http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/18/national/18CHAT.html By JAMES RISEN May 18, 2001 WASHINGTON, May 17 Four C.I.A. employees, fired for their involvement with a private and unauthorized chat network on the agency's computer system, said in interviews this week that the agency had treated them far too harshly for what they considered a harmless social activity. The four employees, who were dismissed late last year as part of a broader investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency of what it said was secretive and unauthorized computer use, have lost their appeals of their dismissals, said their lawyer, Janine Brookner. They now plan to pursue other internal administrative remedies before deciding whether to take the agency to court. The four are Chris Hlatky, a senior systems engineer; Janet Platt, a program manager; Annemarie Kline-Edens, an information security officer; and Jane Harmon, a computer scientist. They are speaking out for the first time to present their side of the story of the investigation. In November, the C.I.A. said it had completed an investigation of a group of agency employees and contractors for their involvement in what the C.I.A. called a "willful misuse of the agency's computer networks." In addition to the four employees fired, others have faced less severe disciplinary action. In all, 160 employees were involved in the chat system at one point or another, officials said. The C.I.A. said its investigation had not found any unauthorized disclosure of classified information as a result of the computer use. But American intelligence officials say the main reason the agency took the matter seriously was that the employees had tried to keep the chat network secret for years. "The significance was that they were trying to use a classified computer system for their own use, and they tried to hide what they were doing," an intelligence official said. "We have to have absolute confidence in the C.I.A.'s computer systems." The employees say their chat network which they say began about 1987 and underwent several changes in name and format over the years was harmless and effectively ended in 1997. That was, they say, before C.I.A. regulations went into effect forbidding such informal databases. "There was no attempt at deception or malice," Mr. Hlatky, who helped create the system, argued. The firings, he said, were "a gross overreaction to the alleged offenses." Ms. Kline-Edens added, "I suspect that they had very real concerns, but I suspect strongly that this was an overreaction." The underground chat system first began on an early, pre-Internet C.I.A. computer network and was nicknamed Lunacy by its members, Mr. Hlatky recalled. He said it started out as an effort to test new ways of using computer bulletin boards to let people working in different sections of the C.I.A. communicate. At first, Mr. Hlatky said, Lunacy was open and visible to other computer users. But as computer software technology evolved, so did the chat network, and its members acknowledged that it became a private system. At various times it was called The Den or The Underground Railroad and allowed members to share off-color jokes, network about jobs and share other personal information, as well as set up social gatherings. A kind of social club, with occasional get-togethers, developed around the chat system, several of the former employees noted. Membership in the database was by invitation only, Mr. Hlatky said. "The reason for screening members was to ensure that their sense of humor would be generally aligned with the current membership," he wrote in a brief history of the chat system. "While the content of The Underground Railroad varied from gripe sessions to off-color humor, it had numerous tangible benefits. Some of the agency's worst stutterers and most terminally shy people were able to become extraordinarily articulate within its bounds," Mr. Hlatky wrote. It was shut down on the C.I.A.'s Lotus Notes-based system in early 1997, though Mr. Hlatky said others tried to revive it on a Web-based system. Mr. Hlatky and Ms. Platt, who is his wife, said they revealed the existence of the chat network when they underwent routine C.I.A. polygraphs in 1995. They said the polygrapher told them it was not a problem. An intelligence official said that it was not true that all the unauthorized computer use ended in 1997. The official said that some activity was continuing just days before members of the group were first questioned last May. ISN is hosted by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email isn-unsubscribeat_private
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