Pentagon Spokesman's Regular Tuesday Briefing

DoD News Briefing



Tuesday, September 19, 2000 1:30 p.m. EDT

Presenter: Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, DASD PA



Q: I'd like to get straight on the time line of former Deputy
Secretary Deutch and his use of his home computer for classified
information from the Pentagon as distinguished from that he put on his
home computer from the CIA. According to congressional documents, the
CIA notified the Pentagon in June of '98 that there was a problem with
Deutch putting his secrets from the Pentagon on his home computer. And
I understand that Secretary Cohen wasn't aware of it, or didn't
initiate any action till February of 2000. Why the big gap, and when
did the IG formally launch an investigation, and were any of this
stuff that Deutch put on his home computer from the Pentagon
penetrable? In other words, could a bad guy get into his system and
extract secrets?


Quigley: There were a couple of memos from June and July of 1998 where
the CIA had indicated to us -- they had asked for our assistance at
that point in their ongoing investigation, to have -- assist in any
sort of interaction between Dr. Deutch's use of computers, personal
computers while he was the director of Central Intelligence, and if
there was an overlap during any of his time while he was
undersecretary or deputy secretary here at DOD. During those initial
conversations in June and July of 1998, we were apprised that at some
point in time, when CIA was completed with its IG investigation, we
would probably want to do a damage assessment of our own, based on --


Q: (inaudible) -- who's telling you that at this point?



Quigley: This is the CIA IG.



Q: Telling you -- suggesting that you do your damage assessment?



Quigley: Right. Suggesting that when they provide us the findings of
their investigation that we will probably want to do a damage
assessment of our own, based on the findings that they had gotten to
date.


Time has passed now, and we received the full-blown findings of the
CIA IG in February of this year, along with the journal that had been
kept, a running journal, by Dr. Deutch, over a period of time, and
that provided us an opportunity then to take a look in a very
comprehensive way at what CIA's investigators had been working so hard
on for this, roughly, year and a half.


When Secretary Cohen received that information in February of this
year, the results of the CIA investigation, he immediately turned
around and tasked our own people here within DOD to take further
action, and that takes two parts. On the one hand, he tasked our IG to
take a look at the physical handling of the computers -- the hard
drives, the floppy drives, the hardware, if you will -- on which Dr.
Deutch would have used information -- processed e-mails, done work,
what have you; track them down, try to find out where they had been,
how they had moved, over time. On this side, he had tasked then our
assistant secretary for Command, Control, Communication and
Intelligence to take a look at the products that would have been on
that hardware -- the actual information they contained.


And what did we find? Again, basing -- with a running start from the
very professional work being done by the CIA's investigation -- what
did we find? Do we have a sense of possible compromise? If so, what
would be the damage assessment from that compromise? -- and then
tasked, further, the general counsel to bring both parts of that
effort together and, ultimately, to forward it to him, to Secretary
Cohen, when both parts of the work had been completed.


That is where we are today. We're getting closer to completion,
although I don't have a date certain to give you. But the general
counsel is in the process of pulling together both of those parts and
will then forward it up to Secretary Cohen.


Q: Well, let me just follow on that. The red flag was waved by the CIA
in June of '98, and there was no action for 18 months. What -- that
seems, for a place that puts out memos every day about breaches of
security, that seems to me that there was a reluctance on the part of
the IG to investigate this, or a reluctance on the part of the top
executives of the Defense Department. How can you go from a warning in
June of '98 to doing nothing until February of 2000?


Quigley: We saw very little value of reinventing the wheel. The CIA
had already started down this road, had asked for our assistance to
provide them information that was relevant to their investigation,
from DOD records and files. Rather than largely duplicating their
effort, we felt that the best course of action was to let that
professional investigation proceed, like I say. And eventually we
received the comprehensive package in February of this year and
immediately Secretary Cohen turned that around and took the actions
that I just described.


Q: Was there any reluctance by the IG, or acting IG, Mancuso or Deputy
Secretary Hamre to investigate one of its own after the CIA had
sounded its warning?


Quigley: No. I think the record does not support that at all.



Q: How about the other question about penetrability? Any evidence that
somebody could get into Deutch's home computer and get defense secret
information from it?


Quigley: Well, that's one of the elements that the assistant secretary
for C3I is looking at as part of their effort in this -- is the
possibility of compromise.


I don't want to go into the findings. I have tried to be complete on
the process that's ongoing, but I'm not ready to get into the findings
yet until they've been presented to Secretary Cohen.


Q: Is there any evidence that that could have been done, or are you
not ready to say?


Quigley: I'm not ready to say. That's going to be part of the
findings.


Barbara?



Q: Can I follow up on two points? I don't understand what would have
been duplicated when the CIA, if I remember correctly, was
investigating Dr. Deutch's activities while he was DCI. What would
have been duplicated if you had been investigating his activities
while he was deputy and undersecretary?


Quigley: Part of their efforts -- and again, when they had asked for
our cooperation in June and July of 1998 -- was to provide access to
relevant records over here, in DoD, where there had been an overlap.
That would have been the very information upon which we would have
focused an effort of our own. We were not going to take a look at
activities in his capacity as head of CIA. Our activities would have
been focusing on the time spent here in DoD, and that was the exact
area that the CIA investigators asked for our help to facilitate their
own investigation. So it would have been a near carbon copy of the
effort.


Q: So that included his computers? They investigated what was actually
on his computers that he used while he was at DOD?


Quigley: Yes, yes.



Q: But you know, in that period, Hamre had warned that there was
hackers that were penetrating your uttermost secrets, and he sounded
the alarm about it, and yet you did nothing and just waited on CIA. It
doesn't compute for me.


Quigley: I'm not sure how we could have advanced the time line,
George. Again, we would have been -- you would have been doing the
exact same process that the CIA investigators were already well into
by that point. I'm just not clear what value that a second,
overlapping investigation would have brought to the effort.


Q: Well, the CIA has its IG, you have your IG, and your IG didn't do
anything.


Quigley: Well, we did. I mean, the -- our folks here in the Pentagon
were asked to help and assist in the CIA investigation, and they did
that for a period of considerable time, to provide the information
that I described. But for us to have initiated something at that point
would just -- would have been duplicative.


Barbara?



Q: Well, let me just go back over something, then. I mean, during that
whole 18 months you knew there was a problem, and yet Deutch
maintained his industrial security clearances in this building. And if
I remember correctly, it was on that very point that the secretary was
quite annoyed in February and said he wanted to know, I believe, you
know, why this had gone on for so long. And that's one of the reasons
he put his own investigation into place. So it still doesn't really
answer the question which Cohen raised, which was you waited 18 months
to pull his DOD clearances knowing that there was a problem.


Quigley: Well, you're talking about the industrial clearances here.
And there is a very specific process that needs to be followed in
removing those clearances except in clear evidence of grave danger to
the national security of the United States. And at that point we
simply did not see that. And so in February of this year, when Dr.
Deutch voluntarily relinquished his industrial clearances, that
followed the August 1999 recision of his special compartmented
information -- SCI -- clearance by the director of Central
Intelligence and DoD rescinding his Washington Headquarters Services
clearance as well, which left only the industrial one. And again, he
voluntarily rescinded that in February of this year.


Q: Do you have any answer yet, though, to Cohen's own questions when
this came up as to why this went on for so long in this building
before something was done? I mean, I do believe --


Quigley: What -- what went on?



Q: This whole period of DoD not addressing it. I think I do remember
in February he raised that very point himself. When he was asked, he
said this should have been dealt with sooner.


Quigley: I don't recall that. I'd have to go back and check the
record.


George?



Q: So you're very clear that there was no resistance by the IG into
digging into this situation.


Quigley: Crystal clear.



Q: Would you concede that there was a double standard in the fact that
they put Mr. Lee in jail on the first suspicion of espionage, and
here's a deputy secretary of Defense with secrets on his home computer
and nothing happens at all?


Quigley: No, sir. I do not concede that at all. The allegation against
Wen Ho Lee was that it was a conscious effort on his part to
compromise classified information. The allegations against Dr. Deutch
from the beginning have been lax handling. There's a world of
difference, in my mind. I do not equate the two.


Q: You said that the Pentagon did not want to start the investigation
earlier because it would duplicate what the CIA was doing. But you
started the investigation in February 2000, which is still an
investigation that would duplicate what the CIA is doing. So what
would have been the difference, whether you started 18 months earlier
or whether you start in February?


Quigley: The difference was the receipt of the formal, comprehensive
package, Toby, from the CIA investigators, which showed us clearly
exactly what their findings had been and allowed us a running start,
if you will, on our own efforts. So you're way down the road based on
the receipt of their professional efforts for the period of several
months.


Q: And what is the reason why, when their IG had completed his report
in August 1999, that you did not receive the formal documents until
February? What is the reason for -- the reason that you didn't get
them sooner?


Quigley: I'm not sure, but I think one of the contributing reasons was
the great sensitivities and highly classified nature of a lot of the
materials that the CIA investigators had found. Just because an
individual has a clearance or an authorization to -- clearance and
access within the scope of one individual's employment within the
federal government does not automatically equate that to another
element of the federal government.


And I think that we certainly wanted to proceed very cautiously here
and make sure that we were all kind of working from the same set of
assumptions and not to perhaps further compromise any highly sensitive
and classified material during that same time frame. Ultimately that
was resolved in the package being turned over in February of this year
by the CIA to us, but again, in a very tightly controlled manner,
limited number of copies, because of the highly sensitive and
classified nature it contained -- information.


Q: So are you saying that the CIA did not want to turn over that
information to you until you had a group of people that could receive
it?


Quigley: I think that one of the contributing things was their very
appropriate caution to make sure that the proper controls were in
place for turning over their product to the Department of Defense.


Q: But I am reading you correctly, that you're saying that the CIA
held up turning over the documents to the Pentagon?


Quigley: I'm not necessarily calling that a bad thing. (Light
laughter.)


Q: Right.



Quigley: I'm saying that I think that they were appropriately cautious
before handing over such a highly sensitive volume of information to
another agency to proceed on an investigation of its own.


Q: Well, just to follow that, didn't their caution, as you describe
it, mean that if there were weaknesses in security in this building
that they had found out about, that no one was addressing those
weaknesses during the entire 18 months? If nobody was -- either saw
their report or was briefed on what they were finding as they were
investigating, then any kind of weaknesses in security in this
building were going unaddressed during that time. Is that right?


Quigley: Yeah, but that's a wonderful thing to have in hindsight,
Dale. We may -- we may wish that were the case today. I don't think
that was the case at the time.


There's always a great deal of enthusiasm to speed things up.
Generally, that's not an advantage. It's generally an advantage to
take your time and resist the pressure to speed things up, to make
sure that you don't do more harm than good by either overlooking
something that's a very important element of the work you're trying to
uncover, making sure that the information that is shared is shared in
an appropriate way. I mentioned the classification and the highly
sensitive nature of a lot of the equipment. And you're talking about a
tremendous amount of material here. So I think a little extra time was
certainly appropriate.


George?



Q: Can you think of a precedent when a chief executive -- in this
case, the number two executive of the Defense Department -- is
suspected, wittingly or unwittingly, by the CIA of breaching security,
and you subcontracted the investigation -- the Department of Defense
subcontracted the investigation of one of its own to the CIA? I can't
think of any precedent where the Department of Defense would
subcontract an investigation of a security breach in its own tent to
the CIA. I mean, I -- can you think of a precedent for that being
done?


Quigley: No, I wouldn't characterize it the way that you have just
done. The CIA --


Q: (Off mike) -- the CIA.



Quigley: Yeah, the CIA's efforts were focused on his time as the
director of Central Intelligence --


Q: Right.



Quigley: -- as they should have been. Where there was an overlap into
his previous service here at the Pentagon, they asked for our
cooperation, and we gave that.


Q: Why would there have been an overlap? I don't understand.



Quigley: If you're the director of Central Intelligence, there are
legitimate needs for you have to access to DoD classified information
as well. And if there were documents or e-mails or any other form of
record that would contribute to the CIA's investigation, they did not
have possession of those materials, necessarily, unless they were
found on the computers.


But if there was information here that would be relevant to their
work, that's what they asked us to assist them -- and we agreed. We
had --


Q: I'm saying something different, though, Craig. What I'm saying is
that the CIA of course would come to you for any help you could give
them in relation to their own investigation of what Dr. Deutch or did
not do while he was at the CIA.


My question is, why would you subcontract the investigation of what
Dr. Deutch did on his computer in the way of breaching security while
he was at DOD as the number-two executive?


Quigley: I understand --



Q: In other words, it would seem to me that you would have to get
right on that, order the IG of your own department to say, "What
happened here, what damages have been done, and is it something that
we have to plug immediately, and could the bad guys have found out,"
rather than wait for the CIA to tumble in with its own report on --
"Oh, by the way, we looked into your problem, too." Why didn't you
investigate your own problem as soon as you heard about it?


Quigley: Well, again, go back to the memos I referred to in June and
July of 1998, where the CIA was giving us a heads-up --


Q: Right.



Quigley: -- that when we had a chance to assess their investigative
work, they felt that we would want to do an investigation of our own,
more finely focused, if you will. But that was based -- okay, we
accept that at face value. But we did not have access at that point,
in June and July of 1998, that the CIA investigators had. We wanted to
--


Q: (Off mike) -- computer and say, "Hey, Doctor, while you were at
DoD" --


Quigley: We were not in possession of his home computer. CIA was in
possession of his home computer.


Q: But you could send an IG guy to co-investigate it.



Quigley: Well, you've got dueling investigations again, and we just
didn't feel --


Q: It's your department, Craig.



Quigley: Well, yeah, but there's no reason to do it twice. The CIA has
a very professional inspector general that knows how to do this. We
had confidence that they were able to find out the information during
that period of time. We had no computers to check.


Q: Well, it seems to me that the CIA would have to take care of its
worries about its own CIA, and DOD would have to have a parallel look
at what it has to worry about within its own department. It doesn't
compute to me that you say, "Well, we'll just wait for the CIA
report," and let the damage that might have been done to DOD be
untilled by the inspector general.


Quigley: Well, this was all about a potential compromise of classified
information on computers that we did not have in our possession. It's
not clear to me how we would have proceeded without reinventing a lot
of the effort that CIA investigators were doing at the very same time
frame.


Barbara?



Q: In hindsight now, are you satisfied with the procedure you have
outlined? Is this now, in fact, standard procedure in a security
investigation that crosses -- that goes across agencies? Is this the
way you handle it with everybody, no matter how low level they are?


Quigley: I don't think there is such a thing as a standard procedure.
I think you have to take a look at the process and what you know each
and every time and make a human value judgement as to the best way
ahead. I don't think anyone would subscribe that there is a single
best way to proceed in all cases.


Q: To what extent, then, was part of this because of the very
extraordinary sensitivity of the information Dr. Deutch had access to
and was dealing with? Did that play a role in how this was handled?


Quigley: I don't understand your question.



Q: Was part of the reason you handled it the way you did was because,
I believe you have said, there was some extraordinary sensitivity of
the information he had access to?


Quigley: No, I don't think that was an element of our approach. Our
approach was focused on the period of time that he served in the
Defense Department, using as a starting point the CIA investigation
that we received in February of this year.


Pam?



Q: I want to be clear on something. The CIA is investigating for his
time when he was at the CIA, and not for his time at DOD at all. And
DOD has now picked it up and is going back to look at Deutch when he
was USD A&T and then when he was DEPSECDEF. Is that right?


Quigley: Yes, although there is some overlap.



Q: And the overlap is only because CIA sometimes deals with DOD
intelligence.


Quigley: For instance, Dr. Deutch, remember, remained a member of the
Defense Science Board after he had left the Pentagon. So in that
capacity, I mean, he would have a need to retain access to some of the
Pentagon programs that the Defense Science Board would be looking at.


Q: Okay. So I guess this is back on George's question, which is you
have two distinct time periods. So it wouldn't have been dueling
investigations. It seems to me they'd be separate investigations,
because one is him as CIA chief and one is him as USD A&T. And with
regard to your point on -- that DOD didn't have possession of the
computers, correct me if I'm wrong, but what I remember is that Deutch
had DOD computers and they were then transferred to his own personal
use when he left DOD.


Quigley: I believe at least one went with him to CIA.



Q: So DOD doesn't retain any kind of ex officio control of those
computers? It can't come and say, These were DOD property and by our
good graces you have them, and we -- give us them back?


Quigley: I don't think that's an action we would have taken in the
midst of a CIA investigation into the same computers. It doesn't make
sense.


Q: All right. So then can you go back to the first point, which is two
distinct time periods. I don't -- can you explain how you would see
those as dueling investigations when you're dealing with one man who
is CIA director, and then another man who was -- had several top roles
at DOD at different times?


Quigley: When you go back to the June-July 1998 timeframe, when we
were advised at that point that there may be something that we want to
-- that we would want to follow up on a possible damage assessment
once the results of the CIA investigation were known to us, keeping in
mind that this was an investigation that was ongoing by CIA at that
point, they were in possession of the relevant computers at that
point. And the -- I don't know how we would have proceeded at that
point knowing that the investigators at CIA were already marching down
this same road. And that --


Q: Let me address that. You have your own experts in this building --
I mean, if there's something very technical, like the footprint of a
warhead when it hits, so that you know its killing capacity. It just
would seem to me that this was not an antagonistic witness, so to
speak. You could send your experts to borrow the computer, to go to
the CIA and get the computer. If there were any interest in the DOD
finding out what went wrong in its own house, I don't see you can hold
out the excuse that, well, we didn't have access to the computers. You
were welcome to look at those computers. You could have taken your
experts over there. I don't get it.


Quigley: There was an enormous amount of information, I understand, on
those computers that DOD has no equities in. The CIA does. And to ask
them at that point to segregate, Please put all the DOD information in
this pile so we can take a look at it while you guys go ahead and
retain the CIA information, just didn't seem like an efficient way to
move forward.


Barbara?



Q: Who made the decision in this building not to proceed with the DOD
investigation? Who made that final decision?


Quigley: I don't know that there was a suggestion by anyone to
initiate a DOD investigation in the summer of 1998.


Q: Why not?



Q: But, I mean, is it just the dog didn't bark, or was there a
decision not to do this, or did nobody just bother?


Quigley: I don't know.



Q: There was a warning flag. We all agree on that.



Quigley: That's right. And the warning flag was clearly placed in
people's minds that when the CIA investigation is made available to
the DOD, we may want to take a close look at the damage assessment.
That is precisely what we did in February of 2000.


Q: It's a warning that nobody did anything about for 18 months in this
building.