CHIEF OF THE US'S TOP-SECRET LISTENING POST SAYS LEAKS HAVE HARMED SECURITY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00561R000100140020-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: September 3, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08 :CIA-RDP91-005618000100140020-4
KEEPING SECRETS
3 September 1987 ~
Cttief of the US's
top-secret listening
post says leaks have
harmed sec~uity
er P.ar cir:Nr
Stag water of The Chruban Sconce Mondor
w.
Lt. Gen. William Odom may be in charge of more
secrets than anyone else in the world -and he worries
that too many of them have been revealed.
General Odom is director of the National Security
Agency (NSA), the United States's electronic intelli-
gence agency. He claims that leaks have .done more
damage to NSA operations over the past three. or four
years than at any other time in recent memory.
"I don't want to blame anybody. I'm just stuck with
the consequences of it," he said yesterday in a rare
meeting with reporters over breakfast.
The three-star Army general declined to list specific
revealed secrets, saying only that an intelligence source
in Damascus had dried up after the appearance of
printed reports concerning US interception of communi-
cations in Syria. NSA actions targeted at Libya had also
been damaged, he said.
Other US o?cials have complained that revelations
about .Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafl's support of
terrorism, which were used to support last year's US air
strikes against Libya, inadvertently revealed intelli-
gence sources and methods. Reports on the past use of
US submarines to tap Soviet communications cables
have also been very damaging, according to o,?ciab.
General Odom indicated that he is in favor of investi-
gating damaging leaks and prosecuting those responsi-
ble. "The first people under the gun ought to be leakers
in the administration," he said.
But he clearly believes that media organization and
authors who print leaked information should be
charged as well. He said that he personally had submit-
ted cases to the Department of Justice for possible
prosecution. The Justice Department '.has taken them
under consideration," Odom said, but he admitted that
none of these cases had yet been acted upon.
Communications intelligence has special protection
under US law, the NSA chief claims. Herbert Yardley,
the father of US government electronic eavesdropping,
published material in the 1920s that Congress consid-
ereddamaging tothe US. In response, a law was eventu-
allypassed that rnncerns leaks only of communications,
not human-gathered intelligence, according to Odom. He
admitted this statute has seldom been invoked.
One specific book Odom mentioned as damaging was
"The Puzzle Palace," a 1982 work on the NSA by
investigative reporter James Bamford. He says the book
is in the libraries of many foreign intelligence agencies.
On other subjects, Odom said
? He had no unambiguous evidence that Marine
guards had allowed Soviet spies into the inner sanctum
of the US embassy in Moscow -its rnmmunicatiot~
chambers. But he said the dictates of counter-intelli-
Bence mean US intelligence must behave as if this
worst~ase scenario wet+e true.
..Even if they only had a few minutes to an hour's
access, in an a~oining area, it would have been quite
damaging," he said.
? Internal security at the NSA has improved since the
disclosure in 1986 that Ronald 1?~lton, a former mid-
level NSA employee, had sold secrets to the Soviet
Union. "I don't feel paralyzed in my daily work beca~ak
of fear that I'm surrounded by moles," he said.
But he added that no one could give full assuranoe-
that the NSA, or any other U~ Itttelligienoe agency,
would never again be compromised. .
? Any treaty limiting u-termediaLe-range rtuclear
weapons would be harder to verit~r than earlier arms
pacts. He said that, paradoxically, the more Congress
and the White House debate the verific~ttion issue, the
harder his job is, as limits of capability are inadvert-
ently revealed.
"The more enlightened the verification debate, the
weaker my capability becomes," he said.
3.
STAT
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08 :CIA-RDP91-005618000100140020-4