Justice Department to Focus on Technology Transfer
The top counterespionage priority for the Justice Department in coming months will be so-called "export enforcement" cases, the sale or transfer of sensitive U.S. technologies to foreign entities or governments, or terrorist groups.
The new counterespionage and counterterrorism chief at the department, J. Patrick Rowan, told U.S News in an exclusive interview that one of his goals is to get the word out to federal prosecutors that the department will support them in pursuing these often complex, previously low-priority cases.
"We're not talking about physical pieces of machinery as much as technology," Rowan says. He explained that foreign governments are learning that they can get more critical technical information unwittingly from U.S. graduate students and business people than under the "old model of a bunch of covert operatives sneaking around and hiding stuff behind a tree."
With technology becoming increasingly sophisticated, says Rowan, and so much more portable, even a military code or some kind of dual-use technology sold to a hostile nation or terrorist group could do a great deal of harm. A career prosecutor, Rowan is the deputy assistant attorney general for counterterrorism and counterespionage in the department's new National Security Division, which brings all of the department's national security programs under one umbrella.
The division–headed by Kenneth Wainstein, the former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia–became operational last summer and implements a key recommendation of the WMD commission, the presidential commission that investigated intelligence failures leading up to the war in Iraq.
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