WEEKLY
INTELLIGENCE NOTES (WIN) 06-01 dated 12 February 2001
WINs contain intelligence notes and commentaries
selected, edited, written and produced by Roy Jonkers, with
contributions by Associate editors John Macartney and Don Harvey.
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SECTION I --
CURRENT INTELLIGENCE
NORTH KOREAN THREAT POTENTIAL -- CIA Director
George J. Tenet told a Senate hearing last Wednesday that "the
North Korean military appears for now to have halted its
near-decade-long slide in military capabilities," and is
expanding its short- and medium-range missile arsenal. He also said
there are few signs of real economic reform. Ground forces are being
infused with large numbers of artillery rockets and tubes deployed
in bunkers. Long-range 240 mm multiple-rocket-launcher systems and
170 mm self-propelled guns were fielded recently near the DMZ. North
Koreans have been building new ballistic missile facilities,
purchased some fighter aircraft and deployed more anti-tank barriers
and combat posts on military transit routes. The military has
dispersed its forces and is using more camouflage. They are
currently trying to buy 3,000 advanced SA-18 anti-aircraft missiles
to beef up aircraft defenses.
Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence
Agency, told the same Senate hearing that North Korea is unlikely to
reduce its threatening military position because the military is
needed to keep the regime in power. The mercurial North Korean
leader Kim Jong-il is obtaining the support of his military leaders
by using scarce resources to buy new weapons and supplies. North
Korean military leaders remain "deeply suspicious" of any
moves toward reconciliation with the South and economic reform, and
there is a deep disconnect in understanding, frames of reference,
and perspectives between the top leader and the bureaucrats who
implement and execute his ideas and policies. North Korea remains a
fundamentally schizophrenic and unstable state.
Robert Manning, an Asian affairs specialist with the Council on
Foreign Relations, said the agreement that ended North Korea's
nuclear weapons program, the Agreed Framework, is so far behind
schedule that Pyongyang this spring could threaten to restart its
nuclear arms program. "The problem is that diplomacy is way out
front of threat reduction. The threat hasn't lessened at all, and
yet the diplomacy and press image is that this is somehow a new
North Korea and [Kim Jong-il] is a charming guy." A military
buildup, nuclear and missile ambitions, continuing civil deprivation
and internal political disconnects point to a predictable potential
for upheaval, threat and crisis. (Washington Times, February 12,
2001, Pg. 1 //B/ Gertz) (Jonkers)
RUSSIAN AGENT WITH DIPLOMATIC COVER DEFECTS TO US
-- A Russian intelligence officer, identified by the officials as
Sergei Tretyakov, who worked under cover as a diplomat at the United
Nations, defected last October with his wife and other family
members, and has undergone extensive debriefings by the FBI and CIA.
While Mr. Tretyakov's public title was first secretary in the
Russian mission, he was in fact an officer in the S.V.R., Russia's
foreign intelligence service. Defections of Russian intelligence
officers have become relatively rare in recent years, partly because
American intelligence agencies have become more selective in terms
of which Russians they consider to be of interest. The market value
of Russian spies has declined. Officials refused to say whether
Tretyakov had worked as a spy for the United States while he was
still at the United Nations before his defection. But since
Tretyakov appears to have been formally accepted into the United
States under the laws that govern the CIA's official defector
resettlement program, he must have met fairly high standards in
terms of his value to American intelligence.
It is possible that Tretyakov would be able to provide American
counterintelligence officials with information about some of the
Russian espionage operations under way in the United States. Russia
has sharply increased the number of intelligence officers it has
placed in the United States recently. After being cut nearly in half
in the early 1990's after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the
ranks of Russian intelligence officers have now returned to nearly
their cold war levels. Still, the increased Russian intelligence
presence in the United States does not mean that Moscow is winning
any new spy war. In fact, American officials say it is possible that
some Russian intelligence officers view their assignments here
largely as a time to enjoy a pleasant life away from Moscow. For the
most part, Russian intelligence officers are based at the Russian
Embassy in Washington, the Russian Consulate and United Nations
mission in New York, and the Russian Consulate in San Francisco.
(New York Times, February 10, 2001 //J. Risen )( Jonkers)
FUGITIVE FINANCIER MARC RICH AN ISRAELI SPY?
Congress will soon hold hearings on one the most controversial of
President Clinton's last minute pardons. We have already heard that
Rich's former wife gave more than a million dollars to the
Democratic Party and to the Hillary Clinton campaign. Now this NY
Post article claims that Rich was an important intelligence source
for the Mossad and that both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and
former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit lobbied Clinton directly in
support of last month's pardon. (Macartney) http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/23124.htm
CYBER-TERRORISM RESOLUTION -- Reps. James
Saxton, R-N.J., and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., this week introduced
legislation that calls on the government to develop a new legal
framework to prosecute hackers and other Internet criminals. Saxton
and Chambliss offered a House resolution that also labels
cyber-terrorism "an emerging threat to the national security of
the United States which has the potentiality to cause great harm to
the nation's critical infrastructure..." The resolution also
calls for a public-private industry partnership to combat
cyber-crime, and a multi-agency study to assess the threat of
cyber-terrorism to the US. The study would be conducted by the
Commerce and Defense Departments, along with the NSA the CIA and the
FBI. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/161746.html
SECTION II -
CONTEXT AND PRECEDENCE
FORMER DCI OFFERS ADVICE ON THE INTELLIGENCE
COMMUNITY -- Noting that for the first time in over 30 years a
president has decided to retain a DCI selected by the president of
the other party, former deputy director and former director Robert
Gates has written about the present situation facing George Tenet.
He considers the IC as having lived off of strategic plans and
investments made in the early Reagan years with no increase in real
spending for intelligence until very recently. Accordingly, "No
challenge is more pressing than remedying the cumulative effect of
15 years of insufficient investment " in American intelligence
capabilities. The CIA has 25 percent fewer people than less than a
decade ago; the other intelligence agencies experienced the same or
worse reductions at the same time the demands for intelligence
support increased dramatically. Dozens of overseas combat operations
since 1993 [some of them lasting years] have created huge
requirements for daily battlefield intelligence (some 900
intelligence community analysts were involved full-time for a year
in support of operations in Kosovo) with no new capabilities having
been added. He believes the DCI's challenges are:
** First, to persuade the new secretary of defense
to collaborate on a multi-year program for reinvestment in US
intelligence capabilities--above all, the NSA--and then to
persuade the president and Congress to find the money.
** Second, to persuade the president and Congress
"to give him the authority he needs to manage the dozen or so
agencies for which he must develop budgets and priorities and for
whose performance he is accountable."
** Third, to develop a working relationship with
the new secretary of defense. The new secretary of state and the
new secretary of defense have underscored the need for new
resources in their departments; the president and the national
security adviser need to ensure the DCI's voice is heard as well
and with the support of the entire national security team.
** Fourth, to establish himself as a trusted
member of the president's inner circle. "He needs to be
present in the small meetings at which the crucial decisions are
made. He must be the one to make sure all the players have the
same information and that the facts on the table are the best
available, not just those supporting one position or
another."
Mr. Gates probably knows, though he does not allude
to it, that previous DCI's have found it impossible to convince
secretaries of defense to relinquish control of a vital element of
the military forces they control to an outside authority [the DCI]
who shares only a portion of the responsibilities the SECDEF and the
Services hold. With intelligence increasingly recognized in the
military as an integral and necessary element of military operations
and planning, the DCI could anticipate dedicated opposition to a
measure giving him unalloyed management control of the DOD
intelligence agencies' performance and budgets.
(Wall Street Journal 23 Jan '01, "Revitalize the CIA")
(Harvey)
PAN AM 103 LOCKERBIE TRIAL -- On orders from
Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet, the CIA played an
unusually high-profile role in supporting Scottish prosecutors in
the Pan Am 103 case, providing dozens of secret operations cables
and a foreign informer as a witness for the first time in a foreign
court case. But the CIA's most important contribution in helping
secure the conviction of a (low-level) Libyan intelligence officer
on Wednesday may have come a decade ago when a CIA engineer was able
to identify the timer that detonated a bomb aboard the 747 jetliner
carrying 259 people, shifting the focus of the probe from a
Palestinian terrorist group to Libya.
In convicting Libyan intelligence operative Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi
after an eight-month trial at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands, a
three-judge Scottish panel rejected the testimony of CIA informer,
but, in an 82-page opinion, cited the identification of a Swiss-made
Mebo MST-13 timer as a key piece of evidence linking the bomb aboard
Pan Am 103 to Libyan intelligence. Without mentioning the CIA by
name, the judges noted that after months of "fruitless"
effort by Scottish investigators and FBI agents to identify a
fragment of the timer found in the wreckage, the "U.S.
government" succeeded in naming the device in June 1990, 17
months after the Dec. 21, 1988, crash, which also killed 11 people
on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland.
In their closing arguments, prosecutors cited the testimony of CIA
scientist "John Orkin," who explained to the court how the
timer fragment matched an intact MST-13 timer obtained by the agency
after a raid on a Libyan-backed terrorist cell by authorities in
Togo in 1986. The CIA also provided prosecutors with documents
showing that the agency had been allowed to photograph an identical
MST-13 timer found in the possession of two known Libyan
intelligence operatives arrested as they disembarked from an
aircraft in Senegal in 1988. Additional testimony established that a
Swiss firm, Mebo, began supplying MST-13 timers to Libya in the
mid-1980s. "The clear inference which we draw from this
evidence is that the conception, planning and execution of the plot
which led to the planting of the explosive device was of Libyan
origin," the judges wrote.
After Libya in April 1999 finally turned over for trial two
suspects, Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah -- the latter a onetime
Libyan Airlines manager who was found not guilty -- the CIA
assembled a team of lawyers and operations officers to consider what
help the agency could give the Scottish prosecution team, senior
intelligence officials said. Five months later, the team explained
in a briefing to Tenet that Scottish law required an explicit
explanation for how the agency had acquired the intact MST-13 timer
and a photograph of the second MST-13, which meant operational
cables would have to be provided and covert officials, including two
chiefs of station, would have to testify using aliases and
disguises.
"It was at that briefing that the DCI made clear that we lean
as far forward as possible in giving them the support they needed --
'Go to it, whatever they want, I want you to do,' " an
intelligence official recalled. "We had a fairly clear mission
statement from that period forward.". "I don't think they
would have gotten even one conviction without the CIA," Rep.
Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence.
As a footnote of interest, the CIA lost one of its own aboard Pan Am
103: Matthew Gannon, 34, a covert operative who had earlier married
the daughter of a senior agency operations official, Thomas A.
Twetten, and was returning home for Christmas after an undercover
assignment in Beirut. (Wash Post / / V. Loeb) (Jonkers)
SECTION III -
BOOKS AND SOURCES
INTERNATIONAL CRIME THREAT ASSESSMENT -- This
Global assessment was prepared by a US Government interagency
working group in support of and pursuant to the President's
International Crime Control Strategy. Representatives from the
Central Intelligence Agency; Federal Bureau of Investigation; Drug
Enforcement Administration; US Customs Service; US Secret Service;
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network; National Drug Intelligence
Center; the Departments of State, the Treasury, Justice, and
Transportation; the Office of National Drug Control Policy; and the
National Security Council participated in the drafting of this
assessment.
Includes: Introduction; Global Context of International Crime,
International Crimes Affecting US Interests: http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/NSC/html/documents/pub45270chap2.html
Worldwide Areas of International Criminal Activity: http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/NSC/html/documents/pub45270chap3.html
Consequences for US Strategic Interests: http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/NSC/html/documents/pub45270chap4.html
The Future of International Crime: http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/NSC/html/documents/pub45270chap5.html
Report Index: http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/NSC/html/documents/pub45270/pub45270index.html
(Jonkers)
PENTAGON POLYGRAPH REPORT -- DOD has released
its annual report to Congress on the counterintelligence polygraph.
The report provides a summary of Pentagon polygraph activity, a
description of ongoing research efforts on the fragile scientific
underpinnings of the polygraph, and a new collection of anecdotes in
which the polygraph saved the day. http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/polygraph/dod-2000.html
(Macartney)
WAS ROBERT OPPENHEIMER AN ATOMIC SPY? This
fascinating and almost book-length article, "Theory of
Fielding" by HB Laes, argues rather persuasively (but
circumstantially) that the prominent nuclear physicist, Dr.
Robert Oppenheimer was a Soviet agent who was given the fictitious
name 'Arthur Fielding' in 1942 by his NKVD recruiter. http://www.tof.blogspot.com/
(Macartney)
ODD MAN OUT: Truman, Stalin, Mao and the Origins
of the Korean War, by Richard Thornton, Brassey's, 2000, 448
pages. -- The author is professor of history and international
relations at George Washington University. His book is a detailed
review of the political, diplomatic and military events that led to
the outbreak of the Korean War, and its aftermath. Most interesting
is that, contrary to popular belief, US intelligence had detected
and forecast the Communist North's June 25, 1950 attack on South
Korea. The intelligence was there, according to Dr Thornton, but
political leaders did not use it. (Macartney) http://www.brasseysinc.com/Books/Odd%20Man%20Out/1574882406.htm
HARVARD CASE STUDIES ON INTELLIGENCE
($3/each)
http://www.ksgcase.harvard.edu/plist.asp?Search_Type=TOPIC&Topic=Intelligence+Assessment
http://www.ksgcase.harvard.edu/plist.asp?Search_Type=TOPIC&Topic=Intelligence+Assessment
DCI's THREAT STATEMENT, FEB 7, 2001. See:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/UNCLASWWT_02072001.html
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39138-2001Feb7.html
(Macartney)
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