[lit-ideas] Mysterious New U.S. Spy Program?!
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 16:40:11 EST
This is a little ... unnerving...
_Click here: US-Spy-Budget-Mystery_
(http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/041208/w120866.html)
Critics say mysterious new U.S. spy program endangers national security
04:25 PM EST Dec 10
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Congress' new blueprint for intelligence spending
includes a mysterious and expensive spy program that drew extraordinary
criticism from leading Democrats, with one saying the highly classified
project
is a threat to national security.
In an unusual rebuke, Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the senior
Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, complained Wednesday the spy
project is "totally unjustified and very, very wasteful and dangerous to the
national security." He called the program "stunningly expensive."
Rockefeller and three other Democratic senators - Richard Durbin of
Illinois, Carl Levin of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon - refused to sign the
congressional compromise negotiated by others in the House of Representatives
and
Senate that provides for future U.S. intelligence activities.
The compromise noted the four senators believe the mystery program is
unnecessary and its cost unjustified and "they believe that the funds for this
item
should be expended on other intelligence programs that will make a surer and
greater contribution to national security."
Each senator - and more than two-dozen current and former U.S. officials -
declined to further describe or identify the disputed program, citing its
classified nature. Thirteen other senators on the intelligence committee and
all
their counterparts in the House approved the compromise.
The measure, which authorizes spending for intelligence activities for the
fiscal year that began Oct. 1, is separate from the intelligence-overhaul
legislation that received final congressional approval Wednesday.
The rare criticisms of a highly secretive project in such a public forum
intrigued outside intelligence experts, who said the program is almost
certainly
a spy-satellite system, perhaps with technology to destroy potential
attackers. They cited tantalizing hints in Rockefeller's remarks, such as the
program's enormous expense and its alleged danger to national security.
A U.S. panel in 2001 described U.S. defence and spy satellites as
frighteningly vulnerable, saying technology to launch attacks in space is
widely
available internationally. The study, by a commission whose members included
Donald
Rumsfeld prior to his appointment as defence secretary for President George
W. Bush, concluded the United States is "an attractive candidate for a Space
Pearl Harbor."
Sending even defensive satellite weapons into orbit could start an arms race
in space, warned John Pike, a defence analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, who
has studied anti-satellite weapons for more than three decades. Pike said
other
countries would inevitably demand proof any weapons were only defensive.
"It would present just absolutely insurmountable verification problems
because we are not going to let anybody look at our spy satellites," Pike said.
"It is just not going to happen."
Rockefeller's description of the spy project as a "major funding acquisition
program" suggests a price tag in the range of billions of dollars,
intelligence experts said. But even expensive imagery or eavesdropping
satellites - so
long as they're unarmed - are rarely criticized as a danger to U.S. security,
they noted.
"From the price, it's almost certainly a satellite program," said James
Bamford, author of two books about the National Security Agency.
"In the intelligence community, it's so hard to get a handle on what's going
on, particularly with the satellite programs."
Another expert agreed.
"It's hard to think of most any satellite program, at least the standard
ones, as dangerous to national security," said Jeffrey Richelson, who wrote a
highly regarded book about CIA technology in 2001.
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