28 January 1998
(CIA, DIA, FBI, and State Department on Iraq, terrorism) (1240) By Susan Ellis USIA Staff Writer Washington -- The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Lieutenant General Patrick Hughes, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence January 28 that in his view the United States will probably be "faced with some kind of decision point...in the next few weeks or months where we have to decide what to do with Iraq in the future." Hughes told questioners that while the U.S. decision on Iraq is a policy issue, "from a military and from an intelligence standpoint, this is the context we're now in; Saddam Hussein has the capability to generate a crisis and there's not much we can do about that right now except respond to the crisis." Asked about the immediate danger from Iraq to neighboring Arab countries and to the United States, Hughes said it is a "narrow band of danger." He continued: "The unfettered or continued development of weapons of mass destruction is a critical issue for all of us and certainly for the surrounding nations. My personal belief is that he (Saddam Hussein) has somehow protected the essential knowledge and some few capabilities that he still has at his command" in order to use them at some later time, "and that is why he is being so difficult with us now: to protect that core capability he has managed to conceal from us. But much of what he had has been taken or destroyed by us, and that's very appropriate. And the countries that surround Iraq know that and, I believe, appreciate it on a national level." The Senate hearing, focusing on current and projected national security threats, also heard from Director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet; FBI Deputy Director Robert Bryant; and Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research Phyllis Oakley. In response to a question on the UNSCOM inspections in Iraq, Oakley said that "what the inspections have enabled people to do is to find out a lot of information, but we also know that that information is incomplete. And so the inspections that continue help us fill in those gaps of our knowledge." Oakley said the inspections also "prevent further development from going forward." She said the inspectors have put seals of tape on various machines and facilities "and so they know when they go back to inspect that people have not been in those places because the seals have not been broken." She said she would get into more detail during a closed intelligence committee hearing in the afternoon. CIA Director George Tenet, asked to assess the economic threat to national security with respect to the Asian nations' financial crises, said that while he is no economist, "from a political stability perspective, these countries are now being asked to do rather dramatic things internally that will have political consequences and consequences for their stability. "All of that matters a great deal to us," he continued. "We have been deeply engaged here. We see them as strategic partners. They have been part of an emerging market boom. They believe they have been playing by the rules and all of this capital has been infused into their countries and they've been great consumers. Now they see their way of life start to erode on them. And the political turbulence it creates as they implement austerity measures as they're asked to clamp down, have consequences for how they view us; what the long-term engagement of the U.S. is in the region, and quite candidly what the long-term influence of the Chinese may be in taking advantage of this crisis." He said China is "a big, stable power with lots of hard currency reserves, so those are the things that we have to watch. I don't want to opine on how it all turns out but I think engagement on the part of the United States in this region is absolutely critical for our long-term security interests. So while people are focusing on Wall Street's reactions and interest rates and bond trading, we have from a geopolitical perspective invested a lot here, and we have to help these countries work through this." In discussing the need for new encryption legislation because of the easy access to information in the computer age, FBI Deputy Director Robert Bryant expressed concern that such legislation could hamper criminal investigations. "The law enforcement community in particular wants to be able to get a court order to do electronic surveillance or do a search and be able to get into encrypted areas such as telephone conversations or computers and do what we do now." He said the FBI's concern is that there may come a time "when we can't use investigative tools that are critical to national security and to law enforcement...." "I don't want to tell some father that we've lost a child because we couldn't break (into) the telephone conversation or get to the storage on the disk or something like that....all we want are the authorities that we have now." Senator John Glenn made the point that there are "new dimensions" to the intelligence gathering and security problems faced by the United States and other nations in light of new, small weapons. "Over the past few years...15 or 20 years ago -- that recently -- we've seen the availability of technology go to nations that are tiny little nations in the big scheme of things, or terrorist groups or small groups, where these groups can have a firepower available to them or a mass destruction capability available to them that was only available to major nations in times past. In other words, they carry a big stick now. And this is tough to keep up with." He particularly singled out biological weapons (BW) "because we can keep up with satellites and everything else. We keep up with what's going on with regard to the huge industrial complex necessary for nuclear weapons." Nuclear weapons, even small ones, need a certain degree of sophistication and knowledge and development capability to manufacture, Glenn stressed. Some terrorist group, he said, "might have a BW plant that any graduate chemist can set up." He noted that a biological weapon could be "brought in by a suitcase not 'monitorable' going through an airport...then sprayed out the back of a cab driving around Wall Street in New York....You'd probably have the same number of people die as if you'd nuked the place." Hughes said that, from a defense standpoint, the new threats from smaller, deadly biological weapons are understood and the intelligence agencies "have been working on them for some time." But, he said, new defensive mechanisms are called for to protect "our civil infrastructure and our attendant military infrastructure against...organized or nation-state or sub-group sponsored intrusion." In regard to weapons of mass destruction, Hughes continued, "New sensor technology is vital. We have to be able to sense the presence of these kinds of weapons in proximity to not only our military forces but our civilian infrastructure: ports, airfields and cities. And that kind of sensor technology is being developed, but there are some technical hurdles to it right now, and we need to proceed with that in my view on a national basis."