CIA Screws Up, Gets Raise

by David Corn

Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, who chairs the Appropriations Committee, Rep. Porter Goss, a Florida Republican who runs the House Intelligence Committee, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, a Republican who oversees the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Democrat who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, each shouted for more funds for the spies. Former CIA chief Robert Gates cited budget cuts at the CIA as the culprit in the embassy attack.

Usually when a government agency commits an idiotic error, Congress threatens its budget and call for the heads of those responsible for the foul-up. But not when the CIA is concerned. As far as the public knows, no one has been disciplined for the bombing that killed Chinese bystanders and sparked a flare-up in China-U.S. relations -- no one at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, which provided the outdated maps; no one at the CIA, where analysts misidentified the target. (And neither, it seems, has anyone been called to task for an earlier mistake: NATO bombed a civilian convoy of refugees and initially claimed it possessed information showing that the Serbs had committed the attack.)

But as with many other episodes of CIA bumbling -- such as the Aldrich Ames spy case -- the agency and its defenders are reluctant to punish incompetence. In this instance, the CIA is to be rewarded with more cash.

Prior to the Chinese embassy fiasco, the Clinton administration had asked for an increase of 9 percent in the intelligence budget. And a few weeks ago, the House Intelligence Committee added less than 1 percent to that request. As an Associated Press report noted, at that time Goss said he was satisfied with the level of intelligence spending. Yet after the embassy bombing, Goss groused about the "under-investment in our intelligence capabilities."

The CIA's assets on Capitol Hill quickly came to the agency's rescue following the embassy attack. But will they accept the agency's conclusions on Chinese nuclear espionage? On April 21, the agency released the key findings of a damage assessment conducted jointly by the CIA, the Pentagon, the Energy Dept., the FBI, the National Security Agency and other intelligence outfits and reviewed by an outside panel of weapons and national security experts. The study was produced in response to a recommendation of the Cox Committee, which had probed Chinese attempts to steal U.S. nuclear secrets. In recent weeks, Hill Republicans, including Sen. Shelby, have been yelping about Chinese attempts to penetrate U.S. nuclear research labs. Columnist William Safire and others have declared their alarm and accused the Clinton administration of doing little to thwart such thievery while pocketing campaign money that originated in China.

The independently reviewed CIA assessment takes a more measured view. Sure, it says, Beijing has tried to swipe classified nuclear weapons information and that information probably helped China accelerate its weapons development program. But, it adds, "China's technical advances have been made on the basis of classified and unclassified information derived from espionage, contact with U.S. and other countries' scientists, conferences and publications, unauthorized media disclosures, declassified U.S. weapons information, and Chinese indigenous development. The relative contribution of each cannot be determined." That is, no one knows if Chinese espionage has made any difference.

The assessment also notes that the aim of the Chinese nuclear program is to "maintain a second strike capability." That means Beijing wants to be able to withstand a nuclear attack and then strike back, not to launch first. To those Republicans who fret about a Chinese nuclear attack and call for a ballistic missile defense, the report contains reassuring information: "Significant deficiencies remain in the Chinese weapon program... To date, the aggressive Chinese collection effort has not resulted in any apparent modernization of their deployed strategic force or any new nuclear weapons deployment." The damage assessment reports that even though China has the technical capability to develop multiple warhead nuclear missiles for its largest ballistic missiles, it has not done so.

Perhaps the CIA and the outside experts are blowing smoke to cover up the conspiracy in which Clinton pockets Chinese campaign cash and allows Beijing's agents to rifle top-secret filing cabinets. But, taken at face value, this report counters the Chinese espionage hysteria. If the CIA hawks are going to throw taxpayer dollars at the spies, then they at least ought to pay attention to the agency's conclusions.