CIA-Hughes Contacts Are Investigated

Justice Department investigators are trying to determine who approved contacts between the CIA and Hughes Electronics officials after company leaders were tipped off that they would be called before a Senate committee looking into the firm’s technology exports to China.

As many as eight CIA officials, including the agency’s congressional liaison and general counsel are set to appear this week before a federal grand jury examining whether the CIA-Hughes contacts constituted obstruction of justice, officials familiar with the inquiry said Saturday.

The criminal investigation of the agency was launched at the request of Sens. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) and Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. U.S. officials familiar with the matter said committee staffers and lawmakers were furious when the CIA notified the panel it had been in touch with Hughes about aspects of the investigation.

“The moment we heard about this, we exploded,” said an official familiar with the committee’s reaction. Shelby immediately phoned CIA Director George J. Tenet and “read him the riot act.”

Shelby and Kerrey sent a letter to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno within the last four weeks asking for an inquiry and sent a copy to Tenet. The lawmakers said they were concerned that the CIA’s contact with Hughes may have obstructed not only the committee investigation but also a current Justice Department criminal inquiry into whether Hughes and other satellite firms improperly helped China’s rocket programs.

An official familiar with the classified letter described it to the Associated Press.

Furor Erupts Over CIA-Hughes Contacts

What an agency official said the CIA regarded as routine contacts made “in the normal course of doing business,” the intelligence committee considered a serious breach of confidentiality. By tipping off Hughes about questions the committee was asking and the people it was contacting, the CIA may have helped Hughes fend off allegations that it exported to China restricted missile and satellite technology.

The furor over the CIA-Hughes contacts touches on a long-standing agency-contractor relationship dating back decades, through most of the history of the government’s highly classified spy satellite program, according to Jeffrey Richelson, author of several books on U.S. technical intelligence gathering. Hughes, for example, makes the data relay satellites that orbit the Earth and relay to ground stations the electronic imagery from lower-orbiting KH-11 spy satellites, Richelson said.

“There are Hughes people at the National Reconnaissance Office on a daily basis--not just visiting but stationed there,” Richelson said. The NRO is the intelligence organization that runs spy satellites for the CIA.

The intelligence committee worries that the CIA placed greater importance on its long-standing relationship with Hughes than on whether Hughes’ commercial dealings with China were harming U.S. security.

Justice Department officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed existence of the criminal investigation and said charges that might result would be leveled at individuals at the CIA.

In particular, members of the intelligence committee want to know if Tenet approved the Hughes contacts.

CIA Says Contacts Were Authorized

An official familiar with the views of Shelby and Kerrey raised the possibility that Tenet could be in trouble if he was involved.

Shelby refused to comment. Kerrey did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

CIA officials indicate the contacts with Hughes were authorized and not the work of a rogue employee going out of bounds to help the electronics company. But the officials also said the contacts were routine and were not approved at the agency’s highest levels.