Intelligence pros consider Clinton a "security risk," and don't give him classified material

By DOUG THOMPSON Capitol Hill Blue

[Associated Press Writer H. Josef Hubert contributed to this report]

Many career intelligence officers consider President Clinton and the White House a security risk and withhold sensitive information whenever possible to prevent it falling into enemy hands, Capitol Hill Blue has learned.

Often, information is also withheld from Clinton appointees at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Justice and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), veteran intelligence operatives say.

"The White House is not secure when it comes to matters of national security," says one recently-retired intelligence analyst. "Career operatives realize this and place the security of their country above politics."

Revelations over the weekend that a Taiwanese-born scientist at Los Alamos National Labs in New Mexico has been under investigation for the last three years for passing secrets to Communist China is but one example of the lax security, analysts say.

Capitol Hill Blue has spoken to a half-dozen current and former intelligence operatives who agreed to speak on condition that their identities be protected.

They tell a story of poor morale at both the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA), where political infighting threatens national security.

The White House, they say, has little use for career professionals, preferring to put political hacks into high-security positions.

"Intelligence is not something that a political appointee can learn quickly and there is always a question of his loyalty to the elected official who put him in his job," one current career operative says. "You have to depend on the career professional to put all this into perspective."

But the White House ignores the warnings of intelligence professionals and opts to listen to political appointees put into place by the administration.

Capitol Hill Blue has obtained a 1996 memo written by White House Counsel Charles Ruff advising Clinton to ignore warnings from intelligence professionals about the transfer of sensitive technology to China and listen instead to the Presidential appointees.

"The department had every opportunity to weigh in against the waiver at the highest levels and elected not to do so,'' Ruff wrote.

"This is typical," one retired operative says. "If you don't get an analysis that supports your position from the pro you turn to the political appointee who will tell you anything you want to hear."

Because of this, career intelligence professionals decided among themselves to withhold, whenever possible, classified information from the White House.

"We've learned in the China debacle that U.S. secrets are for sale to the highest campaign contributor," one retired intelligence officer said. "So it helps to make sure that the information that is passed on is never complete. It's something you have to do if you love your country."

Unlike many federal agencies where whistleblower laws protect career professionals who come forward, career intelligence officers risk violating the National Security Act if they go public with their concerns.

"You can't go public. It's not allowed," says another career officer. "So you do what you can. I'll be damned if I give the Clinton administration information that will hurt our country. I don't trust the man. None of us do."

Richard Banff, a retired intelligence operative who now runs his own security firm, says a career intelligence officer would lose a security clearance if he or she were caught in an affair like the one between the President and Monica Lewinsky.

"Sexual weakness is a red flag when conducting a background investigation," Banff says. "Anyone with Clinton's background would have been denied a security clearance in the first place."

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers are questioning security at US nuclear weapons laboratories and whether Clinton administration efforts to boost ties with China delayed a long-standing espionage investigation at one of the research facilities.

But Vice President Al Gore led a counterattack Tuesday, defending the administration's policies toward China and its investigation of a nuclear weapons espionage case that he said the administration inherited from the 1980s.

``Keep in mind that happened in the previous administration,'' Gore said in an interview on CNN's Late Edition program. He said ``law enforcement agencies pressed it and pursued it aggressively with our full support'' once the concerns were raised in 1995.

However, Gore and other administration officials left unanswered why the FBI investigation continued for nearly three years before action was taken this week.

National security adviser Sandy Berger, traveling with President Clinton in Central America, said Tuesday night: ``I reject the notion there was any dragging of feet.''

The growing national security controversy erupted after the Energy Department fired a Chinese-American computer scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he had been under FBI investigation since 1996.

The scientist, Wen Ho Lee, quickly went into hiding. He has not been charged with a crime, although federal officials said the FBI investigation was continuing.

But the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and other lawmakers on Tuesday questioned why the investigation had taken so long before any action was taken.

``That makes no sense, especially where he'd been suspected of espionage and they would keep letting him work there, (with) ... all the security clearances,'' Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the Intelligence panel's chairman, said in an interview.

Shelby said his committee would question Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and FBI Director Louis Freeh at a closed-door hearing next week about the delay and whether the administration downplayed the incident when it first surfaced.

Richardson, in a telephone interview Tuesday night, defended the investigation as ``extremely thorough and vigorous'' and said he had no choice but to wait before taking action against the scientist.

``The moment the FBI gave me the green light to terminate this individual, I did,'' said Richardson. He said he had been advised not to pursue the dismissal until ``a thorough investigation and questioning took place.''

A native of Taiwan, Lee, whom associates describe as being in his 50s, had worked at the prestigious weapons research laboratory in New Mexico for about 20 years. According to U.S. officials, he became a prime suspect of an espionage investigation as early as 1996.

The investigation was triggered by concerns by U.S. intelligence agents that China in the 1980s had obtained top secret information on nuclear warhead technology that allowed the Chinese to develop miniaturized nuclear warheads so that more than one warhead coul

With the administration under sharp attack from congressional Republicans, Gore sought to contain the damage and also defend the administration's broader efforts to work with China.

``China is the most populous country in the world. Its economy is growing and its role in the world is going to continue to grow whether we want that or not,'' Gore said. ``And so, obviously, having a relationship with them within which we can try to affect their behavior ... (is) in our best interest. We do that without compromising our interests in any way.''

Clinton issued a presidential directive in February 1998 ordering stepped up security at the weapons labs and there hasn't been any allegations of ``leakage of technology'' since those safeguards were imposed, said a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Richardson said ``there's no evidence of any more (espionage) cases'' at the weapons labs and that counterintelligence activities had been increased to ferret out any problems.

``We believe with the measures in place and the counterintelligence presence that we have at the labs now, the polygraphs, the increased scrutiny ... we believe the problem is addressed,'' Richardson insisted in the AP interview.

The flap over China's alleged theft of nuclear weapons secrets and questions about the speed of the investigation fueled what already had been long-standing criticism from Republican lawmakers about U.S. technology transfers to China. GOP-led congressional committees in 1997 also investigated but were unable to prove whether China had tried to buy influence in the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign.

Several foreign-born business owners, including some with connections to China, have been charged as part of the Justice Department's investigation into campaign finance abuses.

A senior administration official, traveling with Clinton in Latin America, acknowledged that it was clear before 1998 that the weapons labs ``were enormously porous.'' He said other countries, not just China, ``had access that was troublesome'' because scientists from around the world did nuclear work at the facilities.

--Associated Press Writer H. Josef Hubert contributed to this report