US counterintelligence strategy to involve private sector

Washington, March 28 The US has unveiled an eight point National Counterintelligence Strategy that seeks to engage the private sector and academia in a meaningful dialogue to thwart intelligence threats at home and abroad.

Developed by the National Counterintelligence Executive in coordination with various US intelligence agencies, the strategy's major objective is to secure the US against foreign espionage and electronic penetration and protect the integrity of its intelligence system.

Other major objectives include supporting national policy and decisions, protecting US economic advantage, trade secrets and know how, supporting US armed forces, managing the counterintelligence community to achieve efficient coordination, improving training and education of the counterintelligence community.

It also seeks to expand national awareness of counterintelligence risk in the private as well as public sector, the Director of National Intelligence, J. Michael McConnell said in his preface to the strategy released Tuesday.

The fundamental responsibility for US intelligence is to warn of and help prevent terrorist attacks against the homeland, engage other asymmetric threats, and provide reliable intelligence on traditional and enduring strategic issues, he said.

The strategy 'describes a way forward by which the counterintelligence organizations of the US government will engage elements in the public and private sectors to address the threat posed by the intelligence activities of foreign powers and groups and protect our nation's secrets and the means by which we obtain those secrets,' McConnell said.

'The President and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) expect us to make measurable progress on all of these goals soon,' said Joel F. Brenner, National Counterintelligence Executive. 'Our job now is to drive this strategy from the clouds down to the sidewalk.'

'By engaging the private sector and academia in meaningful dialogue,' he said, 'the community will learn and, at the same time coordinate the public dissemination of information on intelligence threats.'

The US faces substantial challenges to its security, freedom, and prosperity. Transnational terrorism, continued proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), asymmetric warfare, extremist movements, and failed states present severe challenges to a just and stable international order, Brenner said.

'Our ability to meet these challenges is threatened by the intelligence activities of traditional and non-traditional adversaries. Our adversaries, foreign intelligence services, terrorists, foreign criminal enterprises and cyber intruders - use overt, covert, and clandestine activities to exploit and undermine US national security interests,' he said.

Brenner said during the Cold War, US adversaries gained access to vital secrets of the most closely guarded institutions of its national security establishment and penetrated virtually all organisations of the US intelligence and defence communities.

The resulting losses produced grave damage to US national security in terms of secrets compromised, intelligence sources degraded, and lives lost, and would have been catastrophic had we been at war, he said.

(c) Indo-Asian News Service

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