INTELLIGENCE NEWS/Counter-terrorism/Espionage

[al-Canine]

Deputy Chief Resigns From CIA

Agency Is Said to Be in Turmoil Under New Director Goss

By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, November 13, 2004; Page A01

The deputy director of the CIA resigned yesterday after a series of confrontations over the past week between senior operations officials and CIA Director Porter J. Goss's new chief of staff that have left the agency in turmoil, according to several current and former CIA officials.

John E. McLaughlin, a 32-year CIA veteran who was acting director for two months this summer until Goss took over, resigned after warning Goss that his top aide, former Capitol Hill staff member Patrick Murray, was treating senior officials disrespectfully and risked widespread resignations, the officials said.

Yesterday, the agency official who oversees foreign operations, Deputy Director of Operations Stephen R. Kappes, tendered his resignation after a confrontation with Murray. Goss and the White House pleaded with Kappes to reconsider and he agreed to delay his decision until Monday, the officials said.

Several other senior clandestine service officers are threatening to leave, current and former agency officials said.

The disruption comes as the CIA is trying to stay abreast of a worldwide terrorist threat from al Qaeda, a growing insurgency in Iraq, the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan and congressional proposals to reorganize the intelligence agencies. The agency also has been criticized for not preventing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and not accurately assessing Saddam Hussein's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction.

"It's the worst roiling I've ever heard of," said one former senior official with knowledge of the events. "There's confusion throughout the ranks and an extraordinary loss of morale and incentive."

Current and retired senior managers have criticized Goss, former chairman of the House intelligence committee, for not interacting with senior managers and for giving Murray too much authority over day-to-day operations. Murray was Goss's chief of staff on the intelligence committee.

Transitions between CIA directors are often unsettling for career officers. Goss's arrival has been especially tense because he brought with him four former members of the intelligence committee known widely on the Hill and within the agency for their abrasive management style and for their criticism of the agency's clandestine services in a committee report.

Three are former mid-level CIA officials who left the agency disgruntled, according to former colleagues. The fourth, Murray, who also worked at the Justice Department, has a reputation for being highly partisan. When senior managers have gone to Goss to complain about his staff actions, one CIA officer said, Goss has told them: "Talk to my chief of staff. I don't do personnel."

The overall effect, said one former senior CIA official, who has kept up his contacts in the Directorate of Operations, "is that Goss doesn't seem engaged at all."

If other senior clandestine officers leave, said one former officer who maintains contacts within the Langley headquarters, "the middle-level people who move up may eventually work out, but meanwhile the level of experience and competence will go down."

The CIA declined to comment on the issues raised by the current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. A CIA spokesman said McLaughlin's retirement "was a long-planned personal decision taken at a natural transition point in the administration and not connected to any other factors."

McLaughlin issued a statement that said: "I have come to the purely personal decision that it is time to move on to other endeavors."

Goss, too, issued a statement, which applauded McLaughlin's "outstanding service."

"On a personal note," the statement continued, "I want to thank John for the kindness he has shown me as Director of Central Intelligence."

In addition to bringing in his former aides from the Hill, Goss plans to dilute the authority of the Directorate of Operations by removing the director as the central figure in appointing country station chiefs overseas and regional division chiefs at headquarters.

"I definitely think all this is disrupting people's work," one agency official said. "Everyone is waiting for the centipede to drop all his shoes."

Associates said McLaughlin was disappointed by Goss's management style and was particularly disheartened by a series of recent confrontations between Murray and senior leaders.

In one of those confrontations, on Nov. 5, Murray raised the issue of leaks with the associate deputy director of counterintelligence. Referring to previous media leaks regarding personnel, he said that if anything in the newly appointed executive director's personnel file made it into the media, the counterintelligence official "would be held responsible," according to one agency official and two former colleagues with knowledge of the conversation.

All three sources gave the following account:

The associate deputy director of counterintelligence, a highly respected case officer whose name is being withheld because she is undercover, told Michael Sulick, the associate deputy director of operations, about the threat. Sulick told his superior, Kappes, and both sought a meeting with Goss to complain.

Goss, Murray, Kappes and Sulick met to discuss the matter. After Goss left, Sulick "got in Murray's space," according to one of his associates whose account was corroborated by another. Murray then demanded that Kappes fire Sulick. Kappes refused, and told Goss that he would resign. Goss and other White House officials appealed to Kappes to delay his decision until Monday.

Goss, a former CIA case officer and Republican legislator from Florida, promised during his confirmation hearing to set aside partisan politics and work to strengthen the CIA clandestine service. But current and former officials have said that his plans have been unclear to the senior clandestine service officials who would be responsible for carrying them out. In addition, they have been concerned by the backgrounds of the senior staff Goss has hired.

Michael V. Kostiw, who was Goss's first choice for executive director -- the agency's third-ranking official -- withdrew his name after The Washington Post reported that he had left the agency 20 years ago after having been arrested for stealing a package of bacon.

More generally, Goss's aides arrived at the CIA with harsh views of the clandestine service. Their views were laid out in a House intelligence committee report in June. "There is a dysfunctional denial of any need for corrective action," the report said. The clandestine service suffers from "misallocation and redirection of resources, poor prioritization of objectives, micromanagement of field operations and a continued political aversion to operational risk."

The report was drafted primarily by Jay Jakub, whom Goss appointed to the newly created position of special assistant for operations and analysis.

The House report's critique brought on a tough response from then-CIA Director George J. Tenet and led to a near-breakdown in relations between the agency and the panel staff. It was repeatedly noted by present and past clandestine officers that Jakub had a limited career at the agency, first as an analyst and later as a case officer.

"He never distinguished himself before he left," a former boss said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46580-2004Nov12.html

[al-Canine]

Former Spies Speak Out on US Intelligence Reform

Larry Kolb was born into a house of spies. His family moved constantly during the height of the Cold War, as his father ran counter-intelligence operations all over Asia, Europe and the Middle East. But Mr. Kolb chose business as a career, eventually becoming the manager for several professional athletes, including boxing legend Muhammad Ali.

After that successful career, Mr. Kolb joined the 'family business,' and was soon involved in covert operations in the Middle East, central Asia and Latin America. He retired from the CIA a few years ago, and wrote a book about his experiences.

Larry Kolb tells his readers, though it might seem exciting to go to bed every night in a different place with a different identity, it's stressful and dangerous work. "Because the penalty for espionage almost all over the world, for centuries, now, has been death. So it keeps you interested and on your toes. But beyond that, it's psychologically very difficult to befriending another person- and it works when you genuinely befriend them- then, betray them. That's what we're forced to do and that's not easy," he says.

Mr. Kolb says he and his colleagues provided U.S. policy makers with an important weapon during the cold war era. America's intelligence services face different challenges today, he says, the war against terrorism. "The CIA was built to fight the Soviet Union and worldwide communism and it's still structured the way it has been since early on, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I think we need a new agency that is set up to tackle the Muslim insurgents who are the biggest threat to us today. I don't think America's intelligence services have many assets on the ground that really speak the language so well that they can operate undetected in the target areas that we're interested in," he says.

Mr. Kolb says operating successfully in the 'target area' takes more than language skills… it requires a broader understanding of the culture. I think as long as we believe that the reason Muslims hate us is because of our freedom and our democracy etc, we're going about it the wrong way. They think they have a point of view that should be heard as well. I think our approach is wrong from the perspective that we have on the Middle East. We need to go about dealing with Muslim world with more sensitivity. How they think vs. how we think. We're not going to make all of the Gulf states democratic in a year or two," he says.

Former CIA agent Peter Earnest - now director of The Spy Museum in Washington DC - points to another challenge in this new war: getting access to terrorist cells. "Terrorists are often very small cells, often made up simply of family members. It's very hard to penetrate such groups. A cell made up of two brothers and a cousin, how can you penetrate that cell? That's the difficulty. Whereas during the cold war in many cases we knew who the other side's spies or intelligence officers were, and we could gain access to them. That's a big, big difference between the cold war and today," he says.

One thing that hasn't changed, according to Mr. Earnest, is funding, there's never enough. I do know for many years that intelligence community didn't have the resources it needed for a long time. After the end of the cold war, a number of people said, 'well, we don't need intelligence anymore. Let's just wind down, we don't need to put resources into it.' And now, all of a sudden everybody says how come we don't have more spies. Well, it's late in the game. As you know [former head of the CIA] George Tenet testified before the 9/11 committee that he thought it would take a good five years to develop a new cadre of intelligence officers to conduct the kind of espionage we need," he says.

Last week, after the election, President Bush called on Congress to pass an effective intelligence reform bill he can sign into law. The House and Senate have each approved legislation that would create a new national counter-terrorism center and a new national intelligence director who would coordinate most of the nation's non-military spy agencies. But the two sides have not been able to agree on how much authority to give the Intelligence Director. Negotiators will try to reconcile the two bills when Congress returns for a lame duck session later this month.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2004-11-13-voa3.cfm

[Ono]

There's going to be a major house cleaning at the CIA. Major.

[al-Canine]

CIA Turmoil Endangers U.S., Ex-Agent Says

Much Depends on Quality of Replacements, Former Bin Laden Hunter Says

Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden Unit, left the agency Friday. He is also the author, known as "Anonymous," of the best seller "Imperial Hubris," which dissected the CIA failures fighting terrorism.

He said in a statement that he was leaving the agency because he "concluded that there has not been adequate national debate over the nature of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and the forces he leads and inspires, and the nature and dimensions of intelligence reform needed to address that threat."

The disarray in the intelligence operations comes less than two months after former Rep. Porter Goss, a Florida Republican who was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was sworn in as the new director of the CIA.

The deputy director of the agency, John McLaughlin, resigned Friday. The 32-year CIA veteran had been acting director for two months, following the resignation of George Tenet.

Stephen Kappes, the CIA's head of overseas clandestine operations, is expected to resign this week, and more resignations are expected to follow, raising the question of whether, with all these experienced people leaving, the CIA can continue to protect the United States in dangerous times.

"If the deputy director of operations resigns, that's a terrific loss because he is a talented man and experienced," Scheuer said. "A lot depends on who they pick as a successor. If they bring back a retired officer from the Cold War era, I think that's a step backward and will be perceived as such."

But Scheuer said the turnover in the agency should not come as a surprise to anyone.

"The current turmoil is a combination of a new administration under Mr. Goss, but also a decade of frustration that the clandestine service has been blamed for many problems that occurred," he said.

The CIA declined to comment when ABC News contacted the agency about Scheuer's claims.

The turmoil raises fears about whether the world will become more dangerous for Americans.

The threat from bin Laden may be more serious than many Americans realize, Scheuer said, because of the kind of support that the Saudi has, and the way he has gone about pursuing his goals.

Bin Laden has "a treatise of religious validation" to use nuclear weapons against the United States, Scheuer said, explaining that "basically, he was authorized to use nuclear weapons up to the extent of killing millions of Americans."

And if any terrorist ever had a chance to get nuclear weapons, it seems bin Laden is the one, Scheuer said.

"We have never seen a non-state group approach the acquisition of the weapons as professionally as bin Laden has," he said. "Unfortunately, I think the only time we are going to know he has one is when he detonates it. He intends to use it as a first-strike weapon, not as a deterrent. In terms of the borders, the borders are awfully porous."

Scheuer said the United States must aggressively pursue bin Laden and other terrorists overseas, and not adopt a merely defensive stance, something he claims the United States has not always done.

"We had repeated opportunities to take out Osama bin Laden either through the clandestine service or military means," he said. "Our leaders decided not to take those opportunities."

One of the other problems, he said, has been that too few people have been assigned to hunt the man blamed for the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"I think one of the huge failures is failure to adequately staff the bin Laden unit since 1996," Scheuer said. "It is only since Sen. Feinstein mentioned the issue to Mr. Goss during his confirmation hearings that additional people have been added."

Scheuer said Goss' approach has been "a little heavy-handed," but said he believes it is too early to judge how effective he will be in remaking the agency.

"Much will be told by whether he starts bringing back people from the Cold War era," he said. "If that's the case, I think it is not a good thing."

The agency needs new, experienced people from within the ranks of those who have worked non-state targets like terrorists.

"That's where the threat lies," he said.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/story?id=253007&page=1

[al-Canine]

Analysis: CIA troubles boiling over into public view

The senior management of the CIA's clandestine service was poised to resign en masse Monday, robbing the nation's spies of a leadership team that one agency veteran said was the best for many years.
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According to two former senior agency officials who maintain close contacts at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., and who were independently interviewed by United Press International, the crisis follows a series of clashes with a new chief of staff, imported by recently appointed CIA Director Porter Goss from his team at the house committee he chaired.
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Others suggest that the clandestine service managers are merely playing bureaucratic games, in an effort to undermine the new leadership of Goss and stymie efforts at reform.
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The clandestine service, formally known as the Directorate of Operations is headed by Steven Kappes, the deputy director of operations; his deputy Michael Sulick and the service's No. 3, a woman who cannot be named because she works undercover.
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The three are "The strongest leadership the DO has had in many, many years," John Macgaffin, who held Sulick's post in the early 1990's told UPI.

"More importantly," he added, "they are seen by the rank and file as the strongest leadership to date, and most importantly of all they have taken a long hard look at what went wrong before Sept. 11 and have begun to address those flaws.
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"It would be truly tragic if these individuals, who have done so much already to prevent another Sept. 11 were to be lost to the agency and to the nation."
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Macgaffin refused to comment further on the controversy and would not confirm or deny a reports over the weekend that Kappes had tendered his resignation after being told to "get rid" of Sulick, but the broad outlines of the account were verified to UPI by several other serving and former intelligence officials.
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One report said that Kappes and the others had been persuaded to hold off any decision until Monday, but one of the two former senior CIA officials who were the main sources for this story suggested to UPI it was a done deal.
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"They have taken down the pictures in their offices," he said.
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The other was less sure: "I would say 'poised' is the word."
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According to the mostly matching accounts provided by these two sources, the threatened resignations are the culmination of two to three weeks of conflict with new CIA Chief of Staff Patrick Murray and Jay Jakub, special assistant to the director for operations and analysis.
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The two officials, men with intelligence backgrounds but political career tracks, are part of a leadership team that Goss has brought in from his staff at the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which he led as a Republican congressman from Florida, until his nomination over the summer to the director's post at the CIA.
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The new team has recently been given carte blanche by Goss to make key appointments and other decisions in the Directorate of Operations, say the two former officials.
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"He's bringing in political people and giving them hire-and-fire power," said one.
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Murray and his new team have been given the authority to appoint new chiefs of station and new division heads -- a power previously exercised by Kappes
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But one serving national security official cautioned the new powers might not been granted yet. "My sense is that this decision has not been finalized. It may be what they're pushing for, but if that deal had been closed, we'd have heard more about it."
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The national security official also cautioned that allies of the clandestine service leadership might be trying to spin the media. "Whenever there's this kind of struggle in an agency, with new people coming in and old ones trying to hang on, there are always going to be attempts to use the available mechanisms -- including the media -- to influence the outcome," the official said.
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The official's warning echoes a comment made over the summer by former Iraq weapons hunter David Kay. Speaking to reporters after a conference address in Washington, Kay said of anyone who would try to reform the CIA, "They'll need to be ready to be up to their knees in bureaucratic blood ... My former colleagues in the (Directorate of Operations) will start leaking to their friends in the media as soon as they hear the swish of the new broom."
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A CIA official authorized to speak on behalf of the agency told UPI he could not comment on personnel matters. "Will there be changes? Without getting into specifics, yes. Is it customary for a new director to make leadership changes, and to bring in his own people to handful of senior positions? Yes."

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20041114-084711-6042r

[exitwound]

There's going to be a major house cleaning at the CIA. Major.

We can only hope. A Central Intelligence Agency which is anything less than its absolute best, is a mortal threat to us all in the Age of Terror. They are our most vital defensive force, and they have not exactly been on top form in recent years.

Here's hoping that you're right.

[al-Canine]

Top leaders of CIA's clandestine service resign

From David Ensor
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Steven Kappes and Michael J. Sulick, the top leaders of the CIA's directorate of operations, resigned Monday morning, sources told CNN.

Their departures come in a period of turmoil at the intelligence agency as the new director, Porter Goss seeks to impose his control.

The directorate of operations is the agency's clandestine service.

Kappes took over from James Pavitt, who left in August.

Deputy Director John McLaughlin, who ran the agency after Director George Tenet resigned earlier this year, announced his retirement Friday. He said he was leaving for personal reasons.

Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's search for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, quit Thursday.

In August, President Bush tapped Goss, a former CIA officer and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, to lead the agency. During his confirmation hearings, Goss pledged to apply "tough love" to the CIA.

Sources say Kappes and Sulick clashed with deputies Goss brought in from Capitol Hill, where he served as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee before being chosen by President Bush as director of central intelligence.

Top Republican lawmakers voiced support for new CIA Director Porter Goss on Sunday after the resignations of McLaughlin and Scheuer raised questions about a possible upheaval in the agency.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said such turnover was to be expected as new leadership takes over.

"The aggressiveness with which we will continue to fight the war on terror for freedom and liberty and democracy throughout the world will not be affected in any way by any sort of personnel changes here or any sort of reorganization of the intelligence functions of entities here," said Frist, a Republican from Tennessee.

But critics suggest Goss may be doing more harm than good with his efforts to reshape the nation's flagship spy agency. California Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, accused Goss of bringing a "highly partisan, inexperienced staff" with him when he took office in September.

"The agency seems in free-fall in Washington, and that is a very, very bad omen in the middle of a war," Harman said.

Harman said Goss has the right to make changes at the spy agency, but he needs "a management team in place that can help achieve objectives."

"To make those changes effectively, he has to do them with an experienced staff, and he doesn't have one," Harman said. "Many of us worked with that staff in the House. Frankly, on both sides of the aisle in our committee, we were happy to see them go."

Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, called the CIA "a dysfunctional agency, and in some ways a rogue agency" that needed to be reformed. He accused some CIA insiders of leaking information to damage President Bush politically in the months before the election.

"Porter Goss is on the right track," McCain said on ABC's "This Week." "He is being savaged by these people that want the status quo, and the status quo is not satisfactory."

The CIA "is not providing the intelligence information necessary for the president to conduct the war on terror," he said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said the CIA "failed this country" with incorrect assessments of Iraq's weapons programs before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

"I'm not worried about hurting people's feelings," said Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "I want to stand behind those who work hard. But if you got it wrong, you need to be dealt with."

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/15/cia.resignations/

[al-Canine]

CIA Says It Will Not Get Mixed Up in Policy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA denied on Wednesday that its new director had told the spy agency to shape intelligence to support the policies of President Bush.

The agency was responding to a report in The New York Times which said CIA Director Porter Goss had told his staff to back Bush, a sharp departure for an agency that is supposed to stick to facts and stay out of policy judgments.

Critics have pointed at the resignations of some top CIA officials as a sign that Goss and his advisers who came with him from Capitol Hill were acting in a partisan manner.

There have also been some suspicions at the White House that the CIA leaked negative information about Iraq before the November election to hurt Bush.

The White House and CIA said the full e-mail sent by Goss to the workforce on Monday put the comments in context, but neither released it.

"I also intend to clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road. We support the administration and its policies in our work. As agency employees we do not identify with, support, or champion opposition to the administration or its policies. We provide the intelligence as we see it -- and let the facts alone speak to the policymaker," Goss said in the e-mail, as read by a source.

A CIA spokesman said that comment did not mean that the CIA was now expected to take policy positions.

"What that passage means is that when we are asked to provide intelligence on a particular issue, we do so without shading or shaping the information in any way, that is what intelligence support to the administration means," the CIA spokesman said.

"It does not mean taking positions on policy pro or con, that is not what this agency does, we are a policy-neutral organization," he said.

Ever since Goss was chosen as the new CIA director he has been dogged by critics raising questions about whether the former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee could be nonpartisan in running an agency that is expected to provide independent assessments to policymakers.

"We do not make policy though we do inform those who make it. We avoid political involvement, especially political partisanship," Goss said in the e-mail.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said some people had "misconstrued" the Goss e-mail and that the CIA's role was to provide unvarnished facts and objective analysis to policymakers. "He (Goss) was not talking about advocacy one way or the other," McClellan said.

He also said that during the presidential campaign there was "a lot of media coverage from anonymous sources talking about intelligence matters and talking about classified information in some instances," but did not point the finger at CIA as being responsible for that.

http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6845007

[al-Canine]

Cooking With Goss
The new CIA chief's shakeups are bad news.

What to make of Porter Goss and the turmoil at the Central Intelligence Agency? Slate's Jack Shafer has run down the press leaks and the bureaucratic back-biting. But what do these squabbles, dismissals, and resignations mean for the state of U.S. intelligence? What does Goss want, and is what he's doing the best way of accomplishing it?

First, it's odd to see so much fretting over the departure of the top two officials from the CIA's clandestine branch. These guys haven't exactly been racking up trophies lately. The agency has been notoriously unsuccessful at mounting covert operations or penetrating hostile governments and terrorist organizations—at doing the sorts of things that clandestine branches do. If John Kerry had won the election, it's a fair bet he too would have swept the broom at Langley.

In any case, the shake-up should have come as no surprise. As far back as 1998, just after the bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa, Goss—then chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—said publicly what many insiders had long been whispering: that the CIA's directorate of operations (the official name for the clandestine shop) was too "gun-shy."

The more important question is what Goss will do with the agency's analytical branch, the directorate of intelligence. That's the branch where integrity and independence are vital. That's where the Bush administration's prime movers—Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—stuck their fingers in the run-up to the war in Iraq, pressuring analysts to drop the maybes and on-the-other-hands from their reports about Saddam's possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and connections to al-Qaida.

The personnel shufflings haven't yet spread to the analytical shop. But signs are starting to point to a broad shake-up, charged by political motivations. And it's in this context that Goss' actions take on a darker tint.

Today's New York Times, in a story headlined "New C.I.A. Chief Tells Workers to Back Administration Policies," reports on a leaked memo that Goss circulated on Monday within the CIA "to clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road," as the new director put it. The pertinent passage is this: "As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies."

This directive reinforces a general uneasiness about Goss, who after all auditioned for his current job by doing political hackwork for the president. In June 2003, when Sen. Kerry—who was clearly running for president already—gave "a major speech" on national-security issues, the Bush-Cheney campaign tapped Goss to write the official critique. And he wrote a blazer, denouncing the speech as "political 'me-tooism' " and complaining that Kerry "neglected the president's historic achievements" and "remarkable progress" at combating terrorism.

Goss also helped Bush during the early days of the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame scandal. As chairman of a Senate oversight committee and as a former CIA case officer himself, Goss should have been dismayed that a White House aide might have exposed the identity of an undercover agent as an act of political retaliation against the agent's spouse. But, although the Justice Department took the reports seriously enough to mount a grand-jury probe, Goss dismissed them as "wild and unsubstantiated" and added, as a jab at the Democrats, "Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation."

It was because of such incidents, among others, that John D. Rockefeller IV, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, confided to aides last August—after Bush named Goss to be CIA director—that his chairman was "too political" for the job.

This background to Goss' appointment is what lends credence to the warning cries from the pros of Langley. Ordinarily, such cries might be suspect. Ensconced bureaucrats always panic when an outsider roars into the sanctuary, espousing radical change. When Robert McNamara took over the Pentagon in 1961 and started cutting weapons programs that didn't pass his cost-benefit analyses, the uniformed military went berserk. Just as Goss brought along some arrogant young staffers from the Senate, McNamara brought in some arrogant young "whiz kids" from the RAND Corporation. Alain Enthoven, the 29-year-old whom McNamara made the assistant secretary of defense for systems analysis (a job that hadn't existed before), told one senior Air Force officer who started lecturing him on a fine point, "General, I don't think you understand. I didn't come for a briefing. I came to tell you what we have decided." To another, who started to argue with Enthoven about nuclear-war plans, he said, "General, I have fought just as many nuclear wars as you have."

McNamara and Enthoven turned out to be right. The military services had been wildly extravagant about the way they'd been buying weapons. Maybe Goss and his whippersnappers will turn out to be right on whatever it is they're trying to do, too.

But there's a big difference. McNamara and his whiz kids didn't work in John F. Kennedy's election campaign. They'd never publicly lashed out against JFK's opponent, Richard Nixon, or made snide comments about his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower. They weren't political people.

President Bush's second-term Cabinet is shaping up to be not a collection of separate agencies but a political arm of the Oval Office. Bush's appointments so far—Alberto Gonzalez at Justice, Condoleezza Rice at State, and today Margaret Spellings at Education—all come from his White House staff. This is a legitimate, if narrowly confining, style of leadership. But the CIA is different: Its success depends above all on whether its director can provide the president with disinterested analysis. So far, Porter Goss does not seem to be such a director.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2109870/

[al-Canine]

CIA plans riskier, more aggressive espionage

By John Diamond, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — CIA Director Porter Goss told his new chief of spy operations this week to launch a much more aggressive espionage campaign that would use undercover officers to penetrate terrorist groups and hostile governments such as North Korea and Iran, according to a senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of Goss' plans.
As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Porter Goss called the CIA's human intelligence efforts "dysfunctional."
Alex Wong, Getty Images

The risky new strategy would be a sharp departure from the CIA's traditional style of human intelligence, in which field officers under flimsy cover as diplomats in U.S. embassies try to recruit foreign spies and gather tips from allied intelligence services. Those methods don't work with terror groups or in countries where the United States has no embassies, such as prewar Iraq or present-day North Korea and Iran.

The new strategy is dangerous — agents could gather much better information but would run a much higher risk of being killed if found out. Goss hinted at this strategy during his confirmation hearing and has told agency officials it is key to his effort to revamp the agency to meet new and unconventional threats.

The new spy operations chief, an official who is himself under cover, took over his post Tuesday after a messy shake-up in which his predecessor and the No. 2 official at the spy service resigned after clashing with aides to Goss. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the CIA has struggled to transform the Directorate of Operations, as the spy service is formally known, but not to Goss' satisfaction. When he was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Goss issued a scathing report in June that referred to the CIA's human intelligence efforts as "dysfunctional."

The move to more aggressive field operations represents Goss' first major effort to put into effect a strategy that he laid out on his first day on the job Sept. 24, when he told agency employees that the CIA is "the pointy end of the spear" in the war on terrorism, "and now is the time that we need the pointy end of the spear."

The speech was transmitted or distributed in writing to agency employees worldwide. Portions of the speech were read to USA TODAY by the U.S. official who described Goss' plans for transforming espionage operations. The official also read portions of an e-mail Goss sent to agency employees Monday telling them they should provide unbiased intelligence but must not oppose administration policies. The official asked not to be named because the speech and e-mail have not been made public, and because the CIA's clandestine operations are highly classified.

"Our core business in my view is close-in access to the plans and intentions" of adversary states and terror groups, Goss said in his speech. He said he expects the strategy to yield successes, but also painful failures he will have to explain to Congress. Goss said he would give his field officers "more autonomy" to do their work and pledged to back them if they fail. "We're going to encourage and expect calculated risk-taking that will be rewarded," he said. "I know it won't go right all the time. When it goes wrong, it will be supported."

Field officers who blow their diplomatic cover are typically thrown out of foreign countries. Under the new tactics, officers caught under deep cover could expect no protection and could be executed. If caught trying to penetrate a terrorist group, they could count on being tortured and murdered.

Goss wants to train and field more officers as "NOCs" — meaning they would work under "non-official cover" to give them more options for penetrating an adversary, the official said. Goss' strategy was described Tuesday night by former CIA director James Woolsey on Boston radio station WBUR's On Point program. Woolsey said he has spoken this week to top CIA officials.

The high-stakes shift in intelligence collection comes at a time of turmoil:

•Four senior officials have resigned from the CIA in less than a week, including the top two officials at the Directorate of Operations who left after feuding with aides to Goss.

• President Bush pressed Congress this week to pass legislation that could reduce the CIA's influence and access to the president by creating an intelligence post above the level of the CIA.

• With the United States involved in two wars and expecting further terrorist attacks, the CIA is struggling to close major intelligence gaps on the growing Iraqi insurgency and to find al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

• The intense scrutiny on past CIA mistakes shows no sign of abating. Bush met Wednesday with members of a government commission headed by former senator Chuck Robb, D-Va., that is investigating the poor intelligence reporting on Iraqi weapons prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Goss' push for more aggressive covert action and human intelligence collection comes as the Pentagon is gaining power to conduct operations previously restricted to the CIA. This year's defense authorization bill gives Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authority to spend up to $25 million to support "foreign forces, irregular forces, groups or individuals" assisting U.S. commandos in the war on terrorism. Such cash handouts to shadowy paramilitary groups had been the sole purview of the CIA.

In the e-mail sent to agency employees Monday, Goss warned of more turmoil ahead. He said he will "announce a series of changes — some involving procedures, organization, (and) senior personnel." White House spokesman Scott McClellan and CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano discussed its contents Wednesday.

Goss' e-mail gave his employees "rules of the road" concerning relations with the White House. "We support the administration and its policies in our work," Goss wrote. "As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies. We provide intelligence as we see it — and let the facts alone speak to the policymaker."

Gimigliano said that by "support," Goss meant providing accurate, unbiased intelligence, not political support for administration policies. At the White House, McClellan said the CIA's job was to "provide unvarnished facts" and stay out of policymaking. Likewise, McClellan said, policymakers would stay out of the intelligence business.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-11-17-cia-plans_x.htm

[al-Canine]

GOP lawmakers block intelligence overhaul

Congressional leaders vow to try again in December

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A bill aimed at overhauling the nation's intelligence agencies was pulled Saturday because of conservative opposition, on what was supposed to be the last day of Congress' lame-duck session.

Republican leaders were caught between angry conservatives, who threatened to vote against the bill, and President Bush, who insisted it should be passed.

Congressional sources told CNN that Bush, in Chile for an economic summit, called a congressman Friday night and told him to "back off" from pushing contentious provisions related to immigration.

Congress will remain in session, and if an agreement is reached before January, a vote on the bill could be taken.

"Our members want us to continue, the speaker wants us to continue to negotiate, and so does the Senate, so we're going to continue to negotiate and see if we can get a bill in December," said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, according to The Associated Press.

In a meeting of House GOP leaders Saturday, Speaker Dennis Hastert said a main concern was that some of the proposed changes could endanger U.S. troops, "who use real-time intelligence."

"We need to clarify it. We need to work on it. We will continue to do that," Hastert said.

"When it comes to a question of the safety of our troops, I don't think we should have any question at all. For our members to move a piece of legislation, they have to have confidence that we do no harm, that we actually make sure that our troops are safe."

The bill was spawned by recommendations of the bipartisan commission that investigated the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It would create a national intelligence director, who would be a principal adviser to the president. A main sticking point has been how much control the director would have over the estimated $80 billion intelligence budget.

The House and Senate have been working to get compromise legislation based on the 9/11 commission's recommendations since August.

Earlier Saturday, when it was thought lawmakers had successfully married House and Senate versions of the bill, two former members of the 9/11 Commission released a statement saying the resulting legislation is a "good bill and a strong bill."

Although one group of relatives of those killed in the terrorist attacks supported the joint bill, another said it supported the House version because of stronger immigration provisions not in the Senate version.

"We believe this legislation will make our country safer by improving communication, collaboration and sharing of critical information within our intelligence community," said a statement issued by the 9/11 Family Steering Committee.

The group 9/11 Families for a Secure America, however, said provisions in the Senate version "will not prevent future attacks like those that murdered our loved ones. Without serious immigration provisions, the Senate bill will leave America as vulnerable as it was on September 11, 2001."

The organization said Congress should let the bill die until next year, rather than pass a measure that it says would weaken immigration and border security.

Tentative agreement between the House and Senate came, sources told CNN, after President Bush called Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin late Friday to urge the congressman to "back off" from pushing immigration driver's license provisions that threatened the bill's passage.

Those provisions would have forbidden states to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants; required refugees and those granted asylum to get driver's licenses that are annually renewed; and imposed what some immigrant advocates said were onerous identification requirements on immigrants seeking driver's licenses.

Sensenbrenner had defended the provisions because all 19 hijackers involved in the attacks had acquired U.S. driver's licenses. But after his conversation with the president, Sensenbrenner agreed to drop them, congressional sources said.

But, in a meeting that lasted until after 4 a.m. Saturday, Sensenbrenner argued to reopen other disputed immigration provisions, congressional staffers involved in the negotiations said.

CNN's Dana Bash, Joe Johns and John King contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/20/congress.intelligence

[al-Canine]

Lawmakers say Pentagon halted intelligence bill

By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

House and Senate leaders yesterday blamed the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for the demise of the intelligence-reform bill and called on the White House to lobby harder for passage of the legislation during a final lame-duck session, set for December.

Republicans and Democrats said a turf war by the Pentagon to maintain budget control separate from the proposed director of national intelligence is the primary offender. Immigration issues, which leaders say should be addressed in separate legislation, also migrated into the bill.

The intelligence measure was blocked by Republican House leaders, but Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican and chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, said others, including the White House, are to blame.

"There's been a lot of opposition to this from the first. Some of it is turf. Some of it is from the Pentagon. Some of it, quite frankly, is from the White House, despite what the president has said," Mr. Roberts said on "Fox News Sunday."

"I know that some people care about turf. I know some people obviously care about immigration. I do, too. We can do that at some later point. But this idea that somehow the Pentagon would be hurt by this, that is a canard," Mr. Roberts said.

Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, was more specific.

"It's well-known that the secretary of defense wasn't enthusiastic about this loss of budget authority. Remember, most of our fiercest debates in Washington come down to who controls the money," Mr. McCain said.

President Bush said yesterday evening after an economic summit in Chile that he was "disappointed the bill didn't pass."

"I thought it was going to pass up to the last minute," he said.

"Hopefully, we'll get a bill done" when Congress returns in December, Mr. Bush said, promising to work with interested parties. "When I get home, I look forward to getting it done."

Mr. Bush did not respond directly to a question about whether Mr. Rumsfeld's opposition contributed to the deadlock, saying, "It was clear I wanted the bill passed."

In a chaotic day that the 108th Congress had hoped would be its last, negotiators announced a compromise on Saturday on the intelligence bill. But hours later, opposition from the Republican chairmen of two House committees stymied the bill, which would create a national intelligence director and establish a National Counterterrorism Center.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV blamed the bill's defeat on Reps. Duncan Hunter, California Republican and Armed Services Committee chairman, and F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican and Judiciary Committee chairman.

Mr. Hunter opposed the bill, echoing the Pentagon's complaints about interfering with the military's battlefield intelligence-gathering. Mr. Sensenbrenner said reforming U.S. intelligence would be pointless without making it harder for illegal aliens to get legal identification.

"I just think that Americans ought to remember the name Duncan Hunter and also Jim Sensenbrenner, because they brought the bill down, the most important national-security bill in the last generation," Mr. Rockefeller, West Virginia Democrat, told ABC's "This Week."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Congress will not rush the legislation, but negotiators will continue to work on a compromise during the next two weeks.

"We're planning on coming back December 6th and 7th ... because the bill was not ready," Mr. Frist told CBS' "Face the Nation."

However, Mr. Frist said he could not assure that a December vote will be taken "until we get it right."

"It is clear that this bill gives a director of national intelligence new power. And that power is authority in budget. And that authority comes away from the Pentagon and the Department of Defense. And that, to many people, is threatening, and so there is a huge debate there," Mr. Frist said.

"There is not general agreement between the Pentagon and members of the White House, and hopefully, that can be resolved over the next 10 days," he said.

The new national intelligence director would oversee the budget and set priorities for 14 different intelligence agencies. The post was opposed by Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a letter to Congress.

Rep. Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Mr. Rumsfeld made it "absolutely clear" that he opposed the bill.

Mr. McCain was asked specifically by NBC host Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" whether the Pentagon is blocking the president's reforms.

"This is one of the more byzantine kind of scenarios that I have observed in the years that I have been in Congress," Mr. McCain responded.

"It's hard for me to imagine the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sending that letter without at least consulting with the secretary of defense," Mr. McCain said.

"The president of the United States felt very strongly that we needed this reform. I believe that it's a fairly good chance, since the majority of both houses of Congress and the president of the United States are in favor of this legislation, that it will probably succeed over time," Mr. McCain said.

Asked whether Mr. Bush should call Mr. Rumsfeld to get on board, Mr. McCain laughed and said, "I would imagine he has done that already."

Sen. Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said he is optimistic that Congress will return next month and vote on the measure.

"The bill may be on life support, but I think it's still breathing," Mr. McConnell said on ABC's "This Week."

Although other Republicans expressed confidence that the disputes could be settled next month and a bill passed and signed by Mr. Bush, Mr. Roberts was more skeptical.

"Slim or none," he said of the chances.

"And slim left town."
****

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041122-124126-4283r.htm

[al-Canine]

White House Asks for Study on Whether to Transfer CIA Forces to Pentagon

By Katherine Pfleger Shrader
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House has requested that the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon study whether the Defense Department should take over CIA paramilitary operations, as recommended by the Sept. 11 commission.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-acting CIA Director John McLaughlin rejected the idea - McLaughlin quite viscerally - when the commission issued its final report this summer. Bush's request indicates that the administration wants to give the issue closer study.

"The president asked that we look at this to understand and address the specifics of this issue," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Monday evening.

Both Whitman and a U.S. official, who also confirmed the study on the condition of anonymity, stressed that the work is being done collaboratively. The study is still in its early stages.

The review comes as Congress has reached an apparent stalemate over other sweeping recommendations from the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including the creation of a new national intelligence director.

Within its 40-plus recommendations, the commission recommended the transfer of the CIA's paramilitary operations to the Defense Department. The commissioners said having two such organizations within the government to handle such operations was redundant.

Paramilitary operations can include a host of activities, including training rebel forces; destabilizing governments and organizations through violence; and directly attacking enemy targets and individuals. The operations can be handled by CIA paramilitary teams or units out of the Pentagon, such as the Green Berets or Delta Force.

Pentagon and intelligence leaders have said CIA paramilitaries and military special operations forces each have distinct capabilities, but work well together.

This summer, McLaughlin said he wouldn't accept the Sept. 11 commission's recommendation. He has since been replaced by CIA Director Porter Goss.

"I think we have a perfect marriage now of CIA and military capabilities. CIA brings to the mix agility and speed. Military brings lethality," McLaughlin said.

Rumsfeld, however, was initially less committal on the proposal, saying he is not sure the CIA's control over paramilitary operations is a problem that needs fixing.

Some nibbling away at the CIA's domain is already under way. Recent legislation would give the U.S. Special Operations Command up to $25 million to support "foreign forces, irregular forces, groups or individuals" that help U.S. efforts against terrorists and other enemies. Such aid - which could mean cash, weapons or other assistance to often shadowy groups or figures - has traditionally been handled by the CIA.

Bush signed the measure into law last month.

AP Military Writer Robert Burns contributed to this story.

AP-ES-11-22-04 2044EST

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBBRHPEV1E.html

[al-Canine]

Bush Wants Plan for Covert Pentagon Role

By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 - President Bush has ordered an interagency group to devise a plan that could expand the Defense Department role in covert operations that have traditionally been the specialty of the Central Intelligence Agency, administration officials said Monday.

A presidential directive signed by Mr. Bush last week sets a 90-day deadline for the review, whose main focus will be whether the military's Special Operations forces should have a role in paramilitary operations that a special C.I.A. unit carries out, the officials said.

With two other directives issued Nov. 18, Mr. Bush also ordered the C.I.A. and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to report to him by February on how they intended to improve their performance in the war on terrorism, the officials said.

One directive calls on the intelligence agency to "fix ambitious targets for recruiting, training and deploying operations officers and analysts," as well as "rebuilding agency's core capabilities to collect intelligence from human agents," a senior official said.

The moves, which the White House has not announced, reflect an aggressive postelection effort by Mr. Bush and his senior national security advisers to improve the performance of the military and intelligence and law enforcement agencies in combating terrorism.

In part, the directives respond to recommendations by the independent commission that investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. With bills to turn those proposals into laws in doubt, Mr. Bush's steps to push them may become more significant.

In a telephone interview, Thomas W. O'Connell, the assistant defense secretary for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said he had assured his counterparts who oversee paramilitary operations at the intelligence agency that "there is no preordained outcome" to the review.

"I have heard it said that there is a conspiracy within the Department of Defense to go and rip off the agency's capabilities, and I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth," Mr. O'Connell said.

The idea of transferring paramilitary authority from the intelligence agency to the Pentagon was among several fundamental changes that the Sept. 11 panel proposed in the summer. In public testimony in August, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and John E. McLaughlin, who was the acting intelligence chief, expressed reservations about the idea, and the recommendation was not included in the measures that Congress set aside over the weekend.

Senior administration officials who spoke about the review came from several agencies, each consulted while the directives were prepared. They would not agree to speak publicly because of the secrecy that cloaks most information about clandestine paramilitary and counterterrorism operations.

Some officials said they believed that civilians in the Pentagon, including the under secretary of defense for intelligence, Stephen A. Cambone, had pressed for the interagency review as part of a quest for a wider role for the Pentagon and the military services in intelligence and counterterrorism.

Special Operations forces and paramilitary units of the intelligence agency already work together in some groups around the world, including those dedicated to the search for Osama bin Laden and other leaders of Al Qaeda. But only the intelligence agency paramilitary units, and not Special Operations forces, are authorized to conduct the most sensitive covert operations, under presidential directives known as findings. The examples have included the operations in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, when paramilitary units were the first American forces sent there.

The panel is to include representatives of the State and Justice Departments, as well as of the Pentagon and the C.I.A., the officials said. A senior administration official said the task of the group would be "to see whether or not transferring paramilitary authorities in their entirety from the C.I.A. to the Department of Defense would best serve the nation or whether there are other ways to have paramilitary forces work in better cooperation."

The separate directives on the intelligence agency and the F.B.I. laid out an accelerated schedule for the leaders of those agencies to report to the White House on their operations, including areas the Sept. 11 panel and Senate Intelligence Committee have sharply criticized in recent reports.

For the bureau, the directive acknowledges that it has made significant changes but orders it to produce in 90 days "a comprehensive plan with performance measures including timelines for achievement of specific measurable progress in analysis, products, sources, field intelligence operations" and other activities that produce information for the president.

The new director of central intelligence, Porter J. Goss, has promised to focus attention on improving his agency's core mission of intelligence gathering. But early personnel moves by Mr. Goss and his management team have stirred sharp dissent in the directorate of operations, which includes paramilitary operations.

The recommendation by the Sept. 11 panel on paramilitary forces was one of its farthest reaching. Its report called on the Defense Department to take charge of "directing and executing paramilitary operations, whether clandestine or covert," tasks that have routinely fallen within the intelligence agency's domain.

In the years before Sept. 11, the intelligence agency "did not invest in developing a robust capability" in this area but relied on proxy forces organized by agency officers, the report said, with unsatisfactory results. Rather than invest money and personnel in the intelligence agency and the military for paramilitary counterterrorist operations, the report said, "the United States should concentrate responsibility and necessary legal authorities in one entity."

Under current directives, the military's Special Operations Command already has the authority to organize, train and equip the elite commando force and to plan and execute its missions against terrorists.

The Special Operations sector has many times more personnel and more rigorous year-round training than the direct-action units at the C.I.A. The military already routinely lends its Green Berets, Seals and Delta Force members to the intelligence agency on request.

Some veteran members of Special Operations branches have responded negatively to the Sept. 11 recommendation, saying that intelligence agency officers operate under a different set of findings and carry different legal protections than the military, in particular for cases in which they are ordered to conduct the most extreme clandestine operations.

Asked about the idea in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in August, Mr. Rumsfeld said that the idea was worth reviewing, but that "at the moment I certainly wouldn't recommend it." But he recently drafted a directive that instructed regional commanders to create a plan for an expanded Pentagon role in intelligence gathering. The directive, first reported last month in The Wall Street Journal, suggested that the Pentagon should be more active in tracking down terrorist and insurgent leaders.

David Johnston, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/23/politics/23covert.html

[Ono]

Oooooo it gets interesting!

[al-Canine]

Bush Orders the CIA To Hire More Spies

Goss Told to Build Up Other Staffs, Too

By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 24, 2004; Page A04

President Bush has ordered CIA Director Porter J. Goss to increase by 50 percent the number of qualified CIA clandestine operators and intelligence analysts, an ambitious step that would mean the hiring and training of several thousand new personnel in coming years.

Bush also ordered the doubling of CIA officers involved in research and development "to find new ways to bring science to bear in the war on terrorism, the proliferation of WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and against new and emerging threats." In the presidential order, dated Nov. 18 and released by the White House yesterday, Bush also called for a 50 percent increase in the number of CIA officers proficient in "mission-critical languages" such as Arabic.

The directive comes as the CIA is under intense scrutiny and in a period of transition under Goss's new leadership, and as the administration is under pressure to show progress in addressing the shortcomings documented by the Sept. 11 commission this summer. Last week Congress was unable to agree on details of legislation to dramatically reorganize the U.S. intelligence community.

In addition to calling for such a reorganization, the 9/11 commission had also urged strong increases in the number of clandestine officers, intelligence analysts and language specialists, as had the Senate and House intelligence committees.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the CIA has undertaken an unprecedented recruiting and training campaign. The president's order left unclear how that would be accelerated.

The 50 percent increases he called for "are huge," requiring a new training facility "and even more aggressive recruiting, or lowering the quality of people," a former CIA official involved in the recruiting effort said.

The exact number of CIA officers in one area targeted for increase -- the clandestine service, officially known as the Directorate of Operations -- is classified, but former officials say it is around 4,500. Only about one-third are in the field as case officers who recruit agents, a former official said. The rest provide support from headquarters and overseas. Overall, the agency is believed to employ about 20,000 people.

U.S. officials said much of what Bush proposed was already being undertaken by the CIA and had been outlined in a strategic plan finished in December 2003. Officials said the White House was not aware of that planning when the president signed the directive, the existence of which was first reported by the New York Times.

Goss has said he wants to make significant changes in the way the agency does business, but he has been unclear on many specifics.

His tenure so far has been tumultuous. Several senior and mid-level clandestine officers, including the director and assistant director of the Directorate of Operations, have resigned or retired.

In his order, Bush gave Goss 90 days to put together a budget and implementation plan for hiring and training the new personnel. One former senior agency official said yesterday that the task "could take years."

Bush's order said the increases should be done "as soon as feasible."

Since many new trainees will be used against tough targets such as terrorists and closed governments such as North Korea and Iran, the training and eventual placement overseas will be even more difficult. Many will not be able to work out of embassies with diplomatic cover -- as many traditionally have -- but will operate covertly in their target countries. These officers will be "NOCs," which means they are there under "non-official cover," and subject to arrest as spies if they are caught.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, suggested that Congress should be "prepared to triple the budget for intelligence" if needed. "We will answer the issue of resources," he said.

In a separate presidential directive -- also issued Nov. 18 and released yesterday -- Bush gave the attorney general 90 days to provide plans for the creation of a "specialized and integrated national security workforce" within the FBI.

That directive builds upon reforms set in motion by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who announced in June that he was creating a "directorate of intelligence" aimed at improving the collection and analysis of intelligence information within the FBI.

The president also signed an order calling on the national security agencies to study whether to expand the types of covert operations undertaken by the military, activities that are now largely handled by the CIA's paramilitary division.

Bush set a 90-day deadline for that study as well.

The Sept. 11 commission recommended that the Pentagon assume all paramilitary activities, including those in which the hand of the U.S. government is to remain secret. None of the recent intelligence reorganization bills contained that provision, however.

The Defense Department has been studying and experimenting with new ways to use military forces to collect intelligence and conduct other covert operations. In this realm -- technically called "intelligence preparation of the battlefield" -- some skeptics view the department as inching into covert actions.

This is controversial, in part because it would mean that if soldiers involved in a covert operation are captured, the government would not admit they are U.S. military personnel. CIA operatives sign up for this risk. Military personnel do not, except when they agree to be temporarily transferred to the CIA.

Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8650-2004Nov23.html

[al-Canine]

CIA's hiring dilemma: few meet requirements

Staffing: New training or lower standards for linguists, analysts and field agents will be needed, say academics and ex-agents.

By Robert Little
Sun National Staff

November 30, 2004

President Bush's ambitious plan to strengthen the CIA's intelligence-gathering operations by hiring thousands of new field agents, analysts and language specialists cannot be accomplished unless the agency creates an extensive and expensive new training program or lowers its hiring standards considerably, according to academics and former agents who follow the nation's intelligence services.

Though Bush proposed increasing the staffing of these key positions by half, the nation's intelligence agencies face a shortage of qualified employees, despite hiring incentives of as much as $35,000.

"Everyone's hoping that Dari speakers and Pashto speakers will somehow just emerge, but that's not going to happen," said Arthur Hulnick, a 28-year CIA veteran, referring to languages spoken in Afghanistan.

"The pool of people who are interested in the intelligence fields, and who have the potential, is very broad in this country," said Hulnick, who now teaches intelligence-related courses at Boston University. "All my students want to do it. But if you want people with the right skills you're going to need to make an investment. You don't just say, 'Hire 50 percent more.'"

The size of the CIA's budget and work force are classified, but former agency officials say a 50 percent increase could mean thousands of new positions.

Other agencies

The nation's other intelligence agencies, including the larger National Security Agency at Fort Meade, with an estimated 32,000 employees, were not mentioned directly in the Bush memorandum calling for increased staffing.

But people who follow the intelligence services suspect federal officials are considering them for similar increases in personnel and other resources.

Yet the NSA, the CIA and all of the nation's spy agencies are scrambling to recruit employees with the same specific, and often obscure, set of skills, such as proficiency in Middle Eastern or Asian languages or intimate familiarity with some of the world's more inhospitable regions.

The CIA will likely find a bevy of willing applicants if it tries to hire thousands of new agents, but would quickly exhaust the modest pool of potential agents who possess the necessary skills and training, with potentially dire consequences for its federal intelligence partners. The rest would have to be trained, at a cost of millions.

'Piece that's missing'

"That's the piece that's missing in all of this: Where are these agents and analysts going to come from?" said Robert J. Heibel, former deputy chief of counterterrorism at the FBI and now executive director of the Institute for Intelligence Studies at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa. "You can go to the military or to other agencies, but then where are they going to go? You need to be developing a new pool of qualified job candidates."

White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan told United Press International last week that the expansion will have to be accomplished "within existing budgets." But former intelligence officials say it would almost certainly require large amounts in additional spending for salaries, benefits and training.

"They can't do it within existing budgets," said retired Adm. Bobby R. Inman, a former director of the National Security Agency and now a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. "Things have improved since 9/11. The pool of people who want to work is very high, and the quality appears to be strong, but you have to train them in the very specific skills that are required. That's expensive, and it takes a commitment of money and time."

Looking for ways

Federal officials say they are looking for other ways to increase the potential pool. One barrier to recruiting intelligence officers, they say, is the nation's cumbersome system for granting security clearances, which can take months to navigate and can disqualify candidates for seemingly conflicting reasons.

Hulnick recounted a student with excellent grades, foreign language fluency and a keen interest in a career in intelligence, but said he has received scant notice from the federal agencies because one of his parents lives in Pakistan.

"You have to do background checks, but our system for that is really wrong," said Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Baltimore County Democrat and a member of the House's Select Committee on Intelligence. "There are people right here in this country - African-Americans, Arab-Americans, Iraqi-Americans - with the skills we need, and we have to find them and offer incentives to encourage them to come to work for our intelligence agencies."

Others are not so certain that the United States is sitting on an untapped pool of qualified intelligence analysts.

Institute training

At Heibel's institute, which offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in intelligence studies and applied intelligence, students typically graduate with four or five job offers.

"If you want to hire an accountant or a chemist or an architect, you go to the schools that produce graduates with the basic skills necessary to do those jobs," Heibel said. "But there's only one place I know of that produces entry-level intelligence analysts, and that's here. I think other universities and colleges are slow to change, but it deserves to be taken seriously in academia because it's a very cerebral discipline. It's not covert action or dirty tricks. That's policy. Intelligence gathering and analysis is about critical thinking."

Bush's memo gave leaders at the CIA three months to submit a plan for implementing his changes, including a budget and a schedule for achieving the staffing increases. The memo also makes clear that the changes will be implemented "subject to the availability of appropriations."

Money if needed

Ruppersberger suggested that if Bush's plan needs money, it is likely to find some - given the important role that security and counterterrorism play in the United States' foreign policy.

"You can prioritize anything, you're just going to have to give somewhere else," Ruppersberger said. "And right now, when it comes to national security, we can't take our eyes off the ball. Look, we're the most powerful country in the world, and our intelligence services are vital to preserving our security. Clearly, in the climate we have right now, and as long as the agencies can justify it, the resources are going to be there for them to do their job."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bal-te.intel30nov30,1,2926046.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

[exitwound]

Let's hope the answer is "more education," and not "lower standards".....

...then again, there may be some unnecessary "standards" which could be eliminated. After all, there are a lot of smart people who have no interest in dealing with the hassles of a government job....

[al-Canine]

Tenet criticizes separate intelligence chief

Ex-CIA director says new official would lack authority

WASHINGTON - Former CIA Director George Tenet criticized proposals Wednesday to create a national intelligence director, saying the position would lack authority unless the director was also charge of “leading men and women every day and taking risks.”

Tenet, who left the CIA in July after seven years as director, offered his opinion to an audience of about 250 people at a closed conference on homeland security and technology. At Tenet’s insistence, national media, including The Associated Press, were kept out. Allowed in were some reporters for trade publications that cover the government’s use of computers and the Internet.

Tenet said efforts to restructure intelligence-gathering had overlooked a more pressing issue: how to get threat information to the state and local authorities.

“We have collected an enormous amount of data about how the enemy thinks, trains and operates,” Tenet said, according to a Web report by Government Computer News.

At the same time, he said, “we can’t just disseminate threat reports and scare the living bejesus out of everybody.”

Tenet acknowledged that U.S. intelligence fell short before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and in the prewar assessments of Iraq’s weapons programs. But he took issue with a provision in legislation now before Congress and endorsed by President Bush that would create a separate director who would oversee intelligence.

“This person has to be leading men and women every day and taking risks,” Tenet said, according to one of the reporters in attendance. “I don’t believe that you should separate the leader of American intelligence from a line agency.”

Currently, the CIA director also serves as the chief of 14 other agencies that are part of the intelligence community.

Conference organizers said Tenet’s contract required that most reporters be excluded.

Since leaving office, Tenet has been giving paid speeches and has often barred reporters and tape recorders. His former public affairs chief, Bill Harlow, said Tenet “does not want to be in the newspapers every day. He doesn’t want everything he says to be the focused in the prism of every day news.”

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6631351/

[al-Canine]

Commentary posted in "In Depth"

http://blackhole.xerces.com/viewtopic.php?p=1694&highlight=#1694

[Gaius Millhelm]

Commentary posted in "In Depth"

http://blackhole.xerces.com/viewtopic.php?p=1694&highlight=#1694

22 does seem rather young to be writing a book as a "veteran of the CIA"....

...however, I've read some excerprts from Imperial Hubris, and I'm thinking about buying the book so I can do a review for TBH. Seems like an important piece of literature relevant to all the crazy shit that has been going on in our intelligence agencies lately.

[al-Canine]

22 does seem rather young to be writing a book as a "veteran of the CIA"....

Actually, the phrase read: "a 22-year veteran of the CIA," meaning that he was employed there for 22 years.

[al-Canine]

Senators condemn mystery spy project

Intel committee member calls it ‘dangerous to national security’

WASHINGTON - Congress’ new blueprint for U.S. intelligence spending includes a mysterious and expensive spy program that drew extraordinary criticism from leading Democrats, with one saying the highly classified project is a threat to national security.

In an unusual rebuke, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, complained Wednesday that the spy project was “totally unjustified and very, very wasteful and dangerous to the national security.” He called the program “stunningly expensive.”

Rockefeller and three other Democratic senators — Richard Durbin of Illinois, Carl Levin of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon — refused to sign the congressional compromise negotiated by others in the House and Senate that provides for future U.S. intelligence activities.

The compromise noted that the four senators believed the mystery program was unnecessary and its cost unjustified and that “they believe that the funds for this item should be expended on other intelligence programs that will make a surer and greater contribution to national security.”

No comment on classified content

Each senator — and more than two dozen current and former U.S. officials contacted by The Associated Press — declined to further describe or identify the disputed program, citing its classified nature. Thirteen other senators on the Intelligence Committee and all their counterparts in the House approved the compromise.

Despite objections from some in the Senate, Congress has approved the program for the last two years, Rockefeller said.

The Senate voted Wednesday night to send the legislation to President Bush. The bill is separate from the intelligence overhaul legislation that also won final congressional approval Wednesday.

‘Space Pearl Harbor’

The rare criticisms of a highly secretive project in such a public forum intrigued outside intelligence experts, who said the program was almost certainly a spy satellite system, perhaps with technology to destroy potential attackers. They cited tantalizing hints in Rockefeller’s remarks, such as the program’s enormous expense and its alleged danger to national security.

A U.S. panel in 2001 described American defense and spy satellites as frighteningly vulnerable, saying technology to launch attacks in space was widely available internationally. The study, by a commission whose members included Donald H. Rumsfeld before his appointment as defense secretary for President Bush, concluded that the United States was “an attractive candidate for a Space Pearl Harbor.”

Sending even defensive satellite weapons into orbit could start an arms race in space, warned John Pike, a defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, who has studied anti-satellite weapons for more than three decades. Pike said other countries would inevitably demand proof that any weapons were only defensive.

‘Just not going to happen’

“It would present just absolutely insurmountable verification problems because we are not going to let anybody look at our spy satellites,” Pike said. “It is just not going to happen.”

Rockefeller’s description of the spy project as a “major funding acquisition program” suggests a price tag in the range of billions of dollars, intelligence experts said. But even expensive imagery or eavesdropping satellites — so long as they’re unarmed — are rarely criticized as a danger to U.S. security, they noted.

“From the price, it’s almost certainly a satellite program,” said James Bamford, author of two books about the National Security Agency. “In the intelligence community, it’s so hard to get a handle on what’s going on, particularly with the satellite programs.”

Another expert agreed. “It’s hard to think of most any satellite program, at least the standard ones, as dangerous to national security,” said Jeffrey T. Richelson, who wrote a highly regarded book about CIA technology in 2001.

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6682352/

[exitwound]

Well, the things they're saying about the satellite system may be true now, but they'll all be eating their words 25-40 years down the road when a rival power takes out all of our satellites in one stroke with virtually no resistance.... :(

[Gaius Millhelm]

Well, the things they're saying about the satellite system may be true now, but they'll all be eating their words 25-40 years down the road when a rival power takes out all of our satellites in one stroke with virtually no resistance.... :(

Makes no sense to work on that now though because our satellites are unchallenged pretty much :?

[al-Canine]

What is America's top-secret spy program?

Experts think Democrats objected to satellite weapon

By Robert Windrem
Investigative Producer

NBC News
Updated: 6:22 p.m. ET Dec. 9, 2004

NEW YORK - What is the hush-hush intelligence project that apparently costs a fortune and has angered key Democratic senators?

Intelligence experts speculate that the highly classified endeavor is a top-secret satellite that would, or perhaps already can, intercept and shut down other countries' spy satellites.

The debate over the project leaked into the open on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, when Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, publicly complained that an unnamed spy project was "totally unjustified and very, very wasteful and dangerous to the national security." He called the program "stunningly expensive."

Rockefeller and three other Democratic senators — Richard Durbin of Illinois, Carl Levin of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon — refused to sign a congressional compromise negotiated by others in the House and Senate that provides for future U.S. intelligence activities. But Rockefeller declined to discuss the precise nature of the project, saying that would have to wait until the Senate could go into closed session.

After a frenzied round of press inquiries on Thursday, Rockefeller's office released a statement saying, "Any assertion about classified intelligence programs based on Senator Rockefeller's statement is wholly speculative."

The statement, which was characterized as a clarification of Rockefeller's remarks on the Senate floor, implied that he considered the project dangerous only because it was so costly.

"Senator Rockefeller's reference to this program, which was fully vetted and approved by security officials, makes the point that continuing to fund an enormously expensive, unjustified, and wasteful program is dangerous to our national security," the statement read. "He believes these funds should be spent on other far more critical intelligence programs."

Mum's the word

Other members of the committee and spokesmen at the nation's intelligence agencies declined to comment on the controversy.

“We have no comment on classified intelligence matters,” Paul Gimigliano, the CIA’s acting director of public affairs, told NBC News.

“Since Senator Rockefeller did not specify which program was involved or even identify which agency, we are not commenting,” said Rick Oborn, director of public affairs at the National Reconnaissance Office, which manages America’s spy satellites.

But that didn't stop the speculation.* Even though much of the technology is highly classified, enough of it is out in the open that intelligence experts can comment on it, usually on condition of anonymity.

"It almost has to be a spy satellite," said Jeffrey T. Richelson, an intelligence historian who has written nearly a dozen books on spy technology. "The cost element Rockefeller talks about would indicate that."

Subtler technologies

Back in the 1990s, President Clinton helped kill earlier anti-satellite programs, also known as "asats." In those programs, U.S. satellites would take out foreign satellites using "space mines" or lasers.

But the current technology, according to intelligence experts, may be much more subtle.* There have been various programs based on the technology, some unclassified and dressed up as U.S. defensive measures, others highly classified.** One unclassified program, called the Counter Surveillance and Reconnaissance System (CSRS, pronounced "Scissors") was recently held up by Congress, according to Defense Daily.*

The program was aimed at blocking an adversary's access to commercial or government space resources.**It was one of a few concepts on the table for offensive counterspace operations, where the United States actively works to counter an adversary's access to space, said the paper.

"That program is stopped," Defense Daily quoted the Air Force Space Command's chief, Gen. Lance Lord, as saying. "The idea to look at that mission area is still open."

'Prowler' at work

The United States has long been interested in such offensive programs, launching an experimental and highly classified satellite called "Prowler" on the space shuttle Atlantis* November 1990.

Prowler stealthily maneuvered close to Russian and presumably other nations’ communications satellites in high Earth orbit, 24,000 miles (38,400 kilometers) up. These satellites are ideal targets.* They are at much higher altitudes, and thus difficult to track visually. Most of the key military satellites are in this orbit — relay satellites that transmit imagery uplinked from spy satellites, military communications satellites and electronic eavesdropping satellites that target terrestrial microwave communications.

Prowler gathered all manner of data on the high-Earth-orbit satellites: their size, measurements, radar signature, mass and the frequencies on which they relay their data.** Now experts suggest that the United States may be trying to use, or has already succeeded in using, that stealth technology to "negate" an adversary's satellite communications.

A satellite using such technology would not have to jam the other satellite's signals, strictly speaking.* Knowing how its communications systems were configured, the satellite could simply step in front of it and block its signals.* In fact, one expert said Prowler did just that in tests using U.S. communications satellites, without being detected.

How close can such a U.S. satellite get to another satellite? Within about a foot (30 centimeters), the expert said. The Prowler technology could even allow the satellite to maneuver close to the target without receiving data from Earth.* Once it came within a certain range of the target, it resorted to an internal computer program.*

Is it war?

Many in the arms control community have long worried about such an anti-satellite program, saying that, particularly in time of crisis, such an operation could be construed as a hostile act and the first phase of a space war.

"The best asat is not a weapon that detonates next to an enemy satellite," said William E. Burrows of New York University, author of "Deep Black," a book on spy satellites. "Instead, it would be a signal that would tell the satellite to take the rest of the afternoon off."

Sending even defensive satellite weapons into orbit could start an arms race in space, warned John Pike, a defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, who has studied anti-satellite weapons for more than three decades. Pike said other countries would inevitably demand proof that any weapons were only defensive.

"It would present just absolutely insurmountable verification problems, because we are not going to let anybody look at our spy satellites," Pike said. "It is just not going to happen."

Robert Windrem is an investigative producer for NBC News.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6687654/

[al-Canine]

Exodus of Staff Hobbles the FBI

The bureau is struggling with rapid turnover among top officials and analysts. The disorder further weakens efforts at a post-9/11 makeover.

By Richard B. Schmitt
Times Staff Writer

December 13, 2004

WASHINGTON — The rapid turnover of top-level managers and highly trained specialists since Sept. 11 is causing disorder within the FBI and undercutting its efforts to meet the mandate of Congress to dramatically expand its intelligence and counter-terrorism capabilities.

Its new intelligence arm, which is to form the core of a transformed FBI, is losing dozens of analysts who are supposed to connect the dots to protect the country from another terrorist attack.

All four members of the top management team announced by Director Robert S. Mueller III shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks have left their jobs — as have their successors. Some other officials have had three or even four jobs since the attacks.

Since Sept. 11, five people have held the bureau's top counter-terrorism job. Five others filled the top computer job within a 24-month period.

And more than 1,000 other senior FBI agents and officials are eligible for retirement, boding a further exodus of employees who form the agency's backbone. In figures provided recently to Congress, the FBI estimated that the number of top managers below the senior executive rank would decline by 16% — about 70 people — in the next year alone.

The rush to the exits partly stems from burnout caused by the intense pace and scrutiny that followed Sept. 11, officials say. It also reflects the growing post-9/11 demand for security expertise in other fields, which has lured dozens from the FBI to lucrative jobs.

One example: The head of the Los Angeles FBI field office left in January to become Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's head of homeland security, only to leave that job six months later for Walt Disney Co.
It also illustrates how the FBI, like many bureaucracies, is a graying institution. A surge of hiring in the 1970s, and the bureau's liberal retirement rules, are coming home to roost at an inauspicious time.

Many analysts are leaving for other parts of the U.S. intelligence community — wooed by fellow agencies like the CIA at a time when, in the view of groups such as the Sept. 11 commission, they should be cooperating with each other more than ever.

Until very recently, the FBI was losing nearly as many analysts to attrition and other causes as it had managed to hire with the post-Sept. 11 infusion of cash from Congress.

The turnover has led to a little-noted provision in the 2005 spending bill that President Bush signed Wednesday. It authorizes Mueller to offer unusually fat retention bonuses to key employees who might be threatening to leave.

Another provision authorizes Mueller to increase the bureau's mandatory retirement age to 65 in select cases, and to establish a "reserve service" of retirees who could be called back to work in an emergency without jeopardizing their pensions.

"The FBI is having difficulty retaining certain staff in critical senior management positions and other specialized positions," acknowledged a senior official on condition of anonymity. "Look at the counter-terrorism positions. You are lucky to get a year out of them."

Mueller, who was unavailable to comment, has told Congress he is losing "some very good, competent people" because he cannot afford to compete with private-sector salaries.

"But we've also lost them to CIA. We've lost them to [the Defense Intelligence Agency]. We've lost them to Homeland Security," he told a House appropriations subcommittee.

Turnover has been cited as a factor in the costly and long-delayed overhaul of the agency's creaky computer system. A Government Accountability Office report this year that criticized the upgrade efforts noted that the bureau had had five chief information officers in the preceding 24 months, and said that lack of "sustained management attention and leadership" had contributed to cost overruns and delays.

"I compare it to a professional football team that has five different head coaches in 24 months. There is not going to be much stability and focused, consistent direction to the team," said Randolph Hite, a GAO information technology specialist.

But the latest director has been in place for a year, which Hite said was a good sign.

The outflow of analysts — considered crucial to the bureau's attempt to create an intelligence service that focuses on preventing terrorist attacks rather than solving crimes — is especially worrisome.

The analysts specialize in sifting though intelligence information gathered from many sources and interpreting it to identify potential terrorism threats.

FBI documents provided to Congress showed that between Sept. 11 and last March, the bureau had hired 487 analysts. But the gains were largely offset because 361 analysts left for other jobs within the bureau or elsewhere.

This year, the bureau had planned on hiring 900 additional analysts, but officials appear to have scaled back their plans, in part because they have to fill vacancies left by the high attrition. Officials implied at a recent congressional hearing that they may add as few as 600.

In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the FBI has hired about 624 analysts, with "much fewer than 100" separations and departures, a spokeswoman said.

Recently, in an attempt to boost recruiting, the bureau dropped a requirement that candidates have a college degree. The bureau said that allowed it to hire qualified people with specialized skills but not necessarily a formal education.

"The FBI is training these analysts so they can go elsewhere," a person familiar with the hiring effort said on condition of anonymity. Other agencies and private firms are "poaching like crazy. They train these guys and they are skimmed off," the person added. The result is that "there has not been a significant inflow of analysts relative to the numbers they've said they want to get," the source said.

Advancement opportunities and the stature of analysts in the FBI have been limited compared with their counterparts at spy agencies like the CIA. And the FBI traditionally hasn't paid as well.

"Until recently, analyst positions at the FBI were viewed as pretty second-rate. If you were anybody who was anybody at the FBI, you were a special agent," said a congressional investigator familiar with the problem. "Analysts do not have the same cachet."

But it has been at the FBI's highest levels where the turnover has been starkest.

Some of the most sensitive top management posts are held by relative newcomers. Among others, the heads of finance, administration, criminal investigations and internal inspections have been in their jobs for less than a year. The bureau's office of strategic planning has been without a director for months.

The FBI argues that in some cases the musical chairs is healthy, in that it gives people a breadth of experience and brings a fresh eye to problems. But some are concerned that managers do not have time enough to learn their jobs before they move to their next assignments.

"Every time you call headquarters, a different guy at the desk would answer the phone. You would have to start everything all over again," said a former terrorism investigator.

"It is not just at that top level. It is at every level. Everybody is kind of in a state of flux all the time."

The turnover has been especially acute in the terrorism arena, where the bureau has run through a long line of distinguished executives in three years. Two — Dale Watson and Larry Mefford — had each been with the FBI since the late 1970s, and left for the private sector.

Each departure triggers a chain reaction. Bruce J. Gebhardt, the bureau's deputy director, left in October for the hotel and casino company MGM Mirage. He was replaced by John S. Pistole, the fourth counter-terrorism boss since Sept. 11, whose own promotion then led to the fifth.

"I grew up in the FBI and I am a flag-waver, but it takes a toll on you," said Gebhardt, a 30-year veteran whose father was a lifelong FBI man.

Other FBI executives have left in recent years for employers as diverse as the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and the Catholic Church.

Like other federal agencies, the FBI has offered bonuses to senior executives before. But the new bonuses are more lucrative — up to 50% of base pay — and appear to be available to more employees. According to the newly enacted legislation, they would be available to those of "unusually high or unique qualifications" whom Mueller deems "essential" and who are likely to leave without the incentive.

Some question whether the money will be enough, and fear that the departures from the FBI have just begun.

About 1,224 special agents, or about 10% of the agent workforce, are eligible to retire now, the FBI says. FBI rules enable people to retire with 20 years' service, and a less-generous retirement program under which most came into the FBI years ago gives them little financial incentive to stay. Many apparently are looking to make the leap, knowing they have a limited window of time when they are attractive to private industry.

"People are just hitting that 20-year mark. No one has quite reckoned with it," said a senior agent on condition of anonymity. "It is going to be like a break in the dike."


FBI turnstile

Five people have held the top anti-terrorism post at the FBI since Sept. 11, 2001:

Dale Watson
December 2001-September 2002 Retired from the FBI after 24 years to become a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Pasquale J. D'Amuro
November 2002-July 2003
Left to become head of the FBI office in New York.

Larry Mefford
July 2003-October 2003
Retired to become a security executive for Wynn Resorts in
Las Vegas.

John S. Pistole
December 2003-October 2004 Named deputy director of the FBI succeeding Bruce J. Gebhardt, who retired after 30 years to join MGM Mirage in Las Vegas.

Gary M. Bald
October 2004-today
Joined the FBI in 1977.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-fbi13dec13,1,1830541.story

[al-Canine]

Agencies scramble for good intel analysts

With latest reform, competition for good candidates grows

WASHINGTON - Counterterrorism agencies are shopping for talent at job fairs, dangling generous scholarships and luring staff from each other in a race to overcome a shortage of analysts that may only get worse in the new intelligence overhaul.

The problem existed even before Congress and the White House approved an intelligence restructuring this month that creates positions for people whose skills already are in high demand.

There is no consensus across the nation’s 15 intelligence agencies on where staffing needs are the most acute. But few dispute that many more analysts are needed, particularly in the departments and agencies created since Sept. 11, 2001. The nearly 2-year-old Homeland Security Department is a prime example.

“If you had a hundred, we’d take them,” Pat Hughes, the Homeland Security Department’s top intelligence official, said in an interview earlier this year. “We have to look, search, test, assess. You don’t just get analysts off a tree. ... We need people, but we need good people.”

To find them, Homeland Security and other agencies are heading to job fairs, often looking near military bases where civil service is part of the culture and people may have security clearances. They’re also trying to snag people from the private sector.

Fat scholarships

Congress also is offering sweeteners.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., created the intelligence community’s answer to G.I. Bills and other military scholarships. Under the program, undergraduate and graduate students can receive up to $50,000 for two years of tuition if they agree to take needed jobs in an intelligence agency for up to three years.

This year, slots for 150 students were divided among the agencies, using $4 million from Congress. Some $6 million will be available next year.

Being an analyst is almost an academic profession — part taught, part absorbed, part intuition — that requires weighing volumes of information and boiling it down into reports for policy-makers in the executive branch and Congress.

Among the most classified and most important reports are national intelligence estimates, which draw on information across government and are written by leading analysts at the National Intelligence Council.

It was the council that produced the October 2002 estimate on the threat posed by Iraq, with its overblown assessment on weapons stockpiles.

Much to be done

Statistics on precisely how many analysts are needed are hard to come by. Almost universally, agencies say such numbers are classified.

President Bush ordered the CIA in November to double the number of analysts it employs. The agency won’t say how that equates to new jobs.

Beginning several years ago, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which studies imagery from spy satellites and other systems, started hiring about 900 analysts, spokesman David Burpee said. Most will join the agency between next year and 2009. In addition, the Defense Intelligence Agency plans to hire 1,000 midlevel to senior civilians next year, mostly analysts, in jobs with starting salaries between $53,000 and $74,000.

And the National Security Agency, the nation’s code breakers and code protectors, hopes to hire more than 6,000 people by 2009, on top of 1,300 hired by the end of September. The secretive agency won’t say how many will be analysts.

DIA spokesman Donald Black said there is more competition to hire analysts since the Sept. 11 attacks, especially for people who speak languages such as Arabic that are needed at the CIA, FBI and elsewhere. Security clearances narrow the field even more.

“You don’t have a limitless pool to draw from,” Black said.

A few good analysts

Agencies also hire away analysts from each other. “Sure, there is intense competition within the government,” said Homeland Security spokeswoman Michelle Petrovich. “The pool that we are looking for is probably going to be fairly limited and in high demand.”

Roberts concluded the shortage of experienced analysts was the intelligence community’s most glaring deficiency during a series of “oh-my-God hearings” into the bombings of the USS Cole, U.S. embassies in Africa and other attacks.

Before the 1998 attack on the USS Cole in a Yemeni port, one intelligence analyst found information that led him to conclude such an attack was possible. But the warnings weren’t heeded, Roberts said.

“He had put the pieces together,” Roberts said.

Training incoming analysts is no easy task. Most specialties require analysts to invest seven to 10 years to get a true handle on their subject. Cultures and languages can require extensive immersion in a region, which can’t be gained from sitting behind a desk in Washington.

Mike Scheuer, who headed the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999, said intelligence services need to find more experts in Islamic extremism to take the jobs, similar to the legions of analysts available during the Cold War to deal with the Soviets.

© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6763203

[al-Canine]

Director of Analysis Branch at the C.I.A. Is Being Removed

By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 - The head of the Central Intelligence Agency's analytical branch is being forced to step down, former intelligence officials say, opening a major new chapter in a shakeup under Porter J. Goss, the agency's chief.

The official, Jami Miscik, the agency's deputy director for intelligence, told her subordinates on Tuesday afternoon of her plan to step down on Feb. 4. A former intelligence official said that Ms. Miscik was told before Christmas that Mr. Goss wanted to make a change and that "the decision to depart was not hers."

Ms. Miscik has headed analysis at the agency since 2002, a period in which prewar assessments of Iraq and its illicit weapons, which drew heavily on C.I.A. analysis, proved to be mistaken. Even before taking charge of the C.I.A., Mr. Goss, who was a congressman, and his closest associates had been openly critical of the directorate of intelligence, saying it suffered from poor leadership and was devoting too much effort to monitoring day-to-day developments rather than broad trends.

Ms. Miscik's departure is the latest in a series of high-level ousters that have prompted unease within the C.I.A. since Mr. Goss took over as director of central intelligence in September. Of the officials who worked as top deputies to Mr. Goss's predecessor, George J. Tenet, at least a half-dozen have been fired or have retired abruptly, including the agency's No. 2 and No. 3 officials. Much of the top tier of the agency's clandestine service is also gone.

The departure of Ms. Miscik will be the first major change within the directorate of intelligence, which is responsible for making important judgments about events around the world and whose products include the President's Daily Brief, the highly classified document prepared for the president each morning.

The C.I.A. declined to comment on the move, and Ms. Miscik did not reply to written questions provided to her on Monday evening.

But in her message to subordinates, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, Ms. Miscik described her departure as part of a "natural evolution," saying every intelligence chief "has a desire to have his own team in place to implement his vision and to offer him counsel."

Current and former intelligence officials said the move seemed to signal that Mr. Goss's overhaul, which has focused on human spying operations, would be widened to include the analytical unit.

The former intelligence officials who agreed to discuss Ms. Miscik's plans did so on condition of anonymity. They defended her performance, saying that in 2003 she was quick to acknowledge the shortcomings of the agency's work on Iraq and adopted new safeguards intended to prevent future breakdowns.

The changes at the C.I.A. come as the agency is bracing for a wider reorganization endorsed by Congress and the White House that will strip it of its leading status among the country's intelligence agencies. Under legislation signed into law this month, the chief of the C.I.A. will no longer oversee all 15 of the country's intelligence organizations, which include operations in the Pentagon, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency.

Instead, that power will be transferred to the new post of director of national intelligence, for which the White House has yet to choose a nominee. Administration officials say aides to President Bush are trying to narrow their search, with a decision expected in early January. It is not clear whether Mr. Goss, whose early personnel moves have been sharply criticized inside and outside the C.I.A., will be a candidate for the new job.

Under the new law, the post of director of central intelligence will no longer exist. Among the questions not yet resolved, according to Congressional officials, is whether Senate confirmation would be required for the C.I.A. director.

Ms. Miscik, an economist who rose through the ranks of the intelligence directorate over a 21-year career at the agency, suggested to associates as early as November that she did not expect to stay at the agency under Mr. Goss. But a former intelligence official who worked closely with her said she would have been happy to stay, despite the intensity of the criticism voiced by Mr. Goss and his top aides.

Mr. Goss has not spoken publicly since he took over at the C.I.A., and the agency has announced only a few of his personnel moves. In November, he told the agency's employees to expect more changes in the days and weeks ahead. Several top jobs remain vacant, including the agency's No. 2 post, deputy director of central intelligence, from which John E. McLaughlin resigned early this month.

There was no indication on Tuesday of whom Mr. Goss might name to succeed Ms. Miscik. One of her top deputies, Scott White, left the C.I.A. in November for another government job, leaving Ben Bonk, an associate deputy director of intelligence, as Ms. Miscik's most senior subordinate.

Among those who have criticized the C.I.A.'s analytical unit for its mistakes on Iraq and that country's supposed unconventional weapons, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a scathing report last summer, and a C.I.A. panel, the Iraq W.M.D. Review Group, completed a 10-month internal review last May.

That review, never made public but described in an internal document issued in August, concluded that the assertion that Iraq possessed illicit weapons had been reasonable based on the information available at the time. But the August document also showed that the review found a pattern of "imprecise language," "insufficient follow-up" and "sourcing problems," including "numerous cases" in which analysts "misrepresented the meaning" of intelligence reports about Iraq's weapons.

The August report described the analytical branch as having "never been more junior or more inexperienced" and said that some of the "systemic problems" uncovered might reflect more widespread "tradecraft weaknesses." But in an interview in September Ms. Miscik said she had acknowledged many of the problems in a speech in February 2004 and had put in place new measures requiring that intelligence judgments be subjected to more rigorous review.

The sharpest criticisms of the analytical unit that Mr. Goss and his associates are known to have endorsed were spelled out last spring in a report by the House Intelligence Committee. Mr. Goss, then a Republican congressman from Florida, was the chairman of the panel; the report's principal authors were Republican staff members who are now working as senior advisers to Mr. Goss at the C.I.A.

The report did not mention Ms. Miscik by name, but it criticized the intelligence directorate's leadership and senior managers, among other things, for devoting too much time and attention to providing updates for policy makers, thus "squandering scarce analytic resources that could be put to better use."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/national/29intel.html

[Funky Monkey]

are those idiots going to hang on to ANY of their preexisting brain power?! :shock: :shock: :shock:

[al-Canine]

Terrorism Fight Prods NSA to Look Beyond Its Fortress

By Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 3, 2005; Page A01

Nicknamed "No Such Agency" and "Never Say Anything" for its legendary secrecy, the National Security Agency conceals its headquarters behind tall fences topped with barbed wire. Its employees are in the business of breaking codes, eavesdropping and guarding secrets. And its normally reticent leaders rarely call attention to themselves outside the agency's sprawling campus.

So it was an extraordinary event when some of the agency's top officials emerged in Annapolis about a year ago at the opening of a business center dedicated to helping start-up homeland security companies.

Their message was also extraordinary: The NSA needs help fighting the war against global terrorism.

"I'm looking for new ideas," said Daniel G. Wolf, the NSA's information assurance director. "We want to hear what you have."

In November, the agency announced that it would pump $445,000 into the center, whose companies are at the vanguard of security technology: finding cures for bioterrorism diseases, protecting computer networks from hackers, developing software designed to find terrorists.

As the intelligence industry continues to expand since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the clandestine agency is playing a more prominent -- and visible -- role in the Washington region. With plans to hire 7,500 new employees over five years, the NSA, already Anne Arundel County's largest employer, is undergoing its largest recruiting drive since the Cold War.

The agency is also increasingly opening its doors to private companies for help in developing spy technologies.

The business center in Annapolis is just one example of how the burgeoning intelligence industry is affecting the region. Highly secure office parks that house defense contractors have sprouted up near the agency's headquarters and nearby Baltimore-Washington International Airport. In Greenbelt, a headhunting agency that serves only clients with security clearances is seeing double-digit growth every month.

Home to the Pentagon, CIA, FBI and NSA, the Washington area has long been a place where the intentionally vague phrase "I work for the government" has been code for one of the security agencies. But now, an increasing number of people demur when asked what they do for a living.

"I'm a contractor for the Department of Defense, doing computer stuff," is how Jason, 31, of Annapolis answers. It's the computer stuff he hopes people focus on, because then they "think I'm an IT guy." And nothing ends a conversation faster than the words information technology, said Jason, who spoke only on the condition that his last name not be used.

Copious Security Features

From the outside, the National Business Park, next to the NSA and Fort Meade, seems like an ordinary set of modern office buildings, just like the corporate parks all around Washington. But there is nothing ordinary about it.

Built to exacting government security standards with a uniform concern -- protecting the technology designed to help intelligence agencies catch terrorists -- the buildings are part of a growing breed of highly secure commercial complexes with cloak-and-dagger amenities.

Known as SCIFs -- sensitive compartmented information facilities -- they often have film on the windows to prevent eavesdropping, walls fitted with soundproof steel plates or white-noise makers embedded in the ceiling that prevent spy bugs from picking up top-secret conversations, according to developers and construction officials.

Some even have a lattice of metal bars in the air ducts to keep out prowlers.

The buildings at the National Business Park are loaded with SCIF space, said Randall M. Griffin, president and chief operating officer of Corporate Office Properties, which owns the site. But he would not discuss their specific security measures.

Demand for secured office space has grown so much that all the park's 1.7 million square feet is leased, to such defense contracting giants as Northrop Grumman Corp., Computer Sciences Corp., Titan and Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. Construction of a second phase of the park, which would add 10 buildings comprising 1.3 million square feet, is underway.

During an event at the Maryland State House last summer, in which it was announced that the NSA would be working more closely with state and local governments, NSA officials again stepped out in public view.

And again they said they needed to tap into local companies for help.

"It's growing out of an awareness that we can't solve all of our problems" alone, Eric C. Haseltine, the agency's associate director of research, told reporters.

Intelligence spending has mushroomed in the years since Sept. 11. Previously, intelligence spending hovered around $30 billion a year, said John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an intelligence policy think tank. Since then, it's grown to about $40 billion annually, he said.

Hoping to cash in on the growth, Anne Arundel helped start the Chesapeake Innovation Center, the country's first incubator that works exclusively with new homeland security companies.

Walking into the center, in a squat brick building near downtown Annapolis, is a little like entering Q's laboratory in James Bond's world.

In one office, researchers for PharmAthene are working on vaccines for diseases that could spread during a bioterrorism attack, including anthrax.

Three flights up, Secure Processing Inc. is developing methods for businesses to keep their computer networks safe from insiders. You never know when someone posing as a loyal employee may try to steal important secrets, said Terence Flyntz, the company's chief executive.

"We're talking about disgruntled employees, potential spies, even terrorists who could embed themselves and pretend they are something else," he said.

"They could pose even as janitors," he added.

Another company, Harbinger Associates, has developed software that can take an Arabic name, run through all its English spellings and match them against a watch list. Because Arabic names are often spelled many different ways in English, the person for whom authorities are looking can often slip by, according to the company.

The software is almost complete, and Harbinger officials hope their product will soon be used behind the guarded walls of the NSA.

'Cleared' and Taking Off

He's a high-tech wiz, which makes him marketable enough. But it's his top-level security clearance that makes him such a hot commodity.

He's so sought after that he doesn't even have to hold down a steady job in one place. Instead, Derek, who would not provide his last name for security reasons, does freelance information technology work for the government and private companies looking for someone trusted to keep secrets. Derek, 34, earns about $170,000 a year, jumping from project to project.

And whenever he needs a new gig, he goes to Kelly FedSecure, a Greenbelt-based personnel firm that works exclusively with "cleared" people.

Richard Piske and business partner Gary Morris noticed the growing demand for workers qualified to work on classified projects. Two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, they founded a headhunting company and temporary agency for people with clearance. In 2003, the company was purchased by Kelly Services Inc., one of the largest personnel service companies in the country. And over the past year, Kelly FedSecure has had double-digit growth from month to month, Piske said.

"The overall demand for cleared people . . . is up significantly since 9/11," he said. "And the forecasted demand is not projected to abate for the foreseeable future."

Pat Hiban, a Columbia real estate broker, knew only that his former neighbors worked for the NSA. Every so often, an investigator he assumed was an FBI agent would knock on his door. Polite but persistent, the investigator would say he was updating background checks on Hiban's neighbors.

"Have they done anything you'd think would be unpatriotic?" Hiban said the investigator would ask.

Even after those visits, Hiban never pressed his neighbors for more detail about their lives. They simply were like a lot of people he meets, through business or the neighborhood, who quickly change the subject when employment comes up.

"You get used to it around here," he said. "It happens pretty frequently."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43264-2005Jan2.html

[al-Canine]

The Last Word: Viktor Cherkashin

Making Sense Of Spying

Newsweek International

Jan. 10 issue - Word that Ukrainian president-elect Viktor Yushchenko had recently been poisoned with dioxin quickly fueled conspiracy theories involving KGB labs and Russian secret-service agents. But in his new book, "Spy Handler," former Washington-based KGB agent Viktor Cherkashin paints a different picture of his spy agency. He recalls agents who served their country, believed in communism and waged an honorable battle with counterparts at the CIA and FBI. Cherkashin, still deeply loyal to the KGB, served 40 years in the agency, ending up as head of counterintelligence at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, where he handled two of Moscow's most prized assets, American double agents Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames. At 73, Cherkashin is retired but still keeps a close eye on world affairs and has some surprisingly choice words for fellow KGB careerist (and now Russian president) Vladimir Putin. NEWSWEEK's Frank Brown spoke to Cherkashin last week. Excerpts:

BROWN: Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned this fall by a toxin experts say may have come from Russian intelligence services. Is that a likely scenario?
CHERKASHIN: No. The KGB works on political objectives. To get some sort of secret document from the White House is one thing, to arrange an attack on a high-ranking White House official is another. After 1991 the KGB has very few rights left. It is absolute nonsense that they would be physically eliminating someone, much less in Ukraine, a former Soviet republic. In general, I have my doubts about whether Yushchenko was poisoned at all. It looks more like a dermatological problem.

Russia today doesn't have the ideology it had in Soviet times. Does this lack of what Russians call a "national idea" make it harder to find people willing to work in intelligence?
We believed. We worked for the people and for the bright future under communism. It turned out to be an impractical idea, but we believed. Now there is nothing to believe in. That's not why people become spies these days. It is still too early to say that Russia represents a beacon for humanity. [Laughs] If humanity were to take the path that Russia is on these days, everything would be a big mess in the world.

What was the hardest thing about being a spy in the United States?
For the Soviet spy, it was having to overcome an inferiority complex, the idea that an American is somehow better, richer and more powerful. All these American films, where the hero is a man of action, flexing his muscles and shooting everywhere, have an effect on your psyche. But at the end of the day, an American is a person. The only way to stop there being any more Ameses or Hanssens is to stop relying on people. Imagine you hire someone as an officer who just graduated from a good university and does well in his intelligence training. He gets married, has a child. Everything is fine, then one day he falls for some girl. That's it. He's got a conflict. He's not so loyal to work anymore. Maybe he needs money now to buy her a present, and so on.

What makes someone a good candidate for switching sides?
A person doesn't become a spy just because someone offers him $100,000 to do something. A person must be in the right frame of mind. It helps if a person has convictions, if he feels like his government is doing evil, if he feels his religious principles are being violated. Look at today's Islamic extremists. Why are they so effective? Because they believe.

Russian liberals complain that Putin is curtailing freedom under the guise of fighting terrorism. Is Putin the man for the job? Can he and the other former intelligence agents now in power set the country right?
Putin is a powerful bureaucrat. But I wouldn't even say he's that powerful. Maybe Yeltsin was an alcoholic and sometimes a fool, but he was more of a heavyweight than Putin. Putin and his men are driving the oligarchs out, but they're moving to take over the property themselves. Everything remains the same. Things must change from the top. When the president and government and bureaucrats are free from corruption, only then will the situation change.

[b]Do you see a Russian leader today who can take the country in that direction?
No. Russia needs Stalin. We need a tough person. There's no one like that right now.

As U.S. intelligence agencies are restructured, do you have any advice for your old adversaries?
America is now at the center of a unipolar world. The danger in this is that the American government will start to believe it can ignore the interests of the rest of the world. That would be a disaster. If the American intelligence agencies start dictating their terms to everyone else, you will get the opposite reaction. Look at what happened in Iraq. First they get rid of the dictator. Fine. But then the Americans start bringing in their own kind of democracy. No one understands or wants it. The Iraqis have other things that are more important to them: clan interests, belief in Allah, internal politics.

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6778048/site/newsweek/

[al-Canine]

CIA pro rates shows

By Maureen Ryan
Tribune staff reporter

Three of our favorite secret agent shows return this week (a new season of ABC's "Alias" kicks off Wednesday, A&'E's "MI-5" returns Saturday and Fox's "24" comes back Sunday), so we thought we'd ask an expert in the field how accurate the shows are when it comes to the doings of clandestine agents.

Mike Baker worked as a covert field operations officer for the CIA for 14 years, before becoming the CEO of Veritas Global, a security and risk-management firm. Here's his take on what's real and what's not when it comes to TV spy guys, gals:

`Alias' (fourth season begins on Wednesday.).

Main character: CIA agent Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner)

What's her deal? Secret agent Syd, who dresses in supersnazzy "undercover" disguises, has an on-and-off relationship with one of her fellow agents and also works with her dad.

What's real: Dating a co-worker, working with dad? Not so far-fetched, it turns out. The recruiters at various spy agencies tend to act as "the best dating service I've ever seen in my life," Baker says. "You've got a readymade pool of single women, all Type A and, in theory, they have the same interests you have and understand what you are doing and going through." The end result? "You do get a lot of people dating and marrying inside an organization like that." As for family members working together, the spy agencies "try to avoid it" but it can happen, Baker says.

What's not so real: Syd's constant gun battles with baddies and her flashy "undercover" outfits. "The high-speed chases, the firefights, the hand-to-hand combat -- generally you want to stay away from that," Baker says. "Your goal is not to be noticed."

`MI-5' (third season begins on Saturday; Season 2 DVD boxed set out Tuesday)

Main character: Tom Quinn (Matthew Macfadyen)

What's his deal? Quinn and a team of British MI-5 officers work on cases involving terrorism, bank robbery, domestic security, etc.

What's real: Since he works as a consultant on the show, Baker is a bit biased toward "MI-5," but he says that the classy Brit import does the best job of showing what it's like to be a spy on a day-to-day basis. "They're not going the route of the spy extravaganza," Baker notes. "Their focus is on the impact of the [spy] business on a person's life." And despite the excitement of the work, that impact can be not great; Quinn has had relationship troubles because of the secretive and all-consuming nature of his job. The spy biz "can be very difficult on anyone trying to live a normal life outside of work," Baker confirms. "It can be difficult to kind of turn the key and switch off" at the end of a day.

What's not so real: The conflicts that the MI-5 types sometimes have with American operatives in England can be a little overblown, perhaps. "We've got great relationships with some of the [foreign] allied [spy] services," Baker says, but those relationships "can sometimes be skewed by politics" at a higher level.

`24' (fourth season begins Sunday)

Main character: Counter-terrorism expert Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland)

What's his deal? Bauer tracks and hunts bad guys over the course of a single season-long, very bad day.

What's real: Though Bauer's 24-hour bad days are at the extreme end of the spectrum, Baker says secret agent work "can be non-stop if you're out in the field, depending on what you're involved in."

As for an agent's family being put at risk (Bauer's wife was shot by a bad guy in Season 1, and at other times other loved ones have been at risk), Baker says the danger to families isn't usually very great, but it does exist -- so it's common for undercover types to not tell the neighbors what they really do for a living.

What's not so real: Jack's known for his rule-breaking ways, but spy agencies and anti-terrorist squads "are not lawbreaking organizations, despite what some conspiracy theorists want you to believe," Baker says.

The least believable thing about "24"? The shocking lack of paperwork. "An independent operator like Jack would get beaten over the head with boxes of forms in triplicate," Baker says. "I've never seen the guy do an expense report!"

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-0501040375jan05,1,408983.story

[nancydrew]

I enjoyed the mini-series, "The Grid." It involved international terrorism, spooks and spies on both sided of the Atlantic. I'd enjoy a regular show with the same cast/characters. Meanwhile, I'll have to catch MI-5, it sounds somewhat similar.
nancy

[al-Canine]

I loved "The Threat Matrix." It was short lived--unfortunately--but really well written and acted!

[al-Canine]

Back to real life cloak and dagger...

C.I.A. Report Finds Its Officials Failed in Pre-9/11 Efforts

By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 - An internal investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency has concluded that officials who served at the highest levels of the agency should be held accountable for failing to allocate adequate resources to combating terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks, according to current and former intelligence officials.

The conclusion is spelled out in a near-final version of a report by John Helgerson, the agency's inspector general, who reports to Congress as well as to the C.I.A. Among those most sharply criticized in the report, the officials said, are George J. Tenet, the former intelligence chief, and James L. Pavitt, the former deputy director of operations. Both Mr. Tenet and Mr. Pavitt stepped down from their posts last summer.

The findings, which are still classified, pose a quandary for the C.I.A. and the administration, particularly since President Bush awarded a Medal of Freedom to Mr. Tenet last month. It is not clear whether either the agency or the White House has the appetite to reprimand Mr. Tenet, Mr. Pavitt or others.

The report says that Mr. Pavitt, among others, failed to meet an acceptable standard of performance, and it recommends that his conduct be assessed by an internal review board for possible disciplinary action, the officials said. The criticism of Mr. Tenet is cast in equally strong terms, the officials said, but they would not say whether it reached a judgment about whether his performance had been acceptable.

As described by the officials, the basic conclusion that the C.I.A. paid too little heed to the threat posed by terrorism echoes those reached in the last two years by the joint Congressional panel on the Sept. 11 attacks and by the independent commission that investigated those attacks. But the criticisms of senior C.I.A. officials are more direct and personal than those spelled out in either of those two previous formal assessments. The findings were described by people who have read or been briefed on significant parts of the near-final version of the document. But the officials said the conclusions could still change on the basis of responses being solicited from those criticized in the document. Mr. Tenet and Mr. Pavitt are among those from whom Mr. Helgerson has solicited responses, the officials said. A final report is expected to be completed within six weeks.

The review was ordered by the joint Congressional panel, which asked in December 2002 that the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general determine "whether and to what extent personnel at all levels should be held accountable" for any mistakes that contributed to the failure to disrupt the attacks. A Justice Department review completed last summer in response to a separate Congressional request, but not yet made public, identified missteps by a handful of midlevel officials at the F.B.I. but did not recommend that anyone be disciplined, government officials have said.

The C.I.A. would not comment on the report. A spokesman for Mr. Tenet, Bill Harlow, also declined to comment on it, except to say that Mr. Tenet had recently reviewed parts of the report and would be responding to it soon. But Mr. Harlow said that "to criticize Mr. Tenet for devoting insufficient resources to counterterrorism would be absurd."

In response to questions, Mr. Pavitt confirmed that he had read parts of the report, and that it concluded that "I, or components or processes for which I was responsible, may not have performed in a satisfactory manner." Mr. Pavitt said that he disagreed with the findings "on many accounts" and had provided a dissent to Mr. Helgerson.

"I believe the findings are flawed," Mr. Pavitt said. He acknowledged that the agency's directorate of operations, which he supervised, did not have adequate resources before the Sept. 11 attacks but said that he had "consistently fought for additional resources, commencing that effort in 1997 and stopping only in August 2004 when I retired."

Still, Mr. Pavitt said, "I was the one ultimately responsible for the D.O. during the period in question." He added, "If blame is to be passed down, and if the facts on the issue are clear, not blurred as they are in the I.G. report, then that blame is mine and mine alone."

Some other current and former intelligence officials who described the document also expressed strong objections to it, saying that it failed to account for the C.I.A.'s successes in combating terrorism before Sept. 11 and failed to acknowledge the obstacles that stood in the way of broader successes. But others praised the review for directing its criticism at senior levels of the agency rather than at the working ranks.

Mr. Helgerson, the agency's inspector general, is a career C.I.A. official who served as deputy director of intelligence and as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the high-level panel responsible for issuing government-wide National Intelligence Estimates and other strategic intelligence assessments. But in the years immediately preceding the Sept. 11 attacks, he was working in jobs not related to terrorism, including a stint outside the C.I.A. from March 2000 to August 2001 as deputy director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.

The vast bulk of Mr. Helgerson's report was completed last summer, intelligence officials said, but its completion was delayed while the document was reviewed first by John E. McLaughlin, who became acting intelligence chief after Mr. Tenet's departure, and then Porter J. Goss, who became director of central intelligence in September.

It is not clear what punitive measures, if any, the C.I.A. could take on the basis of the report. Mr. Goss asked Mr. Helgerson last fall to defer any final judgments to a C.I.A. Accountability Review Board, intelligence officials have said, and Mr. Helgerson appears to have accepted that recommendation. Within the C.I.A., such a panel would routinely be led by the agency's No. 3 official, and would have the power to recommend whether individuals should be disciplined for actions they took or failed to take. But such a panel would have a limited ability to reprimand those no longer employed by the C.I.A., current and former intelligence officials say.

A former intelligence official who criticized the findings said that "plenty of fault can be found" with the agency's performance "with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight." But the former official said, "Everyone I knew - analyst, operator, support personnel, seniors and juniors - were working flat out many, many months in advance of the 11 September attacks to stop those and like attacks."

"To round up the good guys and shoot them for doing their jobs - I can't help but shake my head in dismay," the official said.

Among the episodes that the officials said was cited in the report was a 30 percent cut in the budget and personnel of the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorist Center, imposed in the autumn of 1999, not long after Mr. Tenet issued a memorandum saying that the agency was at war on terrorism. In testimony before Congress, Cofer Black, who took charge of the Counterterrorist Center that year, has said the cuts left the center undermanned and underfinanced.

Mr. Black was chief of the Counterterrorist Center at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, and two intelligence officials said that he was also criticized in the report. Mr. Black recently stepped down as the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism and is retiring from the C.I.A., administration officials say. Mr. Black has not responded to interview requests.

Mr. Harlow, who worked as Mr. Tenet's spokesman at the C.I.A. and remains a close associate, responded by e-mail to a question about Mr. Tenet's performance.

"Mr. Tenet constantly battled for additional resources," Mr. Harlow wrote. "During an austere budgetary environment, he increased funding for the Agency's Counterterrorist Center by more than 50 percent between FY97 and 2001, and the number of people assigned to that unit increased more than 60 percent during that period."

Copyright 2005*The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/07/national/07intel.html?

[Funky Monkey]

I loved "The Threat Matrix." It was short lived--unfortunately--but really well written and acted!

i wanted to check it out but their pilot seemed a bit weak on hooks so i didn't even finish it =/

[al-Canine]

Little cloak, less dagger

An ex-CIA agent talks about the real life of a spy and why she left the agency.

By BILL ADAIR, Times Washington Bureau Chief

Lindsay Moran decided she wasn't cut out to be a spy.

She was drawn to the CIA by the cloak-and-dagger image and a sense of patriotism. She survived grueling training at "the Farm," the agency's famous boot camp, and ended up in Macedonia as a case officer, recruiting foreign agents to spy for the United States. But she quit after five years, unhappy with the CIA's Cold War culture, its sluggish response to terrorism and the heavy demands on her personal life.

Moran, 35, has written about her experiences in a surprisingly funny book called Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy. She spoke last week with Times Washington Bureau chief Bill Adair. Here is an edited version of that interview:

Adair: Your basic cover was that you were an American diplomat. But you also pretended to be a travel writer, right?

Moran: Generally you are left to make up your own cover story, which I actually think is good. It enables you to form an alias that is comfortable to you. I had always been a writer of sorts and enjoyed writing, so (being a travel writer) felt comfortable to me.

Was it hard to remember who you were at any given moment?

Yes it was. That was the biggest stress for me. While I was traveling, I would repeat to myself what my name was, what my birthday was.

What could you tell your friends and family about your job?

The agency kind of leaves it up to you to make those decisions. Some people don't tell anyone. They don't even tell anyone in their immediate family. Other people tell everyone - and that can be a problem. My mother, my father, my brother knew that I was working at the agency . . . and that I was overseas ostensibly as a diplomat.

Your training at the Farm made the job look so sexy. But when you finally got overseas, it didn't seem nearly as exciting. Why?

We were all aware that training didn't have a lot of relevance on what our jobs would be. It was more of a confidence builder or an Outward Bound sort of thing. Actually being a spy is a lot more banal. You are not crashing your car through barriers; you are not jumping out of planes. You are basically preying on people you think have vulnerabilities. That means spending a lot of time with people you might think are losers. I tried to target people that I thought would be interested in working for the U.S. out of ideological inspiration. But the reality of espionage is that most people do it for the money.

Your job reminded me of selling Amway. You were recruiting these people, trying to build your team, paying them and buttering them up.

That's a great analogy. The agency is a little bit cultish. You have to believe in what you're selling.

When I got to the point where I felt like I didn't really have confidence in what I was selling, it made it 10 times more difficult for me to go out and sell. I could see why people at the agency are very nostalgic for the Cold War. That was a time when everything was so clear-cut. We were the good guys, (the Soviets) were the bad guys, and everybody really did believe in what we were selling.

What about the mission didn't you believe in?

I am a very patriotic person and have always believed that, no matter the faults with the American system of government, it's still the absolute best that there is. But on a personal level, it was hard for me to make an argument to people that I was targeting (that they would benefit from spying for the United States).

You said the job left you "desperately lonely." Why?

I cut off most of my friendships outside the agency. A friendship is obviously affected when, on some fundamental level, you are lying all the time. And that's what I was doing in all my relationships. I became increasingly uncommunicative and insular.

The agency does become your family in a way. Those are the only people who know what you're doing and those are the people that you can talk to. But by the same token, it's a paranoid and secretive environment and nobody really trusts anybody else. So it's a big family, but a dysfunctional family because everybody is sort of jockeying for their own position and you all know that the rest of you are all liars.

You describe lots of waste and excess - handing out $100 bills to informants who give worthless or inaccurate information. Is the CIA spending our money wisely?

I don't think so. One of my personal beefs, both as a former CIA employee but also as a citizen, is that the intelligence budget remains classified, and the agency claims that it's classified because to reveal that information would be some kind threat to national security. My feeling is the threat to national security is having an intelligence agency that is not accountable for the, perhaps, $40-billion that it gets a year.

There is incredible waste at the agency. One friend who worked at the agency told me that, at the end of the year, everybody got a free Palm Pilot. The deal was that they had this money they hadn't used. But they wanted to use it so that the following year, they could still get the same amount of money.

Stuff like that, I'm sure, happens everywhere, but in the wake of Sept. 11, which was such a devastating intelligence failure, you would think there would be a lot more scrutiny on how money was spent.

Is it true that when you paid cash to a foreign agent, you had to get them to sign a receipt?

Yeah. (She laughs.) It's kind of funny that you have to cross your t's and dot your i's in that way. But at the end of the day, it's still government funds and, even if they sign it Mickey Mouse, you've got to get some sort of receipt.

Why did you ultimately leave?

I was in Russian language training, and we started this buildup to go to war. I wasn't an Iraqi expert, I wasn't a WMD expert. But it seemed kind of crazy that we were going to war. (Then) I was taken out of language lessons right as the war was starting and put in Iraqi Operations - not in Iraq, because we didn't have anyone in Iraq then, but in Headquarters. I thought, this is good, because now I'm going to see why we're going to war.

I was really astounded. The agency tends to be a really hawkish, conservative environment. But I couldn't find anyone there who was gunning for this war. Everybody who was in the agency knew we were already really spread thin by Afghanistan. We were sending every yahoo and his brother to Kabul. And all of a sudden, we were going to start this other initiative in Iraq. The agency didn't have the people.

Even though I'm critical of the agency, I'm really protective of it in terms of being portrayed as having provided the president faulty intelligence. When we were first going into Baghdad and it wasn't a cakewalk, I said to one of the heads of Iraqi Operations, "Did we say this was going to be a cakewalk?" He said, "No, we were very explicit with the administration that this is a clan society, it's going to break down." It's not going to be easy to go in there and set up a democracy, as the administration seemed to be advocating.

Having very conflicted feelings about the war - my brother was a fighter pilot in the war - what I saw was that I had joined this organization to serve my country. And over the course of the five years I was there, I realized that you end up serving the organization over your country. And once I realized that I didn't know who the CIA was serving I just decided I didn't want to be a part of it any more.

It seemed like there was a personal side to your departure, too.

When I met the man who became my husband, he was such an example to me of someone who lived by his own terms. It reminded me who I had been before I joined the agency. It was so refreshing and relaxing to actually just be myself. In the agency, I was very reticent to speak my mind - as almost everybody was - because people are so distrustful and ready to jump on you. Plus, I was virtually living like a double or triple life.

You were required to submit your manuscript to the CIA before it could be published, to make sure it did not reveal classified information. Tell me about that.

One of the persons on the review board put it to me this way. He said, if you want to write everyone at the CIA is a drunk, you can write that because it might be true or it might not be true. But it's not classified information.

I think there is a misperception that a lot of people have that when you join the agency, you sign away your right to ever say anything. Certainly there is the secrecy agreement, which is a very serious thing. I took it seriously. But ultimately, unless they can prove that what you're writing is classified or is in some way a threat to national security, they can't keep you from expressing your opinion or telling about your experiences.

Would you recommend the CIA as a career?

You know, after all that's been said and done, I probably still would. If you can hack the lying and the leading a double life and all the sacrifices you make, it's not a bad life. You're living overseas, you're probably doing well financially and there's always that reassurance you have that you are doing something that very few people in the world will ever be able to do.

© Copyright 2003 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/01/09/Perspective/Little_cloak__less_da.shtml

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CIA Revising Policies on Books by Employees

Recent Criticism by 'Anonymous' Cited

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer

The CIA is revising its procedures for clearing the publication of books or articles by currently employed analysts and case officers in the wake of controversy generated by the best-selling book, "Imperial Hubris: How the West Is Losing the War on Terrorism."

Written by a then-active senior analyst who had headed the Osama bin Laden task force, "Imperial Hubris" criticized Bush administration terrorism policies and became an issue in the presidential campaign when it came out last summer. Although the author was listed as "Anonymous," he was subsequently identified as Michael Scheuer, who retired in November.

Before the book was published, Scheuer, as an employee, cleared it with his bosses at the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), where he was then working, and with the Directorate of Intelligence. The manuscript was not reviewed by the CIA Publications Review Board, a small staff that regularly must approve works of former employees.

The new procedures, which are expected to be completed soon, would require all manuscripts and other materials to be reviewed by the review board's staff, which would work with a current employee's superiors on determining what would be cleared for publication.

Under current regulations that apply both to present and former agency personnel, manuscripts are reviewed to ensure they do not contain classified information. With current employees, regulations also require that the released materials not "have an adverse impact on the writer's job performance or on the agency," a senior intelligence official said yesterday. In addition, officers or analysts cannot profit financially from writing specifically about the job they are doing, the official said.

"When it came to Scheuer as 'Anonymous,' " a former senior administration official said yesterday, "the CTC and DI were unhappy with what he had written, but were fuzzy about enforcing rules that seemed to prevent agency people from expressing opinions."

However, he said, the effect of Anonymous's personal opinions in the book "was that people assumed the comments had received the endorsement of the agency leadership because they let him print it." The result was "the unintended effect of making the agency's job of appearing nonpolitical more difficult."

The change in the procedures, which was underway before CIA Director Porter J. Goss and his management team arrived at the agency, is aimed at "trying to make sure people still working at the agency don't do similar things" as Scheuer, and put out a book with political implications, the former official said.

For past CIA employees, the standard is different when it comes to opinions and information no longer classified. As described several years ago by John Hollister Hedley, then the review board's chairman, "permission to publish cannot be denied solely because information may be embarrassing to CIA or critical of it, or inaccurate. People have a right to their opinions and they have a right to be wrong."

The purpose of the review process -- which has its roots in the contractual secrecy agreement employees sign, as well as federal law and executive orders -- Hedley wrote, "is to help people to publish in a way that will not cause a problem for them, the agency or for the country."

The last time a publication called attention to the work of the review board was in 1997 when a former senior case officer, Duane C. "Dewey" Clarridge, wrote a book about his colorful career. He was permitted to disclose where he actually had been stationed along with invented agents and operational scenarios -- the latter to protect security. It has been followed by a rush of memoirs from former case officers.

The "Clarridge Precedent," famous within the agency, may now be followed by the "Scheuer Regulation," the former official said.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2127-2005Jan11?

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------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/scotus/la-na-spysuit12jan12,1,3152956.story?coll=la-news-politics-supreme_court

THE NATION

Justices Question Legality of Ex-Spies Suing CIA

By Greg Miller

Times Staff Writer
January 12, 2005

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism Tuesday that a lawsuit by former Cold War spies against the CIA could proceed without exposing secrets or violating a Civil War-era ban on such suits.

The justices spent much of their time during oral arguments challenging the two plaintiffs to explain why their suit should not be blocked by an 1876 Supreme Court decision that barred former spies from bringing legal claims against the U.S. government.

At one point, Justice David H. Souter underscored the magnitude of that hurdle by pointedly asking the plaintiffs how they planned to get around it. "Are you going to say, 'We weren't spies'?" he asked.

Souter's remark came during an hourlong session in which the court began weighing a case that had serious implications for the CIA and its obligations to defectors and former spies.

The suit centers on the claims of a former Eastern bloc diplomat and his wife who say the CIA reneged on a promise to provide lifetime security and financial support in exchange for their service as spies.

The CIA helped the couple relocate to Seattle in 1987 and provided financial support for several years. But the agency cut off the stipend sometime after the husband landed a job with a Seattle bank, and refused to restart payments when he was subsequently laid off.

The case has called unflattering attention to the CIA's treatment of former spies at a time when the agency is under pressure to recruit overseas informants. The Soviet bloc diplomat and his wife have not been identified, and are listed in court documents as John and Jane Doe.

David J. Burman, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, argued that the 1876 case would have been decided differently if it were tried today, in part because modern courts were better equipped to hear cases and protect sensitive information from being disclosed publicly.

But several justices challenged the idea that modern courts were more capable of keeping highly sensitive national secrets. "You think a U.S. district court has all the security facilities of Langley?" asked Justice Antonin Scalia, referring to the CIA headquarters' location in Virginia. "Trust me, it doesn't."

The justices also probed aspects of the government's case, pressing acting U.S. Solicitor Gen. Paul D. Clement to identify the boundaries of the legal protection the agency is asserting.

If former spies are barred from pursuing legal action against the CIA, Justice John Paul Stevens asked, "could you torture an agent" if the agency was unhappy with his performance, and expect to be shielded from liability?

Clement did not respond directly to the question. He argued that by bringing their lawsuit the Does had violated the terms of an agreement that was supposed to remain secret.

"They are effectively pleading themselves out of court," Clement said.
That logic guided the Supreme Court's ruling in 1876, when it rejected a claim brought by the heir of a man who had been hired by President Lincoln to spy on the Confederacy, and then could not get the government to honor the agreement after Lincoln's assassination.

The Supreme Court will decide on the case in several months.

If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

[al-Canine]

Spy-Turned-Author Looks Back At a CIA Mired in Bureaucracy

By Steve Coll
Washington Post Staff Writer

"Look at me," Melissa Boyle Mahle said, her blue eyes shining, her short blond hair cropped in place as she leaned across her desk. "This is who we recruit to run against the Arab target."

She does appear a more likely infiltrator of Belfast than Beirut. Yet for 14 years after she joined the CIA's clandestine service as an operations officer in 1988, Mahle belonged to that cadre whose small numbers were often lamented after Sept. 11, 2001 -- American spies who spoke fluent Arabic and liked working the street.

She served five tours in the Arab world, running operations and recruiting agents. But now, after departing unhappily from the CIA in 2002 over "a mistake" in the field "to which I admitted freely," Mahle is the latest in a parade of disillusioned spies to write a memoir, pitching herself into the debate over what is wrong with American intelligence.

Like several of her CIA predecessors in print -- Robert Baer, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Michael F. Scheuer, who published two books as "Anonymous" -- Mahle sees her former agency as too often mired in process, averse to risk and poorly managed.

Her new book, "Denial and Deception: An Insider's View of the CIA From Iran-Contra to 9/11," is measured in tone and often generous to former colleagues and CIA leaders. But she also declares that the CIA became "totally focused on its own innards" in the 1990s and then proved unwilling to hold itself accountable after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Too often, Mahle writes, the agency has been hamstrung by "the rise of the committee, the anointing of bureaucracy, and the crowning of process."

She praises former CIA director George J. Tenet's management vision but denounces what she describes as his "total denial of failure" after Sept. 11.

Mahle writes that she and her colleagues at first thought that when Tenet defended himself in public after the attacks, he was just following "our mantra, 'Deny Everything.' " But as time passed, Mahle came to believe "[o]bviously something went wrong: why could the CIA not admit this?"

She concluded that Tenet "played it safe and played politics" and failed "to take the actions necessary to wage a real war on terrorism."

Her criticism echoes the recently reported findings of the CIA's inspector general. The IG's unpublished draft report on CIA leadership failures during the run-up to Sept. 11 is threatening to reopen debate about individual blame at Langley -- issues that congressional investigators had avoided, arguing that the failures were systemic.

Tenet, who is writing his own book, remains adamant that his record will be vindicated by investigators and by history. "Even a casual reading of the public testimony George Tenet gave before Congress, going back to the mid-1990s, would demonstrate that his was the loudest and clearest voice on the threat that al Qaeda presented to the United States," said his spokesman, Bill Harlow.

Mahle said she began her book project initially with far less pointed questions in mind. There were no good, recent guides for new CIA employees. After serving a tour in the hiring center, Mahle said, she feared recruits might labor under the mistaken belief that their new office would be like those depicted on television shows such as the Fox Network hit "24," where glamorous intelligence officers equipped with matchless technology make crisp, bold decisions to take down terrorists.

Reality, Mahle said, too often resembled her own experience at a West Bank restaurant in the mid-1990s. Eating at the next table was convicted terrorist planner Abu Abbas, mastermind of the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship, from which hijackers killed and pushed overboard wheelchair-bound, 69-year-old American tourist Leon Klinghoffer.

"You should go arrest him," Mahle recalled her Palestinian lunch companion urging. But Mahle had no authority to do so. Instead, she wrote a cable to headquarters and touched off a months-long interagency debate in Washington about whether Abbas had been granted amnesty under Israeli-Palestinian peace accords, and whether the United States had sound legal and foreign policy reasons to indict him.

Abbas later found refuge in Baghdad. U.S. forces arrested him after the 2003 invasion of Iraq but had still not resolved his legal status when he died of natural causes last year.

After Sept. 11, Mahle said, experiences like her lunch beside Abbas led her to wrestle with questions about CIA reform "down in the weeds," far beneath the top-line wiring diagrams debated during the recent push for legislative reorganization of the U.S. intelligence community.

If that new law, which vests power in a centralized director of national intelligence and mandates other sweeping administrative changes, "is the end of the process, we're in big trouble," Mahle said.

Part of the trouble in the CIA's trenches, she argues, arises from the agency's hermetically sealed office culture, where secrecy and security can become excuses for avoiding risk.

She cites the agency's continuing struggles to recruit Arab Americans, Asian Americans and other second-generation immigrants with native speaking ability who might blend more successfully into Third World societies than someone who looks like her.

As a CIA recruiter, Mahle said she sent many well-qualified, diverse candidates on for security review, only to see large numbers wash out. While some were rejected for straightforward reasons, such as lying about past drug use, others were turned away because their "psychological profile" did not match the CIA's abstract ideal or because their family and social contacts overseas made their backgrounds hard to scrub.

"Security has no incentive to take risks," Mahle said.

The result "was best illustrated by a panoramic view of the swearing-in of the first class to enter on duty . . . after September 11; it was a sea of white faces."

A spokeswoman said the CIA "is actively pursuing individuals who have traveled abroad, have strong or native foreign language proficiency, prior residency abroad, particularly individuals with a background in Central Eurasia, East Asia and the Middle East. While we do encounter challenges in conducting security checks on some individuals, having family members who reside abroad is not an impediment to agency employment."

Mahle describes her own struggles as a woman in the male-dominated Directorate of Operations, which runs covert action abroad. Because the CIA has no provision for maternity leave, "while I was in labor delivering my first baby . . . I fielded calls on threat information from U.S. Secret Service agents" preparing for a visit by President Bill Clinton to Gaza and Bethlehem.

She said she cannot describe the field mistake that led to her forced departure from the CIA because the agency has warned her "in a very threatening letter" that the details are classified. She said only that her error involved "an unauthorized contact" overseas that was "not reported in a timely manner," and that her loyalty unjustly came under suspicion. She also said that during her years in the field, she saw men make the same kind of mistake, but they were not punished as severely.

Without making clear whether the question applies to her, Mahle asks in her book, "Why is a male operations officer not censured for having a personal relationship with an agent, and a female operations officer is fired for doing the same?"

A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment on Mahle's departure but said agency guidelines on "unauthorized contacts" are applied equally to men and women.

As a bravado-filled field officer, Mahle said, she had always dismissed discipline cases as the fault of the employee, not the CIA. Then she discovered "a special room in hell reserved for 'problem employees.' "

"Most Agency officers do not know anything about this part of the Agency," she writes. "Stories are dismissed as falsifications. . . . It is just too hard to reconcile the unfair practices, official dishonesty and purposeful humiliating treatment with the CIA that officers think they 'know.' "

After she left Langley, she went through a prolonged catharsis. She not only wrote her book, she also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in a blizzard.

The farther away from Langley she got, the more she came to believe that at the agency, "the system feeds upon itself, creating 'true believers.' Those who leave the CIA, and with the passage of time and distance become nonbelievers, are often surprised by the sheer intensity of the culture they left behind."

For Mahle, at least, "the world outside-looking-in was very different than the world inside-looking-out."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7714-2005Jan13.html

[al-Canine]

Secret Unit Expands Rumsfeld's Domain

New Espionage Branch Delving Into CIA Territory

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page A01

The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.

Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places they declined to name. According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia." Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.

The Strategic Support Branch was created to provide Rumsfeld with independent tools for the "full spectrum of humint operations," according to an internal account of its origin and mission. Human intelligence operations, a term used in counterpoint to technical means such as satellite photography, range from interrogation of prisoners and scouting of targets in wartime to the peacetime recruitment of foreign spies. A recent Pentagon memo states that recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed.

Perhaps the most significant shift is the Defense Department's bid to conduct surreptitious missions, in friendly and unfriendly states, when conventional war is a distant or unlikely prospect -- activities that have traditionally been the province of the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Senior Rumsfeld advisers said those missions are central to what they called the department's predominant role in combating terrorist threats.

The Pentagon has a vast bureaucracy devoted to gathering and analyzing intelligence, often in concert with the CIA, and news reports over more than a year have described Rumsfeld's drive for more and better human intelligence. But the creation of the espionage branch, the scope of its clandestine operations and the breadth of Rumsfeld's asserted legal authority have not been detailed publicly before. Two longtime members of the House Intelligence Committee, a Democrat and a Republican, said they knew no details before being interviewed for this article.

Pentagon officials said they established the Strategic Support Branch using "reprogrammed" funds, without explicit congressional authority or appropriation. Defense intelligence missions, they said, are subject to less stringent congressional oversight than comparable operations by the CIA. Rumsfeld's dissatisfaction with the CIA's operations directorate, and his determination to build what amounts in some respects to a rival service, follows struggles with then-CIA Director George J. Tenet over intelligence collection priorities in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pentagon officials said the CIA naturally has interests that differ from those of military commanders, but they also criticized its operations directorate as understaffed, slow-moving and risk-averse. A recurring phrase in internal Pentagon documents is the requirement for a human intelligence branch "directly responsive to tasking from SecDef," or Rumsfeld.

The new unit's performance in the field -- and its latest commander, reserve Army Col. George Waldroup -- are controversial among those involved in the closely held program. Pentagon officials acknowledged that Waldroup and many of those brought quickly into his service lack the experience and training typical of intelligence officers and special operators. In his civilian career as a federal manager, according to a Justice Department inspector general's report, Waldroup was at the center of a 1996 probe into alleged deception of Congress concerning staffing problems at Miami International Airport. Navy Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, expressed "utmost confidence in Colonel Waldroup's capabilities" and said in an interview that Waldroup's unit has scored "a whole series of successes" that he could not reveal in public. He acknowledged the risks, however, of trying to expand human intelligence too fast: "It's not something you quickly constitute as a capability. It's going to take years to do."

Rumsfeld's ambitious plans rely principally on the Tampa-based U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, and on its clandestine component, the Joint Special Operations Command. Rumsfeld has designated SOCOM's leader, Army Gen. Bryan D. Brown, as the military commander in chief in the war on terrorism. He has also given Brown's subordinates new authority to pay foreign agents. The Strategic Support Branch is intended to add missing capabilities -- such as the skill to establish local spy networks and the technology for direct access to national intelligence databases -- to the military's much larger special operations squadrons. Some Pentagon officials refer to the combined units as the "secret army of Northern Virginia."

Known as "special mission units," Brown's elite forces are not acknowledged publicly. They include two squadrons of an Army unit popularly known as Delta Force, another Army squadron -- formerly code-named Gray Fox -- that specializes in close-in electronic surveillance, an Air Force human intelligence unit and the Navy unit popularly known as SEAL Team Six.

The Defense Department is planning for further growth. Among the proposals circulating are the establishment of a Pentagon-controlled espionage school, largely duplicating the CIA's Field Tradecraft Course at Camp Perry, Va., and of intelligence operations commands for every region overseas.

Rumsfeld's efforts, launched in October 2001, address two widely shared goals. One is to give combat forces, such as those fighting the insurgency in Iraq, more and better information about their immediate enemy. The other is to find new tools to penetrate and destroy the shadowy organizations, such as al Qaeda, that pose global threats to U.S. interests in conflicts with little resemblance to conventional war.

In pursuit of those aims, Rumsfeld is laying claim to greater independence of action as Congress seeks to subordinate the 15 U.S. intelligence departments and agencies -- most under Rumsfeld's control -- to the newly created and still unfilled position of national intelligence director. For months, Rumsfeld opposed the intelligence reorganization bill that created the position. He withdrew his objections late last year after House Republican leaders inserted language that he interprets as preserving much of the department's autonomy.

Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, deputy undersecretary for intelligence, acknowledged that Rumsfeld intends to direct some missions previously undertaken by the CIA. He added that it is wrong to make "an assumption that what the secretary is trying to say is, 'Get the CIA out of this business, and we'll take it.' I don't interpret it that way at all."

"The secretary actually has more responsibility to collect intelligence for the national foreign intelligence program . . . than does the CIA director," Boykin said. "That's why you hear all this information being published about the secretary having 80 percent of the [intelligence] budget. Well, yeah, but he has 80 percent of the responsibility for collection, as well."

CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilsher said the agency would grant no interviews for this article.

Pentagon officials emphasized their intention to remain accountable to Congress, but they also asserted that defense intelligence missions are subject to fewer legal constraints than Rumsfeld's predecessors believed. That assertion involves new interpretations of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which governs the armed services, and Title 50, which governs, among other things, foreign intelligence.

Under Title 10, for example, the Defense Department must report to Congress all "deployment orders," or formal instructions from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to position U.S. forces for combat. But guidelines issued this month by Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone state that special operations forces may "conduct clandestine HUMINT operations . . . before publication" of a deployment order, rendering notification unnecessary. Pentagon lawyers also define the "war on terror" as ongoing, indefinite and global in scope. That analysis effectively discards the limitation of the defense secretary's war powers to times and places of imminent combat.

Under Title 50, all departments of the executive branch are obliged to keep Congress "fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities." The law exempts "traditional . . . military activities" and their "routine support." Advisers said Rumsfeld, after requesting a fresh legal review by the Pentagon's general counsel, interprets "traditional" and "routine" more expansively than his predecessors.

"Operations the CIA runs have one set of restrictions and oversight, and the military has another," said a Republican member of Congress with a substantial role in national security oversight, declining to speak publicly against political allies. "It sounds like there's an angle here of, 'Let's get around having any oversight by having the military do something that normally the [CIA] does, and not tell anybody.' That immediately raises all kinds of red flags for me. Why aren't they telling us?"

The enumeration by Myers of "emerging target countries" for clandestine intelligence work illustrates the breadth of the Pentagon's new concept. All those named, save Somalia, have allied themselves with the United States -- if unevenly -- against al Qaeda and its jihadist allies.

A high-ranking official with direct responsibility for the initiative, declining to speak on the record about espionage in friendly nations, said the Defense Department sometimes has to work undetected inside "a country that we're not at war with, if you will, a country that maybe has ungoverned spaces, or a country that is tacitly allowing some kind of threatening activity to go on."

Assistant Secretary of Defense Thomas O'Connell, who oversees special operations policy, said Rumsfeld has discarded the "hide-bound way of thinking" and "risk-averse mentalities" of previous Pentagon officials under every president since Gerald R. Ford.

"Many of the restrictions imposed on the Defense Department were imposed by tradition, by legislation, and by interpretations of various leaders and legal advisors," O'Connell said in a written reply to follow-up questions. "The interpretations take on the force of law and may preclude activities that are legal. In my view, many of the authorities inherent to [the Defense Department] . . . were winnowed away over the years."

After reversing the restrictions, Boykin said, Rumsfeld's next question "was, 'Okay, do I have the capability?' And the answer was, 'No you don't have the capability. . . . And then it became a matter of, 'I want to build a capability to be able to do this.' "

Known by several names since its inception as Project Icon on April 25, 2002, the Strategic Support Branch is an arm of the DIA's nine-year-old Defense Human Intelligence Service, which until now has concentrated on managing military attachés assigned openly to U.S. embassies around the world.

Rumsfeld's initiatives are not connected to previously reported negotiations between the Defense Department and the CIA over control of paramilitary operations, such as the capture of individuals or the destruction of facilities.

According to written guidelines made available to The Post, the Defense Department has decided that it will coordinate its human intelligence missions with the CIA but will not, as in the past, await consent. It also reserves the right to bypass the agency's Langley headquarters, consulting CIA officers in the field instead. The Pentagon will deem a mission "coordinated" after giving 72 hours' notice to the CIA.

Four people with firsthand knowledge said defense personnel have already begun operating under "non-official cover" overseas, using false names and nationalities. Those missions, and others contemplated in the Pentagon, skirt the line between clandestine and covert operations. Under U.S. law, "clandestine" refers to actions that are meant to be undetected, and "covert" refers to those for which the U.S. government denies its responsibility. Covert action is subject to stricter legal requirements, including a written "finding" of necessity by the president and prompt notification of senior leaders of both parties in the House and Senate.

O'Connell, asked whether the Pentagon foresees greater involvement in covert action, said "that remains to be determined." He added: "A better answer yet might be, depends upon the situation. But no one I know of is raising their hand and saying at DOD, 'We want control of covert operations.' "

One scenario in which Pentagon operatives might play a role, O'Connell said, is this: "A hostile country close to our borders suddenly changes leadership. . . . We would want to make sure the successor is not hostile."

Researcher Rob Thomason contributed to this report.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29414-2005Jan22.html

[al-Canine]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-pentagon-spy-teams,1,788025.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

Pentagon Tries to Explain Secret Group


By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer

4:51 AM PST, January 25, 2005

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon says the political uproar over the disclosure of a secret military intelligence group is overblown and based on misinformation about the group's makeup and mission.

Stephen A. Cambone, the Pentagon's top intelligence official, rushed to Capitol Hill on Monday after some members of Congress reacted strongly to a Washington Post report that revealed the existence of the group, which is managed by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and other Democrats called for hearings, but Republicans balked.

"According to The Washington Post, the Department of Defense is changing the guidelines with respect to oversight and notification of Congress by military intelligence. Is this true or false?" Feinstein wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Feinstein and others appeared puzzled by the disclosure that the Pentagon had created a new battlefield intelligence group -- "strategic support teams," in Pentagon parlance -- to perform clandestine missions that had been largely the province of the CIA.

Some suggested Rumsfeld had skirted congressional oversight to expand his domain.

Pentagon officials told reporters, however, that the arrangement had been worked out in close coordination with the CIA and that appropriate congressional committees had been fully informed.

A senior military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said CIA director Porter Goss told him Monday that he had "no issue or questions or concerns" about the Pentagon arrangement.

Another defense official said lawmakers may not recognize the news media's descriptions of the intelligence group because its name was changed after they were briefed on it last year.

Now called strategic support teams, they were previously known as humint augmentation teams, the official said, speaking only on condition that he not be further identified. (Humint refers to human intelligence, or information provided by spies.)

In an additional point of clarification, the senior military official said the intelligence teams are not to be used for covert actions, which are unacknowledged by the government and which require a legal "finding" by the president. Rather, they are for clandestine actions, which are meant to be secret but are subject to acknowledgment by the government if publicly disclosed.

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner, R-Va., and the panel's top Democrat, Carl Levin of Michigan, met for more than an hour with Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence.
Later, Warner said he was satisfied by the briefing and would ensure that other committee members were briefed fully as well.

"In my opinion," he said, "these intelligence programs are vital to our national security interests, and I am satisfied that they are being coordinated with the appropriate agencies of the federal government."

The teams -- each with about 10 mostly civilian linguists, case officers, interrogators and debriefers -- are designed to provide the military's conventional and special operations forces with more sustainable battlefield intelligence to support combat and other activities.

The defense officials said this is not a new mission for military intelligence; rather, they said, it is being structured in a new way so that it can be provided to battlefield commanders in a more standardized manner. It previously had been done in a more ad hoc way, they said.

Larry Di Rita, the chief spokesman for Rumsfeld, acknowledged the existence of the group, which he said was managed by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Human Intelligence Service.

"There is a desire to connect better intelligence to battlefield operations," Di Rita said, and the DIA unit is an example of things that can be done in support of commanders in the field.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was confident the Pentagon was taking the right approach.

"The notion by some that various steps taken by the Department of Defense to enhance such intelligence is somehow sinister and illegitimate is nonsense," Hunter said.

Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., urged hearings.

"While I fully support improving the ability of our men and women in the field to get accurate real time intelligence, the creation of this unit raises a number of questions that this committee has a duty to examine," Tauscher said.

The concept of augmenting military forces with specialized intelligence teams was born after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as a means of expanding the military's ability to collect human intelligence -- information from spies as opposed to listening devices or satellites.

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

[exitwound]

I understand the compulsion to investigate this "secret" force, but is anyone really surprised that it was created?

The fact that the public now knows about it, means it's probably one of the less "secret" of the post-9/11 organizations. By far, I would suspect.

[al-Canine]

Defense Espionage Unit to Work With CIA

By Josh White and Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writers

Defense Department officials acknowledged yesterday that the Pentagon has created new clandestine teams to gain better human intelligence for military commanders but emphasized that the program was developed with the cooperation of the Central Intelligence Agency, not to bypass it.

The Strategic Support Branch, housed within the Defense Intelligence Agency, was created to give high-level military officers more control over "actual intelligence" that they can use while making operational military plans, according to two defense officials who briefed reporters on the condition that their names not be used. They said that the program is a joint effort between officials at the Pentagon and CIA and that its organization has been running in its current form since October under funding authorized for this fiscal year.

The existence of the Pentagon's new espionage arm was first disclosed publicly in a Washington Post article on Sunday, which said the program grew out of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld 's desire to end his dependence on the CIA for intelligence gathering. The article reported that officials said that elements of the new unit have been operating in secret for two years in Iraq, Afghanistan and in some undisclosed countries, and was designed to improve Pentagon abilities in what is called human intelligence -- activities such as prisoner interrogation, scouting and recruiting foreign spies.

At the CIA, an official who declined to be named said of Pentagon intelligence initiatives that "they've got the same objectives we do." Defense intelligence units, the official said, are especially well suited to collecting battlefield information on "bridges and tunnels and things like that, and frankly we don't always want to be pulling the CIA resources to do those."

On broader missions not directly related to combat operations, the official emphasized that the CIA has to have the final say. New Pentagon internal guidelines say a mission will be deemed "coordinated" with the CIA after 72 hours' notice to the agency. "It's critical not only to have coordination, but . . . we strongly believe the [CIA] chief of station has to be responsible" for intelligence activities in each country, the official said.

The disclosure of the program evoked widespread discussion on Capitol Hill yesterday, with some legislators unsure whether the program is something they had authorized, and others defending the merits of the effort. The defense officials said confusion arose because the program was authorized within the FY05 budget under a different name -- Humint Augmentation Teams -- and was later changed.

The chairmen of both the House and Senate Armed Services committees said yesterday they support the programs.

"In my opinion, these intelligence programs are vital to our national security interests, and I am satisfied that they are being coordinated with the appropriate agencies of the federal government," Sen. John R. Warner (R-Va.) said in a statement released after a private briefing with Stephen A. Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence. "The committee records indicate that the appropriate budget documents were sent up by the department, reviewed by the committee, and authorizations relative to these programs were incorporated in the FY05 bill."

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) agreed.

"The war on terrorism has made it clear that we need to urgently improve our nation's human intelligence capabilities, including those of the Department of Defense when conducting military operations," he said in a statement. Some Democrats, however, said the new intelligence program should be the subject of hearings.

Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said lawmakers have a duty to examine the program. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked the Senate intelligence committee to look into the issue.

"I've been asked a number of questions, questions which I cannot answer, about reports that the Department of Defense has created new intelligence special forces and has changed the guidelines for reporting to Congress," Feinstein said. "I think that it is within the oversight responsibility of the intelligence committee to have answers to these questions."

Staff writer Chuck Babington contributed to this report.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33798-2005Jan24.html

[al-Canine]

OP-ED

Important Job, Impossible Position

By RICHARD A. POSNER

ROBERT M. GATES, a highly regarded former head of the C.I.A., announced last week that he would not leave his job as president of Texas A&M University to become the first director of national intelligence. This is evidence that the Bush administration may be having trouble finding a qualified candidate who is willing to take the job. It is now close to two months since President Bush signed the law that created the position - almost as long as it took Congress to pass it.

The delay may be attributable to a fundamental structural defect in the law, a consequence of the haste with which it was passed. The publication last July of the report of the 9/11 commission started a political stampede. Within days both presidential candidates had endorsed most of the commission's recommendations; within weeks there were bills in Congress; within months the president had signed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. The core of the new act, which reflects the commission's principal recommendation, is the creation of the post of director of national intelligence; the director would be the presiding deity of the nation's intelligence system.

The beguiling premise of the commission's report was that the 9/11 attacks occurred because there wasn't enough sharing of intelligence data among America's 15 or so federal intelligence agencies. The report's reassuring conclusion is that we can solve the problem by centralizing the control of the intelligence system. The premise is doubtful; only in hindsight do the scattered clues gathered in the summer of 2001 point to the attacks that took place.

And slotting in a new bureaucracy (the director is authorized a staff of 500) above the existing agencies will not increase information sharing. Instead, by adding a layer to the intelligence hierarchy, it will delay and diminish the flow of information to the president.

The 9/11 commission wanted the director to be like a corporate chief executive, who is charged with ultimate responsibility for the performance of the corporation's multiple divisions and is given commensurate power. (Hence the term - though it is not the commission's - "intelligence czar.") As the commission's proposal moved through Congress, however, the director's responsibility waxed and his powers waned. The act piles duties on him but withholds the authority he would need to perform them in the face of predictably recalcitrant bureaucracies.

He is to be the head of the intelligence community and the president's principal intelligence adviser. He is to prepare a consolidated budget; overhaul the community's personnel, security and technology policies; coordinate the agencies and ensure that information is shared among them; monitor the agencies' performance; interact with foreign nations' intelligence services; and eliminate waste and duplication. So broad is his mandate that should intelligence failures open the way to a new attack on the United States, he will be blamed.

Yet he has not been given the wherewithal to prevent such failures. He can make a budget, true, but it is subject to the approval of the president and Congress. He can move some money and a few employees among agencies, and he can veto the appointment of some second-tier intelligence officials. But he cannot hire or fire the agency heads and he has no command authority - that is, he cannot tell an agency what to do. He has much less authority over the intelligence agencies than the secretary of the Homeland Security Department has over the agencies in his purview - yet after two years, no progress in molding those agencies into an organic unity is discernible.

In short, the director of national intelligence can issue policies and guidelines to his heart's content. But if the agencies ignore (subvert, "interpret") them, he is helpless.

Well, not quite helpless. For there is that 500-member staff he's been authorized. He can lay it like a blanket of fog over the intelligence community and allow the agencies beneath it to breathe only if they make reciprocal concessions.

To complete his journey into misery, he has been given three full-time jobs rather than just one. He is to be the president's chief intelligence adviser, responsible for identifying and prioritizing threats to the nation. He is to coordinate the intelligence agencies. And he is to create the office of the director of national intelligence ex nihilo, a task that alone could consume many months.

To avoid becoming a helpless figurehead - and a scapegoat if the United States is attacked again on the scale of 9/11, as is entirely possible - he will have to impose on the act a feasible conception of his role. It should be that of a coordinator or facilitator, albeit one who will not require a staff of 500, who will manage (but with a light hand) the complex and often tense relationships among the intelligence agencies. It should not be that of a substantive intelligence official.

The director of national intelligence won't be able to do both jobs, and if he chooses the substantive path he will, by treading on the C.I.A. director's turf, invite the kind of bitter conflict that paralyzes government. And then intelligence "reform" will have made America less safe.


Richard A. Posner, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, is the author of the forthcoming "Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11."

Copyright 2005*The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/09/opinion/09posner.html

[al-Canine]

CIA Still Trying to Get Access to Pakistani Nuclear Scientist

Director Goss testifies that some aspects of the illicit network remain unknown as Islamabad has rejected requests for information.

By Greg Miller
Times Staff Writer

February 17, 2005

WASHINGTON — CIA Director Porter J. Goss said Wednesday that the United States was making a renewed push for access to Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, and acknowledged that U.S. intelligence agencies had yet to track down and eradicate certain pieces of Khan's vast proliferation network.

Goss said in congressional testimony that efforts to get information from Khan were underway "virtually as we speak," but unraveling the scientist's international web of nuclear suppliers remained an unmet goal.

"We have not got to the end of the trail," he said, underscoring U.S. concern that remnants of Khan's network had not been uprooted. The Pakistani scientist has admitted selling nuclear secrets to Libya and other countries.

Goss did not disclose details of the requests, or whether there had been a response from the Pakistani government, which is holding the scientist under house arrest and has rebuffed previous requests.

The spread of nuclear technology was among an array of security threats Goss highlighted during his first public appearance since taking over as CIA director in September.

In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Goss and other top intelligence officials said that Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups continued to pursue plots targeting Americans; that Iran and North Korea posed daunting challenges; and that Iraq had become a recruiting and training ground for anti-U.S. Muslim militants.

In other testimony, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller and James M. Loy, acting secretary of Homeland Security, said Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups remained intent on carrying out attacks in the United States.

But much of the attention Wednesday was focused on Goss, who has had a rocky tenure at the CIA, and who found himself responding to questions about interrogation practices and encroachments by other government agencies on CIA turf.

Goss delivered a lengthy defense of the CIA's handling of detainees, saying that "interrogation is a main stream of information" in the Bush administration's campaign against terrorism, but insisting that the agency did not engage in torture or deliver suspects to other countries "as a cute way of end-running" laws banning mistreatment of prisoners.

Goss said he supported efforts by other agencies to step up their own intelligence operations. He also indicated that he and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld agreed that the CIA should not relinquish control over paramilitary operations — as was recommended by the Sept. 11 commission — and that their positions were to be outlined in a memo to President Bush.

Since taking over the CIA, Goss has sought to lower the agency's profile in public, and his testimony Wednesday was circumspect compared with that delivered by his predecessor, George J. Tenet, in previous years.

Goss was particularly cautious on North Korea, which declared last week that it had nuclear weapons and would not resume diplomatic talks about its arms program. When asked to expand on a 2002 CIA assessment that North Korea had enough plutonium for one or two bombs, Goss would say only that "they have a greater capability than that assessment. It has increased since then."

Goss was more forthcoming on the war in Iraq. He referred to militants taking part in the insurgency as a "potential pool" for terrorist networks and cells that could scatter to other countries.

"The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists," Goss said.

"Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism."

Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said insurgents were launching an average of more than 60 attacks per day, compared with 25 per day a year ago.

Asked about access to Khan, the Pakistani scientist, Goss said, "We are further exploring our opportunities to learn about Mr. Khan," adding that "active, appropriate, direct efforts are underway on that matter."
Access to Khan has become one of the thorniest issues in U.S. relations with Pakistan, which is otherwise credited by the Bush administration with providing significant support in the war on terrorism.

The scientist is a national hero in Pakistan, and was pardoned by the Pakistani government after he apologized. But the government has refused to let anyone question him, rebuffing not only U.S. intelligence agencies but also the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog group.

"The IAEA has had no contact directly with any Pakistani from the A.Q. Khan network since the start of its investigation into the nuclear smuggling ring," said a senior Western diplomat familiar with the inquiry.

"The Pakistanis are helpful on other issues. On the network so far, they could do much better."

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-intel17feb17,1,3528926.story?coll=la-headlines-world

[al-Canine]

Analysis from the Washington Post

CIA Moves to Second Fiddle in Intelligence Work

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 27, 2005

The nomination of John D. Negroponte as national director of intelligence this month signaled the end of the CIA's nearly 60-year run as the undisputed center of power and influence in the secret world of intelligence.

From its Cold War heyday of spy-vs.-spy confrontation with the Soviet Union, to its rebirth as the lead strike force against al Qaeda's leadership, the CIA earned its standing not from its size, budget or weapons systems, but from the sway its directors held over presidents and the legend of its covert operations overseas.

Today, as a result of a new law reorganizing the intelligence community, the CIA no longer has primary standing among the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies. And its last director, cigar-chewing George J. Tenet -- one in a line of larger-than-life leaders with close ties to the Oval Office -- has been replaced by an anti-Tenet figure, Porter J. Goss, a man of few words and low profile who CIA employees say has yet to annunciate his vision for the agency.

"It does appear the CIA will not occupy that same premier position it had," said Peter Earnest, executive director of the International Spy Museum and a former CIA spy. "It's the end of a chapter."

The CIA has occupied the pinnacle in the intelligence world, in part, because its chief held two titles: CIA director and the broader director of central intelligence. The latter made him responsible for managing efforts of not only the CIA but also the intelligence offices in the Department of Defense and other parts of the federal government. In recent years, it was the director of central intelligence who briefed the president in the morning, and in the afternoon, wearing his second hat as CIA director, he sent spies on missions and executed covert operations.

"The face time," said Earnest, allowed the CIA director to understand what the president was most interested in, "to hear the president's own requirements. It was invaluable."

Now, Negroponte will oversee the CIA and 14 other agencies that spend an estimated $40 billion a year on intelligence -- a reorganization by Congress largely in response to recommendations by the 9/11 commission, which said lack of coordination among those offices played a role in the U.S. failure to thwart the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Not only will Negroponte replace the CIA director as the most important voice the president hears on intelligence matters each day, but other agencies, notably the Pentagon and the FBI, are seeking to take over some of the CIA's traditional case officer duties. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has tasked the military to send highly classified units into the field to collect human intelligence, using newly earned congressional authority to recruit foreign agents when it is helpful.

The FBI wants to replace the CIA's role in recruiting U.S.-based foreign officials to spy for the United States when they return to their homes. It is also trying to mimic the CIA's use of corporate contacts to gain information from overseas business travelers.

With the President's Daily Briefing soon to be in Negroponte's hands, intelligence officials said they expect dozens of CIA analysts who produce it to move over to his office. So will the National Intelligence Council, the nation's top intelligence advisory panel, which produces National Intelligence Estimates as well as analysis of long-term trends.

The CIA's science and technology branch may lose clout as well, intelligence experts said. Already the major technological capabilities -- namely satellite imagery and electronic espionage -- reside outside the CIA. Experts say Negroponte's deputy-to-be, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, wants to keep a major hand in technological issues. Currently, Hayden heads the National Security Agency, which manages electronic espionage.

Critics of the CIA's inability to gather more intelligence on al Qaeda -- and of its high-profile, high-stakes failure to accurately assess Iraq's weapons programs before the war -- say these changes are long overdue.

"The CIA is no longer the favorite child, which will be good for them," said one congressional official, who is not authorized to be quoted by name. "They will have to play on a level playing field. When you are in charge too long, you tend to ossify, then get comfortable. They need to get uncomfortable."

But many CIA veterans, current and retired, say the agency's diminished role comes at a vulnerable time for the institution. Goss and his top aides, former Capitol Hill staffers who once worked at the CIA, have still not settled nerves at the agency after a round of high-profile personnel shuffles that left some employees distrustful of the leadership that took over from Tenet in September.

"One has to be concerned about the standing on the CIA," said one senior CIA official with three decades of experience. "I worry about the whole system. It's in risk of losing its elan."

The new CIA, predicted CIA officials, will be more narrowly, but intensely, focused on using U.S. spies and foreign agents to collect enemy secrets.

In a recent executive order, Bush told Goss to increase the number of U.S. spies by 50 percent over a period of years. Goss gave his plans for achieving that goal to the president last week. CIA officials declined to describe the plans, even in vague terms, because they are classified.

Advocates of the reorganization say the new version of the CIA will be able to focus on its core mission. Gathering human intelligence "is simply going to be front and center," said Jamie S. Gorelick, a member of the 9/11 commission, which recommended the legislation. "They were trying to do too many things and weren't doing them well."

But, Gorelick said, "I can understand why folks at the CIA are despondent. They don't know what Goss wants them to do."

Some intelligence experts worry that the reorganization will leave the CIA dangerously isolated from the heartbeat of U.S. policymaking.

"You won't get the cross-fertilization, the healthy interaction between the collectors and the analyzers that you need to do intelligence work well," said Fred Hitz, a former CIA inspector general.

"When you isolate yourself, you become detached from the policy issues," a former head of the clandestine service said. "You don't let the air in. The smaller the group that approves a covert action, the greater the propensity for failure."

Even the CIA director's role in supervising human intelligence might be challenged by the reorganization, several intelligence officials said. They said Negroponte could decide to appoint his own deputy for human intelligence who would decide whether the CIA or another agency or department would be the most suited to a specific spy operation.

"The CIA is a wounded gazelle on the African plain," said another former senior intelligence official, lamenting the encroachment by other agencies onto the CIA's traditional territory. "It's a pile of bleached bones."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56278-2005Feb26.html

[al-Canine]

Ex-Spies Tell It All

By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, March 14 - These days, more and more American spies who come in from the cold go right back out, on book tours. And their portrait of the Central Intelligence Agency is none too flattering.

Since December, three former C.I.A. case officers who did the most sensitive work of the government - persuading foreigners to betray their countries or their causes - have published memoirs. Two more such books will be out in May, making a dozen firsthand accounts published since the late 1990's. This swelling library of increasingly candid C.I.A. memoirs reflects a striking cultural change at the agency.

"There used to be a feeling of 'Don't even think about writing a book,' and I shared that feeling," said Floyd L. Paseman, 64, who worked for the agency in Asia and Europe for nearly 35 years. Yet today Mr. Paseman is just out with "A Spy's Journey" (Zenith Press), in which he recounts helping foil Libyan hit men trying to assassinate an American ambassador, finding himself in a sniper's gun sights after recruiting an Iranian agent and - a more frequent hazard - fending off colleagues dispatched to the field without language skills or common sense.

Why the change of heart? "We're asking the public to support us when things go bad," said Mr. Paseman, who retired in 2001 and lives near Williamsburg, Va. "People need to understand how difficult and fragile the whole human intelligence effort is."

There is also a less high-minded motive: revenge. In classic field officer fashion, Mr. Paseman and especially the other two recent C.I.A. memoirists - Melissa Boyle Mahle, an Arabic speaker who worked mostly in the Middle East during her 14-year career, and Lindsay Moran, who quit after five years and a single tour in the Balkans - relish the chance to expose bungling at headquarters.

"I don't think anyone outside the agency has any idea how dysfunctional the agency is," Ms. Moran said. "A lot of people inside do."

Neither she nor Ms. Mahle has any apologies for judgments that are sometimes harsh. "I understand that current senior management is not happy with my book," Ms. Mahle said with evident satisfaction.

None of the three latest books is likely to win major literary prizes, but all of them have a first-person authenticity on a subject often obscured by secrecy or bedecked with fantasy. Ms. Moran's memoir, "Blowing My Cover" (Putnam), is the breeziest read, with lots of detail about her love life. Ms. Mahle's book, "Denial and Deception" (Nation Books), is far more substantive, blending personal experiences with policy critiques. Mr. Paseman has the longest and most varied career to recount and seems to have the most affection for his former employer.

No rules have changed at the C.I.A. to unleash the autobiographers. Employees have always been permitted to publish their stories after the agency reviews the manuscripts to take out classified information, an agency spokesman said. (Not carried away by any new spirit of openness, he spoke only on condition of anonymity.)

But the number of manuscript pages submitted to the agency's Publications Review Board has nearly doubled over the last eight years. The reason, according to former agency officers, is changing attitudes.

Once upon a time, said J. Ransom Clark, who worked for the agency for 26 years, "Nobody talked." After several books in the 1970's exposed agents and defied censorship rules, writing about C.I.A. operations was viewed at the agency's Virginia headquarters as imprudent at best, traitorous at worst.

Then the cold war ended, loosening the lips of case officers who had fought Communism, from Central America to Afghanistan. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks reignited public interest in spying.

Now, Mr. Clark, a college administrator, said he had to scramble to keep his online bibliography of intelligence (http://intellit.muskingum.edu) up to date. In addition to memoirs, there are policy critiques and spy novels by veteran officers, like Michael Scheuer's two recent books on al Qaeda, published anonymously, and Gene Coyle's thriller, "The Dream Merchant of Lisbon."

Mr. Clark says the breakthrough for spy-and-tell books came in 1997 with the autobiography of a legendary operations officer, Duane R. Clarridge.

"The older generation thought, 'Why'd you go and write that?' " said Mr. Clarridge, now 72 and retired in California. "I pushed the envelope pretty hard, because I thought there was a lot of nonsense out there about the spy business."

Some recent authors have been inspired by the example of Robert Baer, who quit the agency after 22 years and says he wrote "See No Evil" in 2002 "out of anger" at the spy bureaucracy, which had ordered him polygraphed twice in one year because of what he considered groundless suspicions. It became a best seller and was picked up by Hollywood; George Clooney plays Mr. Baer in a forthcoming film, "Syriana."

Whatever the motives behind them, the recent books paint a strikingly detailed cumulative picture of the craft of espionage, along with a dispiriting sense of how headquarters can become a spy's wiliest adversary.

The authors explain the use of aliases and disguises, methods for shaking off surveillance teams and the myriad ways a cover identity may crumble. They describe how foreign agents are spotted, wooed and won: flattery, American visas, college scholarships, but mostly crisp $100 bills. Mr. Paseman, a banjo player, sometimes used bluegrass music to connect with potential sources. Both Ms. Mahle and Ms. Moran discuss how they handled a male target's disappointment on learning that romance was not the reason for their interest.

Could such revelations tip off an enemy? "It poses the problem of what really should remain secret," Mr. Clark said. "But I'm a true believer in the value of the American public being informed. I read a lot of these memoirs and rarely do I see anything that's going to hurt the security of the United States."

Not everyone is so sanguine. Martha Sutherland, who spent 18 years with the agency and now runs an art gallery in New York, was outraged that Ms. Moran's book recounts clandestine service training in detail.

"It was kind of a manual for our adversaries - here's how the C.I.A. trains its officers - all right there in one spot," Ms. Sutherland said. "I found it pretty despicable."

Ms. Moran, 35, noted that everything in her book was cleared by the agency. She said the real reason it has infuriated some former colleagues is that it punctures the mystique that hides C.I.A. bumbling.

"My guess is that the tone bothers them. It's lighthearted and cheeky, and they can't stand that," she said.

Some books are still blocked by censors. Jeffrey A. Sterling, a Farsi-speaking African-American who worked as a case officer from 1993 to 2002, said that the agency effectively gutted his memoir after he filed a discrimination lawsuit. Another would-be author, still officially under cover, said her book was banned because she had described C.I.A. officers' rowdy after-hours conduct. (The agency declined to comment on the handling of either book.)

Most recent authors, by contrast, said the agency had made only modest cuts. But they added that the censorship process reveals a deep institutional ambivalence toward publicity.

The C.I.A. review of Ms. Mahle's memoir, which the rules say should take 30 days, took more than a year. When the pages were already set, the censors suddenly came up with a new list of cuts, she said. The publisher had to black out several pages, including a passage already approved for publication in a journal, Middle East Policy, where it will appear soon.

"Go figure," Ms. Mahle said. "I find the process very mysterious and very subjective."

Mr. Paseman said that some of the 11 cuts demanded in his nearly 320 pages were head-scratchers. "They said, 'You can't refer to yourself as 'station chief,' " he recalled. "So I called myself 'chief of facility.' "

During the presidential campaign, the agency set off a political storm by permitting publication of "Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror," by Mr. Scheuer, a C.I.A. officer who once ran the unit tracking Osama bin Laden.

Since then, rumors have been rife that the new C.I.A. director, Porter Goss, would ban the tell-almost-all memoirs. The anonymous agency spokesman insisted no crackdown is planned. If a tightening ever does come, it may find at least some sympathy from one unexpected source.

"At the risk of 100 percent hypocrisy, I think it's a bad trend," said Mr. Baer, the bestselling C.I.A. memoirist, of the growing shelf of exposés. "For an intelligence agency to operate, it really has to operate in the dark. It has to have that mystique. Three or four books a year saying the emperor has no clothes could do real damage."

Copyright 2005*The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/15/books/15spyb.html

[WannaBeRSC]

The more I read the less comfortable I am. Preperation H, anyone? :wink:

[al_gy]

The more I read the less comfortable I am. Preperation H, anyone? :wink:...READ SOME MORE NOW LOL....

(élkhsaouna) resigns of Saddam Hussein of the defense body.


(élkhsaouna) presents an empowerment sheet in the defense an foreground from an wife and an daughter Saddam Hussein ( Reuters - archives ).

Foot Ziad (élkhsaouna) president body the defense of President the former Iraqi Saddam Hussein resignation of the body presidency and some American attorneys accused the domination on the defense procedures in an attempt besides (énthajhm) stepped. Less a sharpness in the the United States criticism in Iraq..

And said (élkhsaouna) he call Tuesday Mrs. Sajida Khiralah a wife the former Iraqi president and resignation decision informed of couple of the defense commission presidency.. And clarified that he is an explanation to her caused resignation some American attorneys want the control on the defense party inside the defense body and degraded Arab colleagues in her ..

From and between the personalities American which the defense body aggrieves Clark, Attorney General the former American, (ramzee) .. And (élkhsaouna) referred to both Clark and lawyer an other American (kourts) Doppler , expressed an annoyance for the transitional government from statements for frequent criticisms in addition which criticize the American occupation for Iraq. Supports there American..

And the defense party comprises of Saddam Hussein from 1500 lawyers in addition volunteers attributes to no what diminish of 22 the senior afforded the United States from numerous countries from between her from the attorneys. And France and Jordan and Iraq and Libya.. And a delimitation did not occur in country on for the previous (msjoun) now in a American prison Iraq president prosecution..



Tribunal front Sadam (élkhasa)((élfrnseea) archives .

And clarify (élkhsaouna) there allegations become comfortable the big daughter seeks to him for the current defense party exchange which adopts an headquarter from Jordan for Saddam Hussein, in an international emergencies commission for Iraq, ran. The declaration of her last month in the Malayasian capital (koualalmbour) ..

And seek the commission, based to the former Malayasian Prime Minister the Mohammad lecturer during the declaration of massage, bandage the fair prosecution for Saddam Hussein and an other number from arrested now government officials with him . In Iraq.. The commission catenate in addition to the Mohammad lecturer and, both from President former Algerian Clark (ramzee) and Ahmad Bila Bin and former French foreign minister Douma (roulan) ..

And mentioned (élkhsaouna) become comfortable Saddam Hussein all coils transported the defense and without flag during travel to Libya of father proposition from office.. Have and family Saddam Hussein and (élkhsaouna) measured the American forces for the president after a detention of him for the defense.


The former Iraqi in December / December 2003,..


The source.: Asoshiyeted Bars

[al_gy]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- John Brown. Leon Czolgosz. Bernardine Dohrn. These are the faces of American terrorism -- as much as Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph or Osama bin Laden.

All of them are reminders that terrorism is as old as America itself, having manifested itself in many different ways and for many different causes.

These individuals share space with Ku Klux Klan robes, anarchist bombs and grizzly reminders of the September 11, 2001, attacks at "The Enemy Within: Terror in America," an exhibit at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.

"We want people to come away with an understanding that this is not the first time that Americans have felt terror; that there were other periods in American history when groups either from within or outside the country used terrorism against us," says Peter Earnest, the museum's executive director.

The exhibit brings these characters to life: Brown led the militant abolitionist raid on the Harpers Ferry Arsenal in October 1859. Czolgosz, an anarchist, assassinated President William McKinley in 1901. And Dohrn belonged to the Weather Underground, which carried out a bombing campaign in the 1970s in pursuit of an anti-capitalist and anti-war agenda.

Their rationalizations are as interesting as the characterizations. In an exclusive taped interview with the museum, Dohrn (who surrendered after years in hiding) talks about bomb-making; life on the run; and why she and her comrades shouldn't be called terrorists -- because they targeted buildings, rather than people.

As for Brown, convicted of treason and executed two months after the Harpers Ferry raid, Earnest says he is "a classic case" of the debate about defining terrorism: "One man's patriot is another man's terrorist."

Earnest says the museum, which is independent and privately run, has no political agenda.

The exhibit's introduction cites the government's definition of terrorism -- "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives" -- and says its aim is to address how and when Americans felt under threat, and from whom.

Some displays we might easily recognize as terrorism-related, including a look inside a militia member's closet and photos of a bomb set off inside the U.S. Capitol by members of the Weather Underground. But there are also harder to categorize scenes, such as the British sacking of Washington in 1814 and wartime sabotage by German agents in 1916.

While many visit the museum to spy high-tech gadgets and gather insights on the CIA, KGB, Interpol and other such organizations, Earnest and the museum founder, Milton Maltz, think terrorism is a natural fit with the museum's main theme -- spying.

After all, Earnest says, both those who perpetrate terrorist attacks and those who work to prevent them work behind the scenes, sometimes with minimal support and resources, to gather intelligence and act -- sometimes violently, but most always covertly.

Homegrown terror
Perhaps the timeliest reminder of U.S. terror, on the heels of Edgar Ray Killen's recent conviction for his role in the 1964 killing of three civil rights workers, deals with the Ku Klux Klan.

The display recounts how former Confederate soldiers founded the Klan after the Civil War, ostensibly to help war widows and their children. But soon after, the KKK began a violent campaign against former slaves and whites sympathetic to them.

Photos and films detail some of the odious acts carried out by the Klan, including a century's worth of murders and bombings spread across the South. While much of that violence was concentrated in three concerted waves and has been largely stamped out, the KKK still sputters on in places.

"Would blacks have considered the Klan a form of state terrorism in places where the local sheriff and others were involved? Absolutely," says Earnest, explaining why it forms a large part of the exhibit.

A poster from June 1964 catches the eye and reminds you anew that this brand of American terrorism is not a distant memory. It shows three missing civil rights worker -- Andrew Schwerner, James Earl Cheney and Michael Goodman - who disappeared near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Would blacks have considered the Klan a form of state terrorism in places where the local sheriff and others were involved? Absolutely.
-- Spy museum director Peter EarnestJust last month, after 41 years, Killen -- a part-time preacher and purported Klan member -- was convicted of manslaughter in their deaths.

Reaction or overreaction?
"The Enemy Within" does not spare U.S. authorities -- federal, state, local or otherwise. The companion guide to the exhibit suggests that slavery and some tactics used in the frontier wars against American Indians could also constitute terrorism.

Whatever one's political take, Earnest says the exhibit not only deals with how Americans have reacted to terrorism, but also "in some cases, [how they have] overreacted to the threat of terrorism."

A display about the detention of Japanese-Americans, which took place after the Japanese empire's attack on Pearl Harbor, fits this bill.

Another example relates to the first so-called Red Scare, in which the U.S. government and public linked fears about domestic disorder and revolution to the Russian Revolution, which recently had thrust communists to power.

Rare footage shows a bombing AT the home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in 1919. This attack was part of a nationwide bombing campaign in which anarchists, many of them foreign-born, targeted industrialists and politicians.

Such violence prompted a nationwide government crackdown, known as the Palmer Raids, which included thousands of arrests and deportations. The campaign also gave a career boost to J. Edgar Hoover -- then Palmer's deputy and later head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Eventually, there was a public outcry about tactics used in the Palmer Raids, as well as a scandal about innocent people being deported. This ruckus led not only to the end of the raids and deportations, but the founding of the FBI and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Historical events speak to a debate currently resonating in American society: How do you balance civil liberties and national security? Visitors can offer their take via computer polls placed all around the exhibit.

If these questions aren't relevant enough, consider the last image as you leave: a fragment of one of the commercial airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11.

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June 23, 2005

Mossad Attack upon the United States ‘Imminent’ As Massive Power Struggle Erupts In Washington over Israeli Lasers Provided To Iraqi Insurgents and Israel Draws Closer To China

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Russian Subscribers

Russian Intelligence Analysts are reporting today that the United States Military Forces operating in the Iraqi War Theater have come under sophisticated bombing attacks utilizing Laser Technology known only to exist in Israel’s vast arsenal of weapons, and as we can read as reported by the New York Times News Service in their article titled "Redesigned bombs pushing U.S. toll higher" and which says;

"American casualties from bomb attacks in Iraq have reached new heights in the last two months as insurgents have begun to deploy devices that leave armored vehicles increasingly vulnerable, according to military records. The surge in attacks, officials say, has coincided with the appearance of significant advancements in bomb design, including the use of "shaped" charges that concentrate the blast and give it a better chance of penetrating armored vehicles, causing higher casualties. Another change, a senior military officer said, has been the detonation of explosives by infrared lasers, an innovation aimed at bypassing electronic jammers used to block bombs from detonating."

The specific Laser Device used in these bombings has been identified as being a modified version of that produced by the vast International Arms Company named Israel Aircraft Industries for their ‘Smart Bomb’s, and as we can read about from their website about this bomb:

"MBT produces conversion kits for "smart bombs": the 5m-CEP Griffin LGB (Laser Guided Bomb) and the NGLGB (Next Generation Laser Guided Bomb). These weapons provide Air Forces with high precision, 12km standoff strike capability against ground targets such as bunkers, entrenched tanks, armored vehicles and other hardened targets. This capability enables to attack highly defended targets while eliminating aircraft and aircrew losses, and ensures cost effective operations, killing more targets with less ammunition. The conversion kits are compatible with the Mk-82/83/84 GP and other bombs. The kit comprises a front guidance section and a rear fins section, which are attached to a standard bomb, converting it to a "smart" bomb. MBT's smart bombs are combat proven. They can be carried by many types of fighter aircraft, and used with all available designators."

It should also be noted that the claims by the Israelis that this bomb has been ‘combat tested’ is indeed true as it was the primary weapon of choice for the policy of targeted assassinations of Palestinians, and which in defiance of promises made to the United States the War Criminal Sharon has begun again, and as we can read as reported by the British Times Online News Service in their article titled “Militants fire at Palestinian PM as truce with Israel unravels" and which says;

"Israel, angered by an upsurge in violence, had given the Palestinians few concessions and turned the screw further today when it confirmed it had resumed a policy of targeted assassinations of senior militants, a measure it had confined only to activists caught breaking the ceasefire declared during February’s Sharm el-Sheikh summit."

As the United States also places further sanctions upon the Israeli Government for both their massive spying operations being uncovered at the highest levels of American Political, Economic and Media leaderships and the passing onto China of some of the most secret United States weapons technology, the Israeli Government has decided to abandon its support of American and switch its allegiance towards the Chinese, and as we can read as reported by the Jerusalem Post News Service in their article titled "China, Israel discuss expanding defense ties" and which says;

"Expansion of defense ties with Israel was on the agenda during talks with his Israeli counterparts this week, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said Tuesday. Li, who spoke at the start of a meeting with the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, did not go into detail about the current dispute between Israel and the US over the Israel upgrade of Chinese Harpy drones. He said that during his visit he had held talks on expanding ties in the fields of "trade, army, culture, education and tourism."

Of the greatest concern to the Americans however is what the Mossad had recently transported to the United States from Mexico under the direction of one of Israel’s most known and trusted arms dealers who has been arrested in Mexico, and as we can read as reported by the Mexidata News Service in their article titled "Intrigue behind arrest of Pakistani arms dealer in Mexico" and which says;

"Convicted Pakistani arms dealer Arif Durrani was captured in Rosarito Beach, Baja California, Mexico, by a special team of agents sent from Mexico City, on June 12. And while Mexican government officials initially gave out little information on why he was detained, once the decision was reached to deport Durrani (on immigration charges), according to the Associated Press a statement was made: “Durrani faces an arrest warrant in the U.S. for trafficking in anti-aircraft missiles.”

Durrani, who following his arrest was taken to Mexico City, was put on a June 15 flight that made a stop in Los Angeles, California. Upon landing in the U.S., Durrani was taken into custody by federal officials for illegally exporting military aircraft parts, according to a 1999 indictment unsealed the following day.

Yet there are other possible scenarios that could clarify the arrest: Durrani was still trafficking in illicit arms; he was organizing a Mexico-based terrorist plot against the U.S.; or he was about to go public with allegations regarding the Iran-Contra affair.

Durrani is definitely a shady character, an international arms dealer from Pakistan who once served prison time for selling arms to Iran in the Iran-Contra scandal. As well, his mere presence in Rosarito Beach, located just south of the U.S.-Mexico border from San Diego, is suspicious. During his residency in Rosarito Beach, Durrani could have been shipping contraband across the border, or even organizing a terrorist plot.

But if he was a national security threat, why did U.S. authorities allow him to openly live in Rosarito Beach for over one year? Following Durrani’s release from prison and deportation from the U.S., he ultimately moved to Rosarito Beach where he operated openly. And without doubt U.S. authorities knew where he was. In fact, Durrani well may have been in Mexico with the tacit agreement of the U.S. government.

Professor Alan Block at Pennsylvania State University states, “there was a deal made with the U.S. immigration authorities that permitted him to live in Baja California. I am absolutely certain that they knew he was there.” As well, Durrani was once seen in Rosarito Beach driving a Mercedes with U.S. government license plates, which he said belonged to a friend. Could the U.S. authorities have allowed a known arms trafficker to operate freely along the border for over one year? Another possibility is that U.S. officials did not consider him a threat because Durrani had worked for them. Durrani has long maintained that he worked for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and that he sold arms to Iran per instructions that came from Oliver North when the latter was with the National Security Council. Durrani’s legal defense is that he was North’s “fall guy” in the Iran-Contra affair."

As Russian Intelligence Analysts have previously reported on about the Iran Contra Affair, that operation was entirely organized by both the Israeli Mossad and their American Intelligence Organizations sympathizers for the purpose of blackmailing the then United States President, Ronald Reagan, over his threats to end American support to Israel, and as we can read as reported by the American Conservative Monitor News Service in their article titled "Reagan, Begin, and Israel", and which says;

"In December of 1981, the Israeli Knesset led by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, passed the "Golan Heights Law" officially annexing the territory captured by Israel from Syria in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Syria had previously used the territory to repeatedly shell Israeli civilian areas down below the Heights, and with massive public support, the Israeli government decided to solidify - in law - its determination never to return to such a situation. Till this day, there is a consensus in Israel, not to return the Golan Height to Syrian control. Reagan, angry, withdrew the "strategic relationship" offer. As a response to Reagan's previous statement about foreign countries making American policy, and his withdrawal of the "offer," Begin gave a rousing speech, reminding all who would listen that Israel is not a "Banana Republic". Israel would also not let foreign powers interfere with its pursuit of its vital security needs, such as securing the Golan Heights."

As many American Presidents have learned, and as the present one is learning now, it is a frightful process for any country to contemplate, let alone actually begin a course of confrontation with Israel. However, with that being the old way of dealing with Israel the present American President, according to Kremlin insiders, has previously stated to President Putin that, ‘This problem is going to be solved once and for all.”

With last weeks events though and as we had previously reported on in our June 19th report titled "United States Air Force Put on Highest Alert Level After Israeli F-16s Attempt To Invade US Airspace in ‘Bombing Run’ Towards West Coast and Mid-West Regions of America", it remains to be seen who will actually win this Secret War between the United States and Israel.

But to whatever the outcome of these present events pulling the entire world closer to all out war, it remains a fact that the United States has indeed embarked upon a course of action to radically change the entire Middle East, even if it means the destruction of Israel, and as we can read as reported by the Australian ABC News Service in their article titled "Condoleezza Rice concedes Mid-East policy failure" and which says;

"Now to that very candid statement by America's most senior diplomat. The US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has described America's foreign policy in the Middle East over the past six decades as a failure. She made the statements in a speech calling for democratic reform in the Arab world, at the American University in Cairo overnight. It's the first time a US official has delivered such a tough public message in the heart of the Middle East. Critics of the Bush administration are describing it as hollow but risky rhetoric, while supporters say it was a bold and necessary speech at a critical time in history for the region."

It is no secret to any Government or peoples in the world, with the exception of the American people, that the only solution to the Middle East is the changing of Israel. It is also no secret to any Government or peoples in the world that Israel is fully prepared to see the destruction of the world rather than to see its policies change.

And the events of September 11, 2001 prove beyond anyone’s guessing the massive power of Israel to do exactly what they say they are going to do, even to the destruction of the whole world.

© June 23, 2005, EU and US all rights reserved.

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Condoleezza Rice concedes Mid-East policy failure
The World Today - Tuesday, 21 June , 2005 12:18:00
Reporter: Alison Caldwell
TANYA NOLAN: Now to that very candid statement by America's most senior diplomat. The US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has described America's foreign policy in the Middle East over the past six decades as a failure.

She made the statements in a speech calling for democratic reform in the Arab world, at the American University in Cairo overnight. It's the first time a US official has delivered such a tough public message in the heart of the Middle East.

Critics of the Bush administration are describing it as hollow but risky rhetoric, while supporters say it was a bold and necessary speech at a critical time in history for the region.

Alison Caldwell reports.

ALISON CALDWELL: An invitation only audience of government officials, diplomats and academics gathered to hear the speech by the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

And they were stunned by what they heard.

CONDOLEEZA RICE: For 60 years, my country – the United States – pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East. And we achieved neither. Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.

ALISON CALDWELL: From Presidents Eisenhower to Clinton, Condoleezza Rice was admitting that America had failed in its approach to the Middle East.

CONDOLEEZA RICE: The fear of free choices can no longer justify the denial of liberty. It is time to abandon the excuses that are made to avoid the hard work of democracy.

SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL: Making these kinds of abstract, ideological statements suggest that there is a foreign policy when there isn't.

ALISON CALDWELL: Sidney Blumenthal was a Senior Advisor and assistant to former President Bill Clinton.

He says the speech will only undermine the US in the Arab world.

SIDNEY BLUEMTHAL: The problem with making such abstract generalisations is that everything takes place in terms of specific realities. And this avoids the realities.

Let me give you an example in terms of Iran – making a statement about democracy in Iran is well and good. However, President Bush made such a statement and criticised Iran, days before their election.

It was politically ill-timed and gave impetus to the reactionary forces within Iran. Anybody who was familiar with the region could have known and given him a realistic assessment that that would be the obvious result.

Why that was not told to the President is a question only the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor can answer. But it was an unfortunate error on the part of the President.

FRANK GAFFNEY: It may be dramatic, but it doesn't mean it isn't true.

ALISON CALDWELL: Supporters of the Bush administration say the speech is a reflection of a necessary change in policy in the Middle East.

Frank Gaffney is with the Centre for Security Policy in Washington.

FRANK GAFFNEY: American efforts to appease and accommodate dictators has not produced the desired result. It may have produced some tactical advantages from time to time, but in the end it's been, I think, a failure overall.

ALISON CALDWELL: It's risky though, isn't it, saying something like this. If the US really wants democracy in the Middle East, isn't the US saying yes, were all for more Islamist governments, because of the popularity of Islamist parties in the Middle East?

FRANK GAFFNEY: I do worry that the administration seems not to be paying as much attention, or certainly putting as much effort into the creation of institutions in these countries that have known no democracy, that are necessary to ensure that you have more than just one election.

The old line one man, one vote, one time is not a terribly salutary alternative to what we've known in the past because as a practical matter, one would be substituting an Islamo-facist form of tyranny for a secular one in many cases, and I think what Condy Rice is talking about is a democracy in which there may be Islamist parties represented, but they are not able to impose their will on either the majority or in other cases, perhaps the minority in a way that would preclude the workings of a democracy over time.

TANYA NOLAN: Frank Gaffney is from the Centre for Security Policy in Washington.

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Trojans from China attacking UK


Dan Ilett
silicon.com
June 30, 2005, 15:55 BST


Tell us your opinion

Cyberattacks on the UK's critical nation infrastructure could well be coming from China, according to MessageLabs






Malicious programs the UK government has said are attacking key business and government bodies are being sent from computers in China, according to an email security firm.



But experts at MessageLabs said it would be inaccurate to conclude Chinese hackers are responsible for the Trojan horse attacks as the servers could be controlled remotely from anywhere.



Mark Sunner, CTO for MessageLabs, said: "MessageLabs can confirm that the source of the IP addresses originates in China. But there's a much bigger and broader problem here. The 'China' word is not meaningless but it doesn't mean they are the perpetrators."



Earlier this month the British government's National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC) claimed that waves of "industrial-strength" Trojan attacks were hitting 300 organisations in the critical national infrastructure (CNI). The CNI is made up of key financial, transport, military, health, energy and government organisations.



Although NISCC would not disclose the exact origin of the Trojan attacks, it said they were coming from the Far East.



Yesterday MessageLabs said it had intercepted 17 new Trojans that appeared to be the sort NISCC had warned of. But they were targeted at one company, not at the whole CNI. Sunner said these attacks always aim at a small number of organisations, and the terms "information warfare" and "industrial strength" were misleading in this context.



"We are not making these claims," he said. "We need to be careful that we are not influencing people that way. In the case of these targeted attacks, it's one-offs. The reality is that we've seen a number of source IP addresses in China. But when you try and trace a botnet, quite frequently you often find that it originates from another botnet."



But Bob Ayers, former director of the Computer Emergency Response Team for the US Department of Defense and MD of consulting firm Ayers & Associates, was sceptical that the attacks were coming from China.



He said: "I'm not entirely of the opinion that 'these attacks are coming from China' is accurate. It's not what I would call a government initiative — I don't see how they can know who's doing it. There's no way you can differentiate."



He added: "You can spoof a site address and make it look as if it's coming from China. The question is what is NISCC doing about it? Is it just sending out alerts? I have a feeling that it is and is providing a citizen's advice bureau."



When contacted, antivirus companies Computer Associates, F-Secure, Kaspersky Labs and Sophos refused to say where the Trojan attacks stemmed from.

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Spyware blizzard shows no sign of let up
John Leyden, The Register 2005-06-29

Hackers are continuing to target British workers with a series of specially crafted Trojan horse attacks two weeks after a UK government agency issued an unprecedented security warning. The latest batch of malware again targets a small network of specifically targeted domains in assaults designed to slip under the corporate radar and allow hackers to steal privileged information or launch further attacks from compromised systems.

In the latest attack, email security firm MessageLabs intercepted a small number of emails containing malicious software sent to would-be victims at just four domains. The majority of these 17 emails were bound for addresses at an unnamed international security organisation that was also targeted in a similar attack earlier this month, MessageLabs reports.

Using body text potentially relevant to the target audience, the email encouraged intended recipients to open an attached Word document. The attack exploits a well-known Word macro vulnerability (MS03-050) to inject hostile code, in this case an embedded Trojan, onto vulnerable systems.

MessageLabs reports growing incidents of targeted email attacks against businesses and organisations over the last year. Earlier this month the UK's National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre (NISCC) issued a warning about the industrial espionage potential threat posed by these attacks to governments and large corporates. Mark Sunner, Chief Technology Officer at MessageLabs, said: "The motivation behind today's new email-borne threats is far more sinister than traditional methods of large-scale attacks. New criminal methods show a preference for selecting a particular target, whether an individual or an organisation, to attack for perhaps financial or competitive gain. The architects behind the bespoke Trojan attacks we are witnessing aim to steal confidential corporate information and intellectual property."

"In this evolving environment of customised attacks, organisations must adopt a more holistic approach to email security management; implementing stringent, formalised email security policies, alongside truly multi-layered, proactive technology measures to ensure protection against all known and unknown threats," he added. ®

Infected emails typically contain the subject line "FW : 0627" and body text (as follows) purporting to be from the Times of India:

THE TIMES OF INDIA

Monday, June 27, 2005

China's new JL-2 missile prevents US from the Taiwan affairs

China has successfully flight-tested a submarine-launched missile that U.S. officials say marks a major advance in Beijing's long-range nuclear program. The Bush administration has expressed new worries about China's military buildup. The JL-2 missile was launched from the new submarine, known as the Type 094, said a U.S. official familiar with it.

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DMCC targets half of world gold flows

By Salah Eldin Eltayeb


GENERAL Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and the UAE Defence Minister, yesterday announced the establishment of the Dubai Metals and Commodities Centre (DMCC) at an elite gathering of businessmen, government officials and media.

"We want to make Dubai the leading gold market and refinery centre to maintain the example we have set for the future of this country," Gen. Shaikh Mohammed said.

"To support the new project we have decided to set up three refineries within the complex. We shall try hard and do our best to ensure that half of the world gold production flows through Dubai in the coming few years. We have the will, determination and the skill to pursue the goal," Gen. Shaikh Mohammed declared.

Hamed Kazim, Financial Adviser of the DMCC, said the new centre will provide a full range of facilities for trading in gold, diamonds and key commodities and will be a free zone offering 100 per cent ownership and a 50-year tax holiday to resident companies.

"The DMCC will provide a superb proposition for global players in the gold, diamond and commodity business," said Kazim. He pointed out that the strategic location of Dubai, its world class facilities and its secure and regulated environment are all qualities available to companies that decide to base themselves at DMCC.

The strategic partners for the resident companies in the gold industry will include banks, refineries, jewellery and coin dealers and central banks. Those from diamond industry will partner with banks, jewellery dealers as well as other international centres, while commodities organisations will work with trading companies and international exchanges.

The physical location of Dubai is a huge asset in this project as the city is close to many of the key markets, he said. Transparency and flexibility are key objectives in establishing a regulatory environment that is of international standards.

The DMCC will have an Advisory Board whose responsibilities will be to draw up the strategic priorties for the centre and who will also be tasked with evolving plans for its development. Besides Hamed Kazim, the members of the board are Terry Smeeton, who has been involved with the bullion operation of the Bank of England, Farouq Rattonsey (diamond), Tim Walker (commodities), and Sultan bin Sulayem.

Terry Smeeton, who has been given the specific responsibility for gold, said the gold market mainly depends on consumers and investors being prepared to buy and hold gold and Dubai is essentially the physical market.

"The Dubai Metal and Commodity Centre will be complementary to, rather than as a competitor of, the London market. Dubai, unlike London is primarily a physical centre with great potential to develop its standing as a supplier of gold to the whole of the Middle East and Asian regions as well as jewellery for its already successful and growing tourist industry," said Smeeton.

He said there will be a Dubai Gold Market Management Committee, composed of representatives of various interests that will meet regularly to discuss main issues and problems facing Dubai gold market. "We have clearly discussed the matter of storing gold with the UAE Central Bank officials, but I do not at present know whether it would be possible or desirable for the Central Bank to provide such facilities to participants in the Dubai market," Smeeton said.

He said the standing and quality of production of the present gold refineries in Dubai is very high, but there is the absence of a refinary that meets the standards required to gain admission to the London Good Delivery list of refiners, which is a negative for Dubai.

Dr Mohammed Khalfan bin Kharbash, Minister of State for Industrial and Financial Affairs, said Dubai has to maintain its position as a leading regional business centre by creating series of initiatives to develop and upgrade business in the region and international markets. "Leaders in this country have chosen to be in the front saddle; that can only be achieved by planning a clear strategy to adhere to," the minister said.

Essa Al Ghurair, director, Al Ghurair Investments, and Chairman of the new Gold Refinery, said his group is setting up a refinery that meets international standards with a capacity of 100 tonnes a year. "We shall work hard to reflect the quality of Dubai and establish a brand that equals to none in the Middle East," he added.

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DMCC targets half of world gold flows
Essa Al Ghurair, director, Al Ghurair Investments, and Chairman of the new Gold Refinery, said his group is setting up a refinery that meets international standards with a capacity of 100 tonnes a year. "We shall work hard to reflect the quality of Dubai and establish a brand that equals to none in the Middle East," he added.

Israel to open office in Dubai
JERUSALEM, May 15 (UPI) -- Israel is planning to open a commercial office in Dubai, in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported Sunday.

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The Foreign Ministry's spokesman, Marc Regev, told United Press International he couldn't confirm the report. Asked whether he denies it, he reiterated: I cannot confirm the report.

According to Yediot Aharonot the mission would be low profile: It would not fly the Israeli flag and the diplomats serving there would carry foreign, not Israeli, passports.

The newspaper said secret contacts with Dubai have been going on for more than a year and three emissaries will go there shortly.

Israel has full diplomatic ties with three Arab states -- Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania and recently Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was in Mauritania for a few hours. He has often talked of establishing ties with more Arab states.

Copyright 2005 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

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About Dubai Internet City

Dubai Internet City is a strategic base for companies targeting emerging markets in a vast region extending from the Middle East to the Indian subcontinent, and Africa to the CIS countries, covering 2 billion people with GDP $ 6.7 trillion.

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FBI Launches Sting Against Top Warez Sites
June 30, 2005
Thomas Mennecke


Everything has a beginning on the Internet. The material found on BitTorrent, eDonkey2000 and even the Newsgroups have their origins. Many times, movies - especially prereleased ones - originate from "Top Sites." Top sites are the tip of the piracy iceberg, where material typically trickles down to more common forms of exchange. Yesterday, the FBI arrested Chirayu Patel who ran a top site server.

The FBI had been posing for a considerable amount of time as server operators, inviting people to upload and download material. Once a solid relationship had been established between the FBI and top warez sites, the trap had been set. It was only a matter of time until the FBI had collected enough evidence to make an arrest. While the FBI has only announced the arrest of one individual, it is expected that more information will be released today implicating additional people.

According to Restless.ugtech.net, who broke this news event, the FBI ran a server name "Chud" and "Lad". They were administered by an undercover agent named "Griffen." The warrant, which was released yesterday, named "killaz, marvel/cartel, cin, sidar, dact, korax, bourbon, and burner." When more information is released today, more specific information on these individuals will be available.

Chirayu Patel, aka "Dact" was arrested 9 AM yesterday. During the arrest, police seized his computers and burned DVD/CD discs. More troubling, he was told the police were working with the FBI to "round up people that were on a FBI run site." The story concludes, "ITS TIME FOR EVERYONE BIG TO GO HIDE."

According to the Mercury News, two FBI servers and two warez server contained 27 terabytes of information. Such pirated material as the movies "Star Wars", "Batman Begins" existed, while software valued at almost $400,000 also was seized.

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America's spy software scandal
Michelle Malkin (archive)

July 9, 2003

Did Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have access to a U.S. computer tracking program that enabled them to monitor our intelligence-gathering efforts and financial transactions? If so, who is responsible for allowing the program to fall into their hands? And who else among America's enemies might have access to the tracking system?

It's an explosive spy software scandal that no one in official Washington wants to investigate.

This complex, tangled story began two decades ago, when a tiny private company called Inslaw Inc. developed a software package to help U.S. attorneys' offices in large urban districts keep tabs on their criminal prosecutors' caseloads. The program, dubbed the Prosecutor's Management Information System (PROMIS), was effective and popular. It allowed a prosecutor to locate defendants and witnesses, track motions and monitor ongoing investigations. In 1982, Inslaw won a large Justice Department contract to implement the system nationwide.

In the meantime, Inslaw also developed privately owned enhancements to PROMIS. Despite contractual guarantees of Inslaw's proprietary rights to the enhanced version of PROMIS, the Justice Department essentially commandeered the improved program for its own uses without paying for it. Inslaw was forced into bankruptcy and began an endless fight with the Justice Department to recoup its losses.

In the course of their court battles, Inslaw founder Bill Hamilton and his wife innocently stumbled upon shocking national security revelations. Former Attorney General Ed Meese, the Hamiltons concluded, had conspired to force Inslaw into bankruptcy so that an old Meese crony, California businessman Earl Brian, could take over the company's assets. The Hamiltons obtained information through sworn affidavits of several individuals that suggested Meese, Brian, high-ranking Justice Department official Peter Videnieks and others wanted to modify and distribute the enhanced PROMIS software with "back-door" capabilities for covert intelligence operations.

Sound preposterous?

In 1987, a federal judge blasted the Justice Department for stealing PROMIS. The government, Judge George Bason said, stole Inslaw's software through "trickery, fraud, and deceit" with "contempt for both the law and any principle of fair dealing." The House Judiciary Committee also found in 1992 that there was "strong evidence" the Justice Department had conspired to steal the PROMIS program. An internal Justice Department memo made public by the committee revealed that the Justice Department had secretly turned over a copy of PROMIS to the Israeli government.

An extensive four-part series by Insight magazine reporter Kelly Patricia O'Meara retraced a lengthy investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police two years ago, which "uncovered a network involving friend and foe alike that may be using PROMIS and systems like it for a variety of illegal activities worldwide."

In June 2001, Jerry Seper of The Washington Times reported that former FBI agent and convicted spy Robert Hanssen sold an enhanced version of PROMIS for $2 million to Russian crime figures, who in turn are suspected of selling a black-market version of it to Osama bin Laden.

More recently, the International Currency Review, a London-based financial newsletter, reportedly obtained Iraqi intelligence documents alleging that PROMIS came into Saddam Hussein's possession under the Bush I administration. The publication's editor says the documents were owned by Hussein's half-brother, Barzan al Takriti.

And last week, British news outlets suggested that the resignation of top Bush terrorism intelligence official Paul Redmond was tied to his investigation of Hanssen and the PROMIS theft. The Department of Homeland Security claims that Redmond, a legendary spy catcher who came out of retirement to take the Bush administration position and had served only three months, left for "health reasons."

The odor of a cover-up is unmistakable. To this day, the Justice Department, FBI and other government agencies continue to insist that they have never possessed or used any pirated version of PROMIS. Career Justice officials who oversaw the theft of the Hamiltons' software program in the 1980s remain in place today. And according to my sources, the 9-11 Commission created by President Bush has declined to investigate this spy software fiasco and its possible role in facilitating the terrorist attacks on America.

Inslaw deserves to be compensated. More importantly, the American people deserve to know the truth: Did government greed and bureaucratic hubris lead to a wholesale sellout of our national security? The Bush White House's credibility is on the line.

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http://restless.ugtech.net/

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July 8, 2005

British Commando Units Seal off Israeli Embassy in London in Wake of Attacks as US Congressman Suspected of being Israeli Spy Is Detained While Attempting to Flee to Israel

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Russian Subscribers

Russian Intelligence reports circulating in the aftermath of a series of bombings in Britain’s Capital City of London are showing that Elite Commando Units of the British Army have sealed off and may have entered into the Israeli Embassy in London in an attempt to detain the Israeli Security Attachment assigned to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is currently in the British Capital, and as we can read as reported by the Associated Press News Service in their article titled "Netanyahu Changed Plans Due to Warning" and which says;

"British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said. Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said."

Israeli Government Sources have since denied that they had received any prior warnings, and as we can read as reported by the Associated Press News Service in their article titled “Israel denies 'early information' about attacks" and which says, "A Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, had said earlier that British police warned the Israeli Embassy in London of possible terror attacks minutes before the first explosion. “There was no early information about terrorist attacks,” Shalom told Israel Army Radio later. “After the first explosion an order was given that no one move until things become clear."

Whatever to which version of this warning is the truth, the similarities to the events surrounding the terrorists attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and where claims were also made that Israeli citizens in the United States received prior warnings to those attacks (and which Israel has repeatedly denied) are important to notice say these Russian Intelligence reports.

Of the terrorist attacks in London we can read as reported by the Times of London in their article titled “Rush hour blasts bring terror to heart of London" and which says, "More than 33 people were killed today when London was hit by an al-Qaeda-style series of bomb blasts targeting rush-hour commuters in Tube trains and on a double-decker bus. The death toll was given this afternoon by Britain Paddick, Assistant Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, who said: "This clearly was a callous attack on purely innocent members of the public deliberately designed to kill and injure innocent members of the public." Mr Paddick said four blasts hit London shortly before 9 am."

Russian Intelligence reports are showing that prior to these blasts an ‘unusual’ amount of telephonic activity took place between the Israeli Embassy in London and the United States, and that in the hours just prior to these London attacks a number of high ranking American Government Officials began preparations to flee to Israel.

The highest ranking member of these American Officials attempting to flee to Israel is reported to be a United States Congressman and former pilot for both the United States and Israeli Air Forces named Randy "Duke" Cunningham, and who in the United States crackdown of the massive Israeli spying operation in America was recently raided by the American Counter-Terrorist Forces, and as we can read as reported by the Copley News Service in their article titled "Agents raid Cunningham home, MZM office, yacht" and which says;

"In a dramatic sign of a fast-moving, bicoastal investigation, federal agents searched the Rancho Santa Fe home of Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham yesterday, along with the Washington office of a defense contractor linked to the Republican congressman and the yacht where Cunningham had lived."

"The federal task force that conducted the coordinated, surprise raids on opposite coasts included agents from the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, said Debbie Weierman, an FBI spokeswoman in Washington. "The operation is part of an ongoing investigation," she said. It has been known for at least two weeks that the FBI and a federal grand jury in San Diego are investigating Cunningham's ties to Mitchell Wade, founder of MZM Inc."

Of the much secretive MZM Inc. not very much is known other than the speculation that their vast world-wide resources and location in the United States has provided much secret information to the Israeli government, and as some have speculated is in fact the ‘Central Hub’ for Israeli spying in the United States. From their website MZM Inc. says this about themselves;

“Since its founding in 1993, MZM, Inc. has been solving enigmatic problems for an ever wider range of government and private sector entities. Today, its special capabilities in providing creative and innovative solutions in a rapidly changing environment have been recognized as "state of the art" by clients both domestically and abroad. Our traditional strengths in the areas of intelligence collection and analysis, where application of the most recently developed technologies are brought to bear, are enhanced by expanding capabilities in the national security and policy planning fields and enabled by a highly motivated and experienced staff.”

But to a perhaps much truer version of this secret company, and its Israeli National Leader named Mitchell Wade, we can read as reported by the American Free Press News Service in their article titled "Eaten alive by corruption" and which says;

"The stirring tale of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, congressman and bon vivant, becomes more entertaining by the day, and it is far more instructive than another case of a missing white female. Cunningham was a decorated pilot in Vietnam who has oft campaigned on the claim that he is the original model for Top Gun. In 2003, he sold his house in Del Mar, a very upscale town north of San Diego. The buyer was Mitchell Wade, a defense contractor, who paid $1.675 million. Wade later resold the house at a $700,000 loss.

Now, either this makes Wade the only person in recent history to lose money on a San Diego real estate deal, or the guy paid way too much for the house. The deal is now under investigation by a grand jury. Cunningham in turn used the money he made from the Del Mar deal to buy a $2.55 million home in Rancho Santa Fe.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, Cunningham is living, rent-free, aboard a 42-foot yacht named the Duke Stir, which belongs to the said same Mitchell Wade. Since 2002, Wade's company, MZM Inc., has received $163 million in defense contracts. There the case stood until this week, when we learned from Copley News Service and The Washington Post that the boat-loving Cunningham was living on the Duke Stir only because he had sold his own boat, the Kelly C, a 65-foot flat-bottom riverboat, to Thomas Kontogiannis, a New York real estate developer.

Follow this closely: Kontogiannis buys the boat from Cunningham in the summer of 2002. In 2003, a mortgage company owned by Kontogiannis' nephew and daughter finances $1.1 million of the price of Cunnigham's new home in Rancho Santa Fe. Also, Kontogiannis never gets around to putting the Kelly C in his own name, so the Coast Guard still thinks it's owned by Cunningham. What a misunderstanding. My favorite quote, so far: Kontogiannis, when asked if he was doing Cunningham a favor by keeping the boat in his name while Kontogiannis paid $100,000 to redecorate it, said: "Why would I do that? I don't need the man." The pragmatic approach.

Kontogiannis does admit that he was looking for a pardon for his unfortunate 2003 conviction on kickback and bribery charges in connection with a bid-rigging scheme for New York City school computers. He said Cunningham steered him to a Washington law firm for this purpose, but it was "too Cunningham is very big on patriotism and the no-flag-burning amendment. Meantime, MZM is working on classified intelligence projects for the government. The company's literature says it helps the government with "enigmatic problems."

Of this US Congressman’s devotion to Israel there is no doubt, and as we can read from a speech he made to the United States Congress titled "A Vision of Peace in the Middle East, Remarks by Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham" and wherein he stated;

"Madam Speaker, my intent is to bring something different, something refreshing to a Special Order. As I listened to my colleagues on the other side, you would think that the White House and Republicans are mean-spirited, evil, and do not really care about the American public. I think it would be refreshing to listen to a Special Order that actually projects a vision. I wish it was my vision, Madam Speaker, but there are many great men that have tried to work on this, and the good news is that it is achievable. Now, tonight I only have 20 minutes left to speak. On Monday night, I will have a full hour, and I will expand. But, history has witnessed great men with a vision accomplishing some very difficult tasks, and that vision is a safe and secure Israel.

First, I want to tell why I think it is possible. This is coming from a pilot that flew in Vietnam and also flew in Israel in the 1970s. It comes from a Member of Congress that is a strong supporter of Israel but yet sees the possibility of Palestine living side-by-side with Israel and peace in the Middle East."

Russian Intelligence Analysts are also suggesting that US Congressman Cunningham’s main reason for attempting to flee to Israel could be his connection with the events we had mentioned in our June 19th report titled "United States Air Force Put on Highest Alert Level After Israeli F-16s Attempt To Invade US Airspace in ‘Bombing Run’ Towards West Coast and Mid-West Regions of America", and wherein we had said;

“Russian Intelligence Analysts are reporting today of the intercept of a bizarre intercept showing that the United States put its Northern Region Combat Air Force Units on their highest alert level yesterday after an attempt by 4 Israeli F-16 Combat Aircraft to penetrate US Airspace.

Israeli Combat Aircraft are currently stationed in Canada taking part in an exercise called ‘Maple Leaf’, and as we can read as reported by the Israeli Haaretz News Service in their article titled “Israel participating in aerial drill in Canada" and which says, “For the first time, the Israel Air Force is participating in a six-week international combat exercise in Canada. Israeli F-16 planes, a Boeing 707 airborne tanker and 150 air and ground crew personnel are taking part in the annual Maple Flag exercise held at Canadian air force base 4, Wing Cold Lake Air Weapons Range, in Alberta. The CLAWR covers 11,600 square kilometers and is the only tactical bombing range in Canada.”

The Canadian Air Force further describes this annual exercise as: "Exercise MAPLE FLAG is a six-week international air combat exercise held annually at 4 Wing Cold Lake, Alberta. The exercise, which will be taking place from May 15 to June 24 2005, provides Canadian and allied aircrew with realistic training in a modern simulated air combat environment, and emphasizes air operations involving large package coalition forces."

Prior to the arrival of these Israeli F-16 combat aircraft in Canada the United States had refused permission for their over flight of any United States areas with the speculation being that the reason behind this decision was due to Israel having converted their American built F-16’s to the carrying of Nuclear Weapons, and as we can read as reported by the Center For Defense Information in their report titled “Current World Nuclear Arsenals” and which states;

"Despite refusals to comment on the issue by the Israeli government, the Israelis clearly have a sizeable nuclear arsenal. There are two interesting loopholes in Israel's oft-repeated pledge never to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the region: The U.S. "introduced" weapons in the region in the 1950's when nuclear bombs were stored at Dharan, Saudi Arabia and at sea in the Mediterranean Sixth Fleet. Also, it is believed that Israel might not keep her nuclear weapons fully assembled -- keeping them "a screw away" from completion. The highly capable and well-equipped Israeli air force would more than suffice in the nuclear weapons delivery role, particularly with U.S.-supplied aircraft such as the F-4E and F-16."

This US Congressman’s unique knowledge of both United States and Israeli Air Force procedures and codes, along with his apparent criminal association with the secretive MZM, Inc. make him a very likely suspect to these events say Russian Intelligence Analysts in their reports.

To the safety of those American Government Officials reaching Israel however, it goes without mentioning that once in that country they will never be extradited to face their crimes. Not even to the worst examples of War Criminals will the Israelis let go, and as we can read as reported by the German Expatica News Service in their article titled "Israel refuses to extradite alleged war criminal" and which says;

"Israel has refused a Polish request for the extradition of Solomon Morel, 87, alleged to have committed crimes against humanity as the head of a labour camp holding ethnic Germans in Poland's southern Silesian region immediately after World War II, Poland's Rzeczpospolita daily reported Wednesday. Poland made its second request to Israel for the Israeli citizens extradition on a charge of genocide in April 2004, after an earlier request was refused in 1998."

To the final outcome of these present events however we don’t know, other than that it is just another in a series of escalating events leading us all towards total Global War, but one that which the Western peoples still refuse to see.

© July 8, 2005, EU and US all rights reserved.

[al_gy]

Plain Dealer sitting on leaked stories
CHICAGO, July 8 (UPI) -- The Cleveland Plain Dealer is not reporting two stories its editor says are of "profound importance" because they rely on illegally leaked documents.

Related Headlines
NY Times reporter ordered jailed (July 6, 2005) -- A federal judge ordered New York Times reporter Judith Miller jailed for refusing to tell a grand jury her sources in the leak of a CIA agent's ... > full story

Report: 'Open season' on U.S journalists (July 4, 2005) -- The ongoing U.S. legal battle over who leaked a covert CIA official's name to reporters indicates a new open season on journalists, a rights ... > full story

Lawyer denies Rove leaked Plame's name (July 2, 2005) -- A lawyer for Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove denied Saturday that Rove leaked the name of former CIA agent Valerie Plame to the ... > full story

Rove said to be source of Plame leak (July 2, 2005) -- Political pundit Lawrence O'Donnell says White House adviser Karl Rove is the government official who leaked the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame ... > full story

Deal would delay reporters' jail time (April 28, 2005) -- Two reporters who refused to reveal administration sources will avoid jail while they ask the Supreme Court for review, a published report said ... > full story



Editor Doug Clifton says the newspaper is concerned it could face consequences similar to those that landed New York Times reporter Judith Miller in jail, Editor & Publisher reported. Clifton said lawyers for the Newhouse Newspapers-owned Plain Dealer have concluded the paper would almost certainly be found culpable if authorities investigated the leaks.

"They've said, this is a super, super high-risk endeavor, and you would, you know, you'd lose," Clifton told E&P Friday. "The reporters say, 'Well, we're willing to go to jail,' and I'm willing to go to jail if it gets laid on me, but the newspaper isn't willing to go to jail. That's what the lawyers have told us."

Miller is in jail on contempt charges for refusing to identify confidential sources as part of a federal investigation into a leak that disclosed the name of covert CIA agent Valeria Plame in 2003.

Clifton wouldn't say what two stories he was referring to.

Copyright 2005 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved

[Jake]

Former Spies Speak Out on US Intelligence Reform

Larry Kolb was born into a house of spies. His family moved constantly during the height of the Cold War, as his father ran counter-intelligence operations all over Asia, Europe and the Middle East. But Mr. Kolb chose business as a career, eventually becoming the manager for several professional athletes, including boxing legend Muhammad Ali.

After that successful career, Mr. Kolb joined the 'family business,' and was soon involved in covert operations in the Middle East, central Asia and Latin America. He retired from the CIA a few years ago, and wrote a book about his experiences.

Larry Kolb tells his readers, though it might seem exciting to go to bed every night in a different place with a different identity, it's stressful and dangerous work. "Because the penalty for espionage almost all over the world, for centuries, now, has been death. So it keeps you interested and on your toes. But beyond that, it's psychologically very difficult to befriending another person- and it works when you genuinely befriend them- then, betray them. That's what we're forced to do and that's not easy," he says.

Mr. Kolb says he and his colleagues provided U.S. policy makers with an important weapon during the cold war era. America's intelligence services face different challenges today, he says, the war against terrorism. "The CIA was built to fight the Soviet Union and worldwide communism and it's still structured the way it has been since early on, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I think we need a new agency that is set up to tackle the Muslim insurgents who are the biggest threat to us today. I don't think America's intelligence services have many assets on the ground that really speak the language so well that they can operate undetected in the target areas that we're interested in," he says.

Mr. Kolb says operating successfully in the 'target area' takes more than language skills… it requires a broader understanding of the culture. I think as long as we believe that the reason Muslims hate us is because of our freedom and our democracy etc, we're going about it the wrong way. They think they have a point of view that should be heard as well. I think our approach is wrong from the perspective that we have on the Middle East. We need to go about dealing with Muslim world with more sensitivity. How they think vs. how we think. We're not going to make all of the Gulf states democratic in a year or two," he says.

Former CIA agent Peter Earnest - now director of The Spy Museum in Washington DC - points to another challenge in this new war: getting access to terrorist cells. "Terrorists are often very small cells, often made up simply of family members. It's very hard to penetrate such groups. A cell made up of two brothers and a cousin, how can you penetrate that cell? That's the difficulty. Whereas during the cold war in many cases we knew who the other side's spies or intelligence officers were, and we could gain access to them. That's a big, big difference between the cold war and today," he says.

One thing that hasn't changed, according to Mr. Earnest, is funding, there's never enough. I do know for many years that intelligence community didn't have the resources it needed for a long time. After the end of the cold war, a number of people said, 'well, we don't need intelligence anymore. Let's just wind down, we don't need to put resources into it.' And now, all of a sudden everybody says how come we don't have more spies. Well, it's late in the game. As you know [former head of the CIA] George Tenet testified before the 9/11 committee that he thought it would take a good five years to develop a new cadre of intelligence officers to conduct the kind of espionage we need," he says.

Last week, after the election, President Bush called on Congress to pass an effective intelligence reform bill he can sign into law. The House and Senate have each approved legislation that would create a new national counter-terrorism center and a new national intelligence director who would coordinate most of the nation's non-military spy agencies. But the two sides have not been able to agree on how much authority to give the Intelligence Director. Negotiators will try to reconcile the two bills when Congress returns for a lame duck session later this month.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2004-11-13-voa3.cfm

You need a military general in charge of the CIA. Someone with a lifetime of defense management experience.

Someone who is brilliant and yet more practical than ideological.

[al-Canine]

Intelligence is key to averting attacks

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior Correspondent

Thursday's bombings in London are a horrific reminder that terrorism is stateless and that obtaining good intelligence on radical Islamic groups remains a huge challenge for Western nations.

London police had long warned it was a matter of when, not if, the city would be hit by terrorists, given Britain's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and its close ties to the United States.

But learning exactly when, where and how terrorists will strike has stumped not only Britain's crack intelligence services, but those in the United States, Spain and other countries as well.

"You want to identify and stop terrorist groups before they commit atrocities, and the only way to do that is good intelligence," says Robert Ayers, a Tampa-born expert on international security at London's Chatham House.

"But it's very, very difficult to penetrate a Muslim fundamentalist cell - a blond, blue-eyed farmhand from Minnesota can't very well pass himself off as an Arab."

That a previously unknown group - the Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe - claimed responsibility for the attacks suggests that Islamic militancy is spreading, not constricting.

"From what we've heard so far, more and more of these cells that nobody knows about are joining the international network," says Rime Allaf, a specialist on Islam and the West at Chatham House.

Britain's susceptibility to terrorism is increased by what experts say are porous borders and lax asylum laws. At least 500,000 illegal immigrants live in the country, according to the London School of Economics, and they blend easily into a multicultural society that makes it hard to differentiate between the law-abiding majority and the tiny terrorist minority.

"No one is foolish enough to believe that radical Islamic fundamentalism isn't very dangerous, but you can't start doing profiling and arresting everyone walking down the street," Ayers said. "It's a real difficult balancing act for police."

President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have touted the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a way to fight terrorists on their own turf. But Thursday's attacks again show that Islamic extremists are capable of striking almost anywhere.

In 2002, it was the Bali bombing that killed about 200; in 2003, the explosions in Casablanca and Istanbul that killed a total of nearly 100; and last year, the Madrid train bombings that left 191 dead.

While nothing has rivaled the toll of the 9/11 hijackings, radical Islamic groups have proved adept at staging attacks for maximum attention.

The London bombings coincided with the G-8 summit in Scotland, where leaders of the world's eight most influential nations are gathered.

And the Madrid bombings came just days before Spain's national election, in which a major issue was the unpopular deployment of Spanish troops to Iraq. Voters ousted the pro-U.S. government, and the new prime minister immediately announced a troop withdrawal.

"I'm not surprised that al-Qaida has struck again, and that when they strike it's in a theatrical way," said Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Strategic Threat Analysis and Response.

"Their effort is not so much to inflict maximum damage on the West by killing millions of people with toxins, but to create a kind of political drama that rouses the Middle Eastern constituencies they are trying to get to support them. They are out to remind Middle Eastern Muslims that they are active players, that they can strike the West in a terrifying way."

While critics say the war in Iraq could foster even more global terrorism, Lustick thinks it has helped to hold down the number of terrorist strikes thus far in the West.

"The reason we haven't witnessed a lot of damaging attacks is not because we've successfully sealed our system or gotten terrorists on the run but because we've given al-Qaida so much of what they need in Iraq already - we gave them the war against the infidels over there."

One of the most surprising aspects of Thursday's bombings is that there have not been many more like them, given the vulnerability of mass transportation systems in New York, Paris, Tokyo and other major cities.

Worldwide, airport security has dramatically increased since 9/11; Britain even sent troops and armored vehicles to Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport, after a 2003 terrorist threat.

But as thousands of passengers were removing belts and shoes Thursday morning at Heathrow, millions more were getting on buses and subways with no protective measures except surveillance cameras.

"I do believe a lot of airport security has gone overboard," says Ayers of Chatham House, who recently had a corkscrew confiscated while a friend was relieved of a pair of cuticle scissors.

"We need to take a pragmatic view: Assuming society has a limited amount of money to invest in any transportation function, if you invest money in hiring people to confiscate corkscrews, it means you're probably not going to have money to train and equip people to deal with emergencies."

© Copyright 2003 St. Petersburg Times.

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/07/08/Columns/Intelligence_is_key_t.shtml

[Jake]

July 8, 2005

British Commando Units Seal off Israeli Embassy in London in Wake of Attacks as US Congressman Suspected of being Israeli Spy Is Detained While Attempting to Flee to Israel

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Russian Subscribers

Russian Intelligence reports circulating in the aftermath of a series of bombings in Britain’s Capital City of London are showing that Elite Commando Units of the British Army have sealed off and may have entered into the Israeli Embassy in London in an attempt to detain the Israeli Security Attachment assigned to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is currently in the British Capital, and as we can read as reported by the Associated Press News Service in their article titled "Netanyahu Changed Plans Due to Warning" and which says;

"British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said. Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said."

Israeli Government Sources have since denied that they had received any prior warnings, and as we can read as reported by the Associated Press News Service in their article titled “Israel denies 'early information' about attacks" and which says, "A Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, had said earlier that British police warned the Israeli Embassy in London of possible terror attacks minutes before the first explosion. “There was no early information about terrorist attacks,” Shalom told Israel Army Radio later. “After the first explosion an order was given that no one move until things become clear."

Whatever to which version of this warning is the truth, the similarities to the events surrounding the terrorists attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and where claims were also made that Israeli citizens in the United States received prior warnings to those attacks (and which Israel has repeatedly denied) are important to notice say these Russian Intelligence reports.

Of the terrorist attacks in London we can read as reported by the Times of London in their article titled “Rush hour blasts bring terror to heart of London" and which says, "More than 33 people were killed today when London was hit by an al-Qaeda-style series of bomb blasts targeting rush-hour commuters in Tube trains and on a double-decker bus. The death toll was given this afternoon by Britain Paddick, Assistant Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, who said: "This clearly was a callous attack on purely innocent members of the public deliberately designed to kill and injure innocent members of the public." Mr Paddick said four blasts hit London shortly before 9 am."

Russian Intelligence reports are showing that prior to these blasts an ‘unusual’ amount of telephonic activity took place between the Israeli Embassy in London and the United States, and that in the hours just prior to these London attacks a number of high ranking American Government Officials began preparations to flee to Israel.

The highest ranking member of these American Officials attempting to flee to Israel is reported to be a United States Congressman and former pilot for both the United States and Israeli Air Forces named Randy "Duke" Cunningham, and who in the United States crackdown of the massive Israeli spying operation in America was recently raided by the American Counter-Terrorist Forces, and as we can read as reported by the Copley News Service in their article titled "Agents raid Cunningham home, MZM office, yacht" and which says;

"In a dramatic sign of a fast-moving, bicoastal investigation, federal agents searched the Rancho Santa Fe home of Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham yesterday, along with the Washington office of a defense contractor linked to the Republican congressman and the yacht where Cunningham had lived."

"The federal task force that conducted the coordinated, surprise raids on opposite coasts included agents from the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, said Debbie Weierman, an FBI spokeswoman in Washington. "The operation is part of an ongoing investigation," she said. It has been known for at least two weeks that the FBI and a federal grand jury in San Diego are investigating Cunningham's ties to Mitchell Wade, founder of MZM Inc."

Of the much secretive MZM Inc. not very much is known other than the speculation that their vast world-wide resources and location in the United States has provided much secret information to the Israeli government, and as some have speculated is in fact the ‘Central Hub’ for Israeli spying in the United States. From their website MZM Inc. says this about themselves;

“Since its founding in 1993, MZM, Inc. has been solving enigmatic problems for an ever wider range of government and private sector entities. Today, its special capabilities in providing creative and innovative solutions in a rapidly changing environment have been recognized as "state of the art" by clients both domestically and abroad. Our traditional strengths in the areas of intelligence collection and analysis, where application of the most recently developed technologies are brought to bear, are enhanced by expanding capabilities in the national security and policy planning fields and enabled by a highly motivated and experienced staff.”

But to a perhaps much truer version of this secret company, and its Israeli National Leader named Mitchell Wade, we can read as reported by the American Free Press News Service in their article titled "Eaten alive by corruption" and which says;

"The stirring tale of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, congressman and bon vivant, becomes more entertaining by the day, and it is far more instructive than another case of a missing white female. Cunningham was a decorated pilot in Vietnam who has oft campaigned on the claim that he is the original model for Top Gun. In 2003, he sold his house in Del Mar, a very upscale town north of San Diego. The buyer was Mitchell Wade, a defense contractor, who paid $1.675 million. Wade later resold the house at a $700,000 loss.

Now, either this makes Wade the only person in recent history to lose money on a San Diego real estate deal, or the guy paid way too much for the house. The deal is now under investigation by a grand jury. Cunningham in turn used the money he made from the Del Mar deal to buy a $2.55 million home in Rancho Santa Fe.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, Cunningham is living, rent-free, aboard a 42-foot yacht named the Duke Stir, which belongs to the said same Mitchell Wade. Since 2002, Wade's company, MZM Inc., has received $163 million in defense contracts. There the case stood until this week, when we learned from Copley News Service and The Washington Post that the boat-loving Cunningham was living on the Duke Stir only because he had sold his own boat, the Kelly C, a 65-foot flat-bottom riverboat, to Thomas Kontogiannis, a New York real estate developer.

Follow this closely: Kontogiannis buys the boat from Cunningham in the summer of 2002. In 2003, a mortgage company owned by Kontogiannis' nephew and daughter finances $1.1 million of the price of Cunnigham's new home in Rancho Santa Fe. Also, Kontogiannis never gets around to putting the Kelly C in his own name, so the Coast Guard still thinks it's owned by Cunningham. What a misunderstanding. My favorite quote, so far: Kontogiannis, when asked if he was doing Cunningham a favor by keeping the boat in his name while Kontogiannis paid $100,000 to redecorate it, said: "Why would I do that? I don't need the man." The pragmatic approach.

Kontogiannis does admit that he was looking for a pardon for his unfortunate 2003 conviction on kickback and bribery charges in connection with a bid-rigging scheme for New York City school computers. He said Cunningham steered him to a Washington law firm for this purpose, but it was "too Cunningham is very big on patriotism and the no-flag-burning amendment. Meantime, MZM is working on classified intelligence projects for the government. The company's literature says it helps the government with "enigmatic problems."

Of this US Congressman’s devotion to Israel there is no doubt, and as we can read from a speech he made to the United States Congress titled "A Vision of Peace in the Middle East, Remarks by Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham" and wherein he stated;

"Madam Speaker, my intent is to bring something different, something refreshing to a Special Order. As I listened to my colleagues on the other side, you would think that the White House and Republicans are mean-spirited, evil, and do not really care about the American public. I think it would be refreshing to listen to a Special Order that actually projects a vision. I wish it was my vision, Madam Speaker, but there are many great men that have tried to work on this, and the good news is that it is achievable. Now, tonight I only have 20 minutes left to speak. On Monday night, I will have a full hour, and I will expand. But, history has witnessed great men with a vision accomplishing some very difficult tasks, and that vision is a safe and secure Israel.

First, I want to tell why I think it is possible. This is coming from a pilot that flew in Vietnam and also flew in Israel in the 1970s. It comes from a Member of Congress that is a strong supporter of Israel but yet sees the possibility of Palestine living side-by-side with Israel and peace in the Middle East."

Russian Intelligence Analysts are also suggesting that US Congressman Cunningham’s main reason for attempting to flee to Israel could be his connection with the events we had mentioned in our June 19th report titled "United States Air Force Put on Highest Alert Level After Israeli F-16s Attempt To Invade US Airspace in ‘Bombing Run’ Towards West Coast and Mid-West Regions of America", and wherein we had said;

“Russian Intelligence Analysts are reporting today of the intercept of a bizarre intercept showing that the United States put its Northern Region Combat Air Force Units on their highest alert level yesterday after an attempt by 4 Israeli F-16 Combat Aircraft to penetrate US Airspace.

Israeli Combat Aircraft are currently stationed in Canada taking part in an exercise called ‘Maple Leaf’, and as we can read as reported by the Israeli Haaretz News Service in their article titled “Israel participating in aerial drill in Canada" and which says, “For the first time, the Israel Air Force is participating in a six-week international combat exercise in Canada. Israeli F-16 planes, a Boeing 707 airborne tanker and 150 air and ground crew personnel are taking part in the annual Maple Flag exercise held at Canadian air force base 4, Wing Cold Lake Air Weapons Range, in Alberta. The CLAWR covers 11,600 square kilometers and is the only tactical bombing range in Canada.”

The Canadian Air Force further describes this annual exercise as: "Exercise MAPLE FLAG is a six-week international air combat exercise held annually at 4 Wing Cold Lake, Alberta. The exercise, which will be taking place from May 15 to June 24 2005, provides Canadian and allied aircrew with realistic training in a modern simulated air combat environment, and emphasizes air operations involving large package coalition forces."

Prior to the arrival of these Israeli F-16 combat aircraft in Canada the United States had refused permission for their over flight of any United States areas with the speculation being that the reason behind this decision was due to Israel having converted their American built F-16’s to the carrying of Nuclear Weapons, and as we can read as reported by the Center For Defense Information in their report titled “Current World Nuclear Arsenals” and which states;

"Despite refusals to comment on the issue by the Israeli government, the Israelis clearly have a sizeable nuclear arsenal. There are two interesting loopholes in Israel's oft-repeated pledge never to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the region: The U.S. "introduced" weapons in the region in the 1950's when nuclear bombs were stored at Dharan, Saudi Arabia and at sea in the Mediterranean Sixth Fleet. Also, it is believed that Israel might not keep her nuclear weapons fully assembled -- keeping them "a screw away" from completion. The highly capable and well-equipped Israeli air force would more than suffice in the nuclear weapons delivery role, particularly with U.S.-supplied aircraft such as the F-4E and F-16."

This US Congressman’s unique knowledge of both United States and Israeli Air Force procedures and codes, along with his apparent criminal association with the secretive MZM, Inc. make him a very likely suspect to these events say Russian Intelligence Analysts in their reports.

To the safety of those American Government Officials reaching Israel however, it goes without mentioning that once in that country they will never be extradited to face their crimes. Not even to the worst examples of War Criminals will the Israelis let go, and as we can read as reported by the German Expatica News Service in their article titled "Israel refuses to extradite alleged war criminal" and which says;

"Israel has refused a Polish request for the extradition of Solomon Morel, 87, alleged to have committed crimes against humanity as the head of a labour camp holding ethnic Germans in Poland's southern Silesian region immediately after World War II, Poland's Rzeczpospolita daily reported Wednesday. Poland made its second request to Israel for the Israeli citizens extradition on a charge of genocide in April 2004, after an earlier request was refused in 1998."

To the final outcome of these present events however we don’t know, other than that it is just another in a series of escalating events leading us all towards total Global War, but one that which the Western peoples still refuse to see.

© July 8, 2005, EU and US all rights reserved.

What is the source of this article? Can you also post a link?
.

[Anonymous]

Sorcha Faal’s Books Available Now In English!

Picking up the Pieces: Practical Guide for Surviving Economic Crashes, Internal Unrest and Military Suppression By: Sorcha Faal “In the span of less than 3 months gasoline prices will rise 500%. The prices of both food and shelter rise over 300%. (Continued)



July 8, 2005

British Commando Units Seal off Israeli Embassy in London in Wake of Attacks as US Congressman Suspected of being Israeli Spy Is Detained While Attempting to Flee to Israel

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Russian Subscribers

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index776.htm

[al_gy]

[quote=al_gy]July 8, 2005

British Commando Units Seal off Israeli Embassy in London in Wake of Attacks as US Congressman Suspected of being Israeli Spy Is Detained While Attempting to Flee to Israel

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Russian Subscribers....sorry, it was forwarded to me, something new.....

[al_gy]

http://crusader.rulez.jp/files/truck_bolo_06.01.05.pdf

[al_gy]

were they wearing Pakistani military backpacks ?

facial hair removed...where are their wills and testes ? :devilish:

[al_gy]

July 12, 2005

The suicide bombers and their American service providers

First, your Hebrew lesson for the day:



Suicide bomber explodes outside Netanya mall:

At least two people were killed and 37 people were wounded when a major explosion occurred at an intersection near the Sharon Mall in Netanya around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday evening.

A suicide bomber detonated himself on a crosswalk at the intersection of Raziel and Herzel avenues, directly across from the mall.

Two of the wounded were in critical condition, six suffered from serious wounds, seven suffered moderate wounds, and a number more were being treated for light wounds, medics said.

The wounded were evacuated by Magen David Ambulances to Laniado Hospital in Netanya, Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera, and Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba.

The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, Channel 2 TV reported. The Islamic Jihad is quickly becoming the best-funded of the Palestinian terror organizations, and has been responsible for many of the most recent terror attacks.

Police and security forces have raised alertness levels around the country.

The glass doors at the entrance to the Sharon Mall shattered, and glass lay scattered on the sidewalk, according to an eyewitness description. A number of nearby vehicles were also damaged in the blast.

An eyewitness told Channel 2 that the suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the middle of a crosswalk facing the mall after he apparently failed in his attempts to enter the shopping mall owing to security.


Now follow the American-hosted sites of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Keep in mind that the PIJ is a designated Terrorist organization, but no one bothers to stop these companies from doing business with them.

[WannaBeRSC]

July 12, 2005

The suicide bombers and their American service providers

First, your Hebrew lesson for the day:



Suicide bomber explodes outside Netanya mall:

At least two people were killed and 37 people were wounded when a major explosion occurred at an intersection near the Sharon Mall in Netanya around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday evening.

A suicide bomber detonated himself on a crosswalk at the intersection of Raziel and Herzel avenues, directly across from the mall.

Two of the wounded were in critical condition, six suffered from serious wounds, seven suffered moderate wounds, and a number more were being treated for light wounds, medics said.

The wounded were evacuated by Magen David Ambulances to Laniado Hospital in Netanya, Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera, and Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba.

The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, Channel 2 TV reported. The Islamic Jihad is quickly becoming the best-funded of the Palestinian terror organizations, and has been responsible for many of the most recent terror attacks.

Police and security forces have raised alertness levels around the country.

The glass doors at the entrance to the Sharon Mall shattered, and glass lay scattered on the sidewalk, according to an eyewitness description. A number of nearby vehicles were also damaged in the blast.

An eyewitness told Channel 2 that the suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the middle of a crosswalk facing the mall after he apparently failed in his attempts to enter the shopping mall owing to security.


Now follow the American-hosted sites of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Keep in mind that the PIJ is a designated Terrorist organization, but no one bothers to stop these companies from doing business with them.

From what I understand, the little bastard walked up to a group of teenage girls, then detonated. Check out Winds of Change. Got a basic history of the violence perpetrated by Islam. Most of the comments are flaming, but if you look at the info & ignore the comments,... well, I'm still shaking my head.

http://www.windsofchange.net/

[al_gy]

obl chatter seems to be extremely high this a.m. rt now... :devilish:

[exitwound]

obl chatter seems to be extremely high this a.m. rt now... :devilish:

Here's my chatter:

bite my shiny metal ass.
http://home.comcast.net/~mgol1/futurama-bee-nder.gif

[Real Old Dutch]

God damn it those Poms are doing great!!!

Man... Those Poms are on the ball... Please click on the pic on the right and then on the four numbers of suspect’s photographs of yesterday’s failed bombing attempts...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4703867.stm



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4706787.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4707781.stm

Pictures of yesterday...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4707193.stm



http://edition.cnn.com/EUROPE/

http://edition.cnn.com/US/


YESTERDAY...

Small blasts in London, causes 7 tube stations to close...


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4703777.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4704069.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4704031.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4704005.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4704417.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4704359.stm

In depth... LONDON ATTACKS...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2005/london_explosions/default.stm

These were "GOOD"- deep believing Muslims...

Click on the faces of the attackers, to read about them...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/05/london_blasts/html/bombers.stm



DON"T LET ANYBODY FOOL YOU BY THEM SAYING THAT THIS ACT WAS UN-ISLAMIC... THOSE ACTS ARE %))5 ISLAMIC...


ISLAM... = Murder and Terrorism... Muslims forever want their opponents DEAD...



FIGHTING...

http://www.prophetofdoom.net/quotes1.html#fighting

TERRORISM...

http://www.prophetofdoom.net/quotes1.html#terrorism

WAR...

http://www.prophetofdoom.net/quotes1.html#war

JIHAD (Holy War)...

http://www.prophetofdoom.net/chapter23.html

MARTYRS...

http://www.prophetofdoom.net/quotes1.html#martyrs

MUSLIM MILITANTS...

http://www.prophetofdoom.net/quotes1.html#militants





DEATH TO ISLAM!

[WannaBeRSC]

As I understand it, only the detonators went off... wonder what they did wrong.
Love the info about shot to kill/head shot only orders the Brits have gotten. 'Bout time the gloves came off.

[al_gy]

Man accused of selling secrets to Iraq says he's U.S. agent:

A federal judge has ruled that a Greenfield truck driver accused of being an Iraqi agent presents a "clear and present danger" to the public and should not be freed before his trial later this month.

Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban, 52, appeared in federal court in Indianapolis for a hearing yesterday and spoke for more than three hours.

He told the judge he's really a US secret agent and claims prosecutors have mixed him up with his now-dead twin brother.

Investigators say Shaaban is a seasoned intelligence officer trained by :devilish: Soviet KGB and has at least 13 aliases. The indictment alleges he traveled to Baghdad in 2002 and offered to sell officials the names of US intelligence operatives in Iraq for millions of dollars.


Posted by aaron on Friday, 10 June, 2005 @ 12:23:31 :devilish:

[exitwound]

As I understand it, only the detonators went off... wonder what they did wrong.
Love the info about shot to kill/head shot only orders the Brits have gotten. 'Bout time the gloves came off.

My main curiousity is whether these bombs were made by the same guy as the first wave, or someone else.

The only reason I can think of for the detonators to go but not the explosives, is if this particular batch/design was untested. I guess maybe the bomb-maker was too nervous to make a test bomb and set it off for fear of being detected somehow?

[short_circuit]

As I understand it, only the detonators went off... wonder what they did wrong.
Love the info about shot to kill/head shot only orders the Brits have gotten. 'Bout time the gloves came off.

My main curiousity is whether these bombs were made by the same guy as the first wave, or someone else.

The only reason I can think of for the detonators to go but not the explosives, is if this particular batch/design was untested. I guess maybe the bomb-maker was too nervous to make a test bomb and set it off for fear of being detected somehow?It has been said in the News that the bombs were probably made with the same explosives found in Leeds, Acetone Peroxide that deteriorates over time. This maybe the reason why only the detonators went off and not the explosives.:|

[exitwound]

It has been said in the News that the bombs were probably made with the same explosives found in Leeds, Acetone Peroxide that deteriorates over time. This maybe the reason why only the detonators went off and not the explosives.:|

That's possible, but if the bombmaker is the actual chemist and made the explosives shortly before the first wave, you'd think he'd be aware of that issue and would have at least tested a small amount to make sure it still works.

If the explosives were purchased from a third party, then it's possible that the bombmaker wasn't aware of deterioration issues.....but the fact that all the bombs went off in the first wave, and then NONE of the explosives properly detonated in the second....that just doesn't sound right for only two weeks later. It would have taken much longer than that to transport them, and such a dramatic difference shouldn't be taking place in such a short timespan....

[short_circuit]

It has been said in the News that the bombs were probably made with the same explosives found in Leeds, Acetone Peroxide that deteriorates over time. This maybe the reason why only the detonators went off and not the explosives.:|

That's possible, but if the bombmaker is the actual chemist and made the explosives shortly before the first wave, you'd think he'd be aware of that issue and would have at least tested a small amount to make sure it still works.

If the explosives were purchased from a third party, then it's possible that the bombmaker wasn't aware of deterioration issues.....but the fact that all the bombs went off in the first wave, and then NONE of the explosives properly detonated in the second....that just doesn't sound right for only two weeks later. It would have taken much longer than that to transport them, and such a dramatic difference shouldn't be taking place in such a short timespan....It is believed that the chemist bomb maker may have left the country, so this would mean he could not test for deterioration of the explosives.
Would be bombers could have used bad storage for the explosives; this could have rapidly accelerated the deterioration.
I think they will find the truth in the end, why the bombs did not go off.
There is something that is positive about it all, that the bombers can not get their hands on other kinds of explosives.
Let us hope they never can. :moose:

Also I noticed, they tried to make a cross again where the bombs were on the map.

[exitwound]

It is believed that the chemist bomb maker may have left the country, so this would mean he could not test for deterioration of the explosives.
Would be bombers could have used bad storage for the explosives; this could have rapidly accelerated the deterioration.
I think they will find the truth in the end, why the bombs did not go off.
There is something that is positive about it all, that the bombers can not get their hands on other kinds of explosives.
Let us hope they never can. :moose:

Also I noticed, they tried to make a cross again where the bombs were on the map.

That would make a certain amount of sense, the scenario where the bomb maker has fleed and the second devices didn't receive any kind of final check from him before being used.

I think that the living members of the cell/group from which the first bombers were recruited, know that the clock is ticking and are trying to carry out attacks before they are tracked down. After the most recent failure, I can only imagine they are planning something else to go out with a bang rather than wait to be raided....

[al-Canine]

Senate Panel to Examine Use of Cover by U.S. Spies

By SCOTT SHANE

The Senate Intelligence Committee will conduct hearings on American spy agencies' use of cover to protect the identities of intelligence officers, the committee chairman said on Sunday.

The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said on the CNN program "Late Edition" that the committee was "going to go into quite a series of hearings in regard to cover." The practice of intelligence cover has come under scrutiny during the investigation of the disclosure of the C.I.A. employment of Valerie Wilson, who had worked under cover for the agency for 18 years before being publicly identified as a C.I.A. operative in 2003.

"You cannot be in the business of outing somebody" working under cover, Mr. Roberts said. He said, however, there were questions about the depth of Ms. Wilson's cover, because she had been based at the Virginia headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency at least since 1997.

"I must say from a common-sense standpoint, driving back and forth to work to the C.I.A. headquarters, I don't know if that really qualifies as being, you know, covert," Mr. Roberts said. "But generically speaking, it is a very serious matter."

Ms. Wilson's C.I.A. job was first revealed in a column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003, eight days after her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly accused the White House of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq and justify war. Mr. Novak used Ms. Wilson's maiden name, Valerie Plame, and attributed his information to "two senior administration officials." A special prosecutor is investigating whether anyone illegally leaked Ms. Wilson's status or lied to cover up the leak.

Two top White House officials - Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff - spoke to reporters about the Wilsons in the week before the publication of Mr. Novak's column. Both men have denied being the original source of the leak.

Some Republicans have minimized the significance of the disclosure of Ms. Wilson's identity, noting not only her working at C.I.A. headquarters but also the fact that she did not have an in-depth cover story: her purported employer, a shell company created by the agency, was little more than a Boston post office box. They have also questioned whether the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act applied to her, because the law applies only to officers who have served overseas under cover in the previous five years.

But agency officials apparently believe that the law does apply to Ms. Wilson, possibly because she took overseas business trips in the five years before 2003. The C.I.A. sought an investigation, and the Justice Department and Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, concurred in choosing to pursue the case.

A number of Ms. Wilson's former colleagues have spoken out in recent days, saying the exposure of her cover was a serious offense.

In a letter to Congressional leaders last week, 11 former intelligence officers said that even if the law was not violated, "we believe it is appropriate for the president to move proactively to dismiss from office or administratively punish any official who participated in any way in revealing Valerie Plame's status." The letter added, "Such an act by the president would send an unambiguous message that leaks of this nature will not be tolerated."

Larry C. Johnson, a former C.I.A. analyst who organized the letter, said in an interview that "there are lives on the line" in the leak of an operative's identity, because foreigners known to have met with the operative may come under suspicion.

But another former C.I.A. officer, Reuel Marc Gerecht, called Ms. Wilson's cover "very, very soft" and said cover "is the Achilles' heel of the agency." He said cover is too often easily penetrated by foreign intelligence agencies.

Gonzales Told Card of Inquiry

WASHINGTON, July 24 (AP) - Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said on Sunday that as White House counsel in 2003, he notified the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., that the Justice Department had opened an investigation into the leak of Ms. Wilson's identity, but waited 12 hours to tell anyone else in the Executive Mansion.

The White House did not immediately respond to questions Sunday about whether Mr. Card passed that information to Mr. Rove or anyone else, giving them advance notice to prepare for the investigation.

Mr. Gonzales, who got the first official word inside the White House, said that Justice Department lawyers had notified him of the inquiry about 8 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2003, and that he had received permission from them to wait until the next morning to direct the White House staff to preserve relevant materials.

He said he immediately notified Mr. Card and told Mr. Bush the next morning before notifying the staff.


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/25/politics/25leak.html

[al_gy]

London, ********and Pyongong.......three cities mentioned at least twice....at first I assume from london to china, however, pyongong is in NK....perhaps somewhere in between the cities or a meandering line between them [london- pyongong ]

[Real Old Dutch]

London, ********and Pyongong.......three cities mentioned at least twice....at first I assume from london to china, however, pyongong is in NK....perhaps somewhere in between the cities or a meandering line between them [london- pyongong ]

That's great!... That will make 1.5-billion Chinese our friends soon...
My eldest son lives in China and he thinks it's great!... Muslims create a lot of problem in Southern China...

My son photographs nude Chinese Muslim girls for living, hehehe...

[exitwound]

London, ********and Pyongong.......three cities mentioned at least twice....at first I assume from london to china, however, pyongong is in NK....perhaps somewhere in between the cities or a meandering line between them [london- pyongong ]

Funny how the terrorists keep mentioning Pyongyang. I doubt that's just because Dubya put them in the Axis speech....they seem to be a natural part of the Axis, speeches or not.

[al_gy]

London, ********and Pyongong.......three cities mentioned at least twice....at first I assume from london to china, however, pyongong is in NK....perhaps somewhere in between the cities or a meandering line between them [london- pyongong ]

That's great!... That will make 1.5-billion Chinese our friends soon...
My eldest son lives in China and he thinks it's great!... Muslims create a lot of problem in Southern China...

My son photographs nude Chinese Muslim girls for living, hehehe......may a thousand pubic hairs grow in his eyes lol.... :mrgreen:

[Real Old Dutch]

London, ********and Pyongong.......three cities mentioned at least twice....at first I assume from london to china, however, pyongong is in NK....perhaps somewhere in between the cities or a meandering line between them [london- pyongong ]

That's great!... That will make 1.5-billion Chinese our friends soon...
My eldest son lives in China and he thinks it's great!... Muslims create a lot of problem in Southern China...

My son photographs nude Chinese Muslim girls for living, hehehe......may a thousand pubic hairs grow in his eyes lol.... :mrgreen:

Well that wish of yours won't work, boy... just as the prayer to your Allah won't do a damn thing, other than in your brain. And if it makes you feel good, keep praying...

You're basically not a bad kid... and I don't hate you, son...
I just hate your religion, as it stimulates young kids to kill themselves and others, in the name of some non-excisting God... I've seen it all before during World War II...

I hope that one day, you see the idiocy of it all, like many Japs and Germans do today... I wish you a lenghty life, for plenty of thinking...

[Anonymous]

An accused detention in the Sharm Al-sheikh explosions and an surprise in the Taba prosecutions.


Three exits killed the (ghardnz)((élfrnseea) doe hotel attacker between them in the explosions).
Declared today in Cairo that the security powers arrested last month suspects in a life in the Sharm Al-sheikh explosions which killed in involvement on three persons 64 persons..

And transported the Al-Jazeera correspondent of the say Egyptian sources the security powers lay down arresting suspect in them in the explosions, visited a pursuit continues four others ..

And the source mentioned that the security forces recognized on all personnels the repertoire which implemented the explosions after that accused conducted - and he a daemon a Palestinian possesses for a plantation in Al-Arish - in pilotage of them ..

A newspaper mentioned the Egyptian pyramids and in the procedure three killed from in the operation a person led a automobile transferring during execution and and and a daybreak other (ghardnz) exploded in a doe hotel. An automobile were lead in the market, murdering after exploded a pouch were carry in (mouqf) ..


On the other hand a correspondent reported the Al-Jazeera in Cairo captain Ahmad Mahmoud Mouwafi and he one witnesses and the Taba explosions execution and Sinai had exploded a surprise yesteryear in a measure proposition,. The is accused prosecution secured the country in the Ismailiya city in a tribunal in sittings.

Mouwafi had declared that Mohammad, accused, reconciled Fleifl death found Taba in October / past October on the Hilton hotel in the attack execution thus contradicted security service confirmations. Fleifl was a deserter and the police killed the Sharm Al-sheikh explosions distance in bullets.

And added correspond with defense accused be based to this the certificate in call for innocent accused witnesses say conflicted and the attorneys pierced in an security service inquiring seriousness also..


And testified the sitting twisted the witness which said that a thing does not remember and statement existing in complete in counterfeiting in the police lecturer and deputyship which challenged the attorneys in her between the defense and the officer..


The source.: The Al-Jazeera + Reuters.

:devilish:

[exitwound]

nice burkha.

[Anonymous]

BELARUS: 1

Dmitry Zavadsky, ORT, November 28, 2003, Minsk

Zavadsky, 29, a kidnapped cameraman with the Russian public television network ORT, was officially declared dead by a district court in the capital, Minsk. According to local press reports, the cameraman's widow, Svetlana Zavadskaya, initiated the judicial process in October 2003. Zavadsky's body was never recovered following his abduction.

The journalist was reported missing after he failed to keep a scheduled late-morning rendezvous on July 7, 2000, with his longtime colleague and friend Pavel Sheremet at the airport in Minsk.

Local media reported that Zavadsky had been seen inside the airport not long before Sheremet's flight arrived from Moscow. Zavadsky's car was later found locked and parked outside the airport building. A search for the journalist by local police and officials from the local prosecutor's office turned up no clues.

Sheremet, a former ORT bureau chief in Minsk who now heads the station's special projects department in Moscow, had recently traveled to Chechnya with Zavadsky to shoot "The Chechen Diary," a four-part documentary about the war there. CPJ sources in Belarus suspect that Zavadsky was abducted because he had footage that showed Belarusian security agents fighting alongside Chechen rebel forces.

Sheremet and Zavadsky's wife told reporters that shortly after Zavadsky returned from Chechnya, he began receiving phone calls from an unknown man who insisted on a meeting.

Zavadsky was President Aleksandr Lukashenko's personal cameraman until 1996. During the summer of 1997, local police detained Sheremet and Zavadsky while they were filming a documentary about smuggling between Belarus and Lithuania. They later received a suspended sentence for alleged illegal border crossing.

Sheremet has repeatedly accused Belarusian intelligence agents of being involved in Zavadsky's disappearance. Although investigators have publicly rejected this theory, Sheremet claims they do not rule it out in private. The Belarusian prosecutor's office has "cautiously hinted that former agents of the Belarus secret services, along with some of their Russian counterparts, might have been involved," Sheremet told the local news agency BelaPAN.

Senior Belarus officials, including Acting Interior Minister Mikhail Udovikov, have hinted that Zavadsky's disappearance may have resulted from his pro-Russian coverage of the war in Chechnya. They have also suggested that the journalist was kidnapped, either by his ORT colleagues, including Sheremet, or by members of the local opposition.

In addition to the threatening phone calls Zavadsky had received before his disappearance, two men were spotted trailing the journalist near his apartment building on the day he disappeared, Zavadsky's neighbors told police. The police commissioned artist sketches of the alleged stalkers but refused to release them. In early August 2000, police also collected samples of Zavadsky's hair from his family for testing without explaining the purpose of the tests.

Later that month, police classified Zavadsky's disappearance as a premeditated crime and announced they had identified five suspects. The primary suspect, a leader of the Belarusian branch of the ultraright Russian National Unity movement named Valery Ignatovich, was in prison by the end of 2000. Police ruled out the theory that Belarusian security agents had been involved in the crime.

On November 20, 2000, local independent media had received an unsigned e-mail from a person who identified himself as an officer of the Belarus State Security Committee involved in the Zavadsky investigation. The writer claimed that nine suspects had been arrested, seven of whom were either current or former officers of the Presidential Security Service, and that the suspects had confessed to killing Zavadsky and had named the place where his body was buried. According to the e-mail, the investigators had also found a shovel stained with Zavadsky's blood.

Additionally, the e-mail claimed that President Lukashenko refused to allow investigators to exhume the body, and that the case was later transferred from the Prosecutor's Office to the Interior Ministry to sabotage the investigation.

The next day, the Belarusian State Security Council denounced the allegations, while Lukashenko blamed Zavadsky's disappearance on Chechen kidnappers. At the same time, Sheremet told BelaPAN he believed that the information from the anonymous e-mailer might be trustworthy, while local sources told CPJ that they had received similar information from other anonymous sources close to the investigation.

A week after the e-mail was made public, Lukashenko fired four senior aides: his adviser on security issues, the chairman of the Security Council, the prosecutor general, and the head of the State Security Committee. Lukashenko claimed that the four men had been plotting a coup and had abducted Zavadsky in an effort to compromise the president.

Interior Minister Vladimir Naumov promised to resolve the case no later than January 2001. Local observers questioned the integrity of the investigation, however, given that Naumov once headed the special police unit, Almaz, some of whose members were suspected of being involved in the crime.

On March 14, 2002, two former Almaz members, Valery Ignatovich and Maxim Malik, were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for abducting Zavadsky. Prosecutors argued that Ignatovich and Malik kidnapped the journalist in reprisal for an interview he had given to the Minsk-based Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta during which he alleged that certain unnamed Belarusians had fought with Chechen rebels against Russian forces.

The trial was held behind closed doors in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. Journalists were only allowed into the courtroom for the reading of the sentence.

Zavadsky's lawyer and family said the trial failed to examine credible allegations that Belarusian authorities were also involved in the abduction. Sergei Tsurko, a lawyer for Zavadsky's family, claims that Ignatovich and Malik are scapegoats and that real responsibility lies with the Belarusian government.

On March 25, 2002, the missing cameraman's relatives filed a petition with the Belarusian Supreme Court, claiming that prosecutors had not sufficiently proven that Ignatovich and Malik were responsible for kidnapping Zavadsky. The petition urged further investigation into Zavadsky's abduction and his subsequent fate.

In June 2002, two former employees of the Prosecutor General's Office, Dmitry Petrushkevich and Oleg Sluchek, who had alleged that President Lukashenko had derailed the investigation because of evidence linking a government-led death squad to Zavadsky's murder, were granted asylum in the United States.

Zavadsky's colleague Pavel Sheremet and local opposition groups have supported these claims.

The U.S. State Department has also publicly validated Petrushkevich and Sluchek's claims. "We think these revelations are important," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said at a June 19, 2002, press briefing.

Two weeks later, on July 3, 2002, Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky and other U.S. officials met with Petrushkevich and Sluchek to discuss Zavadsky's disappearance and several other cases in which Belarusian individuals were allegedly murdered for political reasons, Agence France-Presse reported.

On November 28, 2003, a district court in Minsk declared Zavadsky officially dead. Judge Nataliya Andreyeva spent several hours examining evidence presented by the Public Prosecutor's Office that the ORT cameraman had died after his abduction and then officially changed Zavadsky's status from missing to dead.

"This was done for property-related reasons so that my apartment can be registered in my name," Zavadskaya told CPJ. "I still want to find out the truth about my husband and what happened to him."

The Public Prosecutor's Office ended its investigation into the Zavadsky case in January 2003, claiming they had pursued all available leads in the cameraman's disappearance.

On December 10, 2003, prosecutors announced they had reopened the investigation about 48 hours before the Council of Europe, a pan-Europe human rights monitoring organization, released a report alleging that high-level government officials were involved in the journalist's disappearance and its subsequent cover-up.

However, Ivan Branchel, deputy head of the prosecutor's Organized Crime and Corruption Department, sent a letter to Zavadskaya in early April 2004 informing her that the case was closed on March 31, 2004, said the Minsk-based human rights group Charter 97.

Authorities have refused to give Zavadskaya information about the investigation, which relatives of victims are authorized to obtain under Belarus law, said Zavadskaya.

[al-Canine]

The British who loved a Pak spy

RASHMEE ROSHAN LALL

LONDON: Britain has removed its defence attaché in Pakistan from his post "following an internal investigation into his conduct".

A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said Brigadier Andrew Durcan -- who had been handling the military liaison between Britain and Pakistan for over a year -- had been recalled because "he lost the confidence of the British High Commission".

She refused to confirm lurid rumours that Durcan, 56, a senior, well-respected officer -- seconded to the Foreign Office during his Defence Attaché posting -- had been recalled because he had formed inappropriate relations with a suspected woman Pakistani spy.

Red-faced and tight-lipped British officials said they were not ready to provide any details. Londonits believe that the 21st-century foreign relations were just as vulnerable to spies-in-our-beds syndrome of yesteryear.

The Sun said Durcan had been recalled because he had been "tricked into a close friendship by the attractive woman".

It said there was no evidence or classified information that British agents had been compromised.

But it described the woman as a "defence academic" who was "also believed to be an undercover agent for rogue elements within Pakistan's intelligence services".

MoD officials admitted Durcan's removal for reasons of "his conduct" was not unusual.

"It has happened before. In the past, Defence Attaches have been removed for various reasons". Officials said Durcan had "an important post... the link between the military in the UK with the country". They added, he had been a "liaison point".

But the nudge-nudge-wink-wink brigade ...

...said Durcan may have expanded the word 'liasion' to include other areas that were manifestly not part of his job description, as envisaged by the British establishment.

Intelligence experts said the mystery woman -- who appears to be the reason for Durcan's downfall -- is just one of attractive women throughout history, who sang or slept their way into the arms and the secrets of the great powers.

Mata Hari used the stage name now synonymous with the femme fatale spy, but Margaretha Geertruida Zelle was a late 19th-century Dutch courtesan and dancer, and probable spy, who reportedly had a number of affairs with highly-placed military and government officials on both sides and revealed Allied secrets to the Germans.

She was eventually shot by the French on espionage charges.

Other lesser-known, but equally devastating weapons of manly destruction, included Baker, who helped the French Resistance by smuggling secret information written in invisible ink on her sheet music, secure in the knowledge that her undoubted charms would allow her - and her troupe of entertainers - free passage through starstruck passport controls.

According to Linda McCarthy, curator of a unique exhibition on female spies throughout history, the femme fatale spy has always had a huge advantage.


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1203395.cms

[Ono]

Oh boy...and this on the heels of the attack in London by Pakistanis.

[al-Canine]

The C.I.A. Goes Gentle Into the Spooky New Night

By FRANCIS X. CLINES

When the end came, eight former czars of central intelligence gathered in the Langley, Va., headquarters for an eerie moment of nostalgia - and devotees of the fact and fiction of the Central Intelligence Agency were already walking back the cat (spy talk for retrospectively figuring out how a careful scheme turned disastrous). Porter Goss, the former spy and congressman who was awarded the intelligence directorship last year, generously summoned his predecessors and two of their widows on Tuesday to a cafeteria celebration to bid adieu to the agency's tattered primacy. The agency director, once the morning briefer of presidents, is now a secondary player under the umbrella of the new director of national intelligence, John Negroponte. In the wake of 9/11, the agency that once swaggered romantically as "the Company" has been subsumed like the loser in a corporate takeover.

So far, no moles have leaked the party's repartee. ("Remember the exploding Cuban cigar?" "Another martini, please - shaken not stirred.") No problem: Robert Littell, a master at studying the C.I.A. and producing spy thrillers, will likely tap into the clubby moment for some future chapter rich with ranking fogies' ruminations on how the spook's life changed wretchedly in the decade between the collapse of the cold war and the rise of the stealthy masters of terrorism.

Actually, the novelist already has done some of that, in his latest work, "Legends," which skewers the C.I.A. as an ossified global delinquent, a fumbling "risk-averse high-tech social club" whose chief spy manipulator is forced to lament: "There are people at Langley who do nothing but stare at satellite downloads from morning to night, as if a photograph could tell you what an adversary intends to do."

In precisely the way fiction can portend fact, the party at Langley was under way even as another actual spymaster, Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the new director of the National Security Agency (an ultrasecretive strut in the Negroponte umbrella) unconsciously echoed Mr. Littell in ruing how "incredibly difficult" his job of eavesdropping and code-breaking had become. "It's no longer looking for a Soviet division; the threat is now about a person," the director told The Times's Scott Shane. "How do you find one person, among 20-some million in Iraq?"

The answer to those odds, if there is one, will likely never be known since the agency's record of work, like the C.I.A.'s, is officially sealed tight as the secret pantheon of honored spies memorialized in anonymity.

All the more tantalizing, then, to discover that the keynote speaker at the private gathering in Langley was identified as "the C.I.A.'s chief historian." Who knew the agency would dare to have such a job? How does he or she perform it? Is the historian free to walk back the cat on the agency's failure to foretell Soviet communism's fall? Or on muffing the gathering threat from Osama bin Laden four years ago? These are questions whose precise answers are usually attempted, or not, in the privacy of closed panels of Congressional overseers. The rest of us had best consult the work of fiction makers like Mr. Littell, who earlier did produce an encyclopedic historical novel titled "The Company." It is filled with as many tales of intramural treacheries as global, further teasing readers who yearn for the truth of spying.

"All is not what it seems," is the well-taken warning at one of the newer attractions in Washington, the International Spy Museum. The for-profit venture is crammed with actual spy gadgets, including the Nazis' Enigma code machine and a K.G.B. agent's lipstick-tube gun. Visitors can delve into spies' "legends" - the careful cover identities concocted for a life of lies. The museum's exhibitions include the aptly titled "Secret History of History" that fascinates up to a point. It is good to dabble in the history of the infamous Feliks Dzerzhinsky, father of the K.G.B. But what about our own old spymasters who rallied the other day at Langley? There are secret histories of history waiting to be told, manifold cats to be walked back.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/22/opinion/22mon3.html