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Wishing you all a healthy and prosperous 1999! Your support of AFIO is appreciated! WINs are produced by the AFIO Executive Director, Roy Jonkers. NOTE - WINs are protected by copyright laws and re-transmission is not permitted without specific AFIO concurrence. NOTE: This AFIO WIN was researched and prepared by John Macartney, <jdmac@erols.com> LAST REMINDER: AFIO QUARTERLY LUNCHEON NEXT WEEK, 11 Jan 1999 at Fort Myers, Virginia, O'Club, with Two Outstanding Speakers: (1) GUS RUSSO, author of "Live By The Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK. The linkage between the assassination attempts on the Cuban and American presidents promises to make for a lively and entertaining session. (11 am) (2) MILT BEARDEN, former Chief of Station in Pakistan and a central figure in clandestine support of the Afghan rebel war against the Soviets, a struggle reflected in his superb novel 'The Black Tulip', will speak on "Afghanistan: Consequences, Myths and Reality." (1pm) Luncheon is $26 for members and guests, $29 for non-members. Send name and check to: AFIO, 6723 Whittier Ave, St 303A, McLean, Va. 22101-4533. SECTION I CURRENT INTELLIGENCE OUTSOURCING INTELLIGENCE. A long story in the Dec 30
Washington Post tells about the ongoing investigation of Vector
Microwave Research Corporation, a Virginia firm headed by former
Director of DIA, retired LtGen Lennie Perroots, my one-time boss, who
was pictured on the front page. A major activity for the now defunct
firm, apparently, was to act on behalf of US intelligence agencies to
purchase foreign weapons and radar systems that US analysts wanted to
examine. According to the article, Vector had on various occasions
successfully procured Soviet, Chinese, Iranian and North Korean
missile systems. Vector also it seems was involved in some HUMINT
operations -- procuring information. In addition to purchasing and
importing these foreign weapons, Vector also did some of the testing
and scientific analysis. The article mentions that there are several
other firms engaged in similar activities for US intelligence. Among
them, BDM and Electronic Warfare Associates. While working under CIA
contract to covertly purchase, for example, a North Korean missile is
legal, some other alleged activities of the firm are being
investigated. That part of the article was vague, but it seems the
firm carried on a side deal to upgrade and sell Soviet MI-8
helicopters to the Mexican Navy that might have broken US
import/export laws. Also, there is an allegation that in trying to
sweeten the deal for Chinese missiles, the firm may have given the
Chinese classified specifications of US Stinger missile technology.
Whatever... In any event, the article does lift the veil on a
little known aspect of US intelligence. That is, outsourcing. As the
federal government has downsized over the past decade, Departments
and Agencies from Agriculture to State to the Intelligence Community
have been contracting out for more and more services, including
routine staff work. Several of my former AU and Syracuse University
students, for example, are now working as government contract
intelligence analysts for local commercial firms. They have exotic
security clearances and spend their days studying and writing reports
on Middle East terrorists (or whatever) but they are not government
employees -- they work for Parvus, or SXX or some other local firm.
Similarly, there are thousands of contract workers in this area who
work on sensors and software for the intelligence community. Also,
both the Air Force and NIMA (the National Imaging and Mapping Agency)
have standing contracts with local firms for satellite imagery (see
below). In short, there is a great deal of outsourcing going on in
the intelligence business -- it's a multi billion dollar industry in
the Washington area and a major source of jobs for young graduates
and also for retired military and intelligence agency employees. NIMA CONTRACTS FOR COMMERCIAL IMAGERY. Space Imaging Corporation announced that it has signed an agreement with the US National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) to provide commercial satellite imagery products and infrastructure. The contract provides a procedure for government agencies wanting to purchase discounted commercial satellite imagery products and services from Space Imaging's standardized, commercial product catalog. The contract, which has a minimum guarantee of $4.4 million, is expected to increase as NIMA defines the need for additional commercial imagery products. Space Imaging is a leading supplier of space imagery, aerial photography, mapping services, and derivative geographic information products and services. The company supplies these products and services to commercial, government and consumer users worldwide. Space Imaging collects and distributes Earth imagery from the Indian Remote Sensing satellites, the US Landsat, Canada's RADARSAT and the European Space Agency's ERS satellites. In addition, Space Imaging distributes imagery from the Japanese JERS imaging system archive. The company also delivers a broad array of aerial-derived information products through its Mapping Alliance Program. Space Imaging will launch the world's first one-meter resolution, commercial imaging satellite, IKONOS 1, in June 1999. In addition to 1-meter panochromatic imaging, it will be capable of 4-meter hyperspectral imaging -- which is probably what NIMA and the US Intelligence Community will find most useful. Source: Defense News On-Line http://www.spaceimaging.com CHINESE ESPIONAGE - A Congressional committee finished up it's investigation last week into allegations that two US firms, Loral and Hughes, had illegally passed classified missile technology to China in the aftermath of Chinese launch failures of US commercial satellites. Also fueling the investigation was the fact that Loral's chairman, Bernard Schwartz, is the single biggest contributor to the Clinton Administration and the Democratic Party -- and what Schwartz most wanted, and got, was a relaxation of restrictions on US commercial use of Chinese space launch vehicles. Well, the 700 page report remains classified, but bits and pieces are leaking. Apparently, investigators found that the Hughes and Loral leaks of missile technology did not really help China much if at all and in any event the leaks were probably inadvertent, not criminal. More interesting are hints that investigators found considerable
evidence of successful Chinese espionage over decade or more. The Jan
1 Washington Post, for example, says that the Chinese have been
systematically stealing secrets from the Energy Department's nuclear
weapons laboratories which, investigators found, have extremely lax
security practices. Specifically, the Post says, "Chinese agents"
stole neutron bomb data from the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory in 1986 leading directly to the Chinese tests of their own
neutron bomb in 1988. Also, 100's of thousands of dollars (perhaps
millions ) in 1996 contributions probably came from Chinese
intelligence services. Dec 15 NY Times said that government
surveillance equipment picked up a conversation between Mr. Huang and
a Chinese official at the Los Angeles Consulate. [John Huang, an
FOB from Arkansas and an executive of the Indonesian Lippo Group,
helped funnel Asian money into the 1992 and 1996 Clinton
campaigns.] Also, the still classified Congressional Report
apparently criticizes the CIA for holding up, perhaps suppressing, a
1995 analyst's report about Chinese intelligence service targeting of
US technology via campaign donations. Stay tuned... UAV UPDATE - Unmanned drones with cameras and transmitters in their payload bays are regarded as an essential element of future military intelligence, enabling battlefield commanders to see behind enemy lines without endangering pilots or costly manned aircraft. The UAVs, however, will not come cheap, according to the GAO. Global Hawk, a non-stealthy aircraft being designed by Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical, will cost an estimated $13.7 million, the GAO said. The radar evading DarkStar aircraft designed by Lockheed Martin will cost $14.8 million, according to the latest estimate. The Pentagon's preliminary plan is to buy 20 Global Hawks and seven DarkStars along with a few spares. As of last month, two of each aircraft had been completed. One DarkStar was destroyed in a crash during its second flight; For the Global Hawk, much of the price increase is due to wing and fuselage modifications needed to meet performance goals. The plane is supposed to fly 3,000 miles, conduct reconnaissance for 24 hours, and return to base. Price increases in the DarkStar program involve changes in avionics and payloads. The DarkStar is designed to fly more than 500 miles, conduct reconnaissance for eight hours, and return to base. http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/98/Dec/16/national/SPY16.htm INTELLIGENCE BUDGET. In response to a 1996 FOIA lawsuit
filed by FAS, the Federation of American Scientists, DCI Tenet
released for the first time the FY1997 intelligence appropriation of
$26.6 billion, and last year the FY1998 appropriation of $26.7
billion was likewise released. This past summer, FAS asked for the
President's FY1999 budget REQUEST (vice appropriation). The DCI has
refused; and the FY1999 appropriation, which passed Congress in
September, has also not been released. Moreover, there was
a $1.5+ billion FY1999 plus up for intelligence included in the end
of session $21 billion "emergency" appropriation. However, that plus
up was raided, at least temporarily, in December, to fund the Wye
Island Middle East agreement. "Temporarily" means, apparently, that
the intelligence community is supposed to have its money restored by
a future appropriation. Wash Post, 25Dec98
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/
HI TECH SENSORS AT THE BORDER - US Customs inspectors at
the Mexican border already have gizmos that peer down gas tanks and
spot drug stashes inside tires. They may also soon be scanning the
payloads of big trucks with deep-penetrating gamma rays and searching
all types of vehicles for drugs with hand-held sniffing machines. In
addition, the hunt is on for high-tech ways to disable cars whose
drivers elude border inspections. The Immigration and Naturalization
Service uses electronic fingerprinting and computer-stored
photographs to track more than 1 million immigrants who have
previously been caught entering without documents. And a
sophisticated new green card for resident aliens employs holograms
and laser-etched data to deter fakes. The newest item just going into
service is a camera that scans the license plates of cars lined up to
cross the border. The license number is "read" by the camera which
then automatically runs a computer check on it so that when the car
arrives at the border patrol booth, the operator's computer screen
tells him about the car, if and how often the vehicle has ever
crossed the border before and so on all without any human
intervention.
http://detnews.com:80/1998/technology/
HI TECH SENSORS FOR MINE CLEARANCE - The Jan 1 Washington Post has an editorial praising the US military's global mine clearance effort. The editorial cites a paper written by Army Colonel Carl Sahlin, Jr, of the National Defense University. This quote from Sahlin's NDU paper mentions using satellites as well as "olfactory sensors" to locate mines. "A two-part enhanced technology effort is emerging as a cornerstone of the U.S. approach to mine clearance. First, use technology to cut the problem down to size; and second, use technology to find and clear the mines. Highly accurate surveys are needed to separate suspected from confirmed areas and, further, to limit the actual mined areas to their real boundaries. Some currently available satellite and global positioning satellite (GPS) technology may, with further development, be useful. Using this technology to reliably rule out suspected areas, much land can be returned to use without the expense of painstakingly clearing each square foot. With suspected areas ruled out, further development of fast, cheap clearance should be the remaining priority. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing, among other projects; computer-assisted technology to mimic the processing a dog's nose and brain do to differentiate smells. This research is promising and may result in very low risk mine clearance." http://www.ndu.edu/inss/strforum/forum143.html JEANNIE ROUSSEAU, ALLIED SPY - A lengthy David Ignatius
article in the Dec 28 Washington Post tells the fascinating story of
Jeannie Rousseau, a young French woman who spied for the allies
during WWII. Among other things, she passed on the first information
about V-2 ballistic missile program -- which went straight to
Churchill and led to allied bombing of the Peenemunde missile site.
The 21 year old Miss Rousseau's fluency in German got her jobs as a
translator for the German occupation forces, and those jobs put her
in a position to learn a great deal of what was going on in occupied
Europe. Arrested by the Gestapo in January 1941, she was released
because of too little evidence. Later, she moved to Paris where she
again obtained employment based on her German translation skills and
began to pick up and pass on information about the V-2. Finally
arrested again in the spring of 1944, she went through a series of
concentration camps and nearly died. Although the 79 year old
Rousseau's complete story has never been told (this interview with
Post reporter Ignatius is the closest to that), her 1943 report on
the V-2 and Peenemunde was reprinted the the 1988 book "The Wizard
War," by Reginald Jones who was Chief of Britain's scientific
intelligence effort during WWII. That book and Reginald Jones'
recommendations led to a 1993 ceremony at CIA where she was awarded a
special medal by then DCI Woolsey.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/
FORMER EAST GERMAN SPY GETS JOB. Rainer Rupp, a former communist mole at NATO headquarters, has been serving a 12-year prison term since his 1994 for conviction for spying. But he was moved Monday to a minimum security facility, meaning he can hold an outside job during the day. Rupp will work as an adviser on foreign and security affairs in parliament for the Party of Democratic Socialism - successor party to the East German communists. Meanwhile, Volker Beck, a legal affairs expert for the Greens party, called for a review of the treatment of spies who worked for either East Germany or West Germany during the Cold War. "Those who spied for the communists should not be treated differently than those who spied for the West, as long as they did not directly harm anyone," he said. http://www.tampabayonline.net/news/news1007.htm CHINESE SATELLITES. At the Zhuhai air show in mid-November, the China Academy of Space Technology announced a new six satellite reconnaissance network. Beginning next year, China will launch four imaging satellites and two radar satellites. The latter are important due to their ability to penetrate cloud cover to provide unfettered imaging. China will also build a series of small satellites for navigation, communication and imaging missions. Source: Asian Wall Street Journal, Dec 29, 1998 POLLARD UPDATE. As you know, Israeli President Netanyahu
pressed for the release of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard during the
November 1998 Wye River negotiations on a Middle East peace
settlement. Clinton agreed, he says, only to the review the matter
and that review is underway. (Pollard had been a civilian
intelligence analyst for the US Navy prior to his 1985 arrest.)
Meanwhile, Netanyahu lost a vote of confidence because of Wye River
and is facing a March election. Because of that, he has stopped the
peace process. The outcome of the Israeli election will probably
determine the future course of the Israeli-PLO peace process, while
President Clinton's decision on Pollard will certainly have an affect
and could very well determine the outcome of the Israeli elections.
Three former Directors of Naval Intelligence (DNI's), Admirals
Studeman, Shapiro, Butts and Brooks (all of them AFIO members, by the
way), had an op-ed piece in the Dec 12 Washington Post that carried a
strong and compelling argument against Pollard's release. Among other
things, the Admirals, who were in a position to know a great deal
about Pollard and the case against him, said that Pollard had offered
to spy for 4 other countries in addition to Israel. They also said
that Pollard was well paid for his betrayal and was even negotiating
for more money at the time of his arrest. Also, he divulged more
classified material than any other spy in history and as a result
some valuable sources and methods were compromised and lost. Also,
they say, Pollard has violated his side of the plea bargain (mostly
by meeting with press). Professors Reply, Defend Pollard. The Jan 2
Washington Post carries a reply to the Admirals' op-ed piece. The
pro-Pollard reply was written by Angelo Codevilla, Irwin Cotler, Alan
Dershowitz and Kenneth Lasson. Dershowitz is a Harvard law professor
who was on Pollard's defense team (as well as that of OJ Simpson and
Bill Clinton) and is frequently in the news promoting left wing
causes. Cotler and Lasson teach law at McGill and the U of Baltimore,
respectively. Codevilla, now a professor of international relations
at Boston U, is a former Navy intelligence officer who later served
in the State Dept's Bureau of Intelligence (INR) as a junior Foreign
Service Officer before joining to the staff of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence. He has taught classified courses on
intelligence at the Navy Postgraduate School, was a key member of
President Reagan's intelligence transition team and is the author of
"Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a New Century," Free Press,
1992. Codevilla is also a right-wing zealot who, it's alleged,
recommended in the still classified Reagan 1980 transition report
that the CIA be abolished because it was hopelessly compromised with
trendy liberals and "com-symps." The gist of the argument these four
professors make on Pollard's behalf is that the official court
records do not reflect the specific accusations the four admirals
make about Pollard. And the professors are not gentle in the
characterization to the admirals and other Pollard critics. "Such
allegations are totally irresponsible from the standpoint of American
justice, if not intentionally misleading about matters of security.
Though the admirals claim they "feel obligated to go on record with
the facts regarding Pollard," they offer nothing but innuendo and
deceptive half-truths." Moreover, the four professors characterize
Pollard as "not a hero but a victim of a monumental miscarriage of
justice," and, "There is ample evidence that Pollard is being
punished for a crime he didn't commit and is being disproportionately
punished for the one he did." Finally, the professors say it was the
government and not Pollard that violated the plea bargain agreement.
Stay tuned....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-01/02/
SECTION II - BOOKS, PUBLICATIONS & OTHER SOURCES "THE REAL CIA." This special internet report is based on the excellent NY Times TV documentary, "The Real CIA: Enemies, Secrets and Spies," which aired on the Showtime premium movie cable channel November 29th. Text is by Tim Weiner, the Times Washington correspondent who has specialized in intelligence reporting for a number of years and who narrated the TV report. It includes video clips from the documentary and articles from the NY Times archives. http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/index-cia.html ISRAELI BOMB. Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, Columbia U Press, 1998. The book focuses on a two-decade period from about 1950 until 1970, during which David Ben-Gurion's vision of making Israel a nuclear-weapon state was realized. Cohen weaves together the story of the formative years of Israel's nuclear program, from the founding of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission in 1952, to the alliance with France that gave Israel the nuclear technology it needed, to the failure of American intelligence to identify the Dimona Project for what it was in the late 1950s, to the negotiations between President Nixon and Prime Minister Meir that led to the current policy of nuclear opacity. Cohen also analyzes the complex forces that led Israel to conceal its nuclear program -- from concerns over Arab reaction and the negative effect of the debate at home to consideration of America's commitment to nonproliferation. Allen Weinstein & Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood:
Soviet Espionage in America -- the Stalin Era, Random House
1998, 402pp. Based on documents from KGB archives which were
available during a 2 year window after the end of the Soviet Union,
this book documents espionage by a number of the Americans accused
during the McCarthy era -- Alger Hiss, Laurence Duggan, Michael
Straight, Lauchlin Currie, and senior OSS officer, Duncan Lee, etc.
While none of those names are new, their appearance in KGB files (one
document is about a Soviet decoration secretly awarded to Alger Hiss
for his espionage successes), certainly ends all doubt. Of note,
while the authors did not find any evidence that J Robert Oppenheimer
was a spy, they did find documentation that he was a secret member of
the Communist Party USA.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/
CLOAK & DAGGER BOOKS. Dan Halpin, proprietor of Cloak & Dagger Books (over 12,000 volumes in stock) in Bedford, NH and an AFIO member, says he will mail his latest catalogue to members who contact him: 9 Eastman Ave, Bedford, NH 03110-6701; (603) 668-1629; cloakandspies@juno.com. The catalog may also be accessed on-line at: http://www.cloakanddagger.com/dagger_ Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Secrecy, Yale U Press, 1998, 320pp. "Had we spent less time trying to gather secret information about the Soviets and more time openly discussing rather easily interpretable data, Sen. Moynihan argues, we might have been far less paranoid about the supposed Red menace. The problem, he writes, lies in the essential nature of government secrecy: "Departments and agencies hoard information, and the government becomes a kind of market. Secrets become organizational assets, never to be shared save in exchange for another organization's assets.... The system costs can be enormous. In the void created by absent or withheld information, decisions are either made poorly or not at all." DESERT FOX IMAGERY. The US Government has released a rather extensive set of overhead bomb damage assessment imagery from the recent DESERT FOX air campaign. It is said that this imagery derives from "US national systems." John Pike's FAS web page has the entire set online [at multiple resolutions] http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/desert_fox.htm
SECTION IV -- MONTHLY "HEADS UP" LIST. Lists of events of interest to AFIO members and intelligence scholars. NOTE: If you know of an event coming up in the next 12 months that should be added to this list, PLEASE ADVISE John Macartney <jdmac@erols.com> THE NEW YEAR - 1999 JAN 11, AFIO WINTER LUNCHEON, Ft Myer O'Club. Morning speaker (1100) GUS RUSSO, author of Live By The Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK. Russo is an investigative reporter who has sought to compile a credible account of President Kennedy's assassination for over twenty years. After - Luncheon speaker - MILT BEARDEN, former CIA Chief of Station in Pakistan and a central figure in clandestine support of the Afghan rebel war against the Soviets, a struggle reflected in his superb novel, "The BlackTulip," will speak on "Afghanistan: Consequences, Myths and Reality." (703)790-0320, <https://www.afio.com> JAN 16, Westmont, IL, AFIO Midwest Chapter winter function at Bohemian Crystal restaurant, 639 Blackhawk Drive, 6 pm. <diaboliq@home.com>. JAN 19-21, Washington.Conference on "The Applications of Remote Sensing and GIS for Disaster Management." GWU Marvin Center JAN 23-29, San Jose, CA. International Society for Optical Engineering & Society for Imaging Science & Technology. San Jose, Cal Voice:360.676.3290. FEB 7-10, Monterey, CA, PacInfo '99 conference on open source support to peacekeeping and disaster relief operations sponsored by OSS. <http://www.oss.net>, (703) 242-1700. FEB 16-20, Washington. ISA Convention. This is the premier forum for intelligence scholars. http://csf.colorado.edu/isa/washington/ March 8 - Washingon - Fort Myers, Va - AFIO luncheon. Morning speaker (invited) The director of the local High Intensity Drug Area Intelligence Center; After-lunch speaker (invited): LT General (ret) B. Macaffrey, White House Drug Czar, on Intelligence and the War on Drugs. 703 790 0320 MAR 8-9, Chantilly, VA.; NMIA's Symposium, "MASINT Support to the Warfighter", NRO Conference Center, Chantilly, VA. Classification level: SECRET. MAR 10-12, The Hague, Netherlands; EuroIntel '99 conference sponsored by OSS, Inc. http://www.oss.net/ (703) 242-1700 MAR 21-25, Washington.; National OPSEC Conference, Radisson Plaza at Mark Center in Alexandria, Virginia. http://www.opsec.org/ 301.548.1018. MAR 24-25, Washington. Professional Connections in the Intelligence Community (PCIC) Symposium (job fair), at Radisson Plaza Hotel at Mark Center, Alexandria, Virginia. http://www.pcic.net Apr 23-24, Williamstown, MA. Spring meeting of AFIO's New England Chapter at the Williams Inn. (860) 669-7706. MAY 21, Alexandria, VA.; NMIA's Information Operations '99 and the NMIA Annual Awards Banquet are tentatively scheduled for 21 May at the Radisson Plaza at Mark Center in Alexandria, Virginia. (301) 840-6642, <http://www.nmia.org> May 24-26, Washington. OSS '99. (703) 242-1700, http://www.oss.net/ May 25 - Washington / Rosslyn Westpark Holiday Inn - AFIO Mini-Symposium - Intelligence and the Law, Chairman Tom Spencer, Esq. Hosted by OSS 99. Tel 703 790 0320. <https://www.afio.com> June 18, Washington. DIA's Joint Military Intelligence College sponsored conference on teaching intelligence in colleges and universities. LTC Kevin Johnson, (202) 231-4173 / k-m-johnson@worldnet.att.net JUN 24 - 28, Great Lakes Naval Base, IL. AFIO Midwest Chapter 10th annual Intelligence Seminar at Great Lakes June 24, 25 and 26, followed by at tour of the Joint Reserve Center at Fort Sheridan on the 27th, and sessions as well as dinners on 27 and 28 June at the Eagles Nest at the Great Lakes Base. Contact President Angelo Diliberti <diaboliq@home.com>. Jul 16-17, Peru, VT. Summer meeting of AFIO's New England Chapter at the Bromely Sun Lodge, (860) 669-7706. Oct 29-30, Kennebunkport, ME.Fall meeting of AFIO's New England Chapter, Nonantum Resort. (860) 669-7706. NOTE: AFIO MEMBERSHIP or associate membership is open to US citizens who subscribe to AFIO's principles and objectives - see AFIO's Homepage at https://www.afio.com For back issues, updated periodically, see the AFIO Homepage at https://www.afio.com. About AFIO | Chapters & Chapter Activities | Membership | Corporate | Weekly Intelligence Notes | Event Schedule | Bulletin Board | Book Reviews | Search | Other Intel Sites | Home Page |