Coronavirus: Shared intelligence ‘can help fight against disease’

Former US intelligence tsar Jim Clapper says spy agencies can be used to gauge who is telling the truth in this crisis.

Retired intelligence chief Jim Clapper says Russia and China pose security risks to the US and Australia. Picture: Kym Smith

Former US intelligence tsar Jim Clapper is used to dealing with enemies­ that do not respect nationa­l borders, but he says the fast-spreading coronavirus poses a unique challenge and opportunity for spy agencies.

As director of national intelligence in the Obama administration during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, Clapper initial­ly doubted US intelligence would have a major role.

But he admits he was wrong. “In fact, intelligence agencies had a huge role to play when we confronted the Ebola crisis in the last administration,” he says in an exclusiv­e interview with Inquirer.

“They did magnificent work in forecasting the movement of the disease in West Africa. Because of their insight into lines of communic­ation, historical travel patterns, they were able to forecast where the disease would move to, which was an invaluable asset for planning and a good example of anticipatory intelligence.”

Clapper, 78, says Australian and US intelligence agencies can work closely together to share informat­ion on the rapid spread of coronavirus to map its likely traject­ory and inform decisions to slow infections.

“Absolutely there is a role for intelligence agencies on the corona­virus issue,” he says.

“It is part and parcel of the US intelligence relationship with Aust­ralia that we share relevant information when we face a mut­ual threat, whether it is terrorism or whether it is disease — these are two enemies that don’t respect natio­n-state boundaries.”

Spy services can also be used to gauge which countries are telling the truth about infection rates and the spread of it. “Intelligence agencies can help ensure that what we are hearing from countries, or international organisations, about the virus comport with the facts,” Clapper says.

He visited Australia numerou­s times as director of the US ­Defence Intelligence Agency and director of the National Geo­spatial-Intelligence Agency before taking over as DNI from 2010 to January 2017.

The Chinese threat

He highlights the growing challeng­es facing intelligence agencies around the world. For Australia, he says the rise of China, the growing foreign interference in Australian affairs and the corona­virus have made US-Australi­a intelligence ties and the broader Five Eyes Intelligence relationsh­ip between the US, Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand more important than ever. Clapper says he read with interes­t the unusually frank speech last month by ASIO chief Mike Burgess, who warned: “The level of threat we face from foreign espionage and interference activ­ities is currently unprecedented. It is higher now than it was at the end of the Cold War.”

Burgess said visiting academics and scientists had infiltrated Aust­ralian universities to collect intelligence while foreign spies had tried to set up sophisticated hacking ­infrastructure in Australia.

Although Burgess did not mention­ China by name, security analysts say China is easily the main foreign disrupter in Aust­ralia. “China poses a huge counterintelligence threat to the United States and Australia,” says Clapper­.

“One of the problems we share with Australia is that we also have kind of a love-hate relationship with China, because China is ­inextricably bound to both of our economies so that poses a dilem­ma for both of us.”

Intelligence agencies must focus on the multiple and growing ways China seeks to gain advantage through its agents, he adds.

Russian disruption

Clapper calls for “a greater awareness by the public” about Beijing’s activities here and in the US, includin­g China’s penetration of colleges and universities in the West.

Interference in Australian polit­ics is more likely to come from China, as opposed to the US experienc­e, where Russia has been the main foreign disrupter.

“Your primary concern is probably China and if they were to interf­ere in your electoral process it would be for a different motive — it would be to further the economic interests of China — whereas Russia uses information operations and specifically interference in our election process as a way of compensating for their other weaknesses.

“They (Russia) exploit the polarisation and divisiveness in our country and they have done so very successfully and unfortun­ately the US is a very ripe target for this these days. I don’t see Australia as a Russian target in the same way we are.”

The US is struggling to counter Russia’s malign influence in the US electoral process, Clapper says. This includes “technical security” threats such as malware and threats to the voting process as well as Russian disinformation campaigns on social media.

“The other part in which the US is not doing very well is what I’ll call cognitive security,” he says. “This stems from the massive pervasive­ and sophisticated use of social media to influence opinions in this country. We are not doing well in this because we don’t have the President’s voice from the bully pulpit that only he occupies, to enjoin people not to believe everything they see on the internet.”

Taking on Trump

When Clapper brings up “the President”, he is rarely about to deliver­ a compliment.

Clapper is arguably the most vocal critic of Donald Trump’s attack­s on US intelligence agencies­, arguing the attacks have undermined their status and weakened national security.

Trump lumps Clapper along with other security officials who have been critical of him such as former CIA chief John Brennan as a part of the “deep state” intelligence cabal that is out to get him.

“Well, certainly in the past, it’s been terrible. You look at Brennan, you look at Clapper, you look at Hayden, you look at Comey, you look at McCabe, you look at Strzok and his lover, Lisa Page. You look at other people in the FBI that have been fired, are no longer there,” Trump said in 2018.

“I have no confidence in Clapper. You know, Clapper wrote me a beautiful letter when I first went to office, and it was really nice. And then, all of a sudden, he’s gone haywire because they got to him and they probably got him to say things that maybe he doesn’t even mean. But no, I certainly don’t have confidence in past people.”

Clapper says he had never heard of the term “deep state” before­ the 2016 election campaign.

“I guess what it means is some sort of conspiracy among professional civil servants against the current administration’s agenda, which is completely absurd,” he says.

“It just doesn’t exist and I think the President harbours deep sus­picions about those he includes as part of the deep state, including the intelligence community, law enforcemen­t, State Department and others who he views as oppose­d to him.

“There should be a bond of trust between a president and the professional bureaucracy that works for him, and when you demean­, diminish and marginalise the institution of government, particular­ly the autonomous civil service, that is not good for our democracy or any democracy,” he said.

Clapper was overseeing US intelligen­ce agencies during the 2016 campaign when Russia was trying to influence the election in favour of Trump. The President has repeatedly denied or played down Moscow’s involvement.

“Trump has never really accept­ed the Russian interference in 2016, even though I can assure you the evidence of it was abso­lutely overwhelming and I saw it. There was no doubt about it.

“It was subsequently validated in a very public way by the Mueller report (with all of its) indictments, as well as the Senate intelligence committee, which on a bipartisan basis reaffirmed all that, so there is no question about that.

“The reason the President reacted­ negatively to our assessment that there was Russian interferen­ce in 2016, and that it favoured him, was because it cast doubt on the legitimacy of his election­.”

Defending spy services

Clapper accepts that intelligence agencies are not perfect and says he has seen examples over decades where they have made mistakes, from the surveillance of Martin Luther King to spying on US citizen­s abroad.

“These lapses and abuses have led to intelligence oversight committees (being established) in both houses of congress to ensure that what the intelligence community does is legal, moral and ethical,” he says.

Trump and his Republican allies­ claim the FBI initiated the Russia investigation during the 2016 election campaign for politic­ally motivated reasons.

The US Justice Department inspect­or-general’s report into the issue released in December found no evidence of political bias, but it did paint a bleak portrait of the FBI as a dysfunctional agency that had badly mishandled its surveillance powers in the Russia investigation.

US Attorney-General William Barr is awaiting a broader report into the origins of the Russia invest­igation by US prosecutor John Durham.

Clapper says he is alarmed by what he says are Trump’s attempts to pressure intelligence agencies to produce intelligence he likes, not objective intelligence that is inconvenient for him.

He says Trump’s recent reshuffling of intelligence chiefs in his old DNI job was aimed at installing a politically partisan director who would be more partial to the President’s wishes.

Last month, the President abruptl­y replaced acting DNI Josep­h Maguire with Trump loyalist­ Richard Grenell after one of ­Maguire’s officials told the House Intelligence Committee in a routine briefing that Russia was interfering in the 2020 election to help the Republicans.

A furious Trump feared the Democrats would use that inform­ation against him.

The President has since nomin­ated Republican congressman John Ratcliffe to be permanent ­director of national intelligence.

“Both of them (Grenell and Ratcliffe) are partisan and have no real background in intelligence,” says Clapper. “What happened to Joseph Maguire surprised me and was not justified.

“It really attacks what is holy writ in our system of intelligence, and yours as well, which is truth to power. So there was truth-telling there, but that was just news that the President did not want conveye­d to congress for his own political reasons.”

However, Trump’s hostility toward­s intelligence agencies is uneven. He cited intelligence repor­ts of a pending attack on US interests as justification for the assassination of Iranian major-general Qasem Soleimani in January.

“He appreciates intelligence he likes and disparages intelligence he doesn’t like,” says Clapper.

Yet Clapper says the US-Australi­a intelligence alliance and the Five Eyes pact are as strong as ever. “The Five Eyes is extremely important and it will continue despit­e challenges like Huawei,” he says, referring to anger in Australi­a and the US over Britain’s decision to use equipment made by Chinese technology giant Huawei from its new 5G wireless network. Australia and the US have banned Huawei from their 5G ­networks, saying the company poses a national security threat.

“Heads of state come and go but there are fundamental pillars underlying the intelligence relationsh­ip between the US and Australia,” says Clapper. “It’s a relation­ship that I worked for 30 years to help build.”

Cameron Stewart is also US correspondent for Sky News Australia.