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29 January 1998
Source: Hardcopy The New York
Times, January 29, 1998, p. A3
U.S. Spy Agencies Find Scant Peril on Horizon
Washington's experts discern a world without an obvious enemy.
By Tim Weiner
Washington, Jan. 28 -- While the world still bristles with weapons the United
States itself is relatively secure from the threat of war, the Government's
top intelligence officials testified today.
The nation confronts dangers to world peace, personified by President Saddam
Hussein of Iraq, and a Pandora's box of potential threats, exemplified by
the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, the intelligence
experts said.
But "the danger of nuclear attack, large-scale conventional attack and other
threats to our national existence is low," Phyllis Oakley, the Assistant
Secretary of State for intelligence and research, said in testimony before
the Senate intelligence committee.
The rest of the world's nations are spending 40 percent less on their armies
and on military weapons than they did a decade ago, said Lieut. Gen. Patrick
M. Hughes of the Army, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. And no
well-armed, technologically advanced nation is likely to make war on the
United States in the foreseeable future, he said.
The witnesses, especially George J. Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence,
did warn the Senators of a long list of problems that, left untended, could
lead to war somewhere, sometime.
That list was evidence of the unsettled and, for some, unsettling nature
of the post-cold-war world. Few of the threats they cited could be solved
by American military prowess. Many were economic, ecological, technological,
political and criminal phenomena that warplanes and smart bombs cannot combat.
The intelligence chiefs, joined by Bob Bryant, the deputy
director of the F.B.I., presented what has become an annual "state of the
world" briefing to the Senate intelligence committee. Intelligence professionals
are famously pessimistic; an old joke has it that when they smell flowers,
they look for a funeral. But today's briefing left the impression that, for
the time being, the United States faces no lethal threat from abroad, a state
of affairs unimaginable from the 1940's through the 1980's.
Still, uncertainty and threats cloud the horizon. Mr. Tenet cited first and
foremost the spread of weaponry, pointing to China's sales of military hardware
to Iran and Pakistan, and Russian companies' sales of missile technology
to Iran. The C.I.A. had estimated in 1996 that Iran could have medium-range
missiles capable of hitting Saudi Arabia or Israel within a decade; he said
today than Iran would have such missiles "much sooner."
Whether Iran would ever use those missiles is another question. The C.I.A.
sees "a genuine struggle" between moderates and fundamentalists in Iran that,
if resolved in the moderates' favor, "could lead to a less confrontational
stance toward the United States," Mr. Tenet said.
The C.I.A. sees "hopeful signs" in its old cold-war adversary, the former
Soviet Union. "Moscow cooperates with the United States and the West in ways
that were unimaginable during Soviet times," Mr. Tenet said. But the fact
that Russia has 6,000 nuclear warheads capable of reaching the United States
remains "a major preoccupation for U.S. intelligence."
Addressing Iraq and its intentions, Mr. Tenet chose tough, confident words.
He called President Hussein "a desperate man in terrible shape," whose military
forces are deteriorating even as he tries to hide his biological and chemical
arsenal from the world's view.
"I wouldn't want to play his deck of cards," Mr. Tenet said. "We have this
man in a box, and he's going to stay in a box."
General Hughes concurred. "Iraq's military capability continues to erode,"
he said. "Saddam's forces have significant weaknesses -- in leadership, morale,
readiness, logistics and training -- that would limit their effectiveness
in combat."
Going down the list of the nation's potential enemies, the general said Russia
is no more likely to attack the United States than America's allies in Europe
and Asia; Iran is "likely to seek better relations" with Washington; and
"North Korea's overall military readiness continues to erode." He did not
even mention the possibility of an attack from China.
"The global threats facing the United States are diminished in magnitude,"
he concluded.
Few of the potential threats to peace mentioned by the witnesses -- poverty,
pollution, disease, hunger, political disenfranchisement, drug trafficking,
cultural struggles, and shortages of fresh water and arable land -- fit on
a military target list.
Yet, all "bring great stress to the international order," General Hughes
testified, and added, "No condition, circumstance or power is likely to emerge
over the next 10 to 20 years which will somehow transcend them and lead to
a more stable global order."
Iraq Intelligence Gaps Acknowledged
January 29, 1998
Washington - The Associated Press: Even as the United States considers a
possible attack against Iraq, top intelligence officials acknowledged Wednesday
that there are big gaps in what they know about Iraqi chemical and biological
weapons.
- The problem is particularly acute now that U.N. weapons inspections have
ceased due to Iraqi refusal to allow access to sensitive sites, doubly so
because U.S. military commanders may be hoping to damage Iraq's weapons
capability with air strikes.
- ``There are enormous gaps in what we know about where they were in development
of these weapons of mass destruction,'' said Phyllis Oakley, the State
Department's chief intelligence official. ``The number of off-limits sites
has been whittled down, but they're large enough that we don't know what
they've moved into them, and if we can't get at them, we don't know.''
- Oakley, along with CIA Director George Tenet and Army Lt. Gen. Patrick
Hughes, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told lawmakers that Iraq
probably has little in the way of a chemical or biological arsenal but may
have weapons production facilities.
- ``My personal believe is that (Saddam) has somehow protected the essential
knowledge and some few capabilities that he still has at his command to continue
weapons of mass destruction production at some later time,'' Hughes said
in Wednesday's hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee. ``That's why
he's being so difficult with us now - to protect that core capability he's
managed to conceal from us.''
- Although the three officials did not address in open session the increasing
likelihood of U.S. air strikes on Iraq, their testimony underscored the
difficulty of grappling through military means with Iraq's potential weapons
capability.
- Defense officials have said repeatedly, if anonymously, that they are concerned
that the U.S. conventional arsenal would be incapable of penetrating some
of Iraq's most hardened targets, such as deeply buried bunkers that may house
biological or chemical weapons labs. And the testimony Wednesday about the
uncertainty over what Iraq has and where weapons or production facilities
may be located suggests the Pentagon may not be able to guarantee that air
strikes can destroy what U.N. weapons inspectors have yet to find.
- What is known about Iraq suggests a continued erosion of military strength.
The Defense Intelligence Agency reported ``significant weaknesses'' in Iraq
military readiness, leadership, morale, logistics and training. Hughes reported
``limited efforts'' by Iraq to preserve and expand missile technology and
weapons of mass destruction capability. And Tenet said Iraq remains strong
enough to threaten small regional neighbors and internal opposition groups.
- U.N. weapons inspections provided U.S. intelligence with a wealth of
information about Iraqi capability, and led directly to the destruction of
more chemical and biological weapons than were destroyed in the 1991 Persian
Gulf War. But Oakley said the intelligence on what Iraq possessed before
the inspections, and what may survive today, is spotty at best.
- Tenet was at pains to describe Iraq's strategic position as weakened as
a result of an international trade embargo and U.S. military containment
of Iraq.
- Saddam, Tenet said, ``is trying to exploit the diplomatic situation to
his benefit. At the end of the day, he's a desperate man in terrible shape.
... We have this man in a box.''
- The remark prompted Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., to quip that Tenet was now
qualified to be secretary of defense. It was a joking reference to the anger
then-CIA Director John Deutch aroused within the Clinton administration when
he testified in 1996 that Iraq had come out ahead in its most recent brush
with the United States. Deutch soon found himself out of the running to become
defense secretary.
- Despite Tenet's assurances that Saddam remains thoroughly contained, Oakley
and Hughes said he retains enough freedom of action to repeatedly provoke
Washington.
- ``It is Saddam who keeps pushing the envelope to see what he can get away
with,'' Oakley said.
- ``But we react to it,'' interjected Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the committee
chairman.
- ``Well, of course we do,'' Oakley said.
- Hughes struck a similar theme.
- ``Saddam Hussein has the capability to generate a crisis and there's not
much we can do about that now except to respond to the crisis,'' Hughes said.
``We probably are faced with some kind of decision point in the next few
months where we have to decide what we want to do with Iraq into the future.''
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 22:20:42 -0500
To: cryptography@c2.net
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
The nation's top cops aren't happy about Americans using data-scrambling
software to shield their correspondence from prying eyes. Today the deputy
director of the FBI told the Senate Intelligence committee that encryption
"is a critical problem" that Congress needs to solve -- presumably by banning
email and other programs that his G-men can't crack.
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1385,00.html
Bob Bryant warned the committee that "the widespread use of robust non-key
recovery encryption will ultimately devastate our ability to fight crime
and prevent terrorism."
Which is precisely what Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb) claims he's concerned about.
He said "if we want to make the American people continue to feel safe," the
National Security Agency and the FBI "have to be able to somehow deal with
not just the complexity of signals, but increasingly encrypted signals that
are impossible for us to break." Not surprisingly, the question of why the
FBI and NSA should have the ability to listen in on any conversation was
left unasked.
--By Declan McCullagh/Washington (declan@well.com)
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