Secretary ‘Halfbright’? Hard Questions For Madeleine Albright, Her Promoters
This is the fifth in a series of
Center for Security Policy Transition
Briefs intended to
identify critical, looming challenges
to U.S. national interests. The
Center believes that these issues
must be given immediate
attention by President Clinton’s new
national security team and by the
Congress that will be asked to
confirm his senior appointees and
oversee their activities.
(Washington, D.C.): One of the most
pressing issues facing the next set of
Clinton national security Cabinet
appointees — and the Congress that will
be asked to confirm them and have to
oversee their activities — must be
correcting this
Presidency’s egregious disregard for the
most basic personnel and information
security procedures. This matter
has long been of grave concern to the
Center for Security Policy
but rarely more than today: According to
this morning’s Washington Times,
the State Department’s senior
intelligence official and her husband are
under investigation for facilitating
foreign intelligence operations against
the United States.
The most important subject of this
investigation is Dr. Tobi Gati,
the Assistant Secretary of State for
Intelligence and Research and a former
executive of the U.N. Association. While
Mrs. Gati brought no prior experience
with intelligence to this position (apart
from some exposure to its products during
a brief and controversial stint on the
Clinton National Security Council), she
did bring to it the one-world
mind-set of her former employer.
The Center for Security Policy raised
alarms last May about Secretary Gati’s
views in connection with a paper warning
of the dangers of the Clinton
Administration’s determination to share
intelligence with the U.N. and other
foreign governments and institutions. In
a Decision Brief
entitled Before U.S.
Intelligence Can Be Reformed, the Clinton
Administration Must Stop Deforming It
(No. 96-D 44, 6
May 1996), the Center recalled that:
“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.”
Unfortunately, such bizarre notions
were apparently not confined to Dr.
Gati’s efforts to shape U.S. government
policy about intelligence-sharing. To be
sure, she was a prime-mover
behind Director of Central Intelligence
John Deutch’s reckless directive aimed at
revising “Security Controls on the
Dissemination of Intelligence
Information.” This directive turned
traditional practice on its head; the
burden of proof was shifted from those
who wished to share intelligence with
foreign nationals (i.e., to demonstrate
that no harm will accrue to U.S.
interests) to those who opposed such
sharing (they were required to
demonstrate that such sharing will cause
“unreasonable” harm to those
interests.)
Last May, the Center described this
directive as evidence of :
“…The truly radical
nature of the Clinton
Administration’s agenda for U.S.
national security and foreign policy
institutions. Simply put,
that agenda seems designed to
dismantle or incapacitate such
institutions or otherwise to reduce
their effectiveness….This policy
seems rooted in a conviction that
potential adversaries who gain access
to U.S. secrets will not use them to
this country’s detriment — not least
by using such information to
neutralize U.S. ‘sources and methods’
of collecting such information and
exploiting the openness to penetrate
whatever secrets as are still closely
held….An Intelligence Community
still reeling from the effects of one
Soviet/Russian mole, Aldrich Ames,
should be exhibiting more care about
facilitating the burrowing of his
successors.”
‘Gotcha Gati(s)’?
Now, according to the Washington
Times, Secretary Gati is suspected
of having carried her commitment to
intelligence-sharing to lengths
impermissible even under the Clinton
Administration’s lax security standards.
She is reportedly under investigation by
the State Department’s Inspector General
— along with her husband, Dr. Charles
Gati, who served for a time as a member
of the Clinton State Department’s Policy
Planning Staff — “over charges of
several security-related abuses.”
The Times reports:
- “Among the matters under
investigation are claims that
Mrs. Gati, a political appointee
and friend of First Lady Hillary
Rodham Clinton, improperly
provided information to Russia’s
foreign minister [then
Andrei Kozyrev] and received
intelligence data without proper
clearances and before being
confirmed by the Senate.” - “Investigators want to know
if Mrs. Gati misused her position
and violated security rules in
getting two highly classified
documents from the National
Security Agency at a time when she
was not cleared properly for
intelligence derived from
communications intercepts, among
the most closely guarded secrets
in government.” - “One document linked a
family friend [identified as Ivan
Volgyes] of Mrs. Gati to the
Hungarian intelligence service,
and a second document
suggested that her husband, then
an official in the State
Department’s Policy Planning
Office, was a counterintelligence
risk, said
officials familiar with the
reports.” - “…The second
document…was an NSA
intercept that raised serious
counterespionage worries about
Mr. Gati’s ties to the Hungarian
government, specifically
through Hungary’s embassy in the
United States.” - Mr. Volgyes is quoted as denying
that he was associated with
Hungarian intelligence but
acknowledging that he
“visited the Gatis very
frequently.” - “The investigators are also
trying to determine if officials
of the Bureau of Intelligence and
Research, the State Department
office Mrs. Gati heads, covered
up evidence of wrongdoing by her and
others working
there.” - “In addition, investigators
are reviewing Mrs. Gati’s close
ties to several Russian
officials, including Andrei
Kozyrev, who was foreign
minister until January.”
The Center has learned that Mrs.
Gati has stayed with Mr. Kozyrev
at his residence when she was in
Russia — a practice that raises
profound concerns about the
judgment and security practices
of this senior U.S. intelligence
official. - Mrs. Gati is also the subject of
an Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission inquiry over charges
that she “persecuted” a
career professional on the
IN&R staff after he brought
to her attention classified
documents bearing on her alleged
connections and her husband’s to
Hungarian intelligence. - It appears that “security
clearance forms for the Gatis
were improperly filled out”
— a practice that has repeatedly
proved to be no impediment to the
clearing of Clinton political
appointees.
(Emphasis added throughout.)
The Bottom Line
The Washington Times quotes
an unnamed senior House investigator as
saying that “at least two
[congressional] committees will take a
very serious look at this.” Clearly,
prompt hearings are in order to
establish the contents of the documents
implicating the Gatis in improper, if not
illegal, activity and to take testimony
concerning other aspects of the Gatis’
conduct. Among the questions
that such congressional hearings must
explore are the following:
- Why has Mrs. Gati not
been put, at a minimum, on
administrative leave during this
lengthy investigation?
It is absolutely mind-boggling
that, as State Department
spokesman Glyn Davies put it
today, “Mrs. Gati remains a
valued and important member of
the secretary’s foreign policy
team…[who] continues to
perform her functions with all of
the clearances and authorizations
and permissions that she needs to
serve as the Secretary of State’s
advisor on intelligence matters.” - Why did the FBI terminate
its investigation of the Gatis,
turning the case over to the
State Department’s IG?
The Center has been advised that
political pressure from high
levels of the Administration was
brought to dissuade both the FBI
and CIA from pursuing this
matter. Is that true and, if so,
whence came that pressure? (It
would appear that similar
pressure was responsible for
forcing the FBI today to drop its
prosecution of admitted former
Soviet spy Vladimir Galkin.) - What procedures were
followed to ensure that there was
no compromise of sensitive U.S.
intelligence information on those
occasions when Mrs. Gati spent
the night at the Russian Foreign
Minister’s residence?
Was she explicitly authorized
during such visits, or other
meetings with Russian, Cuban,
Hungarian or other foreign
nationals, to share intelligence?
If so, by whom were those
authorizations made and for what
purpose? - What process is being
used to evaluate the
reasonableness of the risk to
U.S. national interests entailed
in such intelligence-sharing by
Mrs. Gati and other Clinton
officials? Has
any assessment been made of the
damage to sources and methods of
American intelligence that may
have resulted therefrom? - As noted above, Mrs. Gati
is reportedly a friend of First
Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
If so, the investigation into Mr.
and Mrs. Gati’s conduct fits a
disturbing pattern of
“Friends of Hillary”
who have run into serious legal
and/or political problems — more
than a few of which have to do
with personnel or information
security concerns. Others in this
mold include: Webster Hubbell,
Vince Foster, Bernard Nussbaum,
John Huang, Craig Livingstone,
William Kennedy and Patsy
Thomasson. - What precisely was Mrs.
Clinton’s role in securing Mrs.
Gati’s present role? Has Mrs.
Clinton’s patronage insulated
Secretary Gati from the sorts of
damage-limitation measures that
would have immediately
been taken against any career
civil servant, Foreign Service
officer, intelligence operative
or member of the armed forces?
In addition to plumbing fully the
depths of the Gati(s) Affair, the
relevant Senate and House committees must
take a hard look at the larger problems
arising from the undisciplined sharing of
U.S. intelligence with foreign nationals
and other initiatives that the Clinton
Administration presents as
“reforms,” but that seem sure
to result (whether by design or not) in
the serious undermining — if not the destruction
— of critical intelligence
institutions and capabilities.
– 30 –
1. See the
following Center Decision Briefs:
‘High Crimes and
Misdemeanors’? The Huang Caper Reinforces
Concerns About Clinton Malfeasance on
Security Matters (
November 1996), Paydirt:
Congressional Investigators Closing In On
The Essence of ‘Filegate’ Scandal:
Jeopardizing National Security
(No. 96-D 71,
18 July 1996), ‘No Aldrich
Ameses at the White House’: Are You Sure?
Real Care In Order As the NSC Reorganizes
‘C.I.’ (
1 May 1994) and The Clinton
Security Clearance Melt-Down: ‘No-Gate’
Demonstrates ‘It’s the People, Stupid’
(No. 94-D
32, 25 March 1994).
2. For more on yet
another catalyst for this benighted
policy, U.N. Ambassador Madeline
Albright, see the Center for Security
Policy’s Transition Brief
entitled Secretary
‘Halfbright’? Hard Questions For
Madeleine Albright, Her Promoters
(No. 96-T 114,
14 November 1996).
3. See, for
example, an article published on 10
November by the Sunday Times of
London entitled “Chinese Trade
Coup Staggers U.S. Spy Chiefs.” It
addresses the possibility that
then-Commerce Secretary Ron Brown’s
waiver of foreign background checks into
John Huang’s overseas connections may
have enabled Communist Chinese
intelligence to penetrate the American
government.
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