SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER The Aleksey Yeremin espionage investigation is spurring calls for greater protection of U.S. stealth technology and other defense secrets.
October 30, 2000
Case sparks calls for tighter security
By PAUL SHUKOVSKY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER"We have to be concerned about defense contractors who have classified information that has to be protected," said Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., a former member of the House Intelligence Committee.
Although he has been briefed on the case, Dicks declined comment on the FBI's investigation of Yeremin, a Russian mathematician who had been under contract to Lockheed Martin. Protecting stealth technology should be a top national security concern, Dicks said.
"Congress needs to look into this more carefully," he said. "We need to set good policy guidelines about sensitive information."
The Yeremin case is reminiscent of other recent national security lapses, involving scientist Wen Ho Lee at Los Alamos National Laboratory and former CIA Director John Deutch. In each instance, sensitive data were loaded onto unsecure computers, including a home PC.
In the Yeremin and Lee cases, officials asserted after the fact that the information involved should have been more highly classified.
After the Los Alamos security breach, in which digitized nuclear data were mishandled, "practices at the (national) laboratories have been dramatically changed," Dicks said.
Dicks produced a detailed report last year emphasizing the importance of strengthening counterintelligence and security at the labs. The changes include a comprehensive reorganization of security responsibilities and better coordination with the FBI.
Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists said security concerns should be balanced with the need for collaboration with experts from other countries, including Russia.
"After a scandal breaks, people say, 'Oh, that should have been protected more rigorously.' It is an exercise in hindsight that is not terribly useful," said Aftergood, who works for the Project on Government Secrecy, calling for more government openness and accountability.
"Security is never an all-or-nothing affair," Aftergood said. "It's always an attempt to balance competing interests."
In the Yeremin case, "it sounds like we had an important interest in collaborating with the Russian mathematician," he said. "A simple solution would say 'let's not collaborate with the Russians anymore.' But that would be cutting off our nose to spite our face."
Tightening security can have unintended negative consequences.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Spence Armstrong, who advises NASA on security issues, said tough regulations on the export of military-related technologies have had a chilling effect on universities working with the space agency because of the large number of foreign scientists at the schools.
One of the best ways to protect sensitive information, Armstrong said, is to make sure it is properly classified.
Seattle-area entrepreneur Russ Sarbora thought his venture a noble one when he teamed with Yeremin in 1991 to start a business, Elegant Mathematics, aimed at bringing Soviet software to the American market.
Not only was the project potentially lucrative, it also meant employing 20 Russian mathematicians and scientists who otherwise might have been tempted to sell their services to nations considered hostile to the United States.
A former Lockheed computer expert who acknowledges giving Yeremin part of the source code for a stealth aircraft design program said he was assured beforehand by engineers that the information wasn't classified.
After the FBI and the Air Force began the espionage investigation, however, the computer expert said he was told it should have been labeled top-secret.
National industrial security regulations for defense plants were relaxed under the Bush administration in the early 1990s. That may have made Lockheed's Skunk Works, the Palmdale, Calif., plant where stealth warplanes are designed, more prone to a security catastrophe, according to a former Lockheed security official.
Aftergood said stringent Cold War-era security measures had become an unnecessary burden, "suffocating industry for no added value." Nevertheless, he said, there should be periodic reviews of defense-plant security regulations.
Taking classified information home is among the most common security infractions, Aftergood said.
"There are approximately 100 cases a year in which individuals are caught doing it. I would guesstimate that there are at least 10 times that many in which they are not caught," he said.
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