White House Angered by Leaks on Intelligence

WASHINGTON -- The White House charged Thursday that unnamed congressional sources compromised national security by leaking sensitive counter-terrorism material, a charge that reignited the debate over how much the public should know in a time of war.

An irate Vice President Dick Cheney called two congressional leaders to convey President Bush’s “deep concerns” about media reports disclosing that U.S. eavesdroppers picked up cryptic references on Sept. 10 to a possible attack the next day.

Leaders of the joint House-Senate panel investigating Sept. 11 intelligence failures promised an immediate crackdown on leaks and asked the Justice Department to determine the source of the media reports. Privately, however, some Capitol Hill officials grumbled that the Bush administration is conducting its war on terrorism largely in secret, without scrutiny and input from Congress or the public.

The episode comes at a time when the Bush administration has angered many open-government advocates by moving aggressively to clamp down on classified and unclassified security information.

The administration has restricted--or shut down--access to reams of material that was readily available before Sept. 11. Dozens of Web sites with information on nuclear facilities, water treatment facilities and the like have been closed down; some government archive records have been destroyed; standards for granting Freedom of Information Act requests have been toughened; and records on the detention of terrorism suspects have been kept secret because officials say the information could help terrorists.

The White House’s broadside over the eavesdropping material underscored what White House spokesman Ari Fleischer described Thursday as the tension between a culture that places a high value on the free flow of information and a nation that is “in the middle of a war.”

One State Department counter-terrorism analyst, in an opinion piece published Sunday in the Washington Post, went so far as to accuse the U.S. media of “treason” for publishing numerous stories on vulnerabilities in U.S. aviation, nuclear facilities and chemical plants that terrorists could put to deadly use.

Recent opinion polls show the public wants as much information as it can get on war and terrorism issues without compromising security, but people are often unsure just where that dividing line is.

Indeed, the debate has proved a recurring source of tension for generations--from the time of World War II, when the military warned that “loose lips sink ships,” through the invasion of Grenada ordered by President Reagan and the Persian Gulf War spearheaded by Bush’s father and Cheney.

Now, however, some critics think the Bush administration has gone too far.

“We’re seeing unprecedented secrecy,” said Lucy Dalglish, head of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in the Washington area.

“When the administration pushes too far ... it’s up to the public and the media to push back and say, ‘We’re not going to let you make the unilateral decision on what is appropriate for us to know,’ ” she said. “You don’t want to give [terrorists] a road map, but does anyone seriously think the terrorists don’t know we have the ability to eavesdrop on them?”

At issue are two cryptic communications intercepted by the top-secret National Security Agency on Sept. 10 from Afghanistan. Translated the day after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the messages said “tomorrow is zero day” and “the match begins tomorrow,” sources said. The contents of the NSA intercepts were first aired Wednesday by CNN and later confirmed and reported by The Times and other media.

Members of the joint House-Senate panel, along with aides who have classified clearance, were told of the NSA material some weeks ago. Congressional sources say members of the panel are eager to find out why it took two days to translate the messages, but Fleischer said the more pressing matter is determining how the information got out.

Fleischer, while saying that “we do not know who did it,” noted that the NSA information was passed to the intelligence panel in closed session and that several news accounts cited congressional sources. “The president is satisfied it’s not coming from his administration,” he said.

Bush has “very deep concerns about anything that would be inappropriately leaked ... that could interfere with America’s ability to fight the war on terrorism,” Fleischer said. That is why the president had Cheney call the chairmen of the joint panel, Democratic Sen. Bob Graham and Republican Rep. Porter J. Goss, both of Florida, Fleischer said.

Fleischer recounted that in 1998, after public reports that the United States was monitoring Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone, U.S. authorities lost any communications from the phone. It is believed Bin Laden stopped using it.

When Cheney called Graham, the vice president “was not a happy man,” Graham told reporters.

Cheney “emphasized the fact that the administration was attempting to be cooperative with our investigation, providing us with a very large amount of material, that the understanding was that it would be handled with discretion,” Graham said. He suggested that Cheney threatened to curb the administration’s cooperation if the leaking did not stop.

After Cheney’s tongue-lashing, leaders of the intelligence committees called meetings to convey the White House’s displeasure.

“This is intolerable,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). “We have called for the investigation and [the leaks] will end.”

Committee members fired off an immediate letter to Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft requesting an investigation. One senior congressional aide, however, said it was “ironic” that the investigation would be limited to the NSA material and would not include suspicions that the administration itself has leaked sensitive information when it served its purposes.

While lawmakers publicly deplored the leaks, privately a Republican member of the intelligence panel said it was symptomatic of the Bush administration’s overly controlling style of running its foreign policy.

“It’s a closed shop,” the Republican panel member said. “There is a sense of irritation on the part of the committee.”

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said Democrats feel shut out. “We are an appendage,” he said.

Hoyer said Bush’s secretive style could come back to haunt the administration, because lawmakers will be less willing to rally around the White House in times of international trouble if they have not had a role in developing the policy.

Many Republicans did not know, for instance, that Bush was going to propose a Department of Homeland Security until the morning of the announcement.

Members of Congress have also been frustrated that Bush had refused, until Thursday, to let Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge testify before Congress. And members of the judiciary committees were upset that they did not get any advance word of Ashcroft’s recent plan to give the FBI broader rein to pursue terrorism investigations.

For all the tension, some people on Capitol Hill grudgingly accept the information clampdown.

“The whole landscape has changed,” said a congressional aide. “Certainly a year ago, everyone would have been saying, ‘Come on, what’s wrong with getting that information out in the open,’ but now I think everyone realizes that we’ve got sources and methods to protect. That’s the new world.”