-Caveat Lector-
------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 12:28:44 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Steven Aftergood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Secrecy News -- 07/19/01
SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
July 19, 2001
** INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT QUESTIONED
** FBI MANAGEMENT CRITICIZED
INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT QUESTIONED
"Is the CIA's refusal to cooperate with Congressional inquiries a threat to
effective oversight of the operations of the Federal Government?"
That rather leading question was the topic of an unusual hearing before two
subcommittees of the House Government Reform Committee yesterday.
The hearing was unusual because the established structures of intelligence
oversight are rarely criticized within Congress itself, and Republican
committee chairmen rarely speak of the CIA with anger and indignation. But
yesterday they did.
"The CIA is assaulting Congress's constitutional responsibility to oversee
executive branch activities," said subcommittee chairman Rep. Stephen Horn
(R-Calif.) "The CIA believes it is above that basic principle in our
Constitution. We do not agree."
"Tell me why I shouldn't be outraged," said Rep. Christopher Shays
(R-Conn.), also a subcommittee chair. "When faced with persistent
institutionalized [CIA] resistance to legitimate inquiries, we're compelled
to reassert our authority,"
The congressional ire was triggered by the CIA's refusal to participate in
a committee hearing on computer security at the Agency.
"Neither I nor any CIA representative will testify," wrote DCI George J.
Tenet bluntly on July 17. He noted that House Intelligence Committee
chairman Porter Goss "urged me not to testify." See Tenet's letter here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2001/07/tenet.html
This prompted a fascinating discussion at yesterday's hearing of the
respective oversight roles of the House Intelligence Committee and the
House Government Reform Committee; the adequacy of the House Intelligence
Committee's performance; the definition of intelligence "sources and
methods" (which, by House rule, are the exclusive purview of the
Intelligence Committee); the need to limit oversight of sensitive
intelligence matters; the role of the General Accounting Office in
intelligence oversight; and other fundamental issues.
The questions were generally better than the answers. Some of the
testimony concerning national security classification was incorrect or
misleading. But the official anger at the CIA was palpable, and may yet
have policy consequences for the Agency.
The witness statements from the hearing are posted here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2001_hr/index.html#oversight
"It is important to curtail growing GAO initiatives to investigate
intelligence activities," according to a 1994 CIA memorandum on CIA policy
toward the General Accounting Office that was released yesterday. The
memo, authored by Stanley M. Moskowitz (who went on to fame if not fortune
as CIA station chief in Tel Aviv), is posted here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/gao/ciapolicy.html
CIA computer security policy, which was initial subject of the House
Committee's inquiry, is governed by DCI Directive 6/3, "Protecting
Sensitive Compartmented Information Within Information Systems." That 5
June 1999 Directive was obtained by Secrecy News and is now available here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/DCID_6-3_20Policy.htm
FBI MANAGEMENT CRITICIZED
A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday on "Reforming FBI
Management: The Views from Inside and Out" became a forum for airing the
usual litany of complaints about the Bureau, and then some.
FBI Deputy Assistant Director Kenneth Senser described several of the
internal security reforms that have been adopted in the wake of the Robert
Hanssen espionage case, including: enhanced computer audit procedures, an
expanded polygraph program, and an enhanced security clearance
reinvestigation program.
Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy noted that the Justice
Department has provided the Committee with an unclassified version of the
long-awaited "Bellows" review of the Wen Ho Lee espionage
investigation. But that unclassified document has still not been
"scrubbed" for privacy and other considerations, and so it is not yet
releasable to the public. A Justice Department spokesman said today that
preparation of a public version of the report is a "top priority."
Prepared statements from yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing are
posted here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2001_hr/index.html#fbi2
Former Energy Department counterintelligence official Notra Trulock
criticized a recent General Accounting Office report on the FBI's handling
of the Wen Ho Lee investigation.
"The report contains some factual errors that, if left uncorrected,
perpetuate the web of deceit the FBI has spun to cover up its own mistakes
and blunders in the Wen Ho Lee debacle," Mr. Trulock wrote to the GAO on
July 17. See:
http://www.fas.org/irp/ops/ci/whl_gao_trulock.html
------- End of forwarded message -------
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