House Panel Sharply Rebukes CIA in Ames Case

Warning that the “business of intelligence is too important not to do well,” the House Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday sharply criticized the CIA for a series of management failures that permitted disgraced spy Aldrich H. Ames to sell U.S. secrets to the Russians, leading to the deaths of undercover agents.

The committee also called for new measures to reform the nation’s intelligence apparatus and pledged to tighten public oversight of future endeavors when the new Congress comes to Washington in January. The findings go further than an earlier Senate report because they demand broader public monitoring of future CIA operations.

In harsh descriptions of the way the Central Intelligence Agency has operated in the last decade, committee Chairman Dan Glickman (D-Kan.) said the Ames episode evolved under a “negligent attitude that prevailed at the agency.”

“Whether it was lack of attention, lack of systems, lack of standards, lack of reporting, bad management . . . to my judgment it was all of the above,” Glickman said. “It was a classic case of when something goes wrong, everything goes wrong.”

He added that there was no “nefarious reason” or “conspiracy of silence” that permitted Ames to get away with his betrayals of American intelligence. Rather, Glickman said, “I just think it was a case of sloppiness in big capital letters.”

The panel also released an unclassified transcript of a jailhouse interview with Ames conducted by committee leaders as part of the group’s eight-month probe into allegations of management shortcomings that followed Ames’ arrest last February.

The confessed spy told of vast amounts of money that he made selling secrets to the former Soviet Union, and he criticized the agency where he had built a lengthy and once-promising career.

“We certainly have to have intelligence collection, and we certainly need the technical resources,” Ames said. “But I think there is a legitimate question of how much money we should be paying for what we really need. We collect entirely too much useless information at too great risk in too many friendly countries.”

Ames pleaded guilty to espionage for which he acknowledged receiving more than $2 million during an eight-year period. Under a plea agreement, he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report last month also concluded that there was “gross negligence” inside the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Va. But while the House recommendations call for broader management changes, the Senate findings dealt more with individual situations, such as dealing with the alcohol problems of employees and improving safeguards for protecting internal computer systems.

However, both reports, which represent the most thorough unclassified reviews of the Ames debacle, do agree that the agency is in deep disarray. And they both concluded that most of the problems predate the administration of CIA Director R. James Woolsey.

“We intend to review the analysis and recommendations thoroughly and to work with the committee to ensure that the problems we have mutually identified are fixed,” Woolsey said of the House findings. “I am committed to these changes.”

An earlier investigation by the CIA’s inspector general recommended that 23 current and former CIA officials should be held accountable for the Ames fiasco. Woolsey, however, has decided to go no further than reprimanding 11 of the officials.