6 August 1999. Thanks to Dan Dupont.
Defense Information and Electronics Report, August 6, 1999
By Richard Lardner
Pentagon officials are considering plans to bolster the department's counterintelligence capabilities in an effort to better protect the military's critical technologies and important research programs from foreign threats, according to internal budget documents.
In particular, DOD has an eye on a "data correlation" system that models and maps current and prospective threats in a way that allows military officials to better concentrate CI resources on the most serious problems.
Without the improvements being debated, defense officials believe they will be fighting a 21st-century battle with outdated equipment.
The deliberations come at an especially sensitive time. Congress continues to pound the Clinton administration for failing to provide proper security at the Energy Department's nuclear weapons labs. And since February 1998, two celebrated computer warfare incidents, Solar Sunrise and Moonlight Maze, have underscored the challenges the Pentagon faces in protecting information on its far-flung networks.
The documents, obtained by Inside the Pentagon, note that DOD's leadership, especially Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre, is fully aware of the challenge.
"The [deputy secretary] has orally and in writing stated his concern that the department's capability to protect its technology programs, as well as recognize and respond to consistently evolving vulnerabilities, threats and exploitation attempts from foreign sources, is not adequate in the face of increased globalization, civil-military integration, and international cooperation," the documents read.
The documents also make clear additional money is required to solve the problem. Tradeoffs within the CI account will not work because "we are also trying to enhance resources for support to force protection and to support critical infrastructure protection while not further denigrating our ability to directly combat foreign intelligence services and terrorist organizations with classical CI efforts, including espionage investigations and clandestine operations," the papers state.
According to the documents, prepared for DOD's Program Review Group, $10.6 million is available for fiscal years 2001 through 2005 for the Defense Joint Counterintelligence Program/Military Intelligence Program. This pays for nine Air Force, Army and Navy CI civilian analysts and nine contractor CI analysts at the Joint CI Assessment Group (JCAG) "for the horizontal protection of DOD critical technology."
The JCAG is described as "a small, but critical CI center" that, once established in FY-00, will "form the nucleus of Defense CI's support of the department's research and technology protection program."
However, as the papers indicate, $10.6 million is not nearly enough. Specifically, current spending levels do not allow the department "to operationalize a functioning prototype of a data correlation model for CI and export control at the JCAG." Data correlation involves integrating and exploiting existing databases from various federal agencies for CI and security purposes.
Further, there is insufficient funding to buy the hardware and software necessary for "JCAG data correlation, analysis, and decision support activities." Finally, the documents reveal, DOD lacks the money needed "to develop and maintain a database that documents and tracks the department's critical technologies in a dynamic manner."
As a result, the PRG is examining alternatives that would pay for the data correlation and threat mapping capabilities. An option listed as alternative two adds $64.3 million to the future years defense plan for systems support.
"Without the funding provided by Alt 2, the JCAG will be unable to access extremely important databases within and outside of DOD, will be overwhelmed by the data to which it does get access due to lack of automated data manipulation tools, will be unable to leverage technology to correlate threat data with vulnerability data and protection capabilities data, and will be unable to adequately support decisionmakers with dynamic decision support tools," the PRG papers read.
"In other words, the JCAG would be a 1980s center in a 21st century information environment."
An option listed as alternative three builds on alternative two by adding another $22.8 million for analytical support. This money would provide for 30 additional CI operational and analytical personnel, which in turn would allow the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Security Service, and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to participate in the JCAG.
"Defense leadership has recognized that simply shifting resources to the crisis du jour (Khobar towers/force protection following a terrorist attacks, technology protection following the DOE experience) does not provide adequate protection nor recognize the growing threats/challenges the department's CI program must address," the documents read.
Hamre, the papers add, has indicated on several occasions "that the country in general and DOD in particular has allowed its CI resources to be inappropriately reduced as a result of the end of the Cold War."
The documents, crafted by Office of the Secretary of Defense staff, avoid making specific recommendations. Final decisions are left to the PRG as well as the Defense Resources Board. However, the papers note that only by adopting alternatives two and three will DOD be able to take "advantage of both the available expertise and leading edge analytical technology to protect the multibillion dollar investments it makes in equipping its forces."
Copyright Defense Information and Electronics Report.