By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 13, 2000; 12:00 AM

The chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees howled in betrayal earlier this month after President Clinton vetoed secrecy legislation that would have made it easier to prosecute government officials for leaking "properly classified" material.

Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) immediately released a statement saying he had drafted the anti-leak provision, embedded in the fiscal 2001 intelligence authorization act, after "extensive consultations" with the Clinton administration.

Shelby blasted the president for caving in to a last-minute lobbying campaign against the anti-leak provision led by The Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN and the Newspaper Association of America.

"Perhaps I shouldn't be shocked that, a few days before a very tight election, the Clinton-Gore administration reverses course in an attempt to placate an irate press rather than stick up for the men and women of our intelligence community," Shelby said.

Rep Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) said in a statement that the anti-leak provision "was approved by the administration before final passage," adding that he would have reviewed the president's concerns during a conference committee on the intelligence authorization act – if only they had been expressed.

"To veto this critical piece of legislation now is disruptive, and may send a dangerous message to those who would harm U.S. interests," Goss said.

Current law prohibits and provides criminals sanctions for the unauthorized release of "national defense" information, intelligence officers' identities and electronic intercepts. The new anti-leak provision would extend criminal sanctions to the unauthorized release of all "properly classified" material.

Under the provision, prosecutors would have to prove only that leaked information had been "properly classified," not that its disclosure had actually damaged security – the current legal standard. The provision states that any government employee who "knowingly and willfully discloses . . . any classified information . . . shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 3 years, or both."

In his veto message, Clinton wrote that, as drafted, the anti-leak provision "may unnecessarily chill legitimate activities that are at the heart of a democracy." But he admitted that his administration bore more than a little responsibility for legislation that was poorly drafted and overly broad.

The "deliberations" of his government, Clinton conceded, "lacked the thoroughness this provision warranted, which in turn led to a failure to apprise the Congress of the concerns I am expressing today."

Nonetheless, Clinton acknowledged that leaks of classified information represent a serious problem in Washington that requires strengthened legal sanctions. "What is in dispute is not the gravity of the problem, but the best way to respond to it," Clinton wrote. "Unauthorized disclosures damage our intelligence relationships abroad, compromise intelligence gathering, jeopardize lives, and increase the threat of terrorism."

Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' government secrecy project, said Shelby and Goss were way off base in their criticisms of Clinton, whose veto Aftergood called "spectacular."

"I thought it was a rebuke to Congress," said Aftergood, who lobbied strenuously against the anti-leak provision. "The idea that the president had to tell Congress that it had to hold hearings was a well-deserved insult to the intelligence committees. They should have thought of that themselves, and that was one of the major flaws in the process."

Aftergood also faulted the intelligence committees "for serving as conduits for the CIA – doing the bidding of the CIA – without asking the larger questions the president raised in his statement."

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said Shelby and Goss have long been concerned about the damage leaks do to intelligence sources and methods. "The notion that this provision was included in the legislation because CIA made Congress do it is utterly ridiculous," Mansfield said.

Although CIA Director George J. Tenet spoke in favor of the anti-leak provision during a White House review two days before the veto, CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said in a statement after the veto that agency looks forward to "working with all parties to craft a new provision that helps preserve national security while fostering the necessary public discussion of important issues."

David Wise's Latest Tale

In this month's GQ, veteran espionage author David Wise tells the story of Navy double agent Tom Hayden, a senior noncommissioned officer "dangled" before the KGB in 1984 from his posting at a NATO base in Naples as a traitor willing to sell classified U.S. military secrets.

The operation, run by counterintelligence officers from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, began when Hayden walked into the Soviet Union's Intertourist office in Rome, asked to speak to the manager and handed over an envelope containing a document marked "confidential" and a note offering a "secret" document upon his return two days later.

So began a carefully choreographed relationship between Hayden, a Vietnam veteran who worked in a top-secret communications facility, and his KGB handler, a young spy named Aleksandr Mikhailovich Chepil, that lasted a little over a year.

Wise said last week in an interview that he first heard tell of this double agent operation a decade ago. But Hayden, who retired from the Navy in 1986, refused to talk to him without Navy permission. Ever persistent, Wise finally convinced the NCIS last year to make Hayden available.

Hayden not only talked but gave Wise access to a journal he had kept during his double agent days in which he professed a wealth of conflicting emotions about life as a spy that could easily have come straight out of a novel by John LeCarre.

He found the intrigue frightening and intoxicating. " 'Spying is like jumping out of airplanes,' " Wise writes, quoting from Hayden's journal. " 'Fear and loneliness, along with tremendous stress. Then, when it's over, and you realize you have survived, unbelievable relief, excitement and exhilaration.' "

He was equally ambivalent about deception and betrayal, coming to identify strongly with Chepil, his handler. " 'I can't tell the good guys from the bad guys.' "

But the most remarkable aspect of Wise's latest spy yarn was the dramatic involvement of Vitaly Yurchenko, the highest ranking KGB officer ever to defect to the United States – and redefect three months later in the fall of 1985.

Yurchenko showed up in Italy unexpectedly in July 1985. As Hayden rendezvoused with his handler on the beach at Sabaudia, Chepil told Hayden he had a colleague he wanted the American to meet. Hayden looked up and saw a tall, mustachioed man in red swim trunks – Yurchenko – walking toward them down the sand.

After questioning Hayden for hours in an attempt to assess the KGB's prize recruit, Yurchenko called the U.S. embassy in Rome three days later and defected, effectively ending Hayden's career as a double agent.

"When a defector walks into the CIA, one of the first questions he's asked is whether he knows of any KGB moles inside the American government," Wise writes. "Yurchenko immediately named Tom Hayden."

Since Hayden wasn't arrested and led away in handcuffs, KGB agents surely came to realize that he was a double agent – and that they had been had.

Although U.S. intelligence officials still do not know whether Yurchenko was a legitimate defector who quickly tired of life as a CIA ward or a double agent himself, Wise's story establishes for the first time why he was in Rome at the time of his defection.

Since his trip to Italy to assess Hayden seems more like a ploy on Yurchenko's part to get out of Moscow than it does part of a larger KGB plot to deceive the Americans, Wise believes Yurchenko's bit part in the Hayden story tips the scales slightly toward the conclusion that he was, in fact, "for real."

Chile Declassification: Is the NSA Taking Part?

With the final release of documents expected today under President Clinton's Chile declassification initiative, it remains to be seen whether any material from the supersecret National Security Agency will be included.

Peter Kornbluh, a Chile expert at the nonprofit National Security Archive who has lobbied for full declassification of Chile documents, said "quite a few NSA cables" from the day of the 1973 coup that toppled socialist President Salvadore Allende have been found in the Nixon papers but not released.

Under Clinton's initiative, the National Security Council directed all federal agencies, including the CIA and the NSA – which intercepts electronic communications worldwide – to broadly declassify documents related to political violence and human rights abuses in Chile from 1968 to 1991. The only material intelligence agencies have been allowed to withhold is that which would reveal and potentially compromise specific intelligence sources and methods.

NSA spokeswoman Judith A. Emmel said last week that the agency had "fully cooperated and responded to NSC tasking" under the declassification initiative. She declined to comment on whether NSA documents would be released today.

It is possible that NSA material will be released without any indications that it was obtained through signals intercepts. The NSA's intercept capabilities are so highly guarded that specifying NSA as the source is enough to keep some material from ever being declassified.