Clinton Legacy Watch # 48: Nation Will Pay Dearly for Systematic Malfeasance Concerning Basic Security Procedures

(Washington, D.C.): In an explosive article published Friday, Insight Magazine’s J. Michael Waller and Paul M. Rodriguez reveal a “foreign espionage operation that could dwarf the other spy scandals plaguing the U.S. government” — an operation involving the apparent, wholesale penetration by Israeli intelligence of secure telephone lines and networks serving the White House, State and Defense Departments and FBI, among other agencies. Unfortunately, if Insight’s characterization of the scope of this sophisticated act of espionage is confirmed, it will be just the latest evidence that the Clinton-Gore Administration is bequeathing to its successor a legacy of indifference to basic security procedures whose terrible costs may not be fully understood for years to come.

Highlights of the Phonegate’ Revelations

The following are among the most important portions (emphasis added throughout) of the 1500-word article published on Insight’s web site on 5 May (an event immediately followed by the crash of its host site, TownHall.com; the likelihood that this was coincidental seems very remote in light of the fact that TownHall’s webmaster discovered shortly thereafter that his password had been changed, denying him access needed to find and fix the problem):

• More than two dozen U.S. intelligence, counterintelligence, law-enforcement and other officials have told Insight that the FBI believes Israel has intercepted telephone and modem communications on some of the most sensitive lines of the U.S. government on an ongoing basis. The worst penetrations are believed to be in the State Department. But others say the supposedly secure telephone systems in the White House, Defense Department and Justice Department may have been compromised as well.
• The problem for FBI agents in the famed [counterintelligence] Division 5, however, isn’t just what they have uncovered, which is substantial, but what they don’t yet know, according to Insight’s sources interviewed during a year-long investigation by the magazine. Of special concern is how to confirm and deal with the potentially sweeping espionage penetration of key U.S. government telecommunications systems allowing foreign eavesdropping on calls to and from the White House, the National Security Council, or NSC, the Pentagon and the State Department.

The Israeli Connection

• For nearly a year, FBI agents had been tracking an Israeli businessman working for a local phone company. The man’s wife is alleged to be a Mossad officer under diplomatic cover at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Mossad — the Israeli intelligence service — is known to station husband-and-wife teams abroad, but it was not known whether the husband is a full-fledged officer, an agent or something else. When federal agents made a search of his work area they found a list of the FBI’s most sensitive telephone numbers, including the Bureau’s “black” lines used for wiretapping. Some of the listed numbers were lines that FBI counterintelligence used to keep track of the suspected Israeli spy operation. The hunted were tracking the hunters.
• Seasoned counterintelligence veterans are not surprised. “The Israelis conduct intelligence as if they are at war. That’s something we have to realize,” says David Major, a retired FBI supervisory special agent and former director of counterintelligence at the NSC. While the U.S. approach to intelligence is much more relaxed, says Major, the very existence of Israel is threatened and it regards itself as is in a permanent state of war. “There are a lot less handcuffs on intelligence for a nation that sees itself at war,” Major observes, but “that doesn’t excuse it from our perspective.”

Mission Possible’

• As for how this may have been done technologically, the FBI believes it has uncovered a means using telephone-company equipment at remote sites to track calls placed to or received from high-ranking government officials, possibly including the president himself, according to Insight’s top-level sources. One of the methods suspected is use of a private company that provides record-keeping software and support services for major telephone utilities in the United States.
• U.S. officials believe that an Israeli penetration of that telephone utility in the Washington area was coordinated with a penetration of agents using another telephone support-services company to target select telephone lines. Suspected penetration includes lines and systems at the White House and NSC, where it is believed that about four specific phones were monitored — either directly or through remote sites that may involve numbers dialed from the complex.

“[The FBI] uncovered what appears to be a sophisticated means to listen in on conversations from remote telephone sites with capabilities of providing real-time audio feeds directly to Tel Aviv,” says a U.S. official familiar with the FBI investigation. Details of how this could have been pulled off are highly guarded. However, a high-level U.S. intelligence source tells Insight: “The access had to be done in such a way as to evade our countermeasures….That’s what’s most disconcerting.”

• Another senior U.S. intelligence source adds: “How long this has been going on is something we don’t know. How many phones or telephone systems we don’t know either, but the best guess is that it’s no more than 24 at a time…as far as we can tell.” And has President Clinton been briefed? “Yes, he has. After all, he’s had meetings with his Israeli counterparts,” says a senior U.S. official with direct knowledge.

Smoking Guns

• Insight was provided access to virtually every telephone number within the White House, including those used by outside agencies with employees in the complex, and even the types of computers used and who uses them. Just by way of illustration, this information allowed direct access to communications instruments located in the Oval Office, the residence, bathrooms and grounds.

  With such information, according to security and intelligence experts, a hacker or spy could target individual telephone lines and write software codes enabling the conversations to be forwarded in real-time for remote recording and transcribing. The White House complex contains approximately 5,800 voice, fax and modem lines.

  “Having a phone number in and of itself will not necessarily gain you access for monitoring purposes,” Insight was told by a senior intelligence official with regular contact at the White House. “The systems are designed to electronically mask routes and generate secure connections.” That said, coupling a known phone number to routing sequences and trunk lines would pose a security risk, this official says. Add to that detailed knowledge of computer codes used to move call traffic and your hacker or spy is in a very strong position.

• Shown a sampling of the hoard of data collected over just a few months of digging, the security official’s face went flush: “How the hell did you get that! This is what we are supposed to guard against. This is not supposed to be public.”
• Insight not only was provided secure current phone numbers to the most sensitive lines in the world, but it discovered a remote telephone site in the Washington area which plugs into the White House telecommunications system. Given national-security concerns, Insight has been asked not to divulge any telephone number, location of high-security equipment, or similar data not directly necessary for this news story.

Concerning the remote telecommunications site, Insight discovered not only its location and access telephone numbers but other information, including the existence of a secret “back door” to the computer system that had been left open for upward of two years without anyone knowing about the security lapse. This back door, common to large computer systems, is used for a variety of services, including those involving technicians, supervisors, contractors and security officers to run diagnostic checks, make repairs and review system operations.

“This is more than just a technical blunder,” says a well-placed source with detailed knowledge of White House security issues. “This is a very serious security failure with unimaginable consequences. Anyone could have accessed that [back door] and gotten into the entire White House phone system and obtained numbers and passwords that we never could track,” the source said, echoing yet another source familiar with the issue.

Be Wary of the Denials

At 1:10 a.m. Saturday, the Associated Press ran a wire story declaring:

The FBI has all but closed an extensive investigation into allegations that Israeli spies penetrated the White House and other government telephone systems, finding no evidence of a breach, a senior federal law enforcement official said. This official and another senior law enforcement official said Friday that more than a year of investigation failed to substantiate the allegations and that the FBI identified no one to arrest. Both spoke on condition of anonymity.

There was extensive investigation, and there are just no facts to support the allegation,” one of the officials said. This official said the investigation had “100 percent complete support from the Justice Department and every other government agency” that would be needed to check such an allegation.

The probe is technically not closed, this official said. But it was described as being in the “pending inactive state because the allegation is so serious and in case something develops.” At the White House, a senior official said the White House had no indication that its phone system was compromised.

One explanation for the disconnect between the detailed and seemingly well substantiated revelations of the Insight article and the disavowal offered by an unnamed “senior law enforcement official” is that the latter was not one of the very few individuals “read-in” on this highly sensitive counter-intelligence operation. If so, he like many other normally reliable sources in the relevant agencies may unwittingly be erring when they claim there is no fire amidst all this smoke.

Another factor may be the sheer mortification federal counter-intelligence officials understandably feel about having to acknowledge that their own “black” numbers, used to monitor foreign intelligence operatives, were among the phone lines believed to have been compromised.

The Bottom Line

Clearly, the relevant congressional committees must immediately turn to the task of establishing the facts amidst these allegations and begin what will likely prove to be a very difficult and time- consuming job of assessing the damage. This inquiry must not be thwarted, slowed or otherwise compromised, however, because the alleged perpetrator is the intelligence service of one of the United States’ most important and valued allies, Israel. The fact is that even friendly countries spy upon each other. As an organization with a record of strong support for the Jewish State, the Center for Security Policy hopes that the U.S. government has at least as thorough an awareness of the workings of the Israeli government as the latter appears to have of ours.

The obligation to prevent espionage against this nation wherever possible — whether by allies or potential adversaries — and, where it has occurred, to mitigate its harmful effects, demands that a no- holds-barred examination be conducted into the reported penetration of sensitive communications systems. In particular, this inquiry cannot be impinged upon by considerations such as the Clinton- Gore Administration’s hope to secure untold billions in additional foreign aid and military assistance for Israel as a lubricant for its concessions in the so-called “peace process.”

Congress must also take on a larger task, however. In the remaining months of this session, the legislative branch owes the American people as full as possible an accounting of the cumulative damage done to U.S. national security by the Clinton-Gore Administration’s seven-years of inattention to — if not utter contempt for — the most elementary of physical, personnel and information security practices. It is not enough to address in isolation the litany of bugged conference rooms, missing laptops, improperly “shared” intelligence, individuals with ties to Chinese intelligence granted access to the White House and high office in the Commerce Department, etc., etc., etc. The public is entitled to, and must have as it considers to whom to give a mandate for governance over the next four years, a full accounting of this ominous aspect of the Clinton legacy.