Company Spies

DREYFUSS, Robert. Company spies. Motherjones (on line), June 1994 (accessible at http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1994/05/dreyfuss.html ). Consulted the 03-15-07.

Here is just an abstract. You can read the whole article by clicking the link above.

"Sometime in the not too distant future, you will probably drive a stolen car.
But the thieves won't be a neighborhood gang, nor will they be part of an organized crime ring. You will have papers to prove that you bought the car, and every month you will make payments to a bank. The bank, in turn, will show that it bought title from Ford, General Motors, or Chrysler.
But the Big Three U.S. auto companies will nonetheless be the recipients of stolen goods. And the perpetrator once again will be that expert at black-bag jobs, the Central Intelligence Agency.
When President Clinton announced last September that the federal government would join the Big Three in a cooperative research effort to improve U.S. automotive technology, he left out the fact that the CIA may be a silent partner. According to administration officials and sources in the intelligence community, the CIA has already begun a clandestine effort to help the American auto industry.
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. "[...]


Dublin core analysis

DC Title: Company Spies
DC Creator: DREYFUSS, Robert
DC Subject: economic espionage, business spying, business intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency
DC Description: The CIA has provoked debate in American Congress by spying on foreign competitors of American companies especially in the car industry sector.
DC Publisher: Motherjones
DC Contributor:
DC Date: 06-1994
DC Type: text
DC Format: HTML
DC Identifier: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1994/05/dreyfuss.html
DC Source:
DC Language: English
DC Relation:
DC Coverage: International
DC Rights: