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STATEMENT OF ATTORNEY GENERAL JANET RENO ON TODAY'S STATEMENT

"I appreciate today's statement by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. It reflects a dedicated effort to gather the facts and present them in a non-partisan manner.

"The statement raises several important issues with respect to the W-88 investigation that must be addressed. That is why I appointed a review team last May to look into how the matter was handled and to determine whether there are any procedural changes that could improve the handling of similar matters in the future.

"The statement does not express a view as to the appropriateness of the decision by the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR) with respect to the 1997 electronic surveillance request. Nonetheless, it presents many of the factors that led several career attorneys, well versed in counter-intelligence matters, to conclude that the 1997 request did not satisfy the criteria and requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). For instance, the statement indicates that no one factual element was in itself sufficiently compelling, the list of suspects had not been sufficiently narrowed in OIPR's view, and many of the so-called suspicious incidents could be viewed as benign.

"While the statement clearly indicates that I did not review the request at the time, I continue to believe the decision made by the officials in OIPR in 1997, based on the information presented to them at the time, was the right one. OIPR has been consistently applying the standard established by Congress in 1978 to balance the needs of national security against an individual's civil liberty. However, I also believe that the matter should have been brought to my attention after it was reviewed within the Department.

"I remain firmly committed to combating espionage. Since I became Attorney General, the Justice Department has successfully prosecuted more than 20 individuals for espionage-related activities, including Aldrich Ames, Earl Pitts, and Harold Nicholson. And, the Department has worked with other federal agencies to help them improve their counterintelligence efforts. I look forward to working with Congress and others to implement any additional measures that may be needed."

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99-342