Clinton's Economic Espionage Led to Intelligence Failure Charles R. Smith
Friday, April 16, 2004
The recent 9/11 Commission hearings demonstrated that America failed. The hearings allowed the current and former top officials of the Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA to assert that they were underfunded and hindered by legal red tape.
While such claims may be true, it is a fact that the Clinton administration revamped the missions of the FBI and CIA following the fall of the Soviet Union, directing large segments of our national intelligence apparatus toward conducting commercial espionage.
In short, President Clinton assigned the CIA, NSA and FBI to help U.S. corporations win foreign contracts. Clinton diverted our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to "commercial" espionage when he classified some economic programs to be of national security.
For example, the National Security Agency (NSA) gathers signal intelligence. During the Clinton years, NSA agents staged operations that monitored Japanese communications during auto trade talks, and French communications during talks on world trade.
In 1994, Clinton CIA Director John Deutch revealed a highly successful operation that intercepted the phone conversations of a Saudi prince taking bribe money during a bidding war between Airbus and Boeing. The taped conversation was released to the Saudi government and Boeing won the billion-dollar airliner contract.
Where was the CIA before 9/11? Clearly, helping Boeing win a big contract in Saudi Arabia was more important than checking the connections between Osama bin Laden and Riyadh.
FBI at Economic Meeting
The Clinton administration also directed the FBI to conduct economic espionage on U.S. soil. The redirection of law enforcement assets led to allegations that the FBI used prostitutes for commercial espionage in 1993.
The allegations first surfaced in Insight magazine when investigative journalist Tim Maier wrote that underage male and female prostitutes were being used to obtain intelligence information from foreign diplomats during the December 1993 Asia Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) in Seattle.
In 1998, this reporter filed a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request seeking all information on the use of prostitutes as agents during the 1993 APEC conference. In response, the FBI found 250 pages of material.
According to the FBI, only 13 pages of the "SECRET" and "TOP SECRET" documentation could be released. Some of the documents not released by the FBI "originated with another Government agency." Government censors heavily blacked out many of the secret documents returned by the FBI.
One such FBI "SECRET" document, dated November 1993, contains a partially blacked-out passage noting that the FBI needed to gather surveillance data "in ample time for the information to be disseminated to Secret Service and Department of State."
Another secret November 1993 document, marked from "DIRECTOR FBI" to "FBI SEATTLE," directs the FBI office in Washington state to pay particular attention to a certain foreign "delegation" whose identity remains blacked out as secret.
According to the heavily classified document, the "referenced communication provided information from a sensitive and reliable WF source."
Where was the FBI before 9/11? Obviously, following foreign diplomats and obtaining data from "WF" sources for economic espionage was a higher priority in the agency than a terrorist attack on America.
NSA Corporate Work
The Clinton administration assigned U.S. intelligence assets to help U.S. firms win contracts. For example, there is the case of Richard C. Barth, former NSC Director of Nonproliferation and Export Controls under Bill Clinton.
Richard Barth left the Clinton White House to work for Motorola as Assistant Director for International Trade Relations in 1993. He joined an impressive crew of former Clinton administration officials that left government work for greener pastures at Motorola.
In 1994, Barth used his White House and government contacts inside the Clinton administration to win approval for Motorola to sell $100 million worth of secure radios to the Chinese People's Armed Police (PAP).
The proposed sale was a touchy subject with the State Department since the PAP is known for its liberal policy of executing Chinese dissidents, cutting them up and selling their body parts on the open market. Thus, Barth decided to write a note to the State Department to get his approval.
"This is to request that your office initiate action to obtain a waiver from requirement for individual export license notifications to Congress for wireless mobile communications systems containing encryption for China. Such a waiver was issued by the President in September of this year for civilian satellite systems and encrypted products for use by American firms operating in China," wrote Barth in a fax memo sent to the State Department and the White House.
"European firms have for a number of months been able to market and sell encryption in China as a result of a decision taken by the UK intelligence agency, GCHQ," wrote Barth.
"I understand that our National Security Agency is aware of this change in GCHQ's position and would support our request for a change in US requirements for export licenses for China. The NSA has agreed that there should be a 'level playing field' in regard to China."
Barth, who no longer worked at the White House, obtained this data from the NSA for his company. I find it interesting indeed that an agency known for keeping its mouth shut would spill its guts to an ex-NSC member then employed in the commercial sector.
How did Mr. Barth know British GCHQ had changed its position? Who in the NSA told him there should be a "level playing field" for exports to China?
Where was the NSA before 9/11? The NSA refused to comment on the help it gave Motorola. Dr. Barth also declined to be interviewed.
Talk Radio Terrorism
The fact remains that the Clinton administration did not consider foreign terrorist groups to be a real threat to national security.
President Clinton declared that domestic terrorism was the No. 1 threat following the Oklahoma City bombing. Clinton went so far as to blame talk radio for the attack.
During her recent testimony before the 9/11 Commission, former Attorney General Janet Reno stuck to this same line, asserting that the threat from domestic terror was still very real. This flies in the face of al-Qaida's history and the mounting evidence that now links the Oklahoma City bombing to Iraq.
Where was Janet Reno before 9/11? Unfortunately, for America and the world, Janet Reno demonstrated her priorities in U.S. national security when she sent machine-gun-armed agents to seize a Cuban child refugee in Miami instead of pursuing Al-Qaida agents around the globe.
Ms. Reno spent more time, money and effort hunting down wheelchair violations in North Carolina than finding Osama bin Laden.
Crippled Military
Law enforcement and intelligence agencies were not the only U.S. government entities crippled by Clinton policies. The U.S. Air Force was unable to respond to the 9/11 disaster because it was operating on the Clinton budget, which cut domestic air defense to zero.
The only two aircraft able to defend Washington were two D.C. National Guard F-16 fighters. Neither plane was armed with missiles because there was no money to buy them. Both planes carried only a few hundred "training" rounds of lead ammunition, not nearly enough to bring down a hijacked airliner.
The two Guard pilots openly complained after the mission that the only way they could have stopped an attack was to make a suicide dive into the airliner.
Where was the U.S.A.F. before 9/11? The planes inside the U.S. were grounded without fuel, pilots or armament. Meanwhile, 500 American combat planes were flying over Iraq in an unsuccessful effort by U.N. diplomats and Clinton bureaucrats to contain Saddam Hussein.
9/11 Clinton Legacies
The current spin that George W. Bush "knew" - a line taken directly from an recent advertisement by the leftist group MoveOn.org - is so far out of bounds as to be laughable.
Osama never sent any message directing the exact time and place of an attack. The 9/11 plotters were finished with their operation before Bush took office; it was only a matter of final execution.
America was blind to the threat because the Clinton administration directed our eyes, ears and brains toward economic spying for corporate buddies. Clinton denied our armed forces the budget to defend America and spent our intelligence assets on foolish enterprises.
While Nero worried over the stained dress and his "legacy," the fuse was burning.