19 August 2000
Source: Jeffrey Richelson <jtrichelson@dellnet.com>. Tel: (703) 684-8274; Fax: (703) 684-0879.

[Fax, August 18, 2000, 4 pages.]

The response by Duncan Campbell and Paul Lashmar¹ to my critique² of their Independent on Sunday report, "The new Cold War: How America Spies on us for its oldest friend -- the Dollar," is not, I believe, particularly convincing.

I can certainly believe, as they state, that a sub-editor inserted the phrase "obtained by the IoS" with respect to the three SIGINT reports I discuss. However, they do not seem particularly troubled by his actions -- hence, their Clintonesque statement that the claim "is still factually correct" even though one document appeared on a web site months earlier, another in a 1999 book, and a third, apparently, in a 1978 book. More relevant is the fact that the statement is extraordinarily misleading -- at least if the phrase "obtained by" is to have any real journalistic or scholarly meaning.

Of far more importance is the question of the relevance of the three documents to claims of economic espionage by the U.S. intelligence community during the Clinton administration. There is not the slightest hint in their article that they are talking about anything other than events since 1993. Thus, the second paragraph of the article begins "Documents obtained by the Independent on Sunday reveal how the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) - propelled by the newly-elected Clinton administration's policy of "aggressive advocacy" to support American firms compet[ing] for overseas contracts - have immersed themselves in the new hot trade war." Nothing that follows would lead a reader to believe that at least one, and probably two (more on this below), of the three SIGINT reports they cite date back to the 1970s. Their claim that "these examples were not presented as examples of the Clinton administration's trade policy" is simply not consistent with their use in the article.

With regard to the second SIGINT report, Campbell and Lashmar wrote in their response that in their original article "There was not even space to give details of [the SIGINT report] which concerned world oil trade." They provided no further details, including the date of the report, in their response other than to note that it appeared in an Australian book. E-mails to both Duncan Campbell and Paul Lashmar requesting clarification have gone unanswered. But it seems that the report they are referring to was published in Richard Hall's 1978 book The Secret State: Australia's Spy Industry (pp. 236-242). That SIGINT report, titled "World Oil: Recent Developments," discussed OPEC negotiations and French diplomatic activity. It was produced by the Australian Joint Intelligence organization in 1975. Further, the report contained a notice prohibiting dissemination to any foreign nations other than the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Surely, such a report is not a very good example of economic espionage in the Clinton administration.

The authors also note that the original version of their article contained a reprint of the 1997 document originally published in Bill Gertz' book -- an illustration missing from the original reprint on Cryptome (as well as from the LEXIS/NEXIS version I read) . But to me, their defense amounts to asserting that a reader who had access to the original version with the illustration could tell that their description of the report and their truncation of a quote in the text of the article were misleading. To describe the 1997 document as "economic in nature" is absurd. By those standards intelligence about any sale of any lethal commodity could be described in such terms. In their response they note "there are not always hard and fast lines between economic and trade matters and political or defence issues." I emphatically agree. Unfortunately, their article made no such distinction.

Much of the rest of Campbell and Lashmar's response focuses on other evidence, allegations, or reporting about U.S. economic intelligence/espionage activities. But since my original critique focused solely on the three SIGINT reports and not their entire thesis that part of their discussion is not relevant as a response.

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1. Response to comments about report on US economic intelligence policy, Cryptome, August 13, 2000.

2. Richelson Disputes US Economic-Spying Report, Cryptome, July 12, 2000.