Senate Committee Targets Deutch

Former CIA Director John Deutch remains under fire Friday for storing sensitive intelligence information on his home computer and raising serious security concerns.

CBS News has learned Deutch had dozens of classified documents on his computer. Among them: memos to President Clinton and other information that was so top secret that special security clearance was needed to see them. All this on a computer that was used to visit what the CIA calls "high risk sites" on the internet, including porn sites.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had no plans to prosecute Deutch.

Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that's looking into the Deutch matter, told CBS News Early Show Anchor Bryant Gumbel the CIA director should be held to a very high standard.

"This is strange behavior, very suspicious," Shelby said. "It's unprecedented, to my knowledge."

The senator also acknowledged the two-year gap between the time Deutch's behavior was discovered and the time authorities were notified.

"That's what we're getting into," Shelby said. "It should not be a cover-up. There should not be a delay."

The committee previously asked current CIA director George Tenet why Deutch has not been prosecuted for storing the sensitive documents on his home computer when Wen Ho Lee is facing life in prison for having downloaded nuclear secrets on to unclassified computer tapes.

Tenet said that Deutch meant no harm. "In one instance there is intent to do harm to the United States. That is a legal judgment that has been made. In the other instance a similar legal judgment was not made," he said.

The probe originally recommended only that Deutch be counseled. When a whistleblower in the director's office complained that Deutch was getting off too easy, Tenet suspended Deutch's security clearances, which he had kept after leaving as CIA director.

Shelby said Deutch has been asked to appear before the committee Wednesday.

Deutch served as CIA director from May 1995 to December 1996. Prior to that, he served as Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1995 and Undersecretary of Defense from 1993 to 1994. He was a systems analyst at the Department of Defense in the early 1960s.

After leaving the CIA, he took a professorship in the chemistry department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.