John Berlau
Security Cracks at the White House
Mon Sep 16 19:45:44 2002
208.152.73.81

Insight on the News - National Issue: 10/01/02 = Special Report

Security Cracks at the White House
By John Berlau

One year after the Sept. 11 attacks the national focus still is on homeland
security. From local banks to city halls, officials frantically are working
to make American institutions less vulnerable to terrorist attack. Many
assumed the hardening for homeland security began at the White House. That,
after all, is where the president resides and meets with his top advisers,
so visitors who come and go must be the most closely scrutinized in
Washington.
But Insight has learned this may not be the case because of a new
computerized access-control system put in place by the U.S. Secret Service —
which still is headed by a director appointed by Bill Clinton — right after
the Bush administration took office. Largely built in the final months of
the Clinton administration, the system was advertised by its proponents as
being quicker and more accurate than previous systems the Secret Service had
relied on to clear visitors into the White House. But sources familiar with
the way it has operated tell Insight that not only was the system never
adequately tested, but it frequently breaks down and delivers inaccurate
data about White House employees and guests.

National-security concerns also have been raised concerning the ownership of
the lead contractor on the system, a company called Ultrak Inc. After
Ultrak's stock price tanked to around $1 last year, controlling interest in
the Lewisville, Texas, company was acquired by Niklaus Zenger, a resident of
Switzerland. Zenger, now Ultrak's new chief executive officer (CEO), also
has ties to the Russian government, leading some security experts to worry
about what now is a foreign-owned company having gained access to highly
sensitive data concerning every aspect of who goes in and out of the White
House and when.

Critics of the system spoke to Insight with reluctance. All have tremendous
respect for the Secret Service and the courageous agents who put their lives
on the line to protect the president and the country. But, as one critic put
it, "The new access-control system potentially poses, at best, embarrassment
and, at worst, a threat to those whom it is intended to help protect: the
president, vice president, government employees and Secret Service officers
who are charged with the physical protection of the White House complex and
its occupants."

Checking carefully, Insight interviewed current and former Secret Service
employees and others familiar with the access-control system and obtained
documents that reiterated many of the concerns expressed.

Most were deeply concerned but asked to remain anonymous. One of those who
did speak for the record is Bill Castle, a Secret Service officer involved
in protecting presidents from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton. Castle became a
consultant to the Secret Service on information-technology programs after he
retired in 1996. He tells Insight the system was rushed into operation and
that there were problems immediately after it was installed in April 2001.

"It wouldn't pull up names of people with White House passes as fast as the
old system," Castle says. "The older system would get it in five seconds,
and the new system took more than 20 seconds" per name. He says this made
the processing of long lines of White House guests much slower.

More importantly, Castle says, the system frequently failed to give accurate
information about White House employees, the press corps and others with
temporary or permanent passes to enter the White House. "The ladies in the
[Secret Service's] pass-clerks office were really concerned that they
couldn't get the hard-copy reports on which passes were active and which had
expired, who should have access to the White House and who shouldn't," he
says.

Castle left the Secret Service in the fall of 2001. According to sources
with knowledge of how the system currently functions, it usually doesn't
take as long to process White House visitors through a line. But they say
the system still has numerous problems ensuring accurate data about White
House guests and employees. They say it also frequently crashes. In fact,
Secret Service agents had to rely on a backup system for more than a day in
early August.

Special Agent Marc Connolly, a Secret Service spokesman, acknowledges the
system was down in August, but insists "that was scheduled routine
maintenance." Commenting generally on the system, Connolly tells Insight,
"It's a state-of-the-art system, and we're really pleased with its
performance." When asked if there have been any errors, Connolly replies,
"Not that I'm aware of."

So how serious is this? Sources familiar with the new system say it has
given inaccurate data about telephone numbers, birth dates, expiration dates
of passes, dates and times of arrivals and departures and, most importantly,
arrest records. "There have been occasions when White House pass-holders'
pictures have been erroneously displayed on computers with personal
information belonging to entirely different pass-holders," one source says.

Such malfunctions have the potential to harm White House security policies
in two main ways, sources say. One is that the computer wrongly will list
people with legitimate business at the White House as "Do Not Admits," thus
blocking or delaying their access. The other, more dangerous, problem is
that visitors who shouldn't be admitted, including potential terrorists or
assailants, will be let into the White House by a computer system that
wrongly processes the data on individuals.

All the sources are careful about not exaggerating. They point out that
there is a backup system that dates from the 1980s, but warn that it is
being phased out. They also note that Secret Service agents carefully
monitor guests even after they're admitted. Still, an incident that occurred
in the summer of 2001, a few months after the new system was installed,
indicates why some believe the new system already may have compromised
national security.

In late June 2001, a uniformed Secret Service officer removed Abdallah
Al-Arian, a 20-year-old Muslim intern for Rep. David Bonior (D-Mich.), from
a White House meeting on President George W. Bush's faith-based initiatives.
During the meeting, the officer approached Al-Arian and asked him to leave
White House premises immediately. A media firestorm ensued as Islamic groups
issued statements condemning Al-Arian's removal as discrimination against
Muslims and demanding apologies from the Bush administration and Secret
Service. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer issued an apology from the
administration at a press conference.

But, in the wake of Sept. 11, some terrorism experts now say there was
nothing to apologize for because the Secret Service had good reason to eject
Al-Arian. His father is none other than Sami Al-Arian, the University of
South Florida professor whose shouts at public rallies of "Damn America!"
and "Death to Israel!" have been reported widely and who is suspected of
raising money for the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Abdallah's
uncle is Mazen al-Najjar, who was deported to the United Arab Emirates in
August for suspected links to Islamic militants.

While the reported and suspected actions of Abdallah's father and uncle
don't make him guilty of anything, and friends in Washington vouch for him,
terrorism authorities say these connections are more than sufficient to
restrict access to the White House. "Given the situation, the Secret Service
officer's action was entirely appropriate," says Stephen Schwartz, an expert
on Islamic extremism and author of the forthcoming book, The Two Faces of
Islam.

Castle and others say that if the access-control system had been working
properly, the Secret Service and Bush administration would have been saved
this embarrassment. A properly functioning system simply would have flagged
Al-Arian as "Do Not Admit" and his name never would have appeared on the
invitation list, they say. Diligent Secret Service officers apparently
performed an additional check on the meeting guests after the access-control
system let Al-Arian in and then found the information about his father and
uncle, the sources speculate. "If the access-control system were working
properly, this shouldn't have happened," Castle says. "But it doesn't sound
like it was working properly."

But Connolly stands by the Secret Service's previous apology to Al-Arian.
"That incident had nothing to do with an error in the access-control
system," he says. "We continue to say that the error was that he should not
have been removed."

Another source says the system also was found to be working improperly
earlier this year when it had difficulty retrieving the dates and times of
arrivals and departures of Enron officials visiting the White House. These
records were needed for investigations of the Enron scandal.

Meanwhile, concern also has arisen about the volatile stock price and
foreign purchase of Ultrak, the system's lead contractor. In July the
electronic-security company's share price hit a low of 73 cents, and it has
hovered around $1 for more than a year. Sales for the six months ending June
30 decreased by more than 20 percent from a year ago, a decline the company
attributes in a press release to losing Sam's Club wholesale stores as a
customer for its security products.

In late 2001, Ultrak was taken over. At Ultrak's June shareholder's meeting,
Zenger was made sole CEO of Ultrak. Other board members from France and
Great Britain also were seated. As a result, says a company spokesman, all
members of the board are foreign nationals, except one.

Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission confirm that Zenger is a
resident of Switzerland, but press reports show he has close ties with
Russia. According to the Financial Times, Zenger worked as a consultant for
the state-owned Tass news agency. Oddly, the article didn't specify whether
he worked there before or after the fall of the Soviet Union. But the
British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) reported that, in 1992, Zenger led a
delegation touring the nuclear facilities of Arzamas-16, set up under the
Soviet Union as its nuclear-weapons command center. Zenger was shown "the
technology of making parts using powder and highly durable materials,
various ways of using the energy of a directed explosion for dividing bulky
metal structures," according to the BBC translation of a Tass report.
According to the Financial Times, Zenger also has worked as a consultant to
the United Nations and is "a lawyer who is fluent is six languages."

Zenger may be a fine chap, say high-level security experts with whom Insight
spoke, but a foreign-controlled company whose CEO has ties close enough to
the Russian government to be toured through its nuclear command center
should not be anywhere near the chain of authority of a highly sensitive
data system at the White House.

"I think it's scary," says Gary Aldrich, formerly the senior agent in the
FBI liaison office at the White House and now president of the Patrick Henry
Center, after Insight apprised him of the situation. "I just don't think
foreign-owned corporations should have such influence in the policies and
procedures that involve our most secure facilities. As soon as it's outside
the control of the U.S. government, and we're not dealing with U.S.
citizens, I have a problem with that."

Ultrak spokesman David Paul says the Secret Service never has indicated that
Zenger's controlling interest in the company was a problem. "Everybody who's
worked on it has had the appropriate security clearance," Connolly says.
When asked about the alleged problems with the Ultrak-built system, Paul
tells Insight, "We've been told by counsel that because of the nature of
it — Secret Service — we're not really allowed to comment on specifics."

Critics of the system with whom Insight spoke say that not only was it never
adequately tested, but Ultrak and some Secret Service officials developing
it did not seem concerned that a complex system controlling access to a
facility as important as the White House needed to be dead-on accurate and
free of bugs. "This system could have been for a bank, an apartment
building, anything as far as they were concerned," an alarmed insider says.
But it was for the White House.

Other sources explain that the Secret Service previously had failed in an
attempt to integrate the functions of the existing computer systems and was
in a rush in late 1999 and 2000 to get a new system online by the time a new
president took office in 2001. In the process, they say, key details were
overlooked. Insight has obtained a paper written in December 2000 by
computer specialists at the Secret Service that expresses concern that the
system was being tested only at the factory and not at a government
location.

"As the overall test plan is now constituted, no government personnel will
have even touched it before it has been totally installed in the White House
complex as a replacement for the existing and reliably functioning
[systems]," the paper says. "A number of key documents, functional items and
necessary system properties are missing, incomplete or only partially
understood by the project team."

The paper urged that the system at least be tested in a part of the White
House complex to get the bugs out before implementing it. "I personally feel
there wasn't enough stress put on the system when it was tested," says
Castle, who was one of the paper's authors. Unfortunately, he says, those in
charge did not follow the paper's recommendations before implementing the
system in the White House in April 2001. "They just unplugged the old
system" and put employees to work on the new system cold-turkey, he says.
Another source says those who expressed criticisms were made to feel they
were part of the problem.

"We're extremely confident with the testing procedures before the system was
implemented," Connolly assures Insight.

Sources say security problems with the White House computers that control
access to the president reflect a larger problem with the administration of
the Secret Service. A June article in U.S. News and World Report charged
that the Secret Service's Office of Inspection and the Inspector General's
Office of its parent, the Treasury Department, give "inadequate oversight"
in disciplining misconduct.

For instance, there is the alleged problem with Clinton-appointed Secret
Service Director Brian Stafford, who sometimes appears to be distracted.
According to U.S. News and World Report, "six current Secret Service agents
say that while protecting Clinton during the [Monica] Lewinsky scandal,"
Stafford himself was "widely believed to be involved in [an] extramarital
[relationship] with [a woman] who worked in the White House."

Insiders say the Bush proposal to move the Secret Service into the new
Department of Homeland Security may lead to greater accountability.
Meanwhile, as far as the computer system is concerned, a Secret Service
source tells Insight, "a congressional investigation is in order to force
the truth into the open. The safety of our leaders should be paramount."
=========================================================================

Painful Questions (APFN, just received copy today, recommended)
Is the U.S. Government so incompetent that the 9-11 attack merely
appears to be a scam? If so, a government of idiots is no better than a
government of con artists! We have a serious problem in either case!
http://www.dpgear.com/painful.htm

David Rockefeller Speaks - satire by Victor Thorn - sisyphus1285@hotmail.com
Breaking News: Late last night, President George Bush admitted to
“The Economist” magazine that not only did he and other members of his Cabinet
know about the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York
City, but that they also allowed them to happen so that American oil companies
could further maximize their profits in the Middle East

• Re: Security Cracks at the White House — Wayne Blanchard, Tue Sep 17 00:39
• Re: Security Cracks at the White House — John Carman, Mon Sep 16 22:39
• THANK YOU, FOR THE THANK YOU! — APFN, Tue Sep 17 01:17
• Times Square Killer Was Former FBI Agent — John Horne, Mon Sep 16 20:12
• Former FBI Agent Kills Two, Self in N.Y. — Atossa, Mon Sep 16 23:53
• Two FBI agents were beaten with rocks — Associated Press, Mon Sep 16 21:27