CIA Chief Defends Deutch Inquiry

WASHINGTON —  The Clinton administration came under fire Thursday for wide disparities in the way it has prosecuted separate cases of mishandling classified information by former CIA Director John M. Deutch and nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, but it denied using a double standard.

Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, complained at a hearing that both men had “made similar mistakes in the fact that they had information that was very important to this country on unsecured computers” in their homes.

He pointed out that Deutch was merely deprived of his security clearance, while Lee has been subjected to a lengthy investigation and currently is under indictment. “I am wondering, how is it that we are treating Mr. Lee” so differently, he asked.

CIA Director George J. Tenet testified that the two cases are very different because Lee allegedly transferred nuclear codes from his computer at Los Alamos National Laboratory to one at home while Deutch merely wrote classified material on his home computer, which was unsecured.

“In one instance,” he said, citing Lee’s case, “there is an intent to do harm to the United States--that’s a legal judgment that’s been made,” while “in the other instance, a similar legal judgment was not made. I don’t think the cases are similar.”

Although Allard did not dwell on the issue any further, it marked the first time that the disparity has been brought up at a congressional hearing on the Deutch case. Asian American groups have been complaining for months that Lee has been treated too harshly.

Committee members also alluded to reports that an internal CIA investigation found that Deutch’s home computer had been used to send and receive e-mail and to log on to Internet sites and that someone in Deutch’s household had been viewing pornographic materials.

Congressional sources said the report also showed that the computer’s hard drive had an e-mail message sent to Deutch from a Russian scientist, although there apparently was no evidence that Deutch responded to the message. Tenet declined to comment on either finding.

Lee had been accused of passing stolen nuclear secrets to China, but an FBI investigation found no evidence to support those allegations. However, Lee was arrested Dec. 10 on 59 unrelated counts of mishandling secret nuclear weapon computer programs and data at the Los Alamos lab. Lee, who has denied any wrongdoing, is being held without bond and could face life in prison if he is convicted. The Justice Department has decided not to prosecute Deutch.

Tenet said Deutch had acted improperly in using an unsecured computer for work on highly classified information, but he added that investigators had no evidence that any of the data had been compromised. He conceded later, however, that he could not rule out such a leak.

He added that officials had no reason to believe that Deutch, who served as deputy secretary of Defense before he became CIA chief, was engaged in espionage. Deutch, now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, repeatedly has declined to comment on the incidents.

The Justice Department’s criminal division investigated the Deutch case and, after deciding last spring not to prosecute the former CIA director, referred the matter back to the CIA’s inspector general.

Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday that investigators had found that Deutch acted carelessly, albeit inexcusably. “That’s not to say that this case involving the former director is not serious,” he said.

Tenet declined to comment on the reports that Deutch’s computer had been used to view pornographic sites on the Internet--apparently during hours when the former CIA director was not at home. “I can’t and I won’t,” he told the panel.

Tenet told the Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the home computer used by Deutch contained “enormously sensitive material . . . at the highest levels of classification.”

Like other government agencies that deal with sensitive information, the CIA has strict regulations that prohibit all but a few top officials, including its director, from working at home with classified material. In cases where they do work at home, officials must use special CIA computers that are equipped with security devices. Users are prohibited from logging on to the Internet when they use those machines.

Separately, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, asked by reporters about criticism that the administration was using a double standard in its handling of the two cases, said that she believes “each case speaks for itself, based on the evidence and the law.” She declined to elaborate, however.