WASHINGTON — FBI Director Louis J. Freeh asked Congress on Wednesday to give the bureau greater legal authority to counter rampant and fast-growing economic espionage against the United States by both friendly nations and traditional adversaries.
Freeh said the FBI is now investigating 800 cases of economic espionage against the United States, double the number of just two years ago. He warned that the intelligence services of at least 23 nations now make U.S. industry a prime target of their espionage and said the steep increase "presents a new set of threats to our national security" in the post-Cold War world.
Economic and technological globalization, Freeh added, have combined "to increase both the opportunities and motives for conducting economic espionage." As a result, the FBI has stepped up its counterintelligence efforts to thwart foreign spy operations in Silicon Valley and other high-tech hot spots.
Freeh did not identify the countries now conducting economic spying against the United States. But other intelligence sources said Wednesday that France, Israel, Japan, Russia and China are among those nations that have mounted major espionage against U.S. industry.
The Russian intelligence service--the Federal Counterintelligence Service, or SVR--has even upgraded the status of its so-called "Directorate T," its unit charged with obtaining foreign technology and countering attempts to steal Russian technology, U.S. sources said.
Japan has been quite successful in penetrating U.S. corporations, usually in an effort to obtain pricing data or the negotiating strategies of American firms, rather than technology, sources said.
U.S. officials said Japan has succeeded without the use of electronic eavesdropping--relying instead on recruitment of human agents within corporate America. "I've always been amazed at how well the Japanese do," said a U.S. source.
In contrast to the Japanese, Chinese spies try for basic technological secrets of U.S. companies, sources said, while French spies have become notorious for brazenly targeting U.S. executives who are traveling in France.
Sources added that Iran is aggressively spying throughout Europe in an effort to obtain technology with defense applications but also has sources in the United States.
