Secrets Weren’t Compromised in Deutch Case, Pentagon Finds

The government secrets that former Pentagon official John M. Deutch included in personal journals stored on his unsecured home computer apparently did not fall into the wrong hands and damage national security, according to a Pentagon review made public Thursday.

Since last February, the Pentagon has been assessing whether the secret information might have been compromised. Deutch and family members used his America Online account with the same computer on which he stored the personal journals relating to his Pentagon work.

An earlier Pentagon investigation said his practice of using an unsecured home computer to store sensitive information was “extremely risky” because it was vulnerable to a computer hacker.

“While the possibility of compromise cannot be foreclosed with certainty, our analysts have found no evidence of compromise,” the investigation report released Thursday concluded.

The portion of the report apparently containing an explanation for this conclusion was blacked out by Pentagon censors. Spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said that part contained classified information.

The seven-page report said Deutch kept 26 personal journals, containing about 675 pages of text, on computer memory cards while at the Defense Department. The journals included references to some of the most highly classified Pentagon programs.

Deutch was undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and technology from April 1993 to March 1994 and was deputy secretary of Defense from March 1994 to May 1995, when he left the Pentagon to become director of the CIA. He left the CIA in December 1996.

The Pentagon inquiry reviewed the 26 journals, plus journals Deutch kept while at the CIA that made references to classified Pentagon programs, as well as e-mail entries sent or received by Deutch during his Pentagon tenure.

A separate CIA investigation examined his computer use during his time at the spy agency.

President Clinton pardoned Deutch just hours before President Bush was inaugurated Jan. 20. A day earlier, Deutch reportedly had agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor for mishandling government secrets.