Deutch Balked at Nondisclosure

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 23, 2001 | by James P. Lucier, | Timothy W. Maier

Former director of central intelligence (DCI) John Deutch did not sign documents acknowledging that he had received exit briefings informing him of his obligations not to keep or disclose classified information when he left his post at the CIA -- at least not until three years later when the Pentagon's inspector general got involved several months after he became a target of a criminal probe, news alert! has learned.

He did sign a nondisclosure agreement June 23, 1999, during a four-month debriefing period that ended Sept. 1, 1999, in which the Pentagon's Office of the Inspector General was present, according to records obtained by news alert! through the Freedom of Information Act. In 1998, the Pentagon initiated a criminal investigation into Deutch's mishandling of thousands of classified documents.

"He was never required to sign anything," explains CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilsher. That's because every CIA employee signs a secrecy agreement prior to employment that covers them the rest of their lives, she says.

Insight obtained the eight pages from a declassified debriefing file on Deutch a year after this magazine initially raised the question in an investigative report (see "Deutch Rules of Engagement," March 27, 2000). The file shows Deutch was debriefed four times on the "sensitive compartmented information nondisclosure agreement" between 1993 and 1999.

After one year on the job, Deutch quit the CIA in December 1996. Records indicate his first debriefing as a former DCI didn't come until June 16, 1997. "Highly unusual to wait that long says an intelligence source. But Guilsher says, "They cut some slack with the DCI as a matter of courtesy."

He was then debriefed two more times: Aug. 23, 1999, and the final one ending Sept. 1, 1999. The records also show he was debriefed once while he was a deputy secretary of defense on March 16, 1993. He was debriefed in August 1999 because he was on an intelligence commission concerning weapons of mass destruction. This August briefing came three days after current DCI George Tenet, in an unprecedented move, cut off Deutch's access to classified information in response to having violated the agency's rules by keeping special-access programs on an unsecured computer.

Deutch, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims he never intended to violate secrecy agreements when he stored 17,000 CIA files on his unsecured home computer. His attorneys insist he was not aware he had unauthorized documents in his possession despite repeated debriefings warning him that he must "return all materials" or face criminal charges.

Prior to leaving office, President Clinton killed the criminal probe by issuing a pardon to his longtime friend, effectively putting an end to allegations Deutch maintained "black-program" intelligence files, consisting of electronic-warfare plans, on his home computer.