Weekly Intelligence Notes 4 March 2000 WINs are produced by Roy Jonkers for AFIO members and subscribers. WINs are protected by copyright laws and may not be reproduced except with the permission of the producer/editor  afio@afio.com  ANNOUNCEMENT: I am delighted to be able to announce that Elizabeth Bancroft, former editor of SURVEILLANT, has joined us at the AFIO Central Office. This is a major enhancement of our capabilities! Warning Notice: Perishability of Links:  WINs, sent weekly to members, often contain numerous webpage links to fast-breaking news, documents or other items of interest; unfortunately, after four weeks many of these websites [especially newspaper and other media sites] remove items or shift them into fee-only archives.  This underscores the benefit of receiving the WINs as they are released. ___________________________________________________________________ SECTION I:  CURRENT INTELLIGENCE ECHELON ?? - In reaction to the flurry of European allegations and news stories, the National Security Agency sent a letter to each member of Congress. "Recently, many allegations have surfaced about activities conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA). We anticipate a continuation, if not an increase, in these allegations for the foreseeable future. . . We want to assure you that NSA's activities are conducted in accordance with the highest constitutional, legal, and ethical standards, and in compliance with statutes and regulations designed to protect the privacy rights of U.S. persons." http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2000/02/nsalet.html (Jonkers) ECHELON (cont'd) -- Among a huge trove of FOIA documents, Jeffrey Richelson found one that mentions "ECHELON," the unconfirmed NSA program that European conspiracy theorists and the EU are naming ECHELON and are going bonkers about. The document is an innocuous missions-and-functions statement of a Navy Security Group Activity. Significantly, Richelson concludes that ECHELON is (or was) a routine program -- there is nothing to indicate ECHELON is anything sinister. (Macartney) http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,33891-2,00.html  http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB23/09-03.htm  ECHELON ?? (continued): A Lawyer For All Seasons. The lawyer who served as NSA's general counsel from 1992 to 1994 has spoken out in response to the allegations from a Canadian ex-intelligence officer that a secret international network of SIGINT sensor systems, led by NSA, spies on private American citizens. Mr. Stuart Baker, a lawyer with the Washington, D.C. firm of Steptoe & Johnson, informed UPI that ninety-nine percent of the information on Americans inadvertently picked up by NSA is thrown out. On the rare occasions when there is doubt whether an American's name should be deleted from a report, it is automatically elevated to the general counsel's office. There must be a warrant issued by a court to surveil a person inside the US; surveillance must be authorized on the same grounds of probable cause that a person is an agent of a foreign power by the Attorney General when the person is outside of the US. Baker said the NSA people are Americans like everybody else and that there is no monolithic conspiracy or ability to construct one in NSA. He also emphasized the many groups that watch over NSA to check for slip-ups. "There must be 100 people whose careers would be golden if they could find intelligence abuses at NSA," Baker said, noting the various inspector generals, presidential oversight boards, congressional committees and watch dog groups. "There hasn't been a credible claim from any of those people to find those abuses," he said. The Director of NSA , Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, has recently spoken out along the same line, saying that there are rules that require NSA to minimize the retention and dissemination of information inadvertently collected in the course of foreign intelligence collection activities. Such information can only be kept and disseminated, "when the life of the US person is in danger; they are the target of a foreign power, or the agent of a foreign power." (UPI by Pamela Hess, 28 Feb '00) (Harvey) NETWORK SECURITY - Recent events demonstrate that security breaches to e-commerce are real. The denial-of-service attacks on several Web sites like Yahoo!, E*Trade, CNN, eBay, Buy.com and others that blocked legitimate users for hours through a "distributed coordinated attack;" the diverting of customer traffic from Staples to a web site of one of its rivals; the attempted extortion of CD Universe Web site to retrieve customer credit card numbers, and the subsequent posting of those numbers on the Internet for an hour; along with the Bloomingdale's sales clerk that was swiping credit card numbers from customers unto a magnetic stripe reader attached to her Palm Pilot -- - all demonstrate real and multiple threats to Internet-based e-commerce that are growing in sophistication, duration and scale. One month after hacker attacks shut down Web sites, including Yahoo and eBay, much of the Net world is quietly boosting its defenses. Organizations must protect the information and the resources that get the job done. Network professionals recognize the susceptibility of unprotected networks to fraud, theft, vandalism and sabotage.Job listings for security professionals are now prominent on several leading e-commerce Web sites.. Security consultants say the attacks have pushed security from being a back-burner issue to becoming a genuine bottom-line concern across the Net. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-1561687.html  http://securityportal.com/direct.cgi?/topnews/why20000301.html  (Ron Levine rlevine@ix.netcom.com ) SECTION II:  CONTEXT AND PRECEDENCE L'AFFAIRE DEUTCH (cont'd) - IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS: Despite his 40 years in service to his country in one capacity or another, it is safe to guess that sympathy for former DCI John Deutch within the intelligence community, serving and former, does not overflow any container you care to name. His actions in using unprotected computers for highly classified material have been widely viewed as stupidity fueled by overweening arrogance. Despite his public apology, the criticism in the media and the continuing Justice Department investigation have been considered the minimum appropriate punishment. Now, however, a new censorious voice has been added to the chorus from a totally different direction. Dr. Deutch had returned from his government service to MIT as an "institute professor," a position essentially allowing him to do as he pleases. The new critic is molecular biology professor Jonathan King, an MIT professor for 30 years, who has told the press that Dr. Deutch should not have been allowed to return to academia. "The CIA reflects everything contrary to the spirit of the university, such as openness, international communication and cooperation," he said. Professor King's statements will be taken as additional evidence by those claiming that the unrequited remnants of the 1960's anti-establishment demonstrators migrated to academia. One wonders what Professor King would have said about George Washington, America's first proficient agent-handler. Dr. Deutch's performance was so lamentable, on the other hand, as to raise the possibility that he deserves to be consigned to continued association with cohorts such as Professor King. ( AP from Cambridge, Mass. 26 Feb 00; <http://daily> http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000226/pl/mit-deutch-1.html (Harvey) NSA GAY EMPLOYEES GROUP. NSA's December newsletter revealed that NSA now has its own homosexual employees group, the Alan Turing Chapter of the Gay, Lesbian or Bisexual Employees (GLOBE), named after the English mathematician and World War II code breaker.(Macartney) http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_gertzscar/20000128_xcgsc_poet_gener.shtml  DOE NUCLEAR WEAPONS SECURITY - Efforts to curb espionage at nuclear weapons labs has been improved, but there are still serious problems that could take years to overcome, not the least of which is the unwillingness of weapons scientists to take polygraph tests, lawmakers have been told by (AFIO member) Paul Redmond, the former head of counterintelligence at the CIA. Redmond conducted an in-depth review of actions taken by the Department of Energy (DoE) during the past 18 months to improve counterespionage programs. Redmond said that although the DoE is doing a much better job of looking for spies within its ranks, the agency nevertheless "has failed to gain even a modicum of acceptance for the polygraph program in the laboratories." Moreover, attempts at "awareness training" for lab scientists on the potential threats posed by espionage "have failed dismally." Weapons lab scientists have traditionally been "free-spirited scientific types" who have, in the past, been hostile towards heightened security measures that would limit open s with foreign counterparts. An intelligence official familiar with how the labs are run, said that, until recently, even scientists with the most sensitive clearance for nuclear secrets routinely violated security standards by not informing superiors of contacts with foreigners. Furthermore, unlike their counterparts in the Defense Department or the CIA, who also hold top-security clearances, the scientists were never administered spot polygraph examinations, and were not required to complete financial statements that would catch any unusual spikes in income. In the case of Wen Ho Lee, the fired Los Alamos National Laboratory weapons designer now charged with more than 50 counts of mishandling classified nuclear weapons, it's difficult to know precisely where to put the blame based on open source information only. Lee, who is suspected of having provided China with nuclear weapons secrets, traveled to China to deliver scientific papers in 1986 and 1988 as part of trips "pre-approved and encouraged" by officials at Los Alamos and the Department of Energy, which claims it "cleared the texts of the papers given at these conferences." The FBI also is said to have approved the trips. During the Reagan and Bush administrations, officials are said to have overlooked the threat to security that is posed by weapons lab scientists visiting countries like China and giving presentations at scientific conferences. These conferences were often attended by intelligence services of countries potentially hostile to the U.S. In a recent message to lawmakers, FBI Director Louis Freeh indicated that the compromising information obtained by China from U.S. weapons labs might have originated in scientific talks given by lab scientists or during private meetings with their Chinese counterparts. Freeh told lawmakers that the FBI had been unable to find traditional physical evidence of espionage in the cases of the specific scientists who are under investigation. This indicates that the information was quite possibly transferred during professional meetings with little official scrutiny. The DoE is pushing for mandatory polygraphs, citing serious and glaring breaches in security found upon scrutiny of the U.S.'s weapons labs. "We've had a wake-up call," Habiger has said. "That wake-up call is, we've got to get serious about security." Energy Secretary Richardson has been working to allay the concerns of nuclear weapons scientists at DoE weapons labs around the country regarding mandatory polygraph testing with a "morale-boosting" tour. "I believe the [polygraph] policy is adequate, narrowly focused and limited in scope," Richardson has been quoted as saying. Richardson recently announced that the tests will be given only to those individuals who have access to the most highly classified nuclear secrets and will involve both DoE and contractor employees at the nations nuclear weapons labs, as well as a small number of officials at department headquarters and other facilities. The final rule also affects political appointees if they have access to the information. "This is a narrowly targeted implementation plan," Richardson said, adding "we need to focus security efforts on protecting information that needs protection without impeding scientific research in the process." Redmond found no problem with DoE Secretary Bill Richardson's decision to reduce to about 800 the number of lab workers and scientists subjectto polygraph tests, from an original testing program that was supposed to include more than 10,000. Overall, Redmond stated "the problem [of strengthening counterintelligence activities] is massive and it's just beginning." Sources http://www.dso.com/newsletter.html  (Jonkers) SECTION III:  BOOKS AND REPORTS MAIN JUSTICE -- A front page story in the Feb 14 Washington Times reports that Richard Scruggs, a Janet Reno protégé, who formerly headed the Justice Dept's Intelligence division, was accused of leaking highly classified information to two book authors, but was never charged and still holds his security clearances. The episode, which came out in the book MAIN JUSTICE, was about an internal Justice Dept debate on a 1995 FBI electronic surveillance operation against the NY office of Aum Shin Rikyo. According to the Times, this was and is the first ever leak from the highly secret intelligence court within the Justice Dept which was established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and which provides "court orders" for counterespionage electronic surveillance ops. http://www.washtimes.com/national/news1-02142000.htm  (Macartney) FORTHCOMING BOOK -- by Elizabeth Bancroft: -- CASSIDY'S RUN: THE SECRET SPY WAR OVER NERVE GAS, by David Wise, Random House, in March 2000, $25. This is the story of Sgt Joe Cassidy who, in 1959, suddenly finds himself being dangled by the FBI in front of GRU officer Polikarpov who was under cover as a Soviet embassy employee. After Polikarpov bites, the relationship between bait and GRU continues for 21 years and is known, inhouse, as Operation Shocker. Cassidy is able to elicit the names of ten other Soviet spies and funnels a mass of chicken feed mixed in with some safe secrets, all of it heading eastwards. Most of it concerned nerve gas research at the Edgewood Arsenal, leading the Soviets down costly blind alleys and derailing their chemical warfare plans. Two FBI agents lost their lives in an accident in this joint FBI/DOD operation. Includes a chilling look at a Russian-developed nerve gas -- Novichok -- capable of instantly killing millions of humans, still in unstable Russian hands despite promises to dispose of all chemical weapons.(Elizabeth Bancroft) -- THE LAST WARRIOR: THE EXPLOSIVE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CIA OFFICER WITH THE LICENSE TO KILL by ********* [unnamed prior to publication] and John Weisman. HarperCollins, in June 2000, $26. -- REMOTE VIEWING SECRETS: A HANDBOOK by Joseph McMoneagle.Hampton Roads Press, in May 2000, $14.95. The author, a former U.S. Army officer working in INSCOM, worked for the remote-viewing program now identified as STARGATE. This book provides definitions, examples and qualifications for potential remote viewers, and includes training methods, technical applications and protocols. It is a good addition to two more personal accounts which appeared in 1996 (Morehouse's PSYCHIC WARRIOR) and in 1997 (Schnabel's REMOTE VIEWERS). (Ed. Note - also certainly, THE PSYCHIC BATTLEFIELD: A History of the Military-Occult Complex, by W. Adam Mandelbaum, 2000 (RJ)) -- SWAMPED BY WORK WITH NO TIME TO READ? Here are forthcoming books-on-tape -- use in your car or while exercising.... -- THIRTY YEARS OF TREASON by Eric Bentley, Dove Audio.Includes transcripts from the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities. 4 cassettes, 6 hrs, $30 in May 2000 -- THE SWORD AND THE SHIELD by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mirokhin. Highbridge Audio.Based on their 1999 Basic Book. 4 cassettes, 6 hrs, $26.95 in May 2000 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Commentary and opinions included are those of the Producer/Editor, the Associate Editors (Harvey and Macartney) or contributors listed in the tagline of each article. Members: Support AFIO -- Sponsor a new member! For Membership Application, see our website at https://www.afio.com  REMEMBER: EVERY MEMBER SPONSOR A MEMBER! ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++END++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Back to Top Back to Top About AFIO | Chapters & Chapter Activities | Membership | Corporate | Weekly Intelligence Notes | Event Schedule | Bulletin Board | Book Reviews | Search | AFIO Store | | Other Intel Sites | Home Page AFIO Central Office 6723 Whittier Avenue, Suite 303A McLean, Virginia 22101-4533 Telephone: 703 790 0320 | Facsimile: 703 991 1278 Email: afio@afio.com