Vernon Loeb

Washington Post reporter Vernon Loeb was online. Loeb covers national security issues, writes a biweekly column exclusively for the Web. His newspaper column, Back Channels, is also carried by this Web site.

Read the transcript below.

Vernon Loeb: Welcome all with an interest in U.S. intelligence. It is an interestng time, indeed. The FBI continues probing Chinese espionage in the nation's nuclear complex, a Navy man has just been arrested for espionage, a U.S. "diplomat" is soon to be expelled from Russia for alleged spying, and Seymour Hersh has written a fascinating piece in the New Yorker on the technological challenges faced by the NSA. Congress also just recently passed the Fiscal 2000 Intelligence Authorization Act, which contained an unsually high number of unclassified nuggets, among them: a requirement that the NSA submit a report on its legal standards for intercepting electronic communications; a prohibition on diplomatic intelligence support teams; a new commission to look at the National Reconnaissance Office;a provision requiring the CIA to report on the Kosovo Liberation Army, and a requirement that the CIA send Congress a report on its activites in Chile in the 1970s.
Are there questions about any of these topics, or anything else?

Erie, PA: How do you judge the veracity of Seymour Hersh's article on the NSA in the New Yorker?

Vernon Loeb: It's always tough with the NSA, because it's true capabilities are so highly classified. But Hersh's thesis seems on the money: That the NSA is now threatened by the very communications and computer technology it helped create, and that it remains to be seen how effective this vast bureaucracy will be in responding to challenges posed by the growing use of fiber optic cables and more and more powerful encryption technology.

Washington, DC: MASINT? Many senior intelligence officials have been saying publicly that "Measurement & Signature Intelligence" is or soon will be the most important INT, more useful than HUMINT, SIGINT or IMINT. Do you agree? Why? What does MASINT do?

Vernon Loeb: MASINT tracks and identifies targets by identifying radar, radio frequencies, nuclear radiation and infrared signals, among others. I don't know whether it will soon be the most important INT or not. Since it is involved in precision guided munitions targeting, indication and warning, arms control and chem-bio monitoring, there are obviously situations where it probably would be the most important form of intelligence one could collect. On the other hand, there will always be situations in which HUMINT would be most important, and situation in which SIGINT would be most important.

Washington, DC: Dear Vernon,

I'm a journalist who researches Nazi war crimes issues using the FOIA so I was interested in your 11-19 column noting a "longer wait" for declassification.

Under the current situation with delays -I have an FBI file pending since 1987- and a recent development of agencies withholding everything under "privacy" or "properly classified" my question is, how can these agencies justify withholding 50 year old records that are historically invaluable pertaining to the Nazi era?

And why does Congress let them get away with it?

Some recent examples:
-CIA withheld entirely a 40's document about Degussa under "national security"--interesting considering Degussa was part of IG Farben--thefolks that brought us Zyklon B gas, and the document was dated at the time Degussa folks were on trial in the Nuremberg I.G. Farben case;
-Army Intelligence has suddenly decided after 10 years of getting their records, to black out ALL names of their records, including those of Nazi war criminals, russian military personnel, and the names of the Army CIC agents writing these memos in files pertaining to rocket work at Nordhausen after the war--where Wernher von Braun and his NASA colleagues worked building V-2 rockets using slave labor.
-nearly all records generated by the Alsos Mission that went to Germany to see if Germany had the A-bomb, especially withholding records pertaining to Nazi biological and chemical warfare activities.

Would appreciate your thoughts.

Linda

Vernon Loeb: You raise an excellent question, and provide many illuminating examples to support your contention that agencies are abusing both the letter and the spirit of the FOIA law. I certainly agree. While President Clinton likes to portray himself as the declassification president, having issued an executive order four years ago requiring the automatic declassification of records older than 25 years, his administration hasn't seemed willing to force executive agencies to comply. Some have. Many haven't. And since there is no independent board outside the agencies to consider appeals of FOIA denials, people like you have no recourse except the courts, which tend to side with the agencies, particularly when national security is involved. As for how Congress let's the agencies get away with this, it's simple: Congress has shown itself to be against declassification, adding several recent provisions that will do nothing but slow down Clinton's program of automatic declassification. What people like you need more than anything else, in my opinion, is a president who makes sure the agencies under his control behave as though declassification is more than just something they can do in their spare tie, if they feel like it.

Washington, DC: My read of that Russia spy case is that it's just tit for tat. What do you think is the likely outcome?

washingtonpost.com: For more information about the case, you can read this story from The Post.

Vernon Loeb: I'm not so sure. Tit-for-tat for what? Our arresting the alleged Navy spy? U.S. officials say there is no linkage. I'm more inclined to see the detention of the U.S. "diplomat" in Moscow as a campaign ploy, than a tit-for-tat move. But who knows. You may be right. In any event, I doubt we'll hear much more at all about the Russia case. It's probably not much more than an agency case officer doing her job, getting caught_which happens, after all_and getting sent home.

Detroit Michigan: Is China the greatest threat to the United States at this time?

Vernon Loeb: There are certainly those who argue that it is, and China certainly does a lot of things on the world stage that are troubling_proliferating weapons, stealing technology, bullying Taiwan, violating human rights all come to mind. On the other hand, I believe there's something to the belief that we can create the relationship we want with China, and if we want to see China as our greatest threat, we can certainly make it that, by playing on China's insecurities. I guess I come down where the past six U.S. presidents have come down_on the side of constructive engagement.

Arlington, VA: What is the function of DIA? and has it's role changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union?

Vernon Loeb: DIA primarily exists to study and gather intelligence on our foreign military adversaries. I don't think its primary mission has changed since the end of the Cold War, but_like all other intelligence agencies_it's targets have proliferated. No longer does it spend most of its time watching and studying the former Soviet Union. Now it's got to worry equally about Iran, Iraq, China, Yugoslavia, North Korea, etc. The list goes on and on.

washingtonpost.com: We're about half-way through our live discussion with The Post's Vernon Loeb. Please continue to submit questions.

McLean, VA: By many accounts Iraq is not really a threat to the U.S. anymore, but we continue to encourage sanctions against the Iraqis. Why is that? Is Iraq still a threat to our national security and interests?

Vernon Loeb: Good question. I don't think Iraq is a threat to U.S. national interests right now. I don't even think Iraq is a threat to its neighbors right now. The sanctions have ground its economy_and its society_into dust. I suppose the reasoning behind on-going sanctions is that as long as Saddam is around, Iraq could always become a threat quite rapidly. And Saddam is such a bad guy that it's hard to argue with that. The oil-for-food program has certainly been effective in keeping most of Iraq's oil wealth from Saddam. But, like you, I am certainly troubled by reports of horribly inflated mortality rates in Iraq since the end of the Gulf War, due to sanctions. The bottom line: the U.S. government remains adamantly opposed to lifting sanctions with Saddam in power.

Bowie, Maryland: Is the status of our armed forces as bad as the stories we read (e.g., 2 of 10 divisions not battle ready)?

washingtonpost.com: What are the national security implications?

Vernon Loeb: I do not believe so. Those two divisions were not battle ready because they had some of their units overseas on peacekeeping missions, which_in the absence of two looming regional wars_seems appropiate. The United States has the world's largest and most skilled military by far. The number two country is a distant, distant second. We may have "readiness" problems, when measured by some absolute standards. But keep in mind: The U.S. spends $267 billion a year on defense. China spends, at most, $50 billion. Russia spends $4 billion.

Arlington, VA: Has their been a National Intelligence Estimate done on North Korea's military capabilities and it's intentions toward the South? Do we believe, for example that a war is inevitable at some point?

Vernon Loeb: I'm sure there has been a recent NIE on North Korea. While I wasn't privy to it, I don't believe we consider a war inevitable. Probably possible, but not likely, is more like it. In fact, a senior CIA official told me yesterday that he had commissioned an analysis on the likelihood of Korean unification sometime in the next 20 or 25 years.

London, England: Hi Vernon

From what I read, the US and the UK have traditionally worked very closely together on international intelligence. Who do you think is the US's most reliable ally these days? And maybe, venture on the US's most unreliable??

Also.. how much of a threat to you think US intelligence places on it's own home grown militia groups, terrorists, et al - particularly with the 2000 date approaching?

Vernon Loeb: I would quarrel with anyone who says the UK remains the US's closest intelligence ally. From what I can tell, intelligence relations between the two remain extremely close_probably as close as they could be between two sovereign nations. As for the U.S.'s most unreliable allies, I would nominate_and I'm really just guessing here_Pakistan and maybe Egypt, given all the recent tension over the EgyptAir crash. And, of course, there's always the French.

Washington, DC: What was the classification level of the material that the Naval officer is accused of giving to the Russians? TS? TS-SCI?

Vernon Loeb: Good question. I don't know. But I would guess, if the information had to do with submarine intercepts, that it was beyond TS-SCI into some exotic codeword.

Vernon Loeb: Thanks all. The next time we do this, it will be Jan. 5, 1900, strike that, Jan. 5, 2000, and we'll be able to talk about how successful everyone's Y2K remediation efforts really were. Have a great holiday season.

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