02 April 2007
Counterintelligence Official Cites Ongoing Need for Vigilance
Mission manager Brenner speaks to American Bar Association
Washington –- Although the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, the security threat espionage poses to the United States continues, says a senior counterintelligence official with the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (DNI).
"Espionage did not go away with the end of the Cold War," Joel Brenner, mission manager for counterintelligence in DNI's Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, told members of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security March 29. "It is older than Joshua’s reconnoitering of the Promised Land, and it will be with us forever." Countering it is not getting easier, he added.
Counterintelligence focuses on identifying and managing foreign intelligence threats, Brenner said. Such threats include actions by foreign intelligence services as well as nongovernment groups, like the terrorist group al-Qaida, who are trying to penetrate U.S. secrets and assets. Brenner said his office does not mount operations, but rather develops strategy while coordinating the disparate counterintelligence elements of the federal government.
SIGNIFICANT ESPIONAGE CASES
"There are now 140 foreign intelligence services that try to penetrate the United States or U.S. organizations abroad, and for many of them, we are their Number 1 target," he said. Brenner also noted that some U.S. citizens have chosen to provide sensitive information to foreign intelligence services, thereby compromising their own country's national security.
A significant example was the case of senior FBI Special Agent Robert Hanssen, who spied for the Soviet Union and then the Russians for nearly two decades, Brenner said. Hanssen provided information "they could have used to defeat us decisively if war had broken out," he said.
In a similar case, the FBI arrested CIA case officer Aldrich Ames in February 1994 on espionage charges for selling vital U.S. secrets to the Russians since 1985, according to the FBI. He conducted espionage in duty stations both abroad in Rome, Italy, and in the United States.
"Aldrich Ames compromised hundreds of CIA, [Defense Department] and FBI human agent operations," Brenner said. "Because of what he did, virtually our entire network against the Soviets was wiped out -– imprisoned or killed."
A more recent security threat involves a Chinese-American engineer, Chi Mak, who is standing trial in California for allegedly revealing highly classified U.S. naval information to the Chinese government, according to Brenner. Mak worked as a contractor on the U.S. Navy’s quiet electric drive, technology used to suppress the electronic signature emitted by U.S. submarines and surface warships, and has admitted to passing information to China since 1983. Among the technologies he has compromised is the power distribution technology for the Aegis cruiser's radar system, Brenner said.
This intelligence breach is significant because it "shortens by years the technological advantage of the U.S. Navy. It degrades the Navy's deterrent capability in the Taiwan Strait," he said. "From a purely fiscal point of view, it also means the Chinese are leveraging the American R & D [research and development] budget ... in support of their own war-fighting capability."
Preventing penetrations like these, and "ferreting them out early when we can't prevent them," is part of what counterintelligence agencies do, according to Brenner.
"When our adversaries succeed in penetrating us, policymakers, the Congress and the American people lose confidence in the intelligence we ourselves produce. And when that confidence is lost, regaining it is difficult. Meanwhile, our security is at risk and we bleed technology, both civilian and military."
This "is the world we live in and why you should care about our ability to counter this kind of intelligence onslaught," he told the ABA lawyers.
The full text (PDF, 21KB) of Brenner's remarks is available on the DNI Web site.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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