WASHINGTON, 8 March 2005 — The Bush administration has approved a new counterintelligence strategy that calls for pre-emptive attacking of foreign spy services and the spy components of terrorist groups viewed as threats to US national security, a senior US intelligence officials said over the weekend.
National Counterintelligence Executive Michelle Van Cleave told officials at a counterintelligence conference at Texas A&M University that the past policy of waiting for intelligence threats to emerge “ceded the initiative to the adversary.”
The strategy is viewed as an extension of the post-Sept. 11 foreign policy initiative known as the ‘Bush Doctrine,’ which calls for pre-emptive action against nations and extremist groups perceived as threats by the US. It is also part of President Bush’s announced plan to promote democracy and freedom and undermine global tyranny, she said.
A detailed outline of the strategy is due to be released to the public as an unclassified document shortly.
Officials said the plan aims to protect US intelligence and information systems from foreign agents, including Al-Qaeda, by integrating counterintelligence through a recently formed agency called the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive.
“No longer will we wait until taking action,” Van Cleave said during the conference hosted by the Bush School of Government and Public Service. “To meet the threat, US counterintelligence needs to go on the offensive, which will require major but achievable changes in the way we do business.”
Counterintelligence efforts are currently dispersed across the 15 agencies that make up the intelligence community.
“We have a great deal of bilateral cooperation between agencies. But we need strategically orchestrated operations directed against prioritized foreign intelligence threats,” said Van Cleave, who will oversee the plan.
“Today we are at war and the potential harm to this country from intelligence losses is far more immediate,” she said.
The strategy marks a departure from a long-standing counterintelligence practice of waiting for foreign-sponsored agents to act against intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
Van Cleave’s office produced the new strategy with input from the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon and other agencies.
Their new counterintelligence mission will be to identify foreign spies and terrorist threats, and then develop “a counterintelligence doctrine of attacking foreign intelligence services systematically via strategic counterintelligence operations, said Van Cleave.
