Weekly Intelligence Notes #38-00
22 September 2000

WEEKLY INTELLIGENCE NOTES (WIN) #38-00 dtd 22 September 2000

WINs are intelligence commentaries produced and edited by Roy Jonkers, based on public media sources, for AFIO members and subscribers. Associate Editor Don Harvey contributed articles to this WIN.

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SECTION I - CURRENT INTELLIGENCE

ELECTIONS IN YUGOSLAVIA -- $77 MILLION HELPS FOES OF MILOSEVIC -- Charges of Chinese influence-buying in the 1996 U.S. presidential campaign caused a political storm in Washington that has yet to fully abate. By some measures, however, that episode pales by comparison to American political interference in Serbia, locus of a $77 million U.S. effort to do with ballots what NATO bombs could not -- getting rid of a prime US propaganda-designated bogeyman, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. By having him painted as a war criminal, however much necessary to give our policies in Yugoslavia and Kosovo a veneer of moral rectitude, the process of replacing him as a political leader has not been made easier.
In the run-up to national elections on Sunday, 24 September, U.S. agencies and contractors have been working to strengthen and support the opposition to Milosevic. They have helped train opposition organizers, equipped their offices with computers and fax machines and provided opposition parties with sophisticated voter surveys, and funneled support to student groups, labor unions, independent media outlets, even Serbian heavy metal bands that stage street concerts as part of a voter registration drive called "Rock the Vote."
There are signs of success - Milosevic is said to be running behind his principal opponent in the polls. But there also is evidence of a potential backlash. Kostunica, the opposition's front-runner, makes a point of telling audiences that he accepts no Western aid. US bombing of cities has not been popular among the Serbs. Milosevic's posters show a picture of another leading opposition figure -- former deputy prime minister Vuk Draskovic -- kissing the hand of Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.
US policy also fosters the further disintegration of Yugoslavia and isolation of Serbia by promoting the separation of Montenegro from Serbia through (media-announced) covert action, and the contest in Montenegro is another locus of activity. The Pentagon yesterday began a global shift of forces to bolster the U.S. military presence in the Balkans. A carrier battle group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln left Thai waters ahead of schedule and headed toward the Persian Gulf, which will free up another carrier group, led by the USS George Washington, for movement to the Adriatic Sea. This is good old-fashioned political hardball -- with money, bullets, information manipulation and covert action. Stand by for the next act and hope for the best in this sorry tale. (Wash Post Sep 19, 2000 Pg. 1 // Lancaster & Ricks) (Jonkers)

THE INVESTIGATION OF DR. DEUTCH -- The Pentagon acknowledged on September 20th that it had sat on its hands for well over a year before even trying to assess the actual or potential damage done to national security by Dr. John Deutch's lack of elementary security practices during his tenure as Deputy Secretary of Defense. RADM Quigley, USN, faced the press this week and engaged in double-speak trying to explain this lack of action, in spite of CIA offers to DOD of documentation and access to computer discs. But regardless of official foot-dragging, the probe is now in process and continuing.
Dr. Deutch reportedly used unsecured computers as well as his America Online account at home to access classified defense information (along with other internet sites) in the early to mid-1990s.
Ironically, the alleged violations occurred after Deutch issued a memo reminding Defense Department employees that only "properly reviewed and cleared" information should be placed on computer systems accessible to the public. The situation was exacerbated because Dr. Deutch declined departmental requests to install secure computer systems in his residence. "The evidence we obtained clearly establishes that Dr. Deutch failed to follow even the most basic security precautions," according to an internal DOD memo.
Deutch developed work habits at the Defense Department and the CIA that included using a variety of unsecured computers at home and carrying computer memory cards and disks with official information in his shirt pocket. One unanswered question is the whereabouts of some floppy disks he used to store classified military and intelligence data until he transferred the information to larger personal computer memory cards. A probe by the CIA inspector general determined that Deutch had four of these cards containing nearly 100,000 pages of information, including his daily journal.
Deutch served as Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisitions and Technology from April 1993 to March 1994, when he became Deputy Secretary of Defense, a job he held until he was appointed CIA director in 1995. He left the CIA in December of the following year.
There is no explicit evidence that computer hackers or spies obtained classified information as a result of Deutch's actions. It is not clear from the documents available to the media at this time precisely what kinds of classified information Deutch was working on at home. Generally, cases similar to Deutch's have not led to criminal charges, but have been handled through administrative sanctions.
The case has been compared to that of Wen Ho Lee, a fellow scientist, but not a member of the old-boy network and part of a minority being publicly targeted from some quarters. In both cases discs are missing. But regardless of excuses made for either Dr Deutch or Dr Lee, any time someone knowingly downloads classified material on a personal system (particularly if connected to the internet), it is done willfully and with bad intent -- even if the intent is only to circumvent the official system.
On the other side of the coin, these people (and many others in our work-obsessed society) deal with tasks and problems that cannot be contained in 8-10 hour workdays in the office. No excuse, but an explanation -- people in a corner may take shortcuts.
Without going overboard on this topic, for the problem is probably widespread (and Deutch - and Wen Ho Lee - may only be the tip of the iceberg and 'unlucky' scapegoats), it leads one to question the role and impact of the recently prevailing political climate on security-consciousness (widely condemned by security officials as disastrous during most of the current administration), or alternatively, the entire classification system. Perhaps the materials potentially compromised, described in such cataclysmic terms for the media initially, were not so important after all. Perhaps too much is classified and really available in open sources. Perhaps the entire classification system and associated procedures need a bottoms-up review. (AP - L. Margasak // Phil. Inquirer Sep 21, 2000; Wash Post Sep 16, 2000 Pg. 1 // Vise&Loeb) (courtesy C. Griffith) (Jonkers)

GLOBAL HAWK RECONNAISSANCE -- The US Joint Forces Command has completed a year-long evaluation of the Global Hawk long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) . The Command has recommended that it be put into production, calling it "militarily useful."
Global Hawk has demonstrated it can fly 1,200 nautical miles and orbit the area of interest at 60,000 feet for 24 hours in a single 32-hour mission. The system can gather imagery of a 200 x 200 mile area in 24 hours, or alternately, up to 1,900 narrow-field-of-view spot observations. System operators have demonstrated the capability to send imagery from Global Hawk to an F/A-18 in as little as nine minutes. Four Global Hawks are currently operational. Plans are in place to buy two per year, and there is interest in pushing that rate to six for more efficient production, even though the Air Force has about a $400 million production funding shortfall over the next five to seven years. (Aviation Week 18 Sept '00, p. 34) (Harvey)

SECTION II - CONTEXT AND PRECEDENT

WE'LL NEVER KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT WEN HO LEE -- A COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE OFFICER'S PERSPECTIVE -- The press has fully reflected the embarrassing conclusion of the case against Wen Ho Lee, including Judge James Parker's apology and indictment of Administration officials. In a Letter to the Editor published in the Wall Street Journal, Stuart Herrington, former career CI officer, provides his perspective, presented here in condensed form.
The series of miscues and errors that saw the Los Alamos investigation compromised in the media are not unprecedented. One need only to recall the late 1980's case against foreign service officer Felix Bloch, captured on videotape passing an attach� case to a known Soviet intelligence officer, only to have the investigation blown in the press. Mr. Bloch, considered guilty by all familiar with the case, but no fool, went to ground, protested his innocence and was never prosecuted. The Lee and Bloch cases underscore a fundamental aspect of the spy-catching art: to make an espionage case against a suspect, government investigators must pursue their quarry covertly. One leak to the media, and the alerted suspect is unlikely to communicate with his foreign agent handler again, or commit other compromising acts.
Concerning Beijing's targeting of our military secrets, we would do well to remind ourselves that virtually all governments - our own included - spy to obtain information in support of their nation's security and interests. The outrage about espionage should be directed at more deserving targets. Herrington's nominations:
(1) Those responsible for the deplorable degradation of security at DOE facilities during the past eight years. Security specialists generally urge prudent security measures. Management (scientists and academicians are the hardest to handle) object because they see them as inconvenient, expensive and restrictive of the free exchange of ideas. Or, incredibly, in the case of Ms. O'Leary's Energy Department, somehow demeaning to those unfortunate souls whose lower access levels would restrict their forays into top-secret files and areas. This leads to unauthorized disclosures and finger-pointing. Management, sensing danger becomes more Catholic than the Pope and full of excessive zeal. Then, after the heat is off, things return to normal and security officers relapse into frustrated apathy.
(2) Government officials who failed to see the Lee case as a potentially serious breach of security. If the FBI affidavit requesting authority to intrusively investigate Mr. Lee was packed with the same kind of probable-cause information these requests normally contain, denying the FBI the requested authority was an egregious error by the Justice Department.
(3) The individual or individuals who condemned the investigation by airing it in the media. In 1988 the New York Times, demonstrating commendable restraint, suppressed a story on suspected Army spy Clyde Lee Conrad, who, as a result, went to jail. Could not the Lee case have been handled the same way?
(4) Those in the public arena who promoted charges that Lee was merely a victim of racism. As Intelligence professionals know, Chinese (as well as other nations') intelligence services place a high priority on spotting, assessing and recruiting agents from their national overseas communities. If investigators had not focused on Lee, an ethnic Chinese US citizen with access to nuclear secrets, who had traveled to China (on government business), they would have been negligent.
Herrington concludes by saying that this affair was so abysmally mishandled that we'll never know whether Mr. Lee was a nuclear spy who got away with it, or a mild-mannered scientist who was unfairly accused and persecuted. But the American people can take no pride or comfort in what the Wen Ho Lee case tells us about how we keep the nation's nuclear secrets at a time when nuclear-weapons proliferation is one of the principal threats we face. (Wall St. Jrnl Sep 15, p. A18 // Stuart Herrington) (Jonkers)

INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ENHANCEMENTS -- A study conducted by the CIA last year found that less than half of the intelligence community's analysts had access to any collaborative tools other than the few available on the classified intranet known as INTELINK. Various cultural and technical hurdles continue to stand in the way of cooperation and data sharing among agencies. "The [intelligence community] has a cultural tradition that impedes information sharing because agencies retain a stovepipe mentality and organizational competitiveness," according to John Gannon, Assistant Director of Central Intelligence. "Lack of trust in the personnel, policies and systems of other agencies within the intelligence community is widespread and pervasive."
Obstacles to intelligence sharing include:
* Limited connectivity across agencies.
* Basic search-and-retrieval tools and complicated stovepipe databases.
* Limited ability to share data and collaborate on-line.
* Limited ability to process and filter information and handle non-English text.
* Limited ability to retrieve past production information, access knowledge base, or update customers.

Programs are underway to change the situation. Gannon has laid out three priorities to enhance collaboration among analysts and agencies:

(1) enhanced connectivity, (2) interoperable databases and (3) new analytical tools. Technologies are being deployed to address each one.

CIA, for its part, plans to install a new virtual workspace, known as "CIA Live," throughout the Directorates of Operations and Intelligence. It is a means for CIA officials to share information, work on the same projects simultaneously, and locate subject-matter experts throughout the agency who are online and available to lend assistance, at the click of a mouse. "CIA Live" is a partial solution that includes:
* Chat room and instant messaging.
* Buddy list to alert analysts when an individual expert is online.
* Electronic, or shared, whiteboard. A user can post an image, for example, and share it with another individual, then either individual can annotate the image in real time.
* Shared applications -- analysts will be able to share text documents.
Many of these features - available for 18 months or more - are already being used in the non-government corporate communities through virtual workspaces, networks and offices.
The DCI will also support the expansion of the Defense Intelligence Agency's 'Joint Intelligence Virtual Architecture' program. JIVA is DIA's next-generation collaboration tool focused on automated, real-time analysis, production and dissemination of intelligence products. JIVA aims to create a "federated environment across organizations. By fiscal 2001, which begins Oct. 1, JIVA capabilities will be on 20,000 desktops across the intelligence community.
The issue of enhancing collaboration among analysts at various agencies goes to the heart of the criticisms of intelligence performance and activities, including calls for a complete overhaul of the intelligence community. Intelligence experts and critics argue that the Internet has turned the notion of "central intelligence," into an oxymoron. They agree, however, that the initiatives now under way are a sign that the DCI is serious about tearing down walls.
(Fed Computer Wk // D. Verton// 08/28, 07/17,07/24/00)
< http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0828/pol-ciabox-08-28-00.asp > (Jonkers)
..
SECTION III - CYBER NEWS

No reports this week.

SECTION IV - BOOKS & LETTERS

LETTER ON CIA RELEASE OF CHILE DOCUMENTS -- A Washington newspaper's recent slant on the story of CIA's refusal to release some documents relating to the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende triggered a 'Letter to the Editor' by Richard Stolz, former chief of the CIA Directorate of Operations from 1988 through 1990.
Several parts of Mr. Stolz's letter are quoted below:
-- "Case officers--like journalists--must protect their sources."
-- "Some people have charged that CIA and other government agencies may resist declassifying some information because it is embarrassing. But in the case of Chile, the embarrassments already are common knowledge."
-- "The CIA does not randomly operate rogue operations. Covert actions are subject to rigorous approval procedures in many federal departments and in Congress."
-- "Often, indeed, too often, the Operations Directorate has been prodded by the White House, the Defense Department, the State Department and others to "not just stand there--do something! -- Well, the CIA doesn't just stand there; it does what it is ordered to do. It should be allowed to protect the people who risk their reputations, their fortunes and, at times, their lives to help." (Wash Post 4 Sept '00, p. A24) (Harvey)

IRAQ'S SCUD BALLISTIC MISSILES: An Information Paper, by the DOD Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, released July 27th, 2000. The DOD report examines Iraq's Scud ballistic missile program and the use of the Scuds against coalition forces in the Kuwait theater of operations and Israel.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq launched more than 90 of the short-range ballistic missiles. A Scud missile struck a warehouse used as a temporary barracks for U.S. soldiers and was responsible for the largest single American casualty event of the war: 28 people died and more than 100 were injured.
Although Iraq had produced both chemical and biological warheads for their Scuds, they did not employ them during the war. According to the information paper, the threat of massive U.S. retaliation and technical difficulties encountered in testing chemical/biological warheads deterred Saddam Hussein from taking this course. No chemical or biological agent warheads were found in the debris of Scud missiles.
Some veterans thought that Iraq launched more Scuds at coalition forces than actually occurred. Scuds broke up on re-entry or after Patriot missile intercepts and debris hit the ground in separate areas. This, together with numerous false alarms, and Patriot missile fire on false targets, contributed to this impression.
Information papers are reports of what DoD knows today about military equipment and/or procedures used in the 1990-1991 Gulf War. This paper and all other reports published by the special assistant's office are posted on the GulfLINK website at: < http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/scud_info/ > (.Media release No. 470-00, 27 July 2000) (Jonkers)

SECTION V - ODDS AND ENDS

WW II Special Operations - Nuclear physicist Niels Bohr was rescued in the nick of time from German-occupied Denmark. While Danish resistance fighters provided covering fire, he ran out the back door of his home, stopping momentarily to grab a beer bottle full of precious "Heavy Water" (for nuclear weapon research). He finally reached England still clutching his bottle. Which contained beer. I suppose some German drank the bottle of Heavy Water. (courtesy Milligan // Marples).

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