Szady, an FBI agent who was in charge of the Portland, Oregon, Field Division, will head a "counterintelligence" board of directors consisting of officials from the Department of State, Defense, Justice, and Energy, and representatives of the FBI, CIA, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and National Security Council. His role will be, as described by the Wall Street Journal, to pursue "closer ties between the government and private industry in fighting spies."

The New York Times described the executive's central task as trying "to determine which secrets held by the government or the private sector are so valuable that they need to be protected from the nation's adversaries."

In early January Clinton signed a Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) aimed at enhancing "Counterintelligence for the 21st Century (CI-21)," which encompasses a broad sweep of operations both inside and outside U.S. borders. A fact sheet prepared by the Federation of American Scientists describes the sweeping mandate of the new counterintelligence czar: "The system will be predictive, proactive, and will provide integrated oversight of counterintelligence issues across the national security agencies."

The National Counterintelligence Center emphasized that the government's spying operations "must be transposed from a largely reactive state to a modern, innovative program that is much more proactive."

Both the CI-21 program and the national counterintelligence executive role, the Washington Post reported, will be "to foster entirely new strategies for defending not only critical government assets but also the computer infrastructure used by government and private industry alike." This will include assessing the need for a National Counterintelligence Training Academy.

The mid-February arrest of Robert Hanssen, a 25-year FBI agent and counterintelligence officer who is being charged with spying for Moscow, was used as further justification of the new spy apparatus. Nearly 500 FBI employees were also ordered to undergo lie detector tests, something the agency did not do before, although it is a norm in the CIA and National Security Council.

Hanssen's arrest has "triggered an internal review of the bureau's counterintelligence policies and procedures," according to a Post article. This includes zeroing in on "the FBI's resistance to requiring periodic polygraph exams of all employees" and the need for "coordination of efforts by federal agencies to prevent and root out espionage."

The CI-21 program also comes in the context of the spy scare and U.S. government frame-up of Wen Ho Lee, a scientist at Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico who was arrested and held in solitary confinement on charges that included stealing U.S. nuclear weapons secrets.  
 
Anti-terrorist task force in Portland
Prior to his appointment at National Counterintelligence Executive, Szady spearheaded the formation of a joint Portland police and FBI task force on domestic terrorism. The FBI has similar task forces set up in 30 of its 56 divisions nationwide, according to FBI spokesman Gordon Compton.

The task force's mission, according to a statement signed by Szady and Portland police chief Mark Kroeker, is to target individuals or groups responsible for acts of "criminal terrorism within the traditional criteria of the Right Wing or Left Wing movements, as well as acts of criminal terrorism committed by special interest groups, such as the anti-abortion movement and the Animal Liberation Front/Earth Liberation Front."

A number of community groups in Oregon, including the League of Women Voters, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Portland chapter of the NAACP, and the National Lawyers Guild, protested the formation of the task force, pointing out the threats it poses to democratic rights.

The groups explained that operating under the guideline of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which defines terrorist acts as "any violent act or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any state," the government could charge many who protest against U.S. policies with terrorism.

The FBI defines terrorism as, "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives." This could be used against union members on a picket line or demonstrations that cops allege to have blocked or obstructed public access. The government is allowed by law to seize their assets, homes, and vehicles of those facing terrorist charges.  
 
New generation of U.S. spy satellites
Washington is also putting in motion plans to deploy a new generation of U.S. military satellites that will significantly enhance its ability to conduct spying operations around the world.

At an estimated price of $25 billion over the next 20 years, the U.S. government is working to put in space a dozen or so new satellites with electronic cameras that "would be able to track objects as small as a baseball anywhere, anytime on the planet," according to an article in the International Herald Tribune. "It will be 'an incredible improvement' in America's ability to spy from the sky, a U.S. official said in Washington," the big-business daily added.

Set in motion by the Clinton administration under the name "future imagery architecture," the new system of space-based cameras will collect from eight to 20 times more imagery than the current generation of U.S. spying satellites, according to the Federation of American Scientists. "While performance details are classified," writes the Tribune, "experts said that the modernized, miniaturized satellites would be able to identify objects one-tenth the size of those visible in commercially available satellite pictures."

The U.S. rulers also carry out massive electronic eavesdropping via satellites in a system known as Echelon. Under the direction of the National Reconnaissance Office--an agency whose existence was only acknowledged by U.S. officials in the 1990s--this operation taps into a multitude of electronic transmissions.

"The U.S. eavesdropping capabilities extend much farther in the Echelon program," said the Tribune. "Beyond intercepting calls handled by satellite and tapping intercontinental undersea telephone cables, the United States also operates satellites designed to intercept local calls."

In another development, the Wall Street Journal reports that the FBI is now using computer databases to spy on millions more people. Using services like ChoicePoint Inc., which claims to have records on nearly every U.S. resident with a credit card, FBI agents can go on line and gain access to a wide variety of confidential information.

"Big Brother isn't gone. He's just been outsourced," states an April 13 Journal article. "In the past several years, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, and other agencies have started buying troves of personal data from the private sector.... Using a password, FBI agents can log on to a custom Web page that links them with privately owned files on tens of millions of Americans."  
 
 
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