From: Lee 
Subject: CIA plans to open information sources to government overview
Message-ID: <199511020236.VAA04851@minerva.cis.yale.edu>
Date: Thu, 02 Nov 95 01:36:16 0400

CIA plans to open information sources to government overview


(c) 1995 Copyright Nando.net
(c) 1995 Associated Press

  CIA's worst wounds self-inflicted

WASHINGTON (Nov 1, 1995 - 16:18 EST) -- As a result of a devastating
investigation of security lapses at the CIA, government officials who
receive its most secret reports will get a closer look in the future
at the sources of the information, says CIA Director John Deutch.

"High on the list of things that we must do is to rebuild confidence
... in the integrity of our human intelligence," Deutch said Tuesday
after closed sessions before the House and Senate intelligence
committees.

He said that for the first time in history, the CIA will let
representatives of the nation's policy makers "into our cases to
assure that we are reporting information ... with integrity."

The need to rebuild confidence was obvious after an intelligence
community assessment of the Aldrich Ames case that found that
government officials, including presidents, received intelligence
reports based on information received from agents under the control of
the KGB.

CIA officials -- but not the agency's directors -- knew the
information was tainted, but said nothing to the recipients, the
report said.

"It's an inexcusable lapse in elementary intelligence practice," said
Deutch.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, said the "customers" or recipients of the CIA information
"were making purchases of military equipment with vast sums of monies
involved and were making judgments vital to the national security."

"It's just mind-boggling, thescope of what went on here," said
Specter.

Deutch said the damage assessment was done by an independent team of
intelligence analysts and operations officers from throughout the
intelligence community. He said the team produced "a devastating
record that will take us years and years to recover from."

Ames, a CIA counterintelligence officer, was sentenced to life in
prison without parole in April 1994 after he admitted selling secrets
to the Soviets for eight years. The agency has said his treachery led
to the deaths of 10 Western agents and compromised dozens of
operations.

The report said three former CIA directors -- William Webster, Robert
Gates and James Woolsey -- were "accountable" for what took place
during their tenure, but did not recommand taking action against them.

Deutch agreed, saying that "the criteria that I would use for taking
action against individuals, I would not do so against any of the three
prior directors of central intelligence, for whom I have the highest
professional and personal regard."

Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, the senior Democrat on the Senate
Intelligence Committee, disagreed.

"A new standard of accountability, in my judgment, is being applied:
'We just didn't know,"' said Kerrey.

He released a letter the three former directors wrote to Deutch in
which they said that "a senior manager be held accountable if he is
advised of a problem and fails to act. ... None of us had any
knowledge of the misleading characterization of sources as described
in the report."

In addition, Webster, Gates and Woolsey criticized the CIA inspector
general for failing to "bring to our attention ... the matter about
which he now urges that we be held accountable."

They urged Deutch to investigate the functioning of the IG's office.

Rep. Larry Combest, R-Texas, chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee, said after that panel's session with Deutch that the damage
assessment report was "every bit as bloody as we had been led to
expect."

"The number of agents and prospecive agents of many nationalities Ames
identified to his Soviet and later Russian masters number well over
100," said Combest.

"Ames provided reams of classified documents, including a veritable
library of highly classified intelligence estimates," he said.

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