Counterintelligent -- How the GOP keeps the FBI stupid. In March, 2003, the FBI arrested a Chinese-American businesswoman and Republican fundraiser, alleging that she had passed a frighteningly broad range of American intelligence secrets to the People's Republic of China (PRC). For two decades, Katrina Leung had been a paid bureau informant, supplying information on Chinese intelligence operations in America. She'd also been sleeping with two senior FBI agents--one of whom was her so-called "handler"--for the better part of those two decades. It was alleged that she had transmitted what she learned about American counterintelligence from her lovers to Beijing and sent Beijing's disinformation back through the FBI. The story was sordid, embarrassing, and, worse than that, quite grave: Intelligence sources told The Washington Post that Leung had single-handedly compromised 20 years of American counter-intelligence work against the PRC. Democrats, who in 1997 weathered endless--and ultimately unproven--accusations of selling political favors or national security secrets for PRC money, can take a measure of satisfaction from this unlikely coda: The only bonafide Chinese spy so far turns out to have been not only a Republican, but a well-connected GOP fundraiser. And not just any Republican fundraiser, but one who happened to be sleeping with one of the lead FBI agents investigating Democratic fundraising. t's bad enough that Leung was able to seduce two FBI agents. But her longtime handler and lover, James Smith, was in possession of information covering a wide range of investigations and operations aimed at the PRC. Since Smith had access to so much, and Leung had access to what Smith had (copying and returning documents from his briefcase before he noticed their absence), her treachery touched everything: the 1997 campaign finance scandal, the investigation of Wen Ho Lee (the Chinese scientist at Los Alamos who was once suspected of selling nuclear secrets to Beijing), investigations of spies at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and much more. "They lost everything," one hawkish D.C.-based China watcher told me. "It's not how big a fish she is; it's how much damage did she do to the system over 20 years. She totally wrecked it." The real lesson that the Katrina Leung case teaches is one that the FBI and the Republicans, who became its most aggressive patrons during the 1990s, have spent almost two decades ignoring: The repeated failure of the FBI to adopt basic counterintelligence tactics has left it wide open to moles and spies. From time to time, every spy agency falls victim to a mole, a traitor, or a double agent. It's in the nature of the enterprise, since each such institution constantly attempts to penetrate the secrets of almost every other intelligence service. But because intelligence professionals know that it is extremely difficult to guard against every compromise of an agency's secrets, they are supposed to structure their outfits in such a way as to minimize the damage when the inevitable breach occurs. The best way to do that is through what intelligence professionals call "compartmentation"--designing the organization like a honeycomb, with individual parts sealed off from the rest as much as possible, and distributing information within the organization only on a "need to know" basis. There's always a tension between the needs for compartmentation and information sharing. But without effective compartmentation, a single, well-placed mole can trigger an intelligence leak of catastrophic proportions. Poor compartmentation also makes finding the culprit almost impossible. If the Leung scandal were a one-time goof, it might not be so outrageous. But it's not. The problems it exposed bear striking similarities to those revealed in the investigations into the Soviet-controlled American spies Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen--problems of information security about which the bureau had been repeatedly warned, but had just as often failed to address. This is no insignificant bureaucratic rigidity. Some of the country's most important national security secrets over the last 20 years have been exposed to our two biggest adversaries, and finding the culprits has been long delayed because of the bureau's failure to effectively implement this most basic principle of intelligence work. Despite no fewer than five very public warnings, Washington has been chronically unwilling to fix it. These repeated, dangerous failures at the FBI have both administrative and political sources. Bureaucratically, the agency is being asked to undertake two incompatible responsibilities: law enforcement and intelligence work. Though the two activities are related and overlapping, the skills, strategies, and tactics needed for each are profoundly different. The skills needed for law enforcement--a clubby culture of sharing information among agents--often means disaster in intelligence work. The latest debacle is proof that the bureau has never, and can never, overcome this built-in conflict in its mission. Only changing the FBI's mission can solve the problem. But only politicians can change the bureau's mission, and that's the second, more disturbing source of the problem. For the bureau's serial failures have been revealed at a time when Republicans have been tightening their hold on power in Washington--including on the congressional committees that oversee the FBI. Equally important, it has been during this period that the GOP has chosen to act as the FBI's protector, encouraging its investigations of the Buddhist-temple affair and other "scandals" which hurt the Democrats, while shielding the FBI from tough but necessary reforms that might have stopped the real damage done by spies like Leung. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0307.marshall.html

Tens of Thousands Will Lose College Aid, Report Says The first report to document the impact of the government's new formula for financial aid has found that it will reduce the nation's largest grant program by $270 million and bar 84,000 college students from receiving any award at all. The report, by the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of Congress, does not calculate the full effect of the changes, since it does not consider the further cuts in student awards that will probably occur once the new formula is applied to billions of dollars in state awards and university grants. But it does settle some uncertainty over the initial consequences of altering the intricate federal formula that governs the vast majority of the nation's financial aid. Word of the changes has kindled a small storm in Washington in the last month. Members of Congress have put forward legislation in hopes of either gauging the toll of the new formula or stopping it; they have characterized the change as a way to cut education spending without facing the public. "The department is wrong to turn its back on students and families," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. "They need more financial aid for college, not less." The Department of Education has cited its obligation under federal law to revise the formula and played down the impact. Sally L. Stroup, its assistant secretary for postsecondary education, told The Washington Post last month that "the changes will have a minimal impact on a handful of students." The figures cited in the report made clear, however, that the new formula would trim the government's primary award program, the Pell grant, by $270 million once it takes effect in the 2004-5 academic year. That amount, financial aid experts said, probably means that hundreds of thousands of students will end up getting smaller Pell grants, not counting the 84,000 who it is estimated will no longer qualify. "It's pretty hard to call several hundred thousand students a handful," said Brian K. Fitzgerald, director of the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, which was created by Congress to advise it on higher education. He estimated that more than one million students could receive smaller Pell grants because of the new formula. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/18/national/18GRAN.html

White House E-Mail System Becomes Less User-Friendly �want to send an e-mail message to the White House? Good luck. In the past, to tell President Bush � or at least those assigned to read his mail � what was on your mind it was necessary only to sit down at a personal computer connected to the Internet and dash off a note to president@whitehouse.gov. But this week, Tom Matzzie, an online organizer with the A.F.L.-C.I.O., discovered that communicating with the White House had become a bit more daunting. When Mr. Matzzie sent an e-mail protest against a Bush administration policy, the message was bounced back with an automated reply, saying he had to send it again in a new way. Under a system deployed on the White House Web site for the first time last week, those who want to send a message to President Bush must now navigate as many as nine Web pages and fill out a detailed form that starts by asking whether the message sender supports White House policy or differs with it. Completing a message to the president also requires choosing a subject from the provided list, then entering a full name, organization, address and e-mail address. Once the message is sent, the writer must wait for an automated response to the e-mail address listed, asking whether the addressee intended to send the message. The message is delivered to the White House only after the person using that e-mail address confirms it. Jimmy Orr, a White House spokesman, described the system as an "enhancement" intended to improve communications. He called it a "work in progress," and advised members of the public who had sensitive or personal matters to bring up with President Bush to use traditional methods of communications, like a letter on paper, a fax or a phone call. He said the White House, which gets about 15,000 electronic messages each day, had designed the new system during the last nine months in partnership with a private firm that he would not identify. "It provides an additional means for individuals to inquire about policy issues at the White House and get a personalized response in 24 to 48 hours," said Mr. Orr, the Internet news director at the White House. It is still possible to send a traditional e-mail message, he said, but the sender will receive the automated reply and there is no guarantee it will be read or responded to. Some experts in Internet usability think the new method for sending messages is not doing much to enhance communications between the White House and the public. "Over all, it's a very cumbersome process," said Jakob Nielsen, an authority on Web design who helps run a consulting group, Nielsen Norman Group, in Fremont, Calif. "It's probably designed deliberately to cut down on their e-mail." Chart: Dear (Click) President (Click) Bush (Click)http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2003/07/17/technology/18MAIL.chart.jpg.html http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/18/technology/18MAIL.html

Passing It Along Here's another sentence in George Bush's State of the Union address that wasn't true: "We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and other generations." Mr. Bush's officials profess to see nothing wrong with the explosion of the national debt on their watch, even though they now project an astonishing $455 billion budget deficit this year and $475 billion next year. But even the usual apologists (well, some of them) are starting to acknowledge the administration's irresponsibility. Will they also face up to its dishonesty? It has been obvious all along, if you were willing to see it, that the administration's claims to fiscal responsibility have rested on thoroughly cooked books. The numbers tell the tale. In its first budget, released in April 2001, the administration projected a budget surplus of $334 billion for this year. More tellingly, in its second budget, released in February 2002 � that is, after the administration knew about the recession and Sept. 11 � it projected a deficit of only $80 billion this year, and an almost balanced budget next year. Just six months ago, it was projecting deficits of about $300 billion this year and next. There's no mystery about why the administration's budget projections have borne so little resemblance to reality: realistic budget numbers would have undermined the case for tax cuts. So budget analysts were pressured to high-ball estimates of future revenues and low-ball estimates of future expenditures. Any resemblance to the way the threat from Iraq was exaggerated is no coincidence at all. And just as some people argue that the war was justified even though it was sold on false pretenses, some say that the biggest budget deficit in history is justified even though the administration got us here with cooked numbers. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/18/opinion/18KRUG.html

Glimpses of a Leader, Through Chosen Eyes Only The official White House photograph of President Bush, splashed across the front pages of the nation's newspapers last summer, showed him striding vigorously on a Camp David trail, just hours after he had been sedated for a colonoscopy. It was a flattering portrait of a fit chief executive, ready to take up the nation's business once again. And no wonder, say photojournalists: the president had selected and approved the photograph's release to the news media. Eric Draper, the chief White House photographer and the only photographer allowed at Camp David that weekend, had shown Mr. Bush the small image of the picture in the back of his digital camera. "I said, `What do you think about this?"' Mr. Draper recalled in an interview in his West Wing basement office last week. "And he said, `O.K., that's good.' " All recent presidents have had official photographers, and all have distributed White House photographs that they hoped put the president and his administration in the best light. But photographers, picture editors and even administration officials say that no other administration has moved as forcefully as the Bush White House to limit the access of outside news photographers to the president. There are two reasons, they say: the administration's desire for secrecy, and new technology, like the ability to send digital photos by e-mail, that makes immediate dissemination of images possible.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/national/13IMAG.html

Israel Calls Arafat Obstacle to Peace Effort While Mr. Abbas has strong international support and Mr. Arafat is shunned by the United States and others, Mr. Arafat has strong support among Palestinians, and Mr. Abbas risks being seen by them as an Israeli and American agent. Further isolating Mr. Arafat would only enhance that image, said Hisham Ahmed, a political scientist at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah. "If Sharon tightens the siege and the isolation of Arafat, people will point the finger at Abu Mazen and his government," Mr. Ahmed said. Already, he said, "People constantly mock Abu Mazen and his government on the street." He said that "the only one who could enable Abu Mazen to succeed is Sharon," listing steps like releasing Palestinian prisoners and removing Israeli military roadblocks. Under the peace plan, Israel has withdrawn from parts of the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank city of Bethlehem. It has said it will not pull back from other Palestinian areas until Mr. Abbas acts to suppress militant groups and collect their weapons. After a series of suicide bombings last year, Israel reoccupied Palestinian cities in the West Bank that it had ceded to Palestinian control. Israel has also released about 280 Palestinian prisoners, and it says it is preparing to release some 300 more. Israel is not required by the peace plan to take that step, which is politically sensitive within Israel, but Mr. Sharon says he believes it will strengthen Mr. Abbas. Muhammad Dahlan, Mr. Abbas's minister of security, told Israeli officials on Thursday that to help Mr. Abbas and the peace plan they must release many more of the roughly 5,800 prisoners they hold. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/international/middleeast/13MIDE.html

Supremely Blocked: Libraries and Filters When the Supreme Court ruled last month that public libraries must install anti-pornography filtering software on their computers as a condition of federal funding, child safety advocates called it a landmark decision for the rights of children. The decision also applies to public schools although that portion of the law wasn't challenged. For Congress, it was a breakthrough decision after two previous attempts to protect children from online smut were rejected by the courts as unconstitutional. For free speech advocates, it was a historic decision of another sort: the Supreme Court has never previously upheld an effort to regulate content on the Internet. Even worse, according to the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the decision was based on the faulty premise that filters work. The Supreme Court ruling overturned a federal appeals decision that rejected the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA)as a violation of the First Amendment. The lower court ruled that the use of filtering software in public libraries blocked access to Web sites that contained substantial amounts of protected speech. In other words, filters don't always work. Although CIPA specifically stipulates adults can request a librarian to turn off the anti-porn filters, the lower court said library patrons might be too embarrassed or lose their right to be anonymous. The Supreme Court, though, ultimately ruled the government's interest in protecting children from exposure to sexually inappropriate material outweighed the rights of adult library patrons. The Court did agree with the lower court that filtering software, at best, is problematic. "Findings of fact clearly show that filtering companies are not following legal definitions of 'harmful to minors' and 'obscenity,'" the ALA said in statement following the Supreme Court ruling. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, "the immense size and variablity of the Internet raises concerns as to whether it is possible to limit Internet blocking only to Web pages containing legally 'blockable' content." A recent study by the EFF and the Online Policy Group examined the effects of N2H2 and SurfControl's filtering software, two of the popular products on the market. The study involved Internet searches of text taken directly from the state-mandated curriculums of California, Massachusetts and North Carolina. Testing nearly a million Web pages, the study found that for every page blocked as advertised, the software blocked one or more pages inappropriately either because the pages were miscategorized or because the pages, while correctly categorized, did not merit blocking. In case of block codes used in compliance with CIPA, the blocking software miscategorized 78-85 percent of the sample. The study concluded that blocking software either overblocks or underblocks. The software either blocks access to many pages protected by the First Amendment or does not block pages likely to be prohibited under CIPA. A Kaiser Family Foundation study conducted last year said that Internet filters most frequently used by schools and libraries can effectively block pornography without significantly impeding access to online health information, but only if the filters are set at the lowest, least restrictive levels. As filters are set at higher levels they block access to a substantial amount of health information, with only a minimal increase in blocked pornographic content, the report stated. The ALA is dealing with the filtering issue by calling for full disclosure of what sites filtering companies are blocking, who is deciding what is filtered and what criteria are being used. The group hopes to obtain this information and then evaluate and share the data with the libraries now being forced to forego funds or choose faulty filters. The ALA believes library users must be able to see what sites are being blocked and, if needed, be able to request the filter be disabled with the least intrusion into their privacy and the least burden on library service. http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/2234181