WASHINGTON TIMES - FEW WILL CONCEDE NEED FOR COUNTERINTELLIGENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000500230005-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 30, 2000
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: May 5, 1987
• Content Type: NSPR

STATINTL
Approved For Release 2003/04/02 : CIA-RDP91-00901
ARTICLE AP
WASHINGTON TIMES
5 Plav 1987
Few will concede need
~for counter.ntelU ence
'g
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
as the most senior Soviet intelligence officers
stationed abroad.
Officials said the expelled Soviet agents
d 'd
Lack of government cooperation in covere a wt a spectrum, including
countering spies and preventing serious operatives active in disinformation, elec-
breaches in internal security remains one of and tronic t o ef high tech military intelligence
to
nology.
the most divisive issues facing the admin- However, according and tht However, ac
to
istration today, according to current and for- one official,
sev-
mer ntelligence officials. State Department deleted the names of f sev-
"In U.S. .S. intelligence the administration eral Soviet spies on the FBI's original expul-
"In
totally and completely fragmented;' one of- sion list, and replaced in
t ons nf to good od with willothers
in the
ficial said. "That's because in any bu- United order to States low certain a as a gesture agents
remain will.
reaucracy, counterintelligence looks at fail- a aced them
ures, and nobody wants that:' Secretary of State George Shultz told re-
on porters during negotiations in New York with
Several intelligence officials, speaking
Soviet Foreign
condition of anonymity, agreed that co- Minister Eduard Shevard-
condition that some of he spies had been en "use-
operation among U.S. diplomatic and intel- ful" to the Soviet foreign minister.
ligence agencies on sharing "positive intel- Security officials noted that breakdowns
ligence" - satellite photos, agent information were not limited to the State Department. Ev-
and analyses - has been one of the major ery U.S. government agency charged with
strengths of the administration. using and protecting national security infor-
But counterintelligence failures in the past mation suffered a major intelligence failure
10 years have occurred in every agency of because of the modest counterspy program
government charged with protecting U.S. se- over the past 10 years, they said.
crets, they said. Other recent cases include security
Security breakdowns have plagued the U.S. breaches in the one of the most secret coun-
government since the 1970s, when wholesale I cils of the CIA - the Soviet operations direc-
reductions were made - in the capacity of torate - by Edward Lee Howard, the first
American intelligence agencies to ferret out agency employee to defect to Moscow
spies, according to the officials. The John Walker espionage ring that sold
The problem has been highlighted by the secret Navy communications codes to the So-
recent Moscow embassy scandal involving viets for decades has been described as one
two U.S. Marine security guards charged with
allowing Soviet agents inside secret sections of the worst security failures in history. A
of the building, including communications, National Security Agency signals intelligence
defense and intelligence areas, failure, caused by former NSA employee Ron-
At the State Department, many Foreign ald Pelton, convicted of spying for the Soviets
Service officers believe the "diplomatic cul- last year, led to the compromise of a secret
ture" leads diplomats to regard security as electronic eavesdropping operation against
incompatible with traditional diplomacy, one Moscow in Asia.
White House official said. According to intelligence officials, few cor-
"But the fact is you can't conduct success- rective measures have been taken as a result
ful diplomacy without security," the official of the spy scandals.
said. "How can we carry out arms control Analyses about how the penetrations oc-
negotiations if the Soviets are reading our curred and how future cases can be averted
cables and bugging our embassy?" are limited to internal agency studies. The
The official credited the decades of suc- officials said bureaucratic divisions prevent
cessful diplomacy carried out by former So- any single government agency from taking a
viet Ambassador to Washington Anatoly comprehensive look at security failures or the
Dobrynin, now a senior Communist Party of- damage caused by them.
ficial, to the tight security maintained by the "There has never been a damage assess-
Soviet Embassy in Washington. ment beyond what the bureaucracies call 'the
By comparison, Arthur Hartman, former point of failure' [of an espionage leak];" said
U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, assailed one White House official. "The failures are
by the officials as a major opponent of White not pursued. NSA won't tell CIA what it's do-
House security policies until he left Moscow ing and the CIA won't tell the FBI what it's
earlier this year, told one White House aide in doing. The result is that the lowest common
1983: "I don't care if the KGB is listening." denominator is used to assign blame for intel-
Another example of State Department op- ligence failures."
position to NSC counterespionage programs 79 George rver, a former CIA official, be-
happened during the November expulsion of lieves such recent problems as the Moscow
the 80 Soviet spies, described by U.S. officials embassy case grew out of intergovernment
conflicts dating to the early 1970s, when secu-
rity officials clashed with government offi-
cials more concerned about civil liberties
As a result, he said, CIA counterintell--
by officials opposed to tough security an
counterespionage programs.
While the Reagan administration ha
spy functions, he said.
"It's a lot easier to break an egg than to pu~
it back together," Mr. Carver said in a recent
interview.
"The dominant culture in the State Depart-
ment says you basically achieve ends by a -
commodation," Mr. Carver said. "People out
side the Foreign Service clan, like the FBI o
the CIA, are regarded as interlopers who have
to be repelled."
As for espionage, many at the State Department regard it as "a fact of life," Mr. Carver
said.
Other officials go further, asserting tha
since both sides spy on each other, counter
intelligence may be harmful to collection ac
tivities.
Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger r
ferences that separate our two systems," h
"For example, given our democratic gov~
ernment of checks and balances, our inter
ligence activities could never approach the
scale of the 'anything goes' Soviet operation
and properly so;' Mr. Weinberger said.
Officials said Reagan administration in
fighting over counterespionage policy peaked
in 1982, when a presidential directive was
signed ordering a governmentwide review of
counterintelligence programs.
The directive triggered a confrontation bed
tween then-National Security Adviser Wil
Liam Clark and Adm. Bobby deputy CIA director at the time, who oppose
the directive so strongly that he resign
rather than carry out the review, official
said.
Adm. Inman later was hired by the State
Department to conduct a study which found
major deficiencies in U.S. embassy security
a inst terrorist and es ions a th t
rea s
.
el- p g
John McMahon Adm. Inman's successor,
also clas a wrt the National Security Coun.'
cil over counterintelligence programs, ac-
cording to the officials. The officials said Mrl
McMahon, who resigned last year, resisted'
and eventually blocked a White House plan tq
strengthen CIA capabilities against Soviet)),
spying abroad.
Approved For ReleaseM?o'k2 : CIA-RDP91-00901R000500230005-6