Why Did Former CIA Director John Deutch Endanger America’s Most Vital Secrets?

By Andrew I. Killgore

“…CIA Director George Tenet told Congress he could not be sure the information on Deutch’s computer had been secure… CBS News reported [Deutch] e-mailed a Russian scientist on his AOL account.”

—Reuter’s report in the 2/4/00 Gulf News

“We have asked him to appear [before the Senate Intelligence Committee], we hope he will….This is strange behavior, very suspicious. It’s unprecedented to my knowledge.”

—Sen. Richard Shelby, chairman, Senate Intelligence Committee, quoted in an AP story in the International Herald Tribune, Feb. 2/5-6/00

John Deutch, born in Belgium in 1938, was brought to the United States as a young boy. He studied chemistry, earned a doctorate in his specialty at M.I.T., became a professor there and eventually won the chair of the department of chemistry.

Obviously a brilliant professor, Deutch did not come to public notice, as measured in mainline media attention, until 1994, when then-Secretary of Defense William Perry elevated Deutch from assistant secretary—to which he had been appointed in 1993—to deputy secretary of defense. In May 1995 Dr. Deutch moved from his number-two job at the Department of Defense to the top position of director of the Central Intelligence Agency, America’s spy agency. He held the directorship until he resigned in December 1996.

Deutch’s brilliance of mind did not enhance his reputation as CIA director. John Millis, a former CIA operations officer and chief staffer at the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, was quoted in the Feb. 18, 2000 issue of The Washington Post as saying Deutch was “the worst CIA director ever.” Millis thought the miscast Deutch also had earned the second-worst and third-worst rankings.

But it is the unloved John Deutch’s unfathomable side that excites the most compelling interest. Both at the Department of Defense and at the Central Intelligence Agency, he grossly violated rules for the protection of America’s secrets, including “special access programs” so secret that officials privy to them are authorized to lie to keep them from becoming public. Most such programs are kept secret from the CIA and only disclosed to the Pentagon’s top three or four officials. Deutch was briefed on many of these programs both when he was at the Defense Department and at the CIA, according to the Washington Times of Feb. 17, 2000.

Deutch’s open computer—loaded with the most carefully protected secrets—was a target for any computer hacker. That explains CIA Director George Tenet’s statement to Congress, quoted above, that he could not be sure that information on Deutch’s computer was secure.

U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Shelby, also quoted above, was deeply suspicious of Deutch’s motives in leaving U.S. secrets open for grabbing. Shelby wanted Deutch before his committee, but whether Deutch ever appeared is doubtful. If he did, the session was in camera and the proceedings have not been published.

Deutch may have been so blindly arrogant that he treated the laws on security protection as applying to others, but not to himself. This is the view of a retired CIA officer who is a friend of the writer.

Or, his gross defiance of the rules may have stemmed from some tangle of perversities that even Deutch did not understand.

Finally, he may have been a quiet but passionate Zionist seeking to help Israel, where he has relatives. His sophisticated excuse, if he had ever had to answer questions under oath, was that he was simply careless.

Deutch may well have been tried for his transgressions, and some cracking of the Deutch enigma might have been possible. But former President Bill Clinton took away that possibility when he pardoned Deutch on the last day of his presidency.

Why?

Andrew I. Killgore is the publisher of the Washington Report.