- BRIT HUME, HOST: Last time we
reported on an Israeli-based company called
Amdocs Ltd. that generates the computerized
records and billing data for nearly every phone
call made in America. As Carl Cameron reported,
U.S. investigators digging into the 9/11
terrorist attacks fear that suspects may have
been tipped off to what they were doing by
information leaking out of Amdocs.
In tonight's report, we learn that the concern
about phone security extends to another company,
founded in Israel, that provides the technology
that the U.S. government uses for electronic
eavesdropping. Here is Carl Cameron's third
report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT
(voice-over): The company is Comverse Infosys, a
subsidiary of an Israeli-run private
telecommunications firm, with offices throughout
the U.S. It provides wiretapping equipment for
law enforcement. Here's how wiretapping works in
the U.S.
Every time you make a call, it passes through the
nation's elaborate network of switchers and
routers run by the phone companies. Custom
computers and software, made by companies like
Comverse, are tied into that network to
intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls,
and at the same time transmit them to
investigators.
The manufacturers have continuing access to the
computers so they can service them and keep them
free of glitches. This process was authorized by
the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law
Enforcement Act, or CALEA. Senior government
officials have now told Fox News that while CALEA
made wiretapping easier, it has led to a system
that is seriously vulnerable to compromise, and
may have undermined the whole wiretapping system.
Indeed, Fox News has learned that Attorney
General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert
Mueller were both warned Oct. 18 in a
hand-delivered letter from 15 local, state and
federal law enforcement officials, who complained
that "law enforcement's current electronic
surveillance capabilities are less effective
today than they were at the time CALEA was
enacted."
Congress insists the equipment it installs is
secure. But the complaint about this system is
that the wiretap computer programs made by
Comverse have, in effect, a back door through
which wiretaps themselves can be intercepted by
unauthorized parties.
Adding to the suspicions is the fact that in
Israel, Comverse works closely with the Israeli
government, and under special programs, gets
reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research
and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of
Industry and Trade. But investigators within the
DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to
pursue or even suggest Israeli spying through
Comverse is considered career suicide.
And sources say that while various F.B.I.
inquiries into Comverse have been conducted over
the years, they've been halted before the actual
equipment has ever been thoroughly tested for
leaks. A 1999 F.C.C. document indicates several
government agencies expressed deep concerns that
too many unauthorized non-law enforcement
personnel can access the wiretap system. And the
FBI's own nondescript office in Chantilly,
Virginia that actually oversees the CALEA
wiretapping program, is among the most agitated
about the threat.
But there is a bitter turf war internally at
F.B.I. It is the FBI's office in Quantico,
Virginia, that has jurisdiction over awarding
contracts and buying intercept equipment. And for
years, they've thrown much of the business to
Comverse. A handful of former U.S. law
enforcement officials involved in awarding
Comverse government contracts over the years now
work for the company.
Numerous sources say some of those individuals
were asked to leave government service under what
knowledgeable sources call "troublesome
circumstances" that remain under
administrative review within the Justice
Department.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
And what troubles investigators most,
particularly in New York, in the counter
terrorism investigation of the World Trade Center
attack, is that on a number of cases, suspects
that they had sought to wiretap and survey
immediately changed their telecommunications
processes. They started acting much differently
as soon as those supposedly secret wiretaps went
into place – Brit.
HUME: Carl, is there any reason to suspect in
this instance that the Israeli government is
involved?
CAMERON: No, there's not. But there are growing
instincts in an awful lot of law enforcement
officials in a variety of agencies who suspect
that it had begun compiling evidence, and a
highly classified investigation into that
possibility – Brit.
HUME: All right, Carl. Thanks very much.
Content and Programming Copyright 2001 Fox News
Network, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
|
