Pentagon Regular Briefing

DoD News Briefing

Tuesday, November 28, 2000

Presenter: Mr. Kenneth H. Bacon, ASD PA

Q: Ken, on a different subject: I read a published report today that
contained quotes from the Pentagon inspector general's report on the
laptop used by former deputy secretary John Deutch. Can you tell us
what's either - can you either tell us what was in that IG report or
what conclusions it came to? Or better yet, can we get a copy of the
report?

Bacon: Well, I think if the report's not available, it will be
available this afternoon and I think I'll let you draw your own
conclusions about the report.

Q: Yes, but we - do you think it will be available this afternoon?

Bacon: It should be. It should be available after this briefing.

Staff: (off mike)

Bacon: Not after this briefing? Sometime.

Q: Ken, what's the next step on that whole thing? Is the secretary
committed to getting that resolved before he leaves office? What
happens next here?

Bacon: Well, in February the secretary put two - took two steps. The
first, he asked the IG to find out what Dr. Deutch had done with
personal computers while he was the under secretary for acquisitions
and technology, and when he was deputy secretary of Defense.

Second, he asked the - he asked the assistant secretary for command,
control, communications and intelligence to look at any damage, to try
to find out what, if any, damage had been done by the way Dr. Deutch
handled classified information on his computers at home.

The first part of that review has been completed by the IG. It was
actually completed in August. The second part is not yet complete.
That's the damage assessment. That's still being worked on. My
anticipation is it'll be done relatively soon, and by that, I mean, I
would guess by the end of the year.

There is a recommendation in the IG report about the way disk drives
should be handled for DoD computers that are disposed of, in other
words that leave the department. And these are disk drives - it
basically recommends the disk drives that handle both classified and
unclassified information be destroyed before the computers are
disposed of. We're in the process of looking at that, and I would
anticipate there will be a ruling on that relatively soon. It's easy
policy to carry out, but it would - it would hurt a program by which
we give a lot of old computers to schools. They would get these
computers without hard disk drives, which would reduce their
usefulness somewhat. (Laughter.) So we're looking at the best way to
handle that. And there may be other actions taken as well, but that's
the primary recommendation in the IG report.

Q: But what happens after the damage assessment is done? What does the
secretary do next?

Bacon: Well, I think we'll wait and see what the damage assessment
says. It's a little hard to determine what we do next until we have
the complete review. And the review isn't yet finished, because we
don't have the damage assessment.

Q: Does he want to get this done before he leaves office?

Bacon: Well, he would like to get it done before he leaves office,
sure. And - but I think we'll just have to wait and see what the
damage assessment says before we answer that question, "What do we do
next?"

Q: What happens to Deutch? I mean, is there - what's the next step in
terms of his future as a defense --

Bacon: Well, Dr. Deutch voluntarily relinquished his security
clearances and said that he has not handled any classified information
since he relinquished those security clearances voluntarily.

The import of a voluntary cessation of security clearances is that it
can be done instantly and was done instantly. To withdraw a security
clearance requires a bureaucratic process that can take some time. So
Dr. Deutch's decision to volunteer the cessation of his clearances
ended this aspect of it quickly - that is, whether or not he's
improperly using classified information in his current role as a
director of companies or as a professor. So that's already happened.

The IG report basically looks at what Dr. Deutch did with his
computers and whether or not it complied with DOD regulations.

The next step will be up to the secretary, but we can't decide what
that will be until we have the full assessment.

Yes?

Q: Just on the damage assessment thing, is this a hypothetical damage
assessment? In other words, if the information that he improperly
handled had - something had happened to it, or - I mean, do you know
that there is any damage?

Bacon: No, because the damage assessment isn't complete.

Q: Will the damage assessment try to answer the question of whether it
was compromised or what if it had been compromised?

Bacon: I can't answer that question, because this is ongoing.