Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 1, 1991 TAG: 9104020018
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-5 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HOPEWELL LENGTH: Medium
Likewise, if terrorists seeking retribution for Saddam Hussein's defeat try to take revenge on the Alaska oil pipeline, Robert W. Daniel Jr. hopes to find out about the plot and stop it before it's carried out.
Daniel, a 55-year-old former congressman and owner of Brandon Plantation on the James River east of Hopewell, is in the business of knowing all there is to know about the nuclear capabilities of other countries and threats to world energy supplies.
He's also supposed to find out who has what supplies, from how much oil is being produced in the Middle East to how much coal is being mined in the Soviet Union.
Daniel is director of the office of intelligence in the Energy Department, a position created a year ago to combine a number of information assessment functions within the federal agency.
The job is a homecoming of sorts for Daniel, a Republican who served in the House of Representatives for 10 years until he was defeated in 1982 by Democrat Norman Sisisky.
Before he was the 4th District congressman, Daniel was a Central Intelligence Agency officer. "I did get out in the field," he said, but otherwise will not discuss his CIA days except to say he is glad to be involved once again in "what I set out to do."
These days, the only field work that Daniel gets into is where the wheat and corn grow at Brandon, a 4,500-acre working farm that has been in his family since the 1920s.
When Daniel left the CIA after five years in 1968, he returned home to manage the farm. Now he shuttles between his Washington office, where he spends the week, and home on weekends.
"It was a chance I couldn't turn down," he said of the energy job, which lets him report directly to The position combined the security functions of the old Atomic Energy Commission - counterintelligence for the nation's top-secret nuclear weapons research and design laboratories - with a new role monitoring world oil, gas and coal production. The office also watches for terrorist threats against a wide range of potential targets, from oil pipelines to nuclear power plants to the strategic petroleum reserve in Louisiana.
Daniel's office was a key behind-the-scenes player in the Persian Gulf War.
"We were very active in Desert Storm," he said. "We had 24-hour watches and an emergency operations center."
During the war, Daniel's office provided the White House and the Pentagon with information about Iraq as a potential nuclear threat and assessments of damage to Kuwaiti oil fields. Daniel also provided reports on the oil spills that threatened desalination plants and oil refineries along the Persian Gulf coast.
He worked with the FBI and CIA to evaluate the terrorist threat that arose as a result of the war. That threat, Daniel believes, should be taken more seriously now that the fighting has ended.
"Some terrorist elements might have been waiting for the war to be over before acting," he said.
Daniel's staff - the exact number and his budget are classified - includes specialists in nuclear weapons design and laser technology, and experts in petroleum and international politics. None of them is a spy, however.
by CNB