Senate Panel Charges Spy Damage Total in Billions

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said Tuesday that recently exposed spy cases have caused damage “far greater than anyone in the U.S. government has yet acknowledged publicly” involving “billions of dollars of actual and potential damage to U.S. military programs.”

The committee also said the U.S. government has an inadequate counterintelligence program to combat “expanding hostile intelligence operations” against this country.

In a 141-page report on U.S. counterintelligence and security programs, the committee said the government’s intelligence agencies, with differing missions and needs, are refusing to cooperate fully with each other.

“Our committee found a security system paralyzed by bureaucratic inertia, with little ability to bridge the gaps between agencies or between different security disciplines like personnel security and computer security,” said Sen. Dave Durenberger (R-Minn.), the committee chairman.

There are “too many secrets, too much access to secrets, too many spies . . . and too little effort given to combatting the very real threat which spies represent to our national security,” he said.

The report called on the Reagan Administration to draw up a “national counterintelligence strategy” that would establish national objectives and integrate the planning and resources of the various agencies involved in counterintelligence.

It suggested that the National Security Council, which operates an Interagency Group for Counterintelligence under FBI Director William H. Webster, be given responsibility for devising and carrying out the strategy.

The committee carried out its 16-month review in cooperation with the Administration, which is expected to release its report next week and to include many of the same recommendations, Durenberger said.

One of the committee report’s main findings was that the existing system of classifying documents is “unduly complicated” and “breeds cynicism and confusion.”

The committee also said the current practice of authorized Administration disclosures and “leaks” are “so commonplace as to imperil many sensitive programs and operations.”

The committee called on the Administration to develop a procedure governing authorized leaks to reporters, “thus relieving the FBI of the need to investigate cases that are not real leaks.”

The report also proposed that the security classification of “confidential” be eliminated, with all information labeled either “secret” or the equivalent of “sensitive compartmented information,” a category used for material collected by various secret methods such as photographic satellites and electronic interceptors.