[109524] in Cypherpunks
Four Intelligence Scandals and a Culture War
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mahou Shoujo Pixy Misa)
Sat Mar 27 19:10:28 1999
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1999 01:54:50 +0200 (EET)
From: Mahou Shoujo Pixy Misa <waste@zor.hut.fi>
To: iufo@world.std.com
cc: cypherpunks@toad.com, InfoSec News <isn@repsec.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9903280114550.22275-100000@zor.hut.fi>
Reply-To: Mahou Shoujo Pixy Misa <waste@zor.hut.fi>
http://jya.com/giu030899.htm
8 March 1999. TTA.
Global Intelligence Update, Red Alert, 08 March 1999
Four Intelligence Scandals and a Culture War
Summary:
Four intelligence scandals blew up in the past week or so: A blown
U.S. intelligence collection operation in Iraq; Chinese theft of
nuclear weapons secrets from Los Alamos; the claim that Israel's
Mossad had taped Clinton having phone sex with Monica Lewinsky and was
using it to blackmail Clinton into stopping a mole hunt for an Israeli
agent in the White House; and suspicion that Greece had traded U.S.
and NATO jamming codes to the Russians. However true each of these is,
somebody has clearly launched a campaign against the Clinton White
House. Depending on your point of view, this is either another in an
endless series of attempts by a vast right-wing conspiracy to
discredit the President or a desperate attempt to warn the country
about the incompetence or malfeasance of the Administration. But it
does not strike us as accidental that these four reports all hit the
major media within a few days of each other. We see a "culture war"
underway between the Clinton Administration and the national security
apparatus. Underlying it is a fundamental disagreement as to the
nature of the international system, the threat faced by the United
States and the appropriate policies that ought to be followed.
Analysis:
What made last week remarkable was the sudden, simultaneous emergence
of four completely unconnected stories of espionage and international
duplicity. The stories varied widely over content and time frame. What
they had in common was that each involved the United States in some
way and all broke into the headlines within a few days of each other.
We present them here in no particular order:
* A report in the Washington Post asserted that the Central Intelligence Agency had placed
agents on the staff of UNSCOM, the United Nations unit that had been assigned to inspect
Iraqi weapons production facilities under UN Security Council resolutions. Claims that the
weapons inspectors were being used by the CIA had been circulating for months. Indeed,
Saddam Hussein had created a major crisis when he decided not to permit American
members of the team into Iraq because they were, according to him, CIA agents. Two
things made the Post story interesting. First, it provided some hints as to how the U.S. had
used UNSCOM remote monitoring to intercept Iraqi communications. Second, the Post
story appears to have originated within official Washington circles and has not been met
with a spate of denials.
* The New York Times broke a story late in the week that claimed that Chinese intelligence
had penetrated Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and that it had, over
many years, extracted technical information on the construction of miniaturized nuclear
warheads. Such miniaturization is critical for the construction of warheads with multiple,
independently targeted, re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), which the United States and Soviet
Union had built, but which China had not been able to construct until they had allegedly
stolen plans from Los Alamos. Apparently, the theft had been discovered in 1995, but
according to these reports, the Clinton Administration had deliberately ignored the
warnings because creating a public crisis would interfere with the Administration's plans
for engagement with China. The Administration did not deny the espionage claim, but did
state that they had tightened security.
* The New York Post published a story claiming that a book written by Gordon Thomas
would claim that Israel's Mossad had tapped Monica Lewinsky's phone (along with
another, unnamed intelligence agency) and had recorded her having phone sex with the
President. The story went on to claim that Mossad had used the tapes to blackmail Clinton.
The President then called off a hunt for a suspected Israeli mole in the White House
because of Israeli threats that they would release the tapes. In a later interview, Thomas
backed off the blackmail claims, stating that Danny Yatom, head of Mossad at the time, had
ruled out blackmail. He continued to maintain that Mossad had obtained the tapes.
* Last weekend, the Washington Post broke a story stating that the United States had
temporarily halted the sale of aircraft to Greece. The reason was that evidence had come
to light that Greece, a U.S. ally and member of NATO, had provided the Russians with
extremely sensitive codes that would enable someone to jam NATO aircraft. In exchange,
according to the reports, Russia gave Greece a system known as SPN-2, which would
interfere with the targeting capabilities of NATO aircraft. Presumably, Greece would have
used this system against Turkey. Once the reports surfaced, Washington asserted that
weapons sales to Greece would resume, because the reports were inaccurate and the
transaction had not taken place.
So it was quite a week for fans of espionage and intrigue. Two stories
seem pretty much confirmed. No one is denying that the U.S. used
UNSCOM as a vector for U.S. espionage activity, nor is anyone denying
that China had stolen extremely sensitive information about U.S.
nuclear technology. The White House is denying and Israel is saying
nothing about the Lewinsky wiretaps and even the author is backing off
the blackmail charge. The U.S. is confirming the suspension of weapons
sales to Greece but is claiming that investigation has shown that the
Greeks did not do what they had been charged with. So two of the
stories seem to be pretty much confirmed and two are being denied with
varying degrees of plausibility.
We could spend days trying to untangle each of these events without
getting to the bottom of them. Let's, therefore, look at what we know
for certain. First, last week saw a surge of very public assertions
about espionage being conducted either by the United States or
directed toward the United States. Second, while each of them appear
unconnected, there is a single, underlying theme: that the Clinton
Administration, through the personal actions of the President and
through his foreign policy, has left major national security breaches
that have materially damaged the United States. Third, that the very
existence of these leaks in this concentrated form is proof of the
second claim, which is that the Clinton Administration does not know
how to conduct a coherent, professional, national security policy.
What emerged from the week was an extremely embarrassing, blown
intelligence operation against Iraq that essentially confirmed that
Saddam Hussein was telling the truth and the U.S. was lying when
Saddam charged that UNSCOM was a tool of U.S. intelligence. It also
created a huge credibility gap for all future UN operations with U.S.
participation. So, the week revealed that even when the U.S. mounts an
effective espionage operation, it cannot control it well enough to
keep it from blowing up very publicly.
The other three leaks tended to show enormous recklessness by the
White House in pursuing its policies. The China story seemed to show
that the White House was so eager for good relations with China that
it would not confront China with clear evidence of espionage directed
toward securing some of the most vital secrets of the United States.
The Greek story carried this theme further by implicitly claiming that
the failure of the United States to redefine NATO had enabled the
Greeks continuing access to U.S. technology in the post-Cold War
world. This, in turn, left U.S. security in the hands of unreliable
nations whose interests had dramatically diverged from U.S. interests.
Finally, the Lewinsky-Mossad story left the impression of a White
House not only casual about national security issues, but willing to
open itself to blackmail for the most frivolous of reasons.
In other words, either by coincidence or intention, someone worked
very hard to make it appear that the Clinton Administration was wholly
incapable of protecting either U.S. secrets or vital, on-going
espionage operations. Now, coincidences happen, and it is certainly
possible that this avalanche of leaks about U.S. intelligence
failures, or successes turned into failures, was coincidence. But what
an avalanche of coincidence it was to have all four of these stories
breaking into the media within days of each other. What a further
coincidence that two of these stories broke in the Washington Post
while a third broke into the New York Times. The fourth, the
Lewinsky-Mossad story, may well have been a coincidence since we
suspect the story was planted by the publisher, St. Martin's Press, as
pre-publication publicity. The Chinese, Greek and Iraqi stories,
however, all went to major, national media. That meant that the
leakers had credibility and access. They were not mid-level officials.
The leakers on the Greek story appear to come from Congress. The
structure of the stories made it clear that congressional sources were
dissatisfied with the results of the Department of Defense examination
and one can infer from that that the source was on either the Senate
or House oversight committees. Indeed, those committees are possible
sources for both the Iraq and China story as well. Again, assuming
that the avalanche was not a remarkable coincidence, we can expand our
hypothesis to claim that elements in Congress and in the intelligence
communities decided this week to go public with an extraordinary
record of something between malfeasance and incompetence far more
damaging than anything to do with sex in the Oval Office.
That may well be the trigger to this week's events. It is now clear
that President Clinton has survived the Lewinsky affair. The final
shot, the story that he had actually raped a women years before in
Arkansas, seems not to have hit the mark. Whatever personal damage was
done to Clinton, he is not going to be forced from office. But lurking
behind Lewinsky and Whitewater have been charges that the
Administration, particularly in its dealings with China, traded
national security for business opportunities for politically connected
corporations.
But even behind this, even behind the hints of corruption and
malfeasance, there has been a deep-seated sense within the defense and
intelligence communities that the Administration was simply not
sensitive to the national security needs of the United States. From
the beginning, there has been a deep policy and cultural divide
between the national security apparatus that was honed and seasoned
during the Cold War and the Clinton Administration. For the
Clintonites, the need to maintain engagement with China and Greece,
for example, outweighed archaic concerns about weapons system
security. Attention to the fine details of covert operations, which
would dictate not operating within the easily exposed milieu of
UNSCOM, was not seen as a priority. Maintaining communication security
and not calling a mistress on an open telephone line was not taken
seriously. Someone in the national security community, or among its
congressional allies, decided this week to open a new campaign against
the President.
Whoever the leakers were this week, they are trying to paint a picture
of an Administration that was simply indifferent to the classical
concept of national security. The end of the Lewinsky affair has, it
appears to us, opened a new battlefield in which the stakes are much
higher. The President and his Administration are being charged with
being either fools or knaves when it comes to defending the security
interests of the United States. Now, there is the obvious question as
to whether the charges in their particulars are true. But it is clear
that the Iraq and China stories are true. The congressional oversight
committees will probe the truth of the Greek story. And if Mossad
didn't tap Monica's phone, it was only because of pure luck and not by
Presidential caution.
The real issue here is cultural. On one side, those leaking these
charges are claiming that the national security state is not archaic,
that protecting the integrity of U.S. military and covert operations
remains a priority above all other considerations. On the other side,
there is the view of the world in which national security
considerations, properly understood, have created a new hierarchy of
values. In this view, cooperating with China on maintaining financial
stability in Asia is more important than weapons technology theft and
working with Greece as a conduit to Serbia or the Kurds is more
important than keeping jamming codes out of Russian hands. The
argument is that maintaining operational security over a covert
operation in Iraq is less important than the short-term goal of
getting the information needed, since the U.S. has the ability to live
through the embarrassment of exposure and the loss of exposed
collection systems. Indeed, in the extreme, the argument is that the
existence of an Israeli mole in the White House is less important than
keeping Netanyahu at the bargaining table with Arafat.
Rulers have traditionally compromised intelligence operations for
higher, policy goals. That is to be expected. What surfaced this week,
however, has been the charge that the Administration systematically
ignored national security issues such as collection systems, jamming
codes, and even nuclear technology, in favor of policy goals of
dubious value. This is the real debate: were these trade-offs worth
it? What did the United States achieve by ignoring foreign operations
or failing to maintain its own operational security?
Apart from the truly sensational revelations of the last week, there
is a deep policy debate that involves how the United States views the
world. If we view the world as having genuinely evolved to a point at
which traditional security issues are now marginal, then the Clinton
Administration's behavior (assuming the stories are true at all) is
understandable. If, on the other hand, the world continues to behave
today much as it did for the past few centuries, then national
security considerations remain central. Scandals aside, this is what
was being debated in Washington this week.
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