U.S. Counterintel Targets: "Leaks," "Trade Secrets"

The Bush Administration has released its "National Counterintelligence Strategy." And there are a number of surprises in the spook-fighting game plan -- surprises, at least to me.

First off, the document has a big-time emphasis on "protect[ing] U.S. economic advantage, trade secrets and know how." There are "state-sponsored and free-lance hackers" out there, the document warns, ready "to steal our nation’s intellectual property or manipulate information to cause financial or logistical chaos... [C]ounterintelligence has an important role to play in understanding who is planning and carrying out those attacks or preparing the ability to do so in order to parry them, and in some cases, to turn them to our advantage."

Now, if I remember my 90's correctly, it was just this sort of focus on economic espionage that made Clinton-critics on the left and the right howl. Even Wired News got its digs in.

Since then, of course, there have been countless stories of Chinese agents making off with secrets from American defense contractors. Which may be why the Counterintelligence Strategy expands its focus "beyond traditional targets in the
Intelligence Community and other US
national security structures."

The private sector and academia are fertile breeding grounds for advanced scientific discovery, cutting-edge technology, and advanced research and development that make them irresistible “soft targets” for foreign intelligence collectors. It is imperative that the
American public understand that the cyber networks that businesses, universities, and ordinary citizens use every day are the object of systematic hostile activities by adversarial intelligence organizations, and that these activities threaten the integrity and safety of the nation’s infrastructure and electronic networks. The counterintelligence community will engage the private sector, academia, and the general public in an ongoing dialogue regarding the threats we face and our responses to those threats.

The document also looks at threats to the intelligence community from within -- and not just the usual worries, like turncoats and foreign
"moles." "Leaks" -- along with "subversion" and "treason" -- "expose our vulnerabilities, our governmental and commercial secrets, and our intelligence sources and methods."

• This insider threat has been a source of extraordinary damage to US national security. Countering this threat will require an aggressive national effort. In coordination with organizations responsible for areas such as security, information assurance, intelligence and law enforcement, and science and technology, the counterintelligence community must develop new policies, tools, and methods to deter, discover, and negate insider threats. For example, electronic systems designed to discover unexplained patterns of activities or anomalous events must be put in place, and they must be monitored. Adding these new tools and techniques to our nation’s existing arsenal, the counterintelligence community will seek to manipulate foreign spies, conduct aggressive investigations, [and] make arrests.*

Now, trust me, I understand full well that giving the press details about a secret surveillance program or covert agent's identity can be damaging in the extreme. But are leaks really comparable in consequence to subversion and treason?