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WASHINGTON -- Sitting here staring at my official KGB coffee mug (given to me by a high federal official who shall remain nameless), I got to wondering about last week's release of the Webster Report, counterintelligence in general, and the hard-edged report's effect on the FBI and its deteriorating reputation.
So, I pumped the words "FBI" and "blunders" into the trusty Google search engine on my magic lantern. The computer came back, bragging it only took 1.8 seconds, with more than 4,100 hits -- and that's just in recent years. Apparently, the FBI's reputation is now bad enough the new report can't drive it much lower.
You see, the FBI is supposed to catch spies, not breed them.
The 107-page Webster Report -- ordered up in the wake of the February, 2001 arrest of FBI agent-turned-traitor Robert P. Hanssen -- warns the latter result may be more likely if the legendary bureau doesn't do something to improve its Swiss-cheese internal security.
"Pervasive inattention" was the way the much-anticipated study described the FBI's attitude toward policing its own, especially in the use of computers and the area of personal finances.
The thing that must be causing FBI officials to grind their teeth into powder is the report's pointed comparison with the rival CIA -- specifically that internal security is "not as valued" at the FBI as it is in other federal agencies.
The lead author of the report ought to know. He is William H. Webster, the respected ex-cop who ran both the FBI and the CIA at separate times in the last century, and ran them well.
"In the Bureau," states the alarming report, "security is often viewed as an impediment to operations, and security responsibilities are seen as an impediment to career advancement."
According to the Webster Commission (officially the Commission for the Review of FBI Security Programs), Hanssen's 22 years of unsuspected toil for Moscow was "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history."
Hanssen, himself a supervisor, turned over -- for $1.4 million from our Cold War archenemy -- "vast quantities of documents and computer diskettes filled with national security information of incalculable value," according to the commission study.
His betrayal, says the report, was eclipsed in shock value only by "the ease with which he was able to steal material."
Hanssen himself talked freely to the panel, in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. The traitor told the commission the FBI's computer security setup was so weak that "any clerk in the bureau could come up with stuff on that system." He termed it "pathetic."
The study makes clear that Hanssen for years waltzed -- unchecked -- in and out of various FBI offices, even the headquarters, with unauthorized computer disks to which he had downloaded "reams of highly classified information."
At his suburban home, he left around piles of cash so thick even his relatives started wondering aloud about it.
All of this led the Webster Commission to conclude the FBI simply ignored specific instructions to fix these lapses from a president not normally thought of by federal agents as a tough counterintelligence expert. You guessed right: The much-maligned William Jefferson Clinton.
In 1995 -- following the guilty plea of veteran CIA mole Aldrich Ames to spying for the Soviet Union for nine years -- Clinton issued an executive order that federal workers who routinely handled classified information had to file written disclosure reports about their finances -- including holdings by spouses and dependent children.
Any federal intelligence agency could ask the Treasury Department for a search of bank records and other databases to make sure its agents did not have suspiciously fat bank accounts.
What did the FBI do to fulfill Clinton's crisp order? According to the Webster Report, basically nothing. The FBI, it said, makes only a few senior officials complete a financial disclosure form. The others get a standard form with "a limited series of questions" which have "little adjudicative value."
Hanssen himself acknowledged that "a complete investigation of my financial positions and deposits to bank accounts" -- which could not be explained by his salary -- could have uncovered his treason.
All this leaves the FBI the target of renewed ridicule -- some of it justified, some of it merely fodder for entertainment. Comic Robin Williams, who appeared here recently and whom I love to quote, has a riff about Osama bin Laden -- the supposedly ill terrorist mastermind thought to have commanded the Sept. 11 disasters, and who now resides on the FBI's Most Wanted List: "We can't find him, but he's a six-foot-five Arab on dialysis. Call me crazy, but look for a guy who's connected to his luggage."
The long list of FBI mistakes is truly staggering. Just a few recent ones:
The blunders are almost traditional. As early as 1984, the respected Special Agent in Charge Neil Welch -- who ran Buffalo's FBI bureau during the Mafia crackdown years -- co-authored a book called "Inside Hoover's FBI." In it, Welch detailed the legendary FBI chief's idiotic and harmful obsession with politics, blackmail, commie witch-hunting, and bureaucratic rote.
In one hilarious passage, Welch describes how a clever field agent left no margins on memos back to headquarters because Hoover invariably used the white space to scribble vitriolic complaints, demands, and impossible instructions. The angry Hoover dashed off "Watch the borders!" on the no-margin memos and sent them back. So powerful and capricious was Hoover that befuddled subordinates played it safe and immediately dispatched agents to cover the Canadian and Mexican boundaries.
The Webster Report is riddled with observations and revelations that won't get much media attention. In one, the commission asks the FBI to consolidate its security functions "which, in sharp contrast to other agencies, are fragmented."
Webster's people found FBI security responsibilities are spread across eight divisions at headquarters and 56 field offices -- whereas the commission recommends one senior executive leading a new Office of Security. One of this person's jobs would be to curtail the "practically unrestricted access" to classified information affecting national security that many agents have, even though they're conducting routine criminal probes. For instance, an information-system auditing program "would surely have flagged Hanssen's frequent use of FBI computer systems to determine whether he was the subject of a counterintelligence investigation," says the Webster report.
The FBI used to gloat over its lack of requirement that agents and other key employees be polygraphed at routine intervals -- while the CIA had made it standard operating procedure. After all, the CIA was trying to find the long-suspected mole. The FBI had no need of such a quest. Riiiight.
Since Hanssen was nabbed, the FBI has snapped to, and more than 700 agents have passed randomly administered lie detector tests. But that's just a baby step.
The real solution can be found in the last sentence of the Webster report's executive summary. The bureau, it says, must overcome "cultural biases that make it difficult for the FBI to accept security as a core function."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 9 2002 |