Plot Thickens Around Ex-CIA Director John Deutch

By Lucille Barnes

Asked at a public lecture at the Smithsonian Institution to rate former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Millis, executive director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and a former CIA operations officer, unhesitatingly proclaimed Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor John Deutch, who headed the agency from May 1995 to December 1996,the worst ever. Deutch, a Bill Clinton administration appointee and former under secretary of defense, takes “first, second and third prize” in the worst category because he did “major damage” to the CIA’s directorate of operations, Millis said. At the other end of the scale, Millis predicted current CIA director George Tenet, also a Clinton appointee, will be judged the best by CIA professionals because he has done “an unbelievably good job” of boosting morale. Deutch, whose security clearance has been revoked by the CIA, is under investigation for security lapses. So far all that has emerged is that he allegedly prepared his regular top-secret briefings for the president and selected cabinet members at home on an unclassified computer, on which he also stored highly classified reference material, all of which he then left unprotected while other members of the family used the same computer to send e-mails and even visit naughty Web sites, thus opening the secrets contained in Deutch’s CIA-owned computer to possible outside penetration and compromise.

Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee wants Deutch to appear before his panel, and Chairman John Warner (R-VA) of the Senate Armed Services Committee said he is “following this closely.” But as the executive and legislative branches bicker over executive privilege, perplexing information keeps surfacing, particularly references to super-secret “black programs” in the 17,000 pages of secret information on the unprotected computer. CIA Inspector General Britt Snider’s 86-page report on the security lapse describes receiving a deluge of e-mails from CIA employees who were outraged that the security review was being directed or, according to the e-mails, delayed by CIA Deputy Director Nora Slatkin. She was brought by Deutch with him from the Pentagon after he took over the CIA, and, it was revealed, had accepted a job offered by Deutch with his next employer, Citibank, even as she continued to monitor the security investigation of her past and future employer. In fact, Snider’s report charged that Slatkin “had the effect of delaying a prompt and thorough investigation of this matter.”

Some newspapers attributed the on-going investigation to a “wave of anti-Semitism” at the CIA because Deutch has been described in Jewish community weeklies as “the first practicing Jew to head the CIA” and with having close ties to Israel, including Israeli relatives and part ownership of a house in West Jerusalem.

Meanwhile Millis said Tenet was having problems coordinating the work of America’s 13 agencies with intelligence responsibilities, which Millis attributed to lack of support by President Clinton, whom he rated as one of the worst presidents when it comes to support of, and regard for, the intelligence community.

Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO) asked at a session of the Senate Armed Service Committee why Deutch was being treated differently from Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, who downloaded reams of secret material on how to make nuclear warheads onto a personal computer. “In one instance,” Tenet replied, “there is an intent to do harm to the United States.” He presumably was not talking about Deutch, who is serving on the Citibank board and who still holds at least one Pentagon security clearance. So Tenet must have been talking about Lee, who has been indicted for mishandling secret material, faces life in prison if convicted, has been denied the opportunity to post bond and remains in jail pending trial in the fall.

The U.S. volunteer thought police, working overtime, have discovered that the Jewish-owned New York Times is unconscionably pro-Arab. Daniel Pipes, Israel-aligned director of the Middle East Forum, which is seldom out of step with any incumbent Israeli government, criticized the good, grey Times for three articles in its travel section, one by Times Cairo correspondent Douglas Jehl, on travel in Syria. “It is curious that a major American paper would promote travel to a state which has a long record of terrorism, occupies another country, and is building weapons of mass destruction,” Pipes told Forward, a New York Jewish weekly. His comments were echoed by Andrea Levin of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, which places paid advertisements in Zionist-oriented U.S. publications criticizing balanced reporting on the Middle East. Since both Pipes and Levin deal in fiction, they’re apparently nostalgic for the thought control described in Brave New World and 1984. Who’s afraid of truth? Now we know.

In a Jan. 26 House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims hearing, a rare voice of reason was raised by Ambassador Philip C. Wilcox, a former U.S. consul general in Jerusalem and former State Department counter-terrorism director. “How serious a threat to America is international terrorism?” Wilcox asked rhetorically. “International terrorism against all nationalities appeared to peak in 1987 when there were 666 such attacks, but declined more or less evenly to 273 in 1996. The number of U.S. citizens who are killed or wounded by international terrorists is another measure of the threat. Since 1990, the average number has been about 10 a year.” While saying that the U.S. must be vigilant, Wilcox put the matter in perspective when he noted that 13 children a day are killed by gunfire in the United States.

Pakistan is a little short of American friends these days, so anyone paying attention in Islamabad must have been pleased to hear Rep. Doug Bereuter (R-NE), a former university professor and army counterintelligence officer, warn the Clinton administration against branding Pakistan a “terrorist state.” The initiative originates with an “iron triangle” composed of the Israel lobby, its new second-best friend (after Turkey), the current sectarian government of secular India, and their rented acolytes in Congress. But Bereuter warned a Washington, DC audience at a Feb. 2 joint program of the Woodrow Wilson Center and the East-West Center that such a move would severely threaten the U.S. national interest, and even India’s own security.

Former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Aubrey Eugene Robinson Jr. died of a heart attack Feb. 27 at his home in Washington, DC. Robinson, an African American appointed to the U.S. District Court by President Lyndon Johnson, sentenced U.S. Navy counterintelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard to life in prison following his 1987 conviction of spying for Israel. Despite an intense campaign by the Israeli government, which doubled Pollard’s monthly salary and granted him Israeli citizenship after he was caught, Pollard continues to serve his sentence. Many (including this writer) believe, however, that in return for Israeli agreement to sign the Wye River Accord in the White House in 1998, President Clinton made a secret deal with then-Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to release Pollard to Israel before the end of the Clinton presidency. Ironically, however, the Israeli government didn’t keep the commitments Netanyahu made at the Wye Plantation.

Lucille Barnes covers Washington, DC for U.S. and Middle East publications.