Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- May 13, 1998
Senate, CIA probe spy agencies' failure to predict India's testing
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The CIA and the Senate intelligence committee are investigating the failure of U.S. spy agencies to detect preparations for India's nuclear tests on Monday.
"This was a colossal failure of our nation's intelligence agencies, probably the biggest failure in recent years," Sen. Richard C. Shelby, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said yesterday. "Our intelligence forces were caught completely off guard."
The Alabama Republican said his committee has scheduled a closed hearing tomorrow to hear from officials of the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office on the intelligence lapse, first reported yesterday by The Washington Times.
"We want to know how this happened, and why this happened," Mr. Shelby said.
CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said a review panel is being set up in response to questions about "intelligence collection and analysis regarding Indian nuclear testing."
CIA Director George Tenet has chosen retired Adm. David Jeremiah, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to head the panel, which will include officials from the CIA, the DIA, the NSA, which conducts electronic eavesdropping, and the NRO, which carries out satellite spying missions.
The panel will review the facts surrounding the nuclear tests and "determine what lessons can be learned," Mr. Harlow said.
Monitoring nuclear weapons proliferation is "an extraordinarily important and difficult target for the intelligence community," he said.
"Close scrutiny was devoted to the issue in late 1995 and the subject was addressed once again following recent Pakistani missile tests," Mr. Harlow said. "It is apparent that the Indians went to some lengths to conceal their activities and intentions."
White House spokesman Michael McCurry said any problems with intelligence reporting on the nuclear test would be examined. "I think it's safe to say that, given the significance of the event, we'll go back and look and see how much we knew and how we knew it," he said.
Indian preparations for the 1995 test were spotted and the advance word allowed U.S. and foreign governments to pressure New Delhi into postponing the tests.
Test preparations also were detected in 1996 but no tests took place, according to intelligence sources.
Mr. Shelby said the inability of the spy agencies to spot preparations for Monday's tests was "a failure on the part of human intelligence as well as our signals intelligence."
If intelligence of an impending nuclear test had been collected, the agencies could have informed policy-makers and the president, who could have taken steps to try to head off the test, Mr. Shelby said.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, said he is worried about U.S. intelligence capabilities. The collapse of the Soviet Union also came as a surprise to American officials.
Democratic leaders were less critical of the intelligence failure but still expressed concern.
"If those reports [of failure] are true, we are certainly disappointed," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat. "We spend billions and billions of dollars on intelligence --I would think on something as fundamental as this, we would have had a little warning."
Republican leaders said the nuclear test bolstered their arguments for passing a national missile defense bill, which could be voted on this week.
"What this says about our intelligence capabilities, we'll have to wait to sort out," John Holum, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, told reporters at a breakfast meeting. "I'm pretty high on our intelligence capabilities, but they are not foolproof."
India's government provided "misdirections" in describing its nuclear policies, he said.
Also, the fact that the tests involved "three very closely spaced events," rather than a series of tests over several days, indicated New Delhi was trying to conduct the tests quickly, before the international community could object, he said.Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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