CIA Chief: Leakers Abound

When it comes to threats against national security, leaders of the CIA and FBI have more on their minds these days than Saddam Hussein.

CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday that his agency and the FBI are struggling to find multiple information leakers within the executive branch.

"The executive branch leaks like a sieve," Tenet said. "You look at it carefully and there's guilt everywhere here. There are people all over this executive branch who are violating a trust."

Tenet said CIA and FBI counterintelligence specialists are actively investigating these security breaches because they "make a difference as to whether the men and women in uniform prevail when they go into conflict."

"Leaks shut down our ability to do our job. They make it impossible for us to protect Americans," Tenet said. "Everybody believes they have a right to a secret, and it's got to stop."

Once the CIA finds the executive branch "moles," Tenet said they will be fired.

Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., suggested going one step further: prosecution.

"[Firing them] is not enough," Shelby said. "Why give them a tap on the wrist when they put people in harm's way, and perhaps cause people to lose their lives?"

Although Tenet said secrets are primarily leaking through the executive branch, Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, suggested that Congress is partly to blame.

"We need action right here, too, and we ought to tighten up our own operation here on the Hill," Glenn said.

Tenet did not specify what leaks he was referring to, but the Associated Press reported that he was "particularly annoyed" by a series of articles of the past year in The Washington Times that quoted from secret or top-secret CIA reports about national security topics.

These leaks have exposed to public view intelligence reports on subjects such as North Korea's missile development program, Chinese weapons exports and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Iran.