Retired Navy Adm. William O. Studeman, a former NSA director who now sits on a panel that is reviewing U.S. intelligence efforts for the White House, said that "advertent and inadvertent leaks have now rivaled espionage" to compromise classified information.
Several speakers said that hacking of classified U.S. computer systems could pose the most dangerous threat. Spies who once needed to patiently photograph page after page of secret documents now, in theory, can quickly transmit millions of computerized pages into cyberspace or onto tiny devices holding gigabytes of data.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday March 09, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 79 words Type of Material: Correction
Intelligence applicants -- An article in Tuesday's Section A about concerns among counterintelligence officials that Al Qaeda sympathizers might be trying to get jobs at U.S. intelligence agencies said Barry Royden, a CIA counterintelligence expert, disagreed with other counterintelligence officials, and suggested that Royden had determined that terrorist groups had assigned people to infiltrate the CIA. In fact, Royden does not disagree with his colleagues, who said it was unclear whether Al Qaeda supporters were seeking to commit espionage.
Former President George H.W. Bush, whose presidential library is at Texas A&M, opened the weekend conference with a fervent defense of the CIA. He headed the agency from November 1975 to January 1977.
Bush said it "burns me up to see the agency under fire" for flawed intelligence on prewar Iraq. He compared recent criticism to the Watergate-era congressional probes of domestic spying, assassination plots and other illegal CIA operations.
Congress "unleashed a bunch of untutored little jerks out there" to investigate the CIA then, Bush said. The inquiries, led by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Rep. Otis G. Pike (D-N.Y.), led Congress to create the first intelligence oversight committees and to pass numerous laws to prevent further abuses.
