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Posted on 09/24/2001 5:39:30 PM PDT by Jean S

On September 19, the editors of Human Events interviewed Herbert Romerstein, a widely recognized authority on internal security matters and Soviet espionage. Romerstein has served on the professional staffs of the House Committees on Internal Security and Intelligence. During the Reagan presidency, he headed the Office to Counter Soviet Disinformation at the U.S. Information Agency. His latest book, published by Human Events' sister company, Regnery, is titled, The Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors. The following is an edited transcript of the interview.

Human Events: Give us your take on the emasculation of our internal security, beginning with the committee chaired by Democratic Sen. Frank Church [Idaho] in the 1970s.

Romerstein: The emasculation started in the mid-1970s, but it continued sporadically. There was some rebuilding in the Reagan years, but after that things worsened again. What we found was that Church put in motion a whole series of concepts, that you had to restrict your intelligence services, both your foreign intelligence service, the CIA, and your domestic security, the FBI, because they are the real enemy. They are "rogue elephants," they want to do terrible things to U.S. persons, and you’ve got to stop them.

I went to work for the House Intelligence Committee in 1978. I was hired by Rep. John Ashbrook [R.-Ohio], who was on the committee, who said we have to try to prevent these people from doing as much damage as they are trying to do. And that really was a lot of what we did over a period of time, at least not make it as bad as they wanted it.

An example comes to mind that is really reminiscent of today. Before the Church and Pike committees [Democratic Rep. Otis Pike of New York], the FBI could wiretap anybody they thought they needed to in connection with foreign intelligence and foreign terrorist activities. They didn’t wiretap ordinary Americans. The assertion of Church and people like that—"Oh, they are spying on ordinary Americans"—is nonsense. They were spying on those who wanted to do us harm, either on behalf of hostile intelligence services or on behalf of foreign intelligence or international terrorist groups.

In 1979 the Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA]. This provided that the FBI had to get a warrant to wiretap somebody they knew to be a foreign intelligence agent or an agent of a "foreign power," which meant not only foreign governments but foreign entities that operated in the United States in ways that were detrimental to us.

That was the first hurdle put in the way of the intelligence services. As a result, the FBI now has to go to a court and ask for a warrant to do the wiretap. And they have to show that the person that they would like to wiretap is engaged in activities of a foreign power, such as terrorism and the like.

The liberal Democrats decided that this was not a big enough hurdle for the FBI to overcome, so they put up another obstacle to gathering intelligence through wire taps. One of the issues was, "What do you do with Mr. X, who has not engaged in spying in the past or has not engaged in terrorism, but is a member of an organization which has traditionally engaged in espionage or terrorism?"

The security-minded types felt this individual should be wiretapped also. But the liberal Democrats wanted a provision in the bill that said that you can wiretap only leaders of foreign powers that engage in espionage or terrorism activity, but not the rank and file.

In other words, under the law that passed, the FBI could wiretap bin Laden—if he had been in the United States—but not the guys who took over the airline. They would be considered "rank-and-filers."

Ashbrook had put in an amendment to cover rank-and-file members of foreign powers or foreign entities, but the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Eddie Boland [D.-Mass.], came over to us and said, "John, we’re giving you your amendment. We’re not going to fight it, but just add it to the bill." I said, "John, we won." But John said, "No, we lost, because if we voted on it and got a big enough vote, the House would have to fight for the provision in a Senate-House conference on the bill. But since we didn’t vote on it, they are going to throw it away in conference." And they did.

And so, in the law that eventually passed the Congress, the FBI was unable to wiretap a member of a foreign power engaged in hostile intelligence or terrorism, rank-and-file members of the Soviet controlled Communist Party, for example.

HE: What do you believe was the aim or intention of the Democratic leadership for doing this?

Romerstein: I think it was to impede the activities of our intelligence and counter-intelligence services. There is no other explanation for it. They had a concept—actually it’s a concept in the law—of "U.S. person." Looking at it objectively, I’d say a U.S. person is a citizen or resident alien. No. Under the law, and the way they utilize this, it’s any foreign person in the United States that is not a foreign diplomat.

HE: According to that concept, what if a Sudanese dissident walks across our Mexican border?

Romerstein: As soon as he crosses the Rio Grande, he becomes a "U.S. person," with all the rights and privileges of a U.S. citizen. Therefore, why should that nice person be wiretapped just because he’s a member of an organization that has blown up American facilities abroad? Why should you expect that he might do something like that here and go get a warrant for wiretapping? You can’t wiretap him without a warrant. You have to convince the court that in fact this is an appropriate person to wiretap. You need probable cause.

HE: In other words, an Arab terrorist who has legal, or even illegal, immigration status in the United States, but who was not actually involved in the commission of a crime before flying an airplane into the World Trade Center, would not, under the law, be liable to a wiretap?

Romerstein: Yes, unless you had an informant who said this man says he’s going to commit an act of terrorism. Then you have probable cause, but not under the basis of membership in the group, but on the basis that he intends to commit the act.

HE: Let’s be even more precise. If the FBI knew this terrorist was a member of Osama bin Laden’s group, Al Qaeda, and went to the FISA judge and said we know he’s a member, though not a leader, of Al Qaeda, the judge, if he actually followed the law, would say, "That’s not enough, I won’t give you the warrant."

Romerstein: Not only wouldn’t the judge give the warrant, but the Justice Department wouldn’t even ask for the warrant. Unless the FBI comes in with massive evidence in the first place, they know they will be turned down. And this law, so far as I know, has not been revised in the area we’re discussing.

HE: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was 1979. But what about the 1976 Levi guidelines, named for Atty. Gen. Edward Levi and which were implemented under Republican Gerald Ford?

Romerstein: The Levi guidelines were a response to the Church hearings. They restricted the FBI in their ability to collect information on subversive organizations. In hearings on the guidelines, John Ashbrook called in some military officials who described what kind of security checks they did for members of the armed forces. I got to ask a question about Progressive Labor, a Maoist organization that said in their open literature that they intended to send people into the military so they could have military training that they could then use as part of the revolutionary movement against the United States.

And I asked the military people if they were aware of this. And they said no. The only way we could be aware of this, they said, is if the FBI told us. That afternoon, the FBI came in, and Congressman Bill Young [R.-Fla.] asked what they were doing about Progressive Labor. They said, "Oh, we don’t have an open case on that."

"Do you read their literature, do you know what they are threatening to do?" Young prodded. They said, "No, under the Levi guidelines, if we don’t have an open case, we can’t read their literature." The FBI person who testified about this said that he could read the literature in the privacy of his home, but couldn’t write a report on it or file it. He was about to retire and said words to this effect: "It’s only in this situation that a man who is about to retire knows he’s prevented from doing the job that he was hired to do."

That was the kind of a situation we were in. In 1975, Levi ordered the FBI not to investigate the Socialist Workers Party, a Trotskyite group. They are a tiny group, insignificant, except for one small thing: They were part of a group called The Fourth International. And some sections of the Fourth International—Spain, Latin America and the Middle East—were engaged in terrorist activities. And the internal bulletin that only the members could get carried reports from these foreign groups as to what they were doing and why they were doing it.

At that point, the House Internal Security Committee was being dissolved, but the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee was still functioning and I did a hearing with them called Trotskyite Terrorist International. I put the documents in that we had gotten from our sources in the organization, the original publications. But the FBI couldn’t read those publications. When they went to Levi and said can’t we keep an informant in the organization just to pick up these publications, his answer was, "You don’t have an open case, so you can’t have an informant in the organization."

HE: As a result of the pressures by Church & Co., then, there was clearly a severe reduction in our capacity to defend ourselves. You had, as you say, the restrictions on wiretapping, the ability to collect information, and to penetrate dangerous organizations. You had, under Ford, the elimination of assassinations. . . .

Romerstein: All true. Let me say this. There was a great deal that we knew in the 1960s and 1970s, and that we knew again in the 1980s. And then we had the eight years of the dark ages.

You don’t hear anybody saying today, for instance, though they eventually will, that the terrorist movements in the world are not independent. They have interrelationships. Fundamentalist terrorist groups, secular terrorist groups, Communist terrorist groups, are all in contact. And they always were. And we used to be able to track them more easily in the past because we knew that they had these contacts.

Bin Laden is a latecomer to the game. During the war in Afghanistan, he was raising money for charitable work to build hospitals, to take care of the Afghan refugees. The Taliban was a small group supported by the Pakistani intelligence service to give help to the mujahideen. But once they took over Afghanistan, they got involved in activities that got them in contact not only with other terrorist groups, but those they were fighting against during the Afghan war.

The Soviet Union during the Afghan war got support from such countries and organizations as Iraq, Libya, Syria and the PLO. But now bin Laden and his friends are in bed with these countries and organizations that some 15 years ago were opposing them and were financed by the KGB.

HE: You would argue that Osama bin Laden would naturally reach out to governments that already had a history of cooperating with terrorist organizations?

Romerstein: Yes, for logistical help, and because they all have the same enemy, the United States. Some people may be offended by this, but it is no accident that they arrested some IRA people with narco-terrorists in Latin America. It was no accident that Latin American terrorists showed up on planes with PLO hijacking planes in the 1970s. These people all interlock.

HE: It was reported that this Mohammed Atta, one of the pilots on one of these planes, had had a meeting with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Europe somewhere. If you were speculating, what would that signify?

Romerstein: You’re dealing with an interesting thing here. This guy was not a leader of bin Laden’s group, he was one of the expendables that they wasted in an airplane. But he was important enough to meet with an intelligence officer from a government that supported their activities. You asked, why did they meet? Maybe he needed something. Maybe the intelligence officer needed him to do something. But there are these relationships, these people know each other and support each other.

HE: Talk a bit about when Stansfield Turner headed the CIA under Jimmy Carter.

Romerstein: During the Turner era, John Ashbrook and I took a trip abroad and we went to a sensitive collection site where they were collecting information of great, great interest. And John said to the guy who headed it: "Supposing in the course of your collection, you run across information on an American who is working for the KGB." The man said, "I’d tear it up. I’m not supposed to spy on U.S. persons."

Then John said, "Supposing the information you had showed the American working for the KGB was going to assassinate a congressman." And the man said, "Then I would chuck my job and warn the congressman." John had smoke coming out of his ears.

When he came back, we went to see Turner. Turner said that the guy didn’t understand the program. Wrong. That guy understood the program, because if he started reporting on these things, he would be in trouble. If you want to keep your job or want to get a promotion, you don’t tell your bosses things you don’t want them to hear.

HE: What did Turner do specifically that damaged our security operations? For instance, didn’t he get rid of some 800 case officers?

Romerstein: Yes, but more important is the atmosphere that develops. When I got to the House Intelligence Committee in 1978, the morale was very, very low. The slogan was: "You don’t get into trouble if you don’t do your job." You didn’t have people going out and doing things.

Sure, they watched the 800 being dismissed and they said, this could happen to me too. There were a lot of other things. They were constantly being told, "We don’t want to do this, Congress is going to be mad." Even in the early Reagan Administration, one of the CIA guys called me and said he wanted to develop a contact. Can we do this, he asked, without having Congress yell at us, if we don’t tell Congress in advance? They were so antsy, they were so afraid Congress was going to beat them up.

HE: What can you do today to penetrate potentially dangerous groups?

Romerstein: The FBI has had informants in organizations for many, many years. When the FBI is told not to investigate, the informants are sent home. They don’t inform anymore. You can’t put them back in. You can’t put the egg back together again. And when you start sending people in again, as we must do, you send them in at the lowest possible level.

There’s an example in the case of Soviet espionage. The FBI didn’t investigate the Communist Party, which was a recruiting ground for Soviet espionage, from 1923 until 1938. It was not one of their concerns.

Franklin Roosevelt asked the FBI to get back into the Communist Party. The FBI’s feeling was we don’t have the right to do it, the laws don’t allow us to do it. Roosevelt said I’m concerned about espionage, I’m concerned about subversion, I want you in. This didn’t mean that Roosevelt wasn’t bringing Communists into his government, but he wanted to know what the people in his government were doing. But it was too little, too late.

Most of the spies that we find in the later years had been recruited to the Communist Party in the early 1930s, not in 1938 and 1939. And so the new FBI recruits who got into the party got into a branch, at the bottom of the totem pole. They didn’t have the opportunity to see what an Alger Hiss was doing or a Harry Dexter White was doing.

Had the FBI had the informants in during those quiet days, during the late 1920s and ’30s, they would have known these people and would have been able to identify them before they got into the government.

The same thing is true today. There is a continuum. It starts with those who are anti-American and demonstrate against anything that America does to defend itself. From there, there is another group, but which has links to the first group, which provides logistical support for terrorist activity. This is the terrorist support organization. But the members of the terrorist support organization are recruited from the first group. It doesn’t mean that every person involved in the first group is going to end up in the second group.

Then you get to the terrorist group itself. What you want to do is to get your informant in the support apparatus, because then they can watch some of the activities in the terrorist group without actually engaging in terrorism themselves.

But to get there, they have to be known. They can’t just walk off the street and say, "Oh, I was in a demonstration today against the IMF, so I want to be taken into your confidence." It doesn’t work that way.

HE: Do you suspect that the support apparatus for the hijackings was created here?

Romerstein: Yes. There are things that Americans know and how America works that we don’t even think about, that a foreigner wouldn’t know. I have foreign friends who call me all the time about how to do things. This is true in real life and it’s true in the terrorist world as well.

My guess—and this is only a guess—is that by the time the FBI finds out about these groups in the United States they are going to find a lot of middle-class white kids who are involved in violent actions against the United States and abroad, providing these groups support, because they know how things are done in this country. They are a valuable asset.

HE: In terms of operationally moving forward from this day, to make sure that the FBI has the counter-intelligence capability to prevent one of these atrocities, what should they be able to do?

Romerstein: First of all, they should be able to monitor the anti-American groups abroad. Those people who support Fidel Castro, those people who support North Korea, the Workers World party. Certainly the FBI should be able to monitor them. Once they start monitoring, they should be looking for people who may be spun off into more violent activities. But it’s a long-term project.

HE: What about electronic surveillance? Congressmen Bob Barr [R.-Ga.], for instance, is very nervous about additional surveillance, fearing it’s a threat to our Constitution.

Romerstein: That’s a difficult question, but, in the long run, the safety of the United States is really paramount. During the Civil War, Lincoln abolished habeas corpus. There are things that you have to do to defend yourself. Technology is extremely advanced. You should be able to scan the airwaves and look for key words or indications of something that is going to happen.

HE: Congress could make this concrete change, amend the FISA Act, so that mere membership in a foreign controlled power or entity is probable cause for the FBI to get a wiretap.

Romerstein: The other issue is the roving wiretap, that you get a warrant for John Smith, and no matter what phone John Smith is on, you should be able to listen to it.

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