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Global Intelligence Update
Red Alert
March 8, 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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