while he was serving as undersecretary
and deputy secretary of defense.
As part of the inspector general's review, investigators found
seven desktop and laptop computers that Deutch used at the
Pentagon but found no classified information stored on their hard
drives. But the review did not include an assessment of whether
Deutch's journal had been compromised by hackers.
Within days of Deutch's departure from the agency in December
1996, CIA computer security employees discovered classified
material on his home computers and began an investigation. The
Pentagon inspector general later determined that Deutch
mishandled defense data by using unsecure computers linked to the
Internet.
Long before his pardon, Deutch had been stripped of all of his
security clearances by the CIA and the Pentagon as punishment for
violating computer security procedures.
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