SEN. BIDEN SAYS U.S. LOST AN ENTIRE SPY NETWORK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R000600230131-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 21, 2004
• Sequence Number: 131
• Publication Date: January 13, 1978
• Content Type: NSPR

By Bill Richards
Washington Post staff writer
The United States lost an entire spy
network, apparently in Central Amer-
ica, during the last 18 months after a
young military sergeant attached to
the National Security Agency sold
top-secret intelligence data to foreign
agents, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said
Wednesday night.
Biden, who is a member of the Sen-
ate Select Committee on Intelligence
and head of its subcommittee on se-
crecy and disclosure, told a student
audience at Stanford University that
"damage assessment reports" from in-
telligence agencies showed the ser-
geant was promoted and given an hon-
orable discharge after selling "entire
reels of this information . . . to the se-
cret police [of a foreign government],
blowing all our cover in a whole area
of the world."
The Delaware senator told his audi-
ence that the incident was just one of
of national security ranging from out-
right murder to major espionage" in-
volving U.S. security agencies, accord-
agencies feared such prosecution
intelligence information.
Omar Torrijos.
though military intelligence officials
knew Torrijos paid the sergeant about
$1,000 monthly through 1975 and 1976
the Army decided not to prosecute
the man for fear the details of the op-
eration would have to be revealed in
open court. Instead, the sergeant was
promoted and honorably discharged,
Biden said Wednesday that it would
have been necessary to establish that
the bugging tapes were stolen. "We
would have to bring into court the
man or woman who establishes they
moved from his possession to the pos-
session of the foreign government,"
Biden said.
"That person, in this case, happens
to be an American spy in the other in-
telligence agency:" said Biden. To
produce the spy, he said, "you do one
of two things: assure that person gets
killed, practically speaking-and it
isn't Alice in Wonderland, it's the real
world out there-or we lose the abil-
ity of that deep agent."
The contents of Biden's remarks,
which were part of an informal
speech to Stanford students at the
university in Palo Alto, Calif., were
made available yesterday by the uni-
versity. A Stanford spokesman said
the speech was taped by a member of
the university's news department.
Spokesmen for both NSA and the
Central Intelligence Agency declined
to comment yesterday on Biden's re-
marks. An official of the Senate sub-
committee on Intelligence leaks, a
unit of the Senate Ethics Committee
which has been quietly investigating
the Panama bugging and NSA leaks,
also refused to make any comment on
the speech.
In addition to the NSA case, Biden
said some of the other security
breaches he had seen in the "damage
assessment reports" by intelligence
agencies ranked on the level of the
case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,
who were executed for stealing nu-
clear secrets and giving them to the
Soviet Union.
Biden said he had found a lesson in
the damage assessments and the lack
of prosecution for those involved in
security leaks. "If you're going to en-
gage in espionage against this coun-
try," he said, "be sure that it really
does jeopardize American society."
The intelligence assessments were
made available to Bid en because his
subcommittee is scheduled to hold
hearings next month on proposed leg-
islation that would allow certain cases
involving sensitive intelligence infor-
mation to be conducted in secret.
"The press will not like it, because
I'm suggesting they be excluded," Bi-
den said. "I may end up being the
cause of some fairly repressive legisla-
tion."