Corporate Fury Over NSA's Contracting Ties Is Why Snowdon In Trouble.

[leveymg]

30. Read this article from '94 about the CIA being used to help US corps against foreign competitors

Afraid the use and misuse of US intel for corporate gain isn't new. It's been part of the spy game from the very beginning.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1994/05/company-spies
Company Spies
The CIA has opened a Global Pandora's Box by Spying on foreign competitors of American companies.

—By Robert Dreyfuss
| May/June 1994 Issue

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Since the end of the Cold War, Washington has been abuzz with talk about using the CIA for economic espionage. Stripped of euphemism, economic espionage simply means that American spies would target foreign companies, such as Toyota, Nissan, and Honda, and then covertly pass stolen trade secrets and technology to U.S. corporate executives.

R. James Woolsey, President Clinton's CIA director, has said repeatedly that the CIA will not engage in corporate spy work. Targeting foreign companies and giving that information to American companies is "fraught with legal and foreign policy difficulties," Woolsey says. But there is not the slightest hesitation among other top CIA officials that such information, when obtained, ought to be shared with American automakers.

The idea of using the U.S. intelligence community to give American companies an edge is an explosive subject that has divided the CIA and provoked bitter debate in Congress. It also raises troubling questions about whether a free society can accept the kind of help that the CIA provides when the question is not one of national defense but simply dollars and cents.

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