-Caveat Lector-
Clinton adviser breached security NSC
Official transferred classified files to unsecured network, but
kept her job.
By Paul Sperry
WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON -- A national security adviser to President Clinton
was caught transferring highly classified computer files from a
secure network in the White House to an unsecured network, but
was allowed to stay on the job, White House sources tell
WorldNetDaily.
The 1998 breach in security occurred when the National Security
Council official copied classified files onto a disk from an NSC
computer in a secure area of the West Wing, White House employees
say.
She then loaded the files onto a computer connected to an
unsecured network in her Old Executive Office Building office,
exposing the secret data to potential Internet hackers and
foreign spies, sources say.
"It was a bunch of files, not just one," said a White House
employee familiar with the incident. "And they were all
classified, which made it a serious security violation."
Jaime Borrego, former White House information security officer,
uncovered the computer security breach and alerted White House
Security Officer Charles Easley.
Easley, in turn, met with then-White House Chief of Staff Erskine
Bowles to discuss how to proceed with an investigation into the
security infraction and potential compromise of U.S.
intelligence.
After the adviser admitted taking the classified files, Easley
confiscated her computer and took away her building security
badge.
But White House sources say the national security adviser, who is
a Clinton appointee, was allowed to return to her job after going
out on extended leave.
"She was supposed to be fired and wasn't," said a White House
employee close to the investigation. "She went on maternity
leave. Now she's back working at NSC."
National security experts say the White House security violation
fits a pattern of sloppy handling of U.S. secrets throughout the
government during the past eight years:
State Department officials lost several classified laptops.
A missing hard drive containing nuclear secrets turned up behind
a copier at Los Alamos lab.
A Los Alamos scientist managed to download the entire history of
the U.S. nuclear-bomb program and bomb-testing data onto several
computer tapes, some of which still haven't been recovered.
A Pentagon official left his CIA briefing book in a Beijing hotel
room.
Even CIA Director John Deutch mishandled secrets.
Clinton, along with his National Security Adviser Sandy Berger,
have for the most part brushed off the problems as unfortunate
but isolated events, while assuring Americans that their national
security secrets are safe.
"But this latest breach lays the problem right at the West Wing
and at Berger's door," said William C. Triplett, a former Reagan
White House official, who notes that Berger was a lobbyist for
China before joining the NSC.
The White House refused to identify the NSC official who
mishandled the classified material.
"It's been a long-standing policy of the White House that we do
not discuss internal security matters and investigations," said
White House spokesman Mark Kitchens.
Asked why the woman was allowed to keep her job, Kitchens said,
"We don't discuss our internal policies."
Neither Kitchens nor NSC spokesman P.J. Crowley would say if the
adviser has retained her CIA clearance to review classified
information.
"This is the president's national security staff, so they're
going to have access to the most sensitive materials the United
States has," said Ken deGraffenreid, who headed intelligence
programs at the NSC from 1981 to 1987.
"Everybody there would be cleared for extremely high levels of
compartmented information, because it's just the nature of the
work," he added.
White House insiders say the adviser accessed the files from a
West Wing "SCIF" -- a secure room where material classified Top
Secret and above is stored in vaults and on secure computers.
Some SCIFs protect super-secret coded information. If such data
fell into the wrong hands, they could cause grave danger to U.S.
security -- especially if they were transmitted electronically.
For that reason, SCIFs can't have computers connected to an
unclassified system, even if it's the White House local area
network used only by employees. They have to be on a secure
system.
"You can't bring in a regular phone line or Internet line into a
full-up SCIF. You can't take a cell phone in there, even though
many of the rooms are hardened to protect against electronic
eavesdropping," said deGraffenreid.
"The rooms have access locks. Uncleared people can't get in.
Security officers are responsible for guarding them, along with
information security specialists," he added.
And there should still be procedures in place for removing
magnetic media, he says. Staffers shouldn't be able to take
disks in or out -- unless they log them out and give a specific
destination, such as another SCIF.
"If someone takes a disk out of a SCIF without logging it,
they're breaking the rules," deGraffenreid said.
Transferring classified files to an unsecured network is a big
no-no, former White House officials say.
"That's what Wen Ho Lee did," Triplett said. Lee is the Los
Alamos scientist convicted of stealing secret restricted nuclear
data, a felony.
White House sources say the NSC official's computer hard drive
was supposed to be wiped clean of the classified data she
uploaded. It's not clear if that was done. It's also not clear
what became of the disk she used.
The White House would not say.
"What was she doing uploading those files?" asked Notra Trulock,
former Energy Department counterintelligence director. "There's
no good reason for it."
"And did that classified information get onto an unclassified
server?" he wondered.
According to one source, Borrego, a Naval officer detailed over
to the White House from the National Security Agency at the time,
spotted the security breach by "doing scans of people's systems."
Poor grade from GAO
The Clinton White House has not had a good security track record.
In 1994, more than a year after taking office, more than 100
senior White House aides still had no security clearances. They
were granted access to highly classified information anyway,
according to former White House FBI agent Gary Aldrich and
others.
And in a 1998 report, the General Accounting Office found that
between 1993 and 1996 there were no procedures to control access
to Sensitive Compartmented Information -- the level of
classification above Top Secret -- within the Executive Office of
the President.
The White House vowed to fix the problems.
But its security procedures issued in March 1998 did not set
specific guidelines for safeguarding classified information.
What's more, Clinton never established a security self-inspection
program, despite an executive order mandating one. The White
House director of information security said his office has never
done a security inspection of classified programs at the White
House.
"My impression is that security in this White House has been
terrible," deGraffenreid said. "They had problems just clearing
people in the beginning."
He says security was much tighter in the Reagan White House.
"We had very stringent controls over classified materials, though
all that was in the easier days of dealing with paper, not
networks," he said.
Still, "I can't recall any serious breaches then," deGraffenreid
said. "And people who lost or misplaced classified documents
were dealt with severely."
"In fact," he added, "people back then were scared to death
they'd go to jail if they mishandled information."
Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan Defense official, agrees that
Clinton ushered in a new culture.
"There's been a dumbing down of national security," he said, "and
it's been systematic."
Gaffney says transferring classified files from the NSC network
to an unsecured network probably was not viewed by the political
appointees in the White House as a serious violation.
"Given what happened to Wen Ho Lee (who, from the start, was not
prosecuted aggressively by Attorney General Janet Reno, and was
let out of jail after he was convicted), I'm not sure that's a
hanging offense anymore," Gaffney said.
Trulock, who originally fingered Lee as a bad actor, says the NSC
official's breach is par for the course for the outgoing
administration.
"It's so typical of the people in this administration -- DOE
(Department of Energy), State ... they all do it," he said.
"They just have no regard for security procedures put in place to
protect our secrets."
Paul Sperry is Washington bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.com.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
=================================================================
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
