CIA Spying Capabilities Criticized

The CIA’s human espionage capability has dwindled since the Cold War and needs to be rebuilt, in the view of the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Using the recent confrontation with Iraq as an illustration, Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), who once was a CIA case officer, criticized U.S. intelligence estimates on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s intentions to use chemical and biological weapons.

“It is fair to say that the cupboard is nearly bare in the area of human intelligence,” Goss said, citing the greater numbers of intelligence officers engaged by Russia and other nations. His intelligence panel’s budget includes increased funding from the fiscal 1999 Intelligence Authorization Bill, which was approved Thursday by a voice vote in the House.

The measure provides about $27 billion for the 11 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community. Although $3 billion of that goes to the CIA, more than 85% funds military services and Pentagon-run agencies.

Although the United States is “doing better,” Goss said “there was a serious shortfall” in pinning down Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Such limitations in foreign intelligence information must be corrected, he said, because “the risk that a terrorist group or a rogue country will use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons against the U.S. or an American citizen or American interests here or abroad is increasing.”

In another area of clandestine operations, Goss said he wants the intelligence community to be “bold and imaginative” in finding new ways to deal with leaders of rogue countries.

“There are risks involved, and recently we have been risk-averse,” he said. “But there are other ways to project our power besides threatening warlike actions.”

Goss emphasized that he was not talking about assassination or what he called the “old-fashioned” covert-action ways of replacing a dictator hostile to U.S. interests by arming his exiled political opponents or fomenting a palace coup.