R James Woolsey

The personnel-screening machinery that has so frequently and publicly failed the Clinton White House continues to show distressing signs of breakdown. The latest embarrassment involves Michael P. C. Carns, the retired Air Force general nominated by the President to head the troubled Central Intelligence Agency. Like its predecessors, this gaffe probably could have been avoided. That it wasn't suggests an unarrested laxity in staff work and a curious obtuseness in political judgment.

A group of prominent conservative foreign-policy and defense experts endorsed Bill Clinton on Sunday, a further indication of the Democratic presidential nominee's intention to challenge President Bush on what was expected to be the incumbent's strongest ground. The endorsements also demonstrate the ability the Democrats are now showing to heal some of the wounds that have divided their party in the past. Among those endorsing Clinton were Paul H.

Pentagon officials have started work on a list of options for possible use to strengthen the stance of U.S. military forces in South Korea, Pentagon sources said Wednesday. Defense Secretary Les Aspin is expected to discuss the options with President Clinton or other White House officials in coming days, prior to Aspin's departure Tuesday for a NATO meeting in Brussels. The possible steps are being prepared in case the situation involving North Korea's nuclear program worsens.

In "The Next Casualty: Bill of Rights?" (Commentary, Sept. 13), Alexander Cockburn decried the "stupidity and blindness" of most mainstream political commentary undertaken in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's tragedy. Ironically, however, in the same column, Cockburn provided perhaps the most stupid and blind bit of commentary thus far: namely, his suggestion that President Bush and his aides were "wit"-less for taking Air Force One through a circuitous, daylong route back to Washington.

The CIA inspector general has identified more than a dozen active or retired officials who either ignored warnings or overlooked complaints against onetime counterintelligence officer Aldrich H. Ames during the nine years he spied for Moscow, according to sources familiar with the report. Chiefs, deputies and operating personnel in the Office of Security reportedly come under fire in a 400-page report for their failure to follow up on information about Ames' lavish spending in 1990.

Investigators said Friday that they have ruled out any political motive in the killing of a CIA agent. Fred Woodruff, 45, was shot to death on Sunday near Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. He had worked in Georgia on three occasions and was officially described as a regional affairs officer in the political section of the U.S. Embassy here. U.S. newspapers have said that Woodruff was in charge of secretly training security personnel for Georgian leader Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said Wednesday that an American intelligence report that Israel may have sold billions of dollars of arms to China is "total nonsense." But he did not deny that arms were sold. The release of the CIA assessment, which bolstered numerous reports about Israeli-Chinese arms deals over the past decade, coincided with the first visit of an Israeli prime minister to China since the two countries established diplomatic relations in January, 1992.

U.S. intelligence agencies helped establish the feared Haitian paramilitary group FRAPH after the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the magazine The Nation said in a report released Thursday. CIA Director R. James Woolsey denied the report in Washington with a terse "no." When pressed for an elaboration, he added: "When I say no, I mean no." The magazine said Emmanuel Constant, leader of the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, named his U.S. handler as Col.

CIA Director R. James Woolsey has been meeting with his top staff for the past three days to decide what to do about the counterintelligence failures that allowed Soviet spy Aldrich H. Ames to operate for nine years, according to CIA sources. The scope and depth of those failures were outlined in a classified 400-page report by CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz after an eight-month inquiry.

Terrorists' success at using passenger jets as giant napalm bombs has left national security experts scrambling to anticipate and shield the nation against other threats. Some of those threats bear more resemblance to science fiction fantasy than to documented, imminent danger.