Cia

WASHINGTON -- In the wake of the Aldrich Ames affair and other purported failures of American intelligence, there have been numerous inquiries and reports designed to reform the operations of the nation's $28 billion-a-year intelligence community.If past experience is any guide, these attempts at bureaucratic reshuffling and organizational fine-tuning will be as ineffective as previous reform attempts extending over three decades since the Bay of Pigs fiasco.The Ames case was the most flamboyant of the CIA's recent problems.

WASHINGTON -- CIA Director R. James Woolsey launched a public campaign yesterday to show he is reforming the agency and its "culture" from within in an effort to head off growing congressional pressure for more far-reaching change in the wake of the Aldrich Ames spy case.Mr. Woolsey announced a series of internal changes in the way the intelligence agency maintains security, evaluates its personnel and runs its computer system. In addition, Mr. Woolsey said there will be internal reviews of the CIA's principal directorates of operations (espionage)

Lawrence R. Houston, a founding father of the Central Intelligence Agency, died of a heart attack Tuesday while vacationing at his summer home in Westport, Mass. He was 82.In the late 1940s, he helped draft legislation that created and shaped the CIA, then served as the spy agency's general counsel from its founding in 1947 until his retirement in 1973.Mr. Houston supervised the legal work for the exchange of Soviet intelligence officer Rudolph Abel for Francis Gary Powers, the U.S. pilot whose U-2 surveillance aircraft was shot down over the former Soviet Union in 1960.

On paper Gen. Michael Carns looks like a good candidate to run the Central Intelligence Agency. Given President Clinton's mixed record of appointments in the national security field, however, some wariness is justified. The retired Air Force officer's predecessor, R. James Woolsey, also had very good credentials to become director of central intelligence. He resigned in less than two years, after failing to get a grip on that troubled agency and losing the confidence of administration officials and key members of Congress.

PARIS -- A European senator leading an investigation into alleged CIA abductions of suspected terrorists said yesterday that European governments were probably aware of clandestine U.S. activity on their soil but that he had not found proof of secret detention centers in Poland and Romania. In a report to the Council of Europe, a legislative assembly based in Strasbourg, France, Swiss Sen. Dick Marty presented interim findings of a two-month-old inquiry that is worsening trans-Atlantic tensions over tough U.S. tactics against terrorism.

After months of investigation, a government report has concluded that Aldrich H. Ames, the Central Intelligence Agency spymaster convicted earlier this year of handing over U.S. secrets to the former Soviet KGB, managed to escape detection for almost a decade mainly because the spy agency itself covered up the failings of its old boy network.In a 400-page classified document, the CIA inspector general's office found that Ames exposed 55 clandestine U.S. and allied operations over nine years, far more damage than had been admitted previously.

WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama has selected Leon E. Panetta to serve as the next director of the CIA, apparently concluding that a spy chief who understands politics might be more important than one with deep experience in intelligence matters. The surprise pick of Panetta, a former congressman and Clinton administration official, would give Obama a CIA director with unquestioned loyalty to the White House and an experienced managerial hand to steer the new administration away from intelligence scandals.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Maxine Waters should have been wearing red. The woman was that hot -- as in burning up angry.But her purple outfit would have to do, as she minced no words in telling the group of students standing near a pool within a block of the U.S. Capitol about the allegations that the CIA funded a group of Nicaraguan contras who flooded her southern Los Angeles district with crack cocaine.Some -- but, significantly, not very many -- have called for a congressional investigation into the allegations.

"Wanted: College students with impeccable pasts. Speakers of non-Romance languages preferred. Sunglasses and trench coats optional. Great salary. Apply (hush-hush) to the CIA."Faced with budget cuts, flare-ups in previously obscure nations and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CIA is cozying up to college students.It seems that the spy agency -- whose motto is: "Our business is knowing the world's business" -- finds itself scrambling to cover the continents with a shrinking staff.President Clinton's budget plan calls for trimming the CIA's $28 billion budget by $7 billion over the next five years.

WASHINGTON -- Like thousands of other Americans in this time of corporate belt-tightening, Jim Waller has just taken a buyout, a one-time cash payment as an incentive to retire early."