Hold the Hosannas: Toby Gati Raises New Questions About Her Judgment, Discretion with Regard to Classified Information

(Washington, D.C.): Earlier this week,
the Assistant Secretary of State for
Intelligence and Research, Dr. Tobi Gati,
appeared before the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence. In the course
of this meeting, she received
congratulations from Committee members
concerning reports that she had been
cleared following a State Department
Inspector General investigation into
alleged mishandling of classified
information by Mrs. Gati and other
possible security breaches.

In fact, as the Center for Security
Policy noted in a recent Decision
Brief,⁽¹⁾
such congratulations may be a bit
premature insofar as the report by the
Inspector General has yet to be completed
with respect to all aspects of the
investigation. Even the documentation
that has been completed has not
been released publicly to permit an
independent evaluation of the findings.

Such an independent inquiry into Mrs.
Gati’s judgment and conduct with respect
to classified information is all the more
needed in light of revelations published
in today’s Washington Times:
Mrs. Gati reportedly gave the Washington
Post’s R. Jeffrey Smith — a
journalist with a record of publishing
leaked information (interestingly, not a
little of it seemingly intended to cast
the Clinton Administration in a favorable
light)⁽²⁾
— a guided tour of the State
Department’s Cryptographic Support Area.
According to the Times:

“This room is ‘a very secure
area where highly classified
documents relating to codes and
electronic intercepts are
kept….Contrary to security
rules, Mr. Smith, who’s
broken a number of stories based
on leaked intelligence, was
brought in unannounced
to the Cryptographic Support Area
of Room 6510 (the State
Department’s Intelligence
Operations Center).'” href=”97-D22.html#N_3_”>⁽³⁾
(Emphasis added.)

The Times reports that this
visit was so unusual that an
employee of the National Security Agency
assigned to duty at the State Department
felt compelled to call NSA headquarters
and “alert the agency’s chief of
operations to the possible security
breach.” An unnamed
American official is quoted as saying
that “[Mrs. Gati] just brought him
in unannounced, much to the horror of the
NSA watch officer…[this incident was]
an example of her cavalier attitude
toward security.”

Although the
particulars of this episode are in
dispute (State Department Spokesman Glyn
Davies insists that Smith received an
unclassified briefing and was shown the
secure area without actually being
admitted to it), the episode bespeaks an
insensitivity to prudent information and
personnel security practices that has
characterized much of Toby Gati’s service
in the Clinton Administration.

Of particular concern, has been Mrs.
Gati’s enthusiasm — which she shares
with many of her colleagues in the
Clinton Administration — for the sharing
of American intelligence products with
foreign governments and multilateral
organizations (such as the United
Nations). For example, as the Center for
Security Policy has previously noted:

“In May 1995, the State
Department’s senior intelligence
official — Assistant Secretary
of State Toby Gati — told
Congress that the United States
had to share intelligence with
the U.N. even when it is not
in U.S. interests to do so.
Her reasoning? Doing so might
assure that the United Nations
would be willing to make use of
American secret information when
Washington wanted it to.” href=”97-D22.html#N_4_”>⁽⁴⁾

The Bottom Line

It is incumbent upon the congressional
intelligence committees to examine with
care the Clinton Administration’s dubious
practices concerning information and
personnel security that have been
illuminated by the controversial Mrs.
Gati. In particular, the Center for
Security Policy hopes that the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence will
take a hard look at the directive on
intelligence-sharing that was initially
proposed by former Director of Central
Intelligence John Deutch, a directive
that would have made it far easier to
share U.S. secrets with foreign
intelligence “consumers.” This
is a particularly appropriate subject for
the Committee to consider as part of its
examination of the policy views and
judgment of Anthony Lake — President
Clinton’s choice to succeed Mr. Deutch
and Tobi Gati’s former boss at the
National Security Council.

– 30 –

1.
See the Center for Security Policy’s
recent Decision Brief entitled,
Good News, Bad News for U.S.
Intelligence: State I.G. Clears the
Gatis; Rep. Solomon Asks FBI
Investigation of John Huang
(No. 97-D 12,
23 January 1997).

2. While the State
Department has frequently criticized
leaks to the press that have portrayed
its actions — or inactions —
unfavorably, it has not evinced much
concern about those published by Mr.
Smith that are deemed to be helpful to
the Clinton Administration.

3. The Times
goes on to note that Mrs. Gati is
evidently on extremely good terms with
Mr. Smith, as evidenced by her confusion
when she took a phone call from
“Jeff Smith” and began a
conversation thinking that she was
speaking with her friend from the Post.
In fact, she quickly learned, she was
speaking with Jeffrey H. Smith, then the
general counsel of the CIA!

4. See, for
example, its Decision Brief
entitled Before U.S.
Intelligence Can Be Reformed, the Clinton
Administration Must Stop Deforming It
(No. 96-D
44, 6 May 1996).