From: fulk@cs.rochester.edu (Mark Fulk)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.clinton
Subject: Re: Kremlin_Gate: Bill Clinton in Moscow during Viet Nam.
Date: 9 Oct 92 14:13:00 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Department University of Rochester

In article <1992Oct8.145350.4639@desire.wright.edu> demon@desire.wright.edu (Stupendous Man) writes:
>	From our quartely security briefing:
>
>	"All contacts with residents of [list of countries, including all
>former communist], or persons travelling to said countries should be reported
>to the [security office] for possible followup.  History has shown that most
>spies come into contact with resident/agents of said countries while never
>actually spending a large amount of time there."

So far so good.

>	Such contacts will also result in your security application being
>denied.  In fact, the government routinely denied clearances to refugees from
>those countries (until it was ruled to be illegal).

You are overgeneralizing the rules of your particular employer.  I can cite
numerous examples of friends and relatives who have been in Communist
countries who have high clearances.

My cousin, who worked for NoSuchAgency or some other military intelligence
agency before she retired, travels every summer with her Czech husband to
Eastern Europe, and has since the Nuremberg trials (where they met; he was a
prosecutor, she was a translator).  (This cousin was not allowed to name
her employer, and said she read and translated Eastern European publications
for a living.  I know she worked in the Pentagon because of a rather
incredible leak.)

In an Air Farce laboratory I worked in one summer there were numerous
scientists of Eastern European origin who had top-secret clearances;
those were pretty much required if you worked there.  In fact, the guy
who recommended me into the place was a Polish refugee.  The branch
commander, who was new and didn't have a clue, developed a severe case
of the insecurities while I was there; the poor contract programmer in the
Faraday cage had to kick us all out whenever he needed to take a leak.
This despite the janitors: the people who changed light bulbs and took
out the trash were all white-collar criminals doing time at the on-base
Federal Prison.

Many of the physicists who participated in the Pugwash meetings have
``Q'' (nuclear devices) clearances.  These people travelled to the USSR
regularly for meetings with Russian scientists.  One of them had the
office next to mine at NYU; he had classification authority at a
government lab.  Incidentally, the Pugwash meetings have been going
on since the fifties.

I could go on for pages, but those are enough examples to establish my
point (if Stupi.. uh Stupendous will accept the facts) that travel to
foreign countries (or refugee status, or...) are not sufficient to deny
one a high clearance.

Incidentally, the terrible security leaks I know of are all due to native
American citizens.  These citizens sought out their foreign contacts,
rather than the reverse.  The sole exception is the Rosenberg case, which
I believe was bogus; the government didn't want to admit how easy it is
to design an atomic bomb.  (I am thinking of Pollard, the Warners, and the
``Falcon and the Snowman'' case.)  The Soviet spies that have been caught
here are usually not asserted to have actually obtained much; they have
been caught in the act of trying.  Stoll's hackers almost certainly didn't
find anything really useful.

>	My father, when he was working with the government on various black
>programs was simply not allowed to travel to Eastern Europe (much less USSR)
>because of the nature of his work.  If he had gone, he would have lost his
>clearance.  Even though our family root trace back to Hungary, Poland, and
>parts of former E. Germany.  We simply couldn't go.

This is very likely.  Particular programs will have special restrictions.
You are mistake is overgeneralizing.

Back to the original point.  I think that Clinton's travel to the USSR
is an asset, not a liability.  I'd rather have a president who is
well-travelled, having learned about places on his own, than some
provincial jerk.  People who spend their lives protecting themselves from
contamination by ``the enemy'' are unlikely to know very much about that
enemy; in fact, they are unlikely to know very much at all.  I'd lament
Bush's obvious ignorance about the people of other countries if it weren't
surpassed by his ignorance of the people of THIS country.
-- 
Mark A. Fulk			University of Rochester
Computer Science Department	fulk@cs.rochester.edu
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.elections,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.perot