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Former CIA chief faults Clinton for decline in U.S. espionage capability

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Tuesday, October 12, 1999

WASHINGTON -- President Bill Clinton has been accused by his former intelligence chief of allowing U.S. espionage efforts to deteriorate.

Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, who left the agency in 1995, told an intelligence symposium in San Antonio, Texas that the international situation is more volatile than anytime since World War II. He pointed to the arms buildup in China and North Korea, international terrorism and biological warfare. At the same time, Woolsey said, U.S. spy skills have deteriorated to the level of the 1930s, when secretaries of state were said to believe that gentleman didn't read other people's mail.

"It's not fair to blame statesmen of [the pre-World War II] era for not being clairvoyant because they didn't see Germany and Japan coming," said Woolsey, speaking at a two-day conference at Trinity University. "Those problems were clouds on the horizon, not thunderstorms overhead. But it is fair to blame them for not being careful, and what they did bears an interesting resemblance to what we're doing today in the comfortable, relaxed 1990s."

Woolsey, a Clinton supporter and CIA director from 1993-5, said a prime threat is proliferation from the former Soviet Union. "We must be concerned that the former Soviet military industrial complex is very much for sale," he said on Saturday.

Retired Navy Adm. William Studeman, former director of both naval intelligence and the National Security Agency, told the conference that budgets for intelligence gathering have stayed constant for 10 years. "As a result of what I consider less than adequate funding, the intelligence community faces prodigious modernization challenges," Studeman said.

Tuesday, October 12, 1999



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