PLO PROVIDED VITAL SOURCE OF INFORMATION, SAYS FORMER CIA OFFICIAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000500240003-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 8, 2000
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: October 10, 1984
• Content Type: PREL

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Approved For Release 2001/03/07 SCIAT RDP91-00901 R
PLO PROVIDED VITAL SOURCE OF INFORMATION, SAYS FORMER CIA OFFICIAL
COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
j October 1984
The removal of the Palestine Liberation Organization from Beirut dried up a
key information source for advanced knowledge on recent terroristic attacks on
U.S. installations in Lebanon, a former CIA official said.
Retired Adm. Bobby Inman, former director of the CIA, said Tuesday the PLO
departure contributed to the United States' lack of prior knowledge on the
surprise bombings of U.S. diplomatic and military headquarters in Beirut.
'The departure of the PLO was the real key to our ignorance of the events in
Lebanon,'' said Inman, who now heads the Austin, Texas-based Microelectronics
and Computer Technology Corp., a consortium of electronics industry research
groups.
"That removed one of our best sources of information on impending terrorist
attacks.
Inman said American intelligence pools had been steadily cut since the
mid-1960s, but that the absence of the PLO in Beirut had a much larger effect on
the Lebanon situation.
Inman, who once headed Naval Intelligence, said recent charges and
countercharges by both presidential candidates on the on the Beirut bombings
were irrelevant to the real situation.
Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP91-00901 R000500240003-7
 STATINTL
Appr *;ed Fpjr,Re.4o,a, a 2-AO1Ip3/07 : CIA-RDP91-00901 RO
Software
Research
rou Seta
G /'
11 Major Defense.:;`.
Contractors to
Combine .Efforts."'
Eleven major defense contractors
whose prodpcts increasingly depend
on sophisticated computer software
plan to form a joint research group
to study new ways to produce com-
puter programs and explore "ad-
vanced artificial-intelligence * soft-
ware techniques.
The companies, most of then, in
the aerospace business, have hired
BTG Inc. of Vienna to develop-. a
plan for their venture, which would
be similiar to a computer industry
research consortium headed byre-
tired admiral Bobb Inman, former
head of the National Security Agen-
cy,
Participants in the proposed Soft-
ware Productivity. Consortiumrlln-
elude TRW Inc., Boeing. Co.N,E-
Systems, General Dynamics Corp.,
Ford Aerospace & Communications
Corp., GTE Government Systmi
Corp., Lockheed Missiles & Space
Co., McDonnell Douglas Astronau-
tics Co., Rockwell International Co.
United Technologies Corp. and_-Sci=
ence Applications International
Corp.
"We want to increase software
productivity in these companies b~
orders of magnitude," said V:.t Ed-
ward Jones, a TRW executive based
in San Diego who heads the condor'-
By Michael Schrage
Washington Post Staff Writer
"If you look at these companies,
you see that software's not our ma-
jor line-it's not our bread and bt t=
ter," he said. But most high-tech.
nology defense contractors have
computers in their products'-#'nnd
need sophsticated software to make
WASHINGTON POST
10 October 1984
Edward H. Bersoff, president, of.
BTG, said particpants in the project
he is planing "typically have not, ad
the appropriate resources to spend
on software research because
they've focused on applications."
Pooling their research resources
is a way for these companies to get
the economies of scale necessaryto
make breakthroughs in software
technology, he said:
In many respects, the Softwarg
Productivity Consortium is similar
to Microelectronics & Computer
Technology Corp., which is based itl
Austin, Texas. This 19-corporation
computer research and develop
ment effort, headed by Inman, went
into operation last year after the
Justice Department decided not, to
raise antitrust objections.
TRW's Jones said that the Justice
Department has approved the ne*
consortium's effort to create a for-
-Mal business plan and that mangy
aspects of the software consortium
.are patterned after the computer
initiative. "The final structure will
be governed by tax and financial
-issues," he said.
The SPC is being initially bud-
geted at close to $1 million and will
-be in the planning stage through the
end of the year. A site for the con-
sortium's headquarters has not yet
,been selected.
According to Bersoff, the re-
searc:h? efforts will focus on hard-
-Ware and software interface Stan-
.dards, software metrics, knowledge
.engineering, prototyping and reus-
'ablle software. " .. Y
Reusable software refers tocorn-
puter programs and techniques that
can be used on a wide variety of
-different machines, Bersoff ex-
plained. He said that the consortium
plans to develop "conversion mech-
anisms" so that useful software de-
.y eloped on one company's comput-
er system can be transported to
-another company that uses a differ-
. ent system.'
Similarly, the group will do re-
search in the measurement of soft-
,ware productivity-called software
.metrics-and plans to design
"knowledge systems" that use so-
phisticated artificial-intelligence
techniques to write computer soft-
ware.
Approved fedr. Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP91-00901 R000500240003-7