UNCLASSIFIED stamped over TOP SECRET

THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON

January 17, 1991 [sic]

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HONORABLE DICK CHENEY
Secretary of Defense

                                       THE HONORABLE WILLIAM P. BARR
                                       Attorney General

                                       THE HONORABLE ROBERT M. GATES
                                       Director of Central Intelligence

SUBJECT: Legislative Strategy for Digital
Telephony (S)

On December 30, 1991, I sent to the President a memorandum
seeking his approval for a legislative strategy for digital
telephony. The substance of that memorandum is attached. On
January 15, 1992, he approved the following course of action:

- Justice should go ahead now to seek a
legislative fix to the digital telephony
problem, and all parties should prepare to
follow through on the encryption problem in
about a year. Success with digital telephony
will lock in one major objective; we will have
a beachhead we can exploit for the encryption
fix; and the encryption access options can be
developed more thoroughly in the meantime. (TS)

<signed> Brent Scowcroft

Attachment

<stamped> Declassified/Released on <handwritten> 6/28/96
under provisions of E.O. 12958
by J. Saunders, National Security Council