CONGRESS IS CRIPPLING THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890016-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 21, 2012
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: November 1, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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ON PAGE7F---
Congress
Is Crippling
the CIA
By
ROWLAND EVANS AND ROBERT NOVAK
??????????????????????????????10MOIN.
Charged with "overseeing"
U.S. intelligence, too
many lawmakers, with
too many political axes to
grind, are leaking too
many vital secrets.
It's time to plug the holes
ALT 5 A.M. ON OCTOBER II, 1985, a
stretch limousine carrying
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.)
pulled up to CIA headquarters in
Langley Va. Vice chairman of the
powerful Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence, Leahy had asked
for a full briefing on the Ac/silk
Lauro hijacking. But why before
dawn?
Because Leahy had agreed to
appear on the CBS "Morning
News" at 7 a.m. to comment on the
interception by U.S. pilots of the
hijackers' plane. Following his
meeting, Leahy, who now pos-
sessed every secret in the case, was
driven directly to CBS studios in
Washington. "It's a major triumph
for the United States," reported
Leahy. Then he made an extraordi-
nary disclosure: "When [Egyptian
President Hosni) Mubarak went on
the news yesterday and said the
hijackers had left Egypt, we knew
that wasn't so. Our intelligence was
very, very good." ?
Leahy had inadvertendy tippe4
intelligence specialists from Cairti
to Moscow that the United States
had intercepted Mubarak': phone
calls and heard that the Ac/silk
Lauro hijackers were still in Egypt.
The conversations had been "read"
by communications intelligence and
flashed to computers in Fort Meade,
Md., where the National Security
Agency daily monitors thousands of
intercepted voice signals.
READERS DIGEST
November 1986
The disclosure would bring
Egyptian countermeasures to safe-
guard subsequent telephone calls.
Every government in the world took
note, and reacted by tightening secu-
rity on communications. Leahy in-
sisted to an incensed CIA director
William Casey that Administration
officials had publicly disclosed the
hijackers' whereabouts the day be-
fore he went on TV.
This incident is one of many
showing that the current era of
Congressional oversight of the CIA
is simply not working. Instead, the
Senate and House Intelligence Com-
mittees have become conduits for
classified information. CIA efforts to
thwart international terrorist actions
or to lend support to anti-communist
guerrillas are difficult enough, but
keeping those operations secret has
become nearly impossible. And vitil
intelligence-sharing by U.S. allies has
been severely hampered by concerns
in foreign capitals over the leakage of
information passed to Washington.
Pattern of Leaks. Under the
present oversight systpm, the 31
members of the House and Senate
committees, plus more than 6o staff
members, are informed of pro-
posed covert operations. "Any one
of these people who does not be-
lieve in an operation can appoint
himself or herself to stop it," says
Rep. Michael DeWine (R., Ohio).
"All they need to do is call a report-
er." Thus, the ability to make or
break government policy is widely
dispersed.
Congressional leaks concern
Rep. Henry Hyde (R., Ill.), a mem-
ber of the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence. He has
blundy scolded colleagues, remind-
ing them that with Congress's "need
to know" for oversight purposes
"goes the overriding responsibility
to keep much of that information
secret."
The impact on U.S. relations
with allies has been severe. Casey
has testified that leaks "do more
damage than anything else" to U.S.
intelligence and to "our reputation
and reliability" among allies. In
fact, concern about American leak-
age has spread across the world,
often disrupting U.S. policy. For
example, in 1984 Saudi Arabian
officials were reported to have
turned down a CIA request to help
fund Nicaraguan Contras, saying
privately they had no confidence
the U.S. government could keep
Saudi involvement a secret.
The current situation sharply
contrasts with the discreet Con-
gressional oversight of intelligence
prior to the Watergate era. The
Eisenhower Administration's co-
vert actions in Iran and Guatemala
were known by only a handful of
bipartisan Congressional leaders,
who breathed not a word. So were
operations of the U-2 spy plane.
Until 1974, a small group of
senior members of Congress
worked with floor leaders of both
parties as an informal oversight
panel. They were briefed by the
CIA director himself, usually with-
out Congressional staff present.
But questionable domestic sur-
veillance activities, assassination
plans, and other abuses by the CIA
in the 1970s led to the branding of
the agency as a "rogue elephant,"
transforming that collegial atmos-
phere. A rapid politicization of
intelligence marked the new era of
CIA oversight. In 1982, for exam-
ple, the Democratic-controlled
House Intelligence Committee re-
leased a staff report asserting that
the Administration was cooking in-
telligence to gain support for its
policy in Central America. Accord-
ing to the committee's own intelli-
gence consultant, former deputy
director of the CIA Adm. Bobby
Inman, the report was "filled with
biases," and in fact had been pre-
pared at the specific request of com-
mittee members with a partisan ax
to grind. Furious that he had not
been consulted, Inman resigned.
A clear breach of secrecy oc-
curred in September 1984 with
press reports of a CIA briefing of
the Senate Intelligence Committee
that revealed our knowledge of a
top-secret Indian proposal to make
a preemptive strike against Paki-
stan's nuclear facility. Realizing its
security had been compromised,
the Indian government launched
an investigation. The probe broke
up a French intelligence ring that
NOW
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had been an important supplier of
information to the CIA.
At the same time, word leaked
that the CIA knew China had pro-
vided Pakistan with atomic-bomb
technology and was exporting nu-
clear material to Argentina and
South Africa. So the CIA took no
chances the next year when it dis-
covered that China was holding
nuclear-trade talks with Iran. The
Senate was not informed as it re-
viewed a 30-year atomic-power
agreement with Beijing.
When word of the Chinese nu-
clear aid leaked out, Senate Minor-
ity Whip Alan Cranston (D., Calif.)
was outraged that the Reagan Ad-
ministration "systematically with-
held, suppressed and covered up"
the information. Said a CIA official,
"We have 2 very serious source
problem in Beijing," meaning the
agency feared compromising its
sources there by giving the infor-
mation to Congress.
Another leak took place on No-
vember 3, 1985, when the Wash-
ington Post trumpeted secret CIA
operations to subvert Col. Muam-
mar el-Qaddafi's regime in Libya.
This leak immediately followed
Secretary of State George Shultz's
briefing of the two oversight com-
mittees, during which he implored
the lawmakers to observe security
on this matter of extraordinary im-
portance. U.S. intelligence sources
say the disclosure probably cost the
life of at least one Egyptian opera-
tive involved.
Political Dynamite. The greatest
seepage of classified data has been
on the subject of Nicaragua, and it
has transformed what was intend-
ed to be a covert operation into an
overt operation subject to floor de-
bate. Nearly every detail of U.S.
plans on Nicaragua has been passed
to the public through the Senate and
House Intelligence committees.
Typical was last spring's bend-
ing of the rules by the Democratic
majority of the House committee to
produce unfair and inaccurate "evi-
dence" against Administration ef-
forts to get Stoo million in aid for
the Contras. In explaining why the
committee voted against aid, the
Democratic majority wrote: "It
continues to be the assessment of
the U.S. intelligence community
that only U.S. forces could truly
resolve the conflict in Nicaragua on
a military basis."
The statement Was loaded With
political dynamite. Was the CIA
warning Congress that at the end of
the Contra road lay use of U.S.
troops? Certainly not. The explo-
sive assertion, which had not been
cleared by committee Republicans,
was simply untrue. It was based on
a hypothetical response in secret
session eight days earlier by John
McMahon, then CIA deputy direc-
tor, who was not addressing that
issue specifically and who was
speaking only for himself.
The distortion and misuse of
McMahon's secret testimony was a
flagrant violation of committee
rules that specifically forbid public
dissemination of any information
obtained in a closed hearing.
Within a week Majority Whip
Thomas Foley (D., Wash.) re-
sponded to President Reagan's
weekly radio address plugging for
Contra aid by citing the Intelli-
gence Committee report.
The next day McMahon wrote
the committee chairman that in fact
"the most recent intelligence-com-
munity assessment on this issue
judged that military pressure from
the Contras would be a key factor
in bringing the Sandinistas to the
negotiating table." But it was too
late. McMahon's "secret testimony"
had already evolved as a center-
piece of a campaign by Democrats
to kill Contra aid.
Reckless Comments. Public de-
bate over supposedly secret CIA
operations has given Intelligence
Committee members unanticipat-
ed exposure and influence. The
effect of just one man in a system so
sensitive to abuse is shown by the
impact of a major new player in the
Capitol Hill intelligence game: Sen.
' Dave Durenberger (R., Minn.),
who became chairman of the Sen-
ate Intelligence Committee under
its rotation policy in January 1985.
Durenberger has engaged in highly
publicized denunciations of the
CIA, proving as gossipy and hostile
as his counterparts in the 1950s
were silent and supportive. Casey
charged that Durenberger's com-
mittee was performing its oversight
work in an "off-the-cuff" manner,
producing "repeated compromise
of sensitive intelligence sources and
methods."
The House Intelligence Com-
mittee requested a joint meeting in
the fall of 1985 with Durenberger's
panel. Quiet please, counseled
House members; the turmoil
you're creating could boomerang
against us. Rep. Edward Boland
(D., Mass.), former House commit-
tee chairman, read the riot act: "I
do not believe that it is helpful or
appropriate for members of Con-
gress who sit on oversight commit-
tees to regularly or recklessly
comment on intelligence matters."
In 1976 then-CIA director Wil-
liam Colby had cautioned that from
a security standpoint "the fewer
members on an oversight commit-
tee the better." But Congress opted
for separate Senate and House pan-
els with large memberships and
large staffs, including many in-
dividuals with no experience in
intelligence or national security.
When Daniel Inouye (D., Ha-
waii) became the first chairman
and Barry Goldwater (R., Ariz.) the
first vice chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, their
agreement on the need for secrecy
led them to forbid any interviews
by staff members. It worked for a
while. But no chairman can long
prevent unauthorized secret con-
versations between staffers and
journalists.
Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D., Texas), a
member of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, put the case bluntly.
"Leaks to make political points of-
ten have a devastating impact on
achieving foreign-policy goals or on
developing defense capability. Our
efforts should be redoubled to iden-
tify and punish those who leak."
Large Order. Bentsen's concern
demonstrates the necessity for re-
form. Given the importance of na-
tional intelligence collection and
the need for secrecy in intelligence
operations of all kinds, the CIA
must be able to conduct its work
beyond public inspection while
Estiovi
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still under Congressional scrutiny.
The most-needed reform is the
replacement of existing intelligence
panels with a single House-Senate
committee composed of responsible
senior members with experience in
national-security affairs. This
oversight committee should be
prohibited from any policy role,
and its members and staff should
be held to the strictest standards of
silence.
Rotation of chairmen and mem-
bers, which prevents continuity and
probably contributes to irresponsi-
bility, should end. It takes years to
become experienced in the arts of
intelligence and to fully appreciate
the demands for secrecy.
Finally, new Senate and House
rules should prevent any member
of the new joint committee from
appearing on television or other
public forum to discuss ongoing
CIA operations.
These changes are a large order.
But the state of the current relation-
ship between the CIA and Capitol
Hill requires immediate attention
for the sake of the national security.
Reader's Digest Roving Editors RowtAND
EVANS AND ROBERT NOVAK are nationally syndi-
cated columnists who have been covering the
intelligence scene for more than 30 years.
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