WIN #18-04 dtd 31 May 2004
Weekly Intelligence Notes (WINs) are commentaries on Intelligence and related national security matters, based on open media sources, selected, interpreted, edited and produced by AFIO for non-profit educational uses by AFIO members and WIN subscribers.
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SECTION I -- CURRENT INTELLIGENCE
Al-Qa’ida’s Current Operational Status?
CIA’s Friend to be Iraqi Prime Minister
SECTION II -- CONTEXT AND PRECEDENCE
Iran and the Level HUMINT Playing Field
9/11 Commission May Split Over Agency Reform
SECTION III -- CYBER INTELLIGENCE
Uncle Sam Continues to Keep His Eye on Databases
CIA Vet Testifies on Behalf of Saudi Nerd
SECTION IV -- BOOKS, SOURCES, AND ISSUES
BOOKS
How the Soviets Stole the Atom Bomb
SECTION V -- NOTES, LETTERS, AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
NOTES
U.S. Army’s new field manual on intelligence
AFIO Member Helps To Revive Iraqi Scouting
COMING EVENTS
8 June - The Greatest Spy Theft in History
10 June - Handbook of Practical Spying
13 June - NPIC Reunion: Spring Fling 2004
16 June - Herbert Yardley: Reader of Other Gentlemen’s Mail
19 June - AFIO Night at the Boston Pops 2004
OBITUARY
SECTION I -- CURRENT INTELLIGENCE
AL-QA’IDA’S CURRENT OPERATIONAL STATUS? -- On 29 May, al-Qa’ida launched an attack on oil company compounds in the Saudi town of Khobar in which at least 22 people died, including an American. BBC. At the Oasis residential compound, which houses company executives, the Islamist militants held hostage about 50 people during a 25 hour siege by Saudi security forces. Some of the freed hostages said Saudi commandos moved in after nine hostages tried to escape and had their throats cut. An audiotape, posted on an Islamic website and claiming the attack for al-Qa’ida, said, "We will cleanse the Arabian peninsula of infidels." It was the second deadly assault in May on oil industry targets in Saudi Arabia. The target in the earlier attack was the office of Houston-based ABB Lummus Global Inc. in the western city of Yanbu. Six Westerners and a Saudi died there on 1 May.
On 30 May, the day after the Khobar attack was launched, the trial opened in Istanbul of 69 Islamists charged in connection with bomb attacks on the British Consulate General, a British bank and two synagogues in that city that left 60 people dead last November. BBC. While the bombings are considered the work of a Turkish Islamist Hizballah group, the Turkish police and government say they have evidence of the involvement of al-Qa’ida at a high level.
The attacks in Saudi Arabia and the Istanbul trial came as a kind of confirmation of a report issued earlier in the week. The Strategic Survey 2003/2004, produced by the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, asserted that far from having been crippled by the war on terror, al-Qa’ida has managed to fully reconstitute itself and has more than 18,000 adherents around the world. RFE/RL. The network remains a powerhouse for Islamic terrorists operating in more than 60 countries, according to the survey. The survey's editor, Jonathan Stevenson, explained the figure of 18,000 potential terrorists was based on a U.S. intelligence estimate of 20,000 foreign jihadis who traveled to Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001 to be indoctrinated and trained in camps run by al-Qa'ida and the Taliban. With about 2,000 al-Qa'ida members killed or captured, the remaining number is 18,000. Only a small number of these are hard-core terrorists, with a larger number being peripheral support figures, providing logistical, technical, or financial assistance, according to Stevenson. The remainder might be inactive individuals who are susceptible to al-Qa’ida's agenda, and who might step into active operational roles at any time.
The day after the survey was released on 25 May, Attorney General Ashcroft told a press conference that intelligence from multiple sources indicated that al-Qa’ida intends to attack the United States in the coming months. CNN. Ashcroft said that after the 11 March bombing of Madrid railroad stations, "an al-Qa’ida spokesman announced 90 percent of the arrangements for an attack on the United States were complete." IISS Director John Chipman told the press that the Madrid bombings had established a new and effective modus operandi that increasingly exploited local affiliates. Al-Qa’ida, he said, must be expected to keep trying to develop more promising plans for terrorist operations in North America and Europe, potentially involving weapons of mass destruction. "Meanwhile, soft targets encompassing Americans, Europeans and Israelis and aiding the insurgency in Iraq will suffice," he added. In the view of IISS researcher Christopher Langton, it could take up to 500,000 U.S. and allied troops to effectively police Iraq and restore political stability. However, he told a news conference, such a figure appeared impossible to meet, given political disquiet in the United States and Britain and the unwillingness of other nations to send troops.
The United States is al-Qa’ida's prime target in a war it sees as a death struggle between civilizations, the survey said. An al-Qa’ida leader has said four million Americans will have to be killed as a prerequisite to any Islamic victory. "Al-Qa’ida's complaints have been transformed into religious absolutes and cannot be satisfied through political compromise," the survey emphasized. Driving the terror network out of Afghanistan in late 2001 appears to have benefited the group, which dispersed to many countries, making it almost invisible and hard to combat, the study said. The U.S. occupation of Iraq has brought al-Qaida recruits from across Islamic nations and up to 1,000 foreign Islamic fighters who have infiltrated Iraqi territory, where they are cooperating with Iraqi insurgents.
On 30 May, the Sunday Telegraph (London) reported that a well-armed group of foreign insurgents had infiltrated Faluja before fighting erupted there in March and they continue to mount operations in defiance of leaders of Faluja's mosques, militia and the police force. The group, led by a young Saudi, is linked to a spate of kidnappings of Westerners, particularly journalists. Local people fear its Saudi members belong to an al-Qa’ida cell and a senior shaykh told the Telegraph the group was out of control. Faluja's independent militia, set up under an agreement with the Americans, is threatening to attack the Saudi group because of its persistent involvement in kidnappings and looting.
Efforts to defeat al-Qa’ida will take time and might accelerate only if there are political developments that now seem elusive, such as the democratization of Iraq and the resolution of conflict in Israel, the survey said. On 27 May, the FBI issued an urgent bulletin to law enforcement officials in two or three cities to warn of intelligence that indicated the prospect of an attack in the next 24 hours, officials said. The alert was retracted a few hours later, after the intelligence proved unfounded, the officials said. LA Daily News. (Cameron L.C., DKR)
CIA’S FRIEND TO BE IRAQI PRIME MINISTER -- On 28 May, the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council unanimously named Ayad Allawi to be prime minister of the interim administration that is to take over the government of Iraq on 1 July. Allawi is best known at home and abroad for his connections with the CIA and Britain’s MI6.
The State Department and the UN appeared taken by surprise by the IGC’s move. On 29 May, Secretary of State Powell said, "We have no position on any candidate at this moment because we are waiting to hear from Ambassador Brahimi and he needs time to complete his work." Powell was referring to the UN’s man handling Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi.
In New York, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said, “It's not how we expected it to happen,” but added Brahimi "respects the decision and is prepared to work with this person on the selection of the other posts in this interim government and UN officials.” The New York Times reported on 29 May that Allawi had ranked third on Brahimi's list of acceptable candidates for prime minister. In short Brahimi and his colleagues on Turtle Bay accepted something decided, not with them, but for them.
Significantly, before Powell made his comments, the White House had said Allawi was a fine and capable leader who appears to have broad support among the Iraqi people and Paul Bremer, the American proconsul in Iraq, congratulated Allawi on his being chosen. This sequence suggested to some observers that State had been kept out of the loop. On 31 May, the Times, reporting from Baghdad, cited an unidentified person, said to be conversant with the negotiations, as saying Brahimi was presented with a fait accompli after President Bush's envoy to Iraq, Robert D. Blackwill, railroaded the IGC into coalescing around Allawi. NY Times.
Allawi was born in 1945 into Shii merchant family. Educated in Britain and trained as a neurologist, he at first supported the Ba’ath regime in Iraq but fell out with Saddam Husayn and returned to England. He survived an assassination attempt by Saddam's agents in 1978 when they broke into his bedroom in a London suburb and tried to hack him to death with knives and axes. The assailants fled when his father-in-law arrived on the scene. Allawi became a founding member and subsequently leader of the Iraqi National Accord, made up largely of former Ba’ath and Iraqi military officers in exile. The organization received support from British intelligence and then the CIA and Jordan. In 1996, Allawi organized a failed coup against Saddam. Iraqi intelligence had penetrated Allawi’s organization and mukhabarat agents are said to have used the satellite telephones provided by the CIA to call up the agency station in Amman and report the plotters had been rounded up.
Allawi, like other IGC members, lacks broad support among Iraqis for many of whom he is tainted by his close ties with the West. But his past association with the Ba’ath party is likely to work in his favor with Sunni Arabs and other nationalists. U.S. backing for Allawi suggests a deepening of a reversal of policy signaled by the disgrace of Ahmad Chalabi, the former favorite of the DoD and Vice President Cheney (See WIN #17-04 dtd 24 May 2004)
Allawi has undertaken an expensive campaign to get to influential Americans, according to the Associated Press. He has paid prominent Washington lobbyists and New York publicists more than $300,000 in recent months to help him contact policy-makers and journalists. According to papers filed with the Justice Department, all the money comes from a U.K. citizen, Mashal Nawab, described as Allawi's close friend and admirer. DowJones News.
Certainly since last October, the --until then-- relatively obscure Allawi has gained in name recognition. On 29 December, the Washington Post ran an op-ed column of his opposing the purging of Ba’ath party members from Iraqi government positions. Despite strong opposition from members of the Iraqi Governing Council, especially by Shii Arabs, the Bush administration started in late April to relax its policy on the ban of Ba'ath officials. A striking example of this shift was the appointment early in May of Maj.-General Jassim Muhammad Salih al-Muhammadi of the disbanded Republican Guard, to lead the Faluja Brigade, a militia of local Sunni Arabs created to maintain order in that city when the U.S. military abandoned its attempt to directly subdue Faluja. Muhammadi’s appointment aroused such consternation in the IGC that the Americans replaced him with Maj. General Muhammad Latif who had at least trained at the British military academy and spent years in Saddam's prison.
Allawi has a much better track record for being forthcoming, upright and making sense than Ahmad Chalabi, said Robert Baer, a former CIA operations officer. But Allawi does not enjoy universal American approval. Laurie Mylroie, a critic of the CIA's handling of Iraq, said, "I think that confidence was entirely misplaced." Mylroie, author of Bush vs. the Beltway, blamed Allawi for what she said was faulty intelligence that endangered U.S. troops at the end of the Gulf War in 1991. The Daily Telegraph (London) reported on 29 May a coalition source as saying Allawi was a bridge builder among the Iraqi communities. “He is not a great public speaking politician,” the source said. “He does not thrust himself forward, but he quietly builds consensus behind the scenes."
When the Coalition Provisional Authority hands over to the Iraqis on 30 June, the interim government will lead the country until national elections in 2005. (DKR)
SECTION II -- CONTEXT AND PRECEDENCE
IRAN AND THE LEVEL HUMINT PLAYING FIELD -- “Those ayatollahs surely know how to run a secret intelligence service,” says Thomas Patrick Carroll, a former officer in the CIA clandestine service, in the Los Angeles Times of 25 May. Carroll was commenting on press reports citing sources inside DIA that charged the Information Collection Program of Ahmad Chalabi's U.S.-funded Iraqi National Congress with being a front for Iranian intelligence and that the INC passed secret U.S. intelligence to the Iranians while at the same time passing Iranian disinformation back to the United States.
“If this is true (and in the murky world of espionage, "if" is the most important qualifier), the Iranians have pulled off one of the greatest covert operations in modern history,” writes Carroll. He compares it to the 1923 Operation Trust (a.k.a. “The Trust”), the deception orchestrated by Lenin's OGPU, forerunner of the KGB. Operation Trust created a phony White Russian group called the Monarchist Association of Central Russia. The group succeeded in passing itself off to Western governments as an anti-Bolshevik resistance operating inside the Soviet Union. At a time when the Bolshevik regime was starved for hard currency, the intelligence services of Britain, France, Poland, Finland and other anti-communist countries channeled funds to the association, unaware the money was going to the new masters in the Kremlin. Worse, the association lured genuine anti-Soviet resistance fighters to their deaths. The Soviets kept the ruse going for six years before being found out.
How likely is it, asks Carroll, that Iranian intelligence put together a modern-day Operation Trust? His answer is that it is impossible to know for sure, but that such a deception is certainly plausible, and that this possibility reveals something important about the power of the Iranian regime. It is that human capabilities can trump the high tech intel resources of the United States. “We only need to look at the WMD fiasco in Iraq, where the United States tried to make up for its lack of human intelligence resources by relying on satellites and intercepts,” said Carroll. “We all know how well that worked.”
Where Iranian HUMINT can achieve stunning results with good tradecraft and imaginative operations, U.S. technological advantages fade. This spy versus spy struggle is one the United States can definitely lose if it's not careful, Carroll warns. And, he adds, the same goes for the conflict with al-Qa’ida. While the U.S. intelligence community has many advantages over the Iranians and Qa’idas of the world, the human game of espionage is played on a field that is far more level than Americans commonly suppose. Carroll concludes by stressing that Congress needs to give DCI Tenet the resources he needs to get U.S humint up to fighting form -- and that the president must then demand results.
Also commenting on the Chalabi affair, George Friedman, the head of Austin based Strategic Forecasting, writes in the Stratfor e-mail newsletter of 28 May, that the Americans and Iranians both used Chalabi for their own purposes. For the Americans, it was to try and convince the Iranians that it was in their interest for stability to be maintained in the Shii areas of Iraq. For the Iranians, it was to screen information from the Americans. Specifically, Friedman believes that the Iranians and Chalabi knew Saddam Husayn planned the guerrilla war now underway in Iraq, but withheld this knowledge from the United States. Concludes Friedman: “At this point, it is honestly impossible to tell who got the better of whom. But this much is certain. Chalabi, for all his cleverness, is just another used up spook, trusted by no one, trusting even fewer. Geopolitics trumps conspiracy every time.” (V.J., DKR)
9/11 COMMISSION MAY SPLIT OVER AGENCY REFORM -- Disagreements over restructuring the CIA, FBI, and other counterterrorism agencies may prevent members of the 9/11 Commission from issuing a unanimous report, according to the New York Times. NY Times. The threat of a split within the commission, with the possibility of separate majority and minority reports, was likely to be welcome news at the intelligence agencies, the Times said, adding that these bodies have been harshly criticized by the panel at its public hearings and are almost certain to be targeted in its final report due out this summer.
Members of the bipartisan commission told the Times they would strive to agree on a unanimous report before their Congressionally mandated deadline of 26 July. Commission chairman Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, has repeatedly called for a unanimous report, warning that anything less could undermine the commission's ability to persuade the White House and Congress to follow through on its recommendations. But, according to the Times, others on the 10-member commission said a unanimous report might be impossible because many of the proposed recommendations were so contentious. Panel members have said they will consider several proposals that are likely to be strongly resisted in Congress and by the Bush administration, including stripping the FBI of responsibility for domestic counterterrorism investigations, shifting that responsibility to a new domestic agency modeled on Britain’s MI-5, and creating a national intelligence director with budgetary authority over the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
Slade Gorton, a Republican member of the commission and former senator from Washington State, said that if there were a split in the commission, it would not necessarily be on partisan lines. "Certainly, the tentative debates have no split on partisan lines by any stretch of the imagination," he said. The commission has prided itself on what it has insisted are nonpartisan policy deliberations behind closed doors. The panel's vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana and sometime chairman of the House International Relations Committee, predicted the commission would "achieve very large consensus on the report and the recommendations, but I hesitate to say unanimity." Another Democrat on the panel, Bob Kerrey, former senator from Nebraska and now president of the New School University in New York, said that in some disputed areas, like restructuring the FBI and intelligence agencies, the commission might decide against a single recommendation and instead present the White House and Congress with options that reflect differences among the commissioners. (Cameron L.C., DKR)
SECTION III -- CYBER INTELLIGENCE
UNCLE SAM CONTINUES TO KEEP AN EYE ON DATABASES -- U.S. government computers continue to sift through a vast array of databases for hints of terrorist activity, despite the closure of a controversial Pentagon program, Reuters reports. Nine months after Congress shut down the Pentagon computer-surveillance program, the U.S. government continues to comb private records to sniff out suspicious activity, according to a congressional report obtained by the London-based news agency. ZD Net UK. (Newsbits.com, DKR)
CIA VET TESTIFIES ON BEHALF OF SAUDI NERD -- Former CIA officer Frank Anderson testified to a Federal court in Boise that a Saudi Arabian graduate computer student at the University of Idaho has not, as accused, used Web sites to foster terrorism. Thereupon, on 26 May, the defense counsel for Sami Umar al-Husayin, rested its case. The seven-week long trial has pitted First Amendment guarantees against the government's efforts in the war on terrorism, according to USA Today. The Federal government claims Husayin, used his skills to disseminate information to terrorists. USA Today.(DKR)
THE VIEW FROM THE OTHER SIDE -- Mehr News, a Tehran news site, carried the following story on 30 May. WIN readers may enjoy it for its vivid presentation of an Iranian point of view. Mehr News. This is what the item says under a Tucson, AZ dateline:
"A routine audit of our weblog at Al-Masakin has revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice has once again made a complete review of Al-Masakin Online. The DoJ investigated Al-Masakin Online in response to demands made by several Zionist racists that frequent the “Little Green Footballs” webpage. [Unfortunately, WIN is ignorant of the Little Green Footballs and where they may be found.]
"Since the beginning of the Masjid al-Aqsa Intifada [the Palestinian uprising] in September 2000, Zionists have been using all manner of cyber attacks against the Muslim and anti-imperialist media. Cyber attacks against the Muslim and anti-imperialist media have taken the forms of hacking, spamming, petitions to webpage host servers, and petitions to government organizations like the FBI. Israeli Zionists first petitioned the FBI against Majdur Travail -- then of Marxist-Leninist Newswire -- in 2002 after MLN declared its support for the Islamic resistance movement Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine simultaneously. ILPS News
"The current investigation comes at the hysterical urging of certain fascists alarmed by our principled stance on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. The Ku Klux Klan Act, 42 U.S.C. 1983, prohibits private use of the criminal justice system to deprive an individual of 1st Amendment rights. The current DoJ audit is routine." (Courtesy of Al-Masakin, which is located at majdur.htmlplanet.com)"
Clicking on Portfolio at Al-Masakin's site will bring the curious to a repertory of Islamist and leftist attacks on the United States and Israel. (Newsbits. net, DKR)
SECTION IV -- BOOKS, SOURCES, AND ISSUES
BOOKS
GEN. ZINNI’S HARSH APPRAISAL -- Tom Clancy with Gen. Anthony Zinni (USMC Ret.) and Tony Koltz, Battle Ready,(Putnam, 480 pp. $28.95) Gen. Zinni has figured frequently in recent days in the news media with the publication of Battle Ready and his harsh appraisal of the conditions in which U.S. intervention in Iraq has unfurled has been widely noted. His appraisal is that, “In the lead-up to the Iraq War and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption.” Zinni writes that he was moved to speak out by "false rationales presented as a justification; a flawed strategy; lack of planning; the unnecessary alienation of our allies; the underestimation of the task; the unnecessary distraction from real threats; and the unbearable strain dumped on our overstretched military." Zinni supports the views of Gen. Eric K. Shinseki (U.S. Army ret.), the former Army chief of staff, whose estimated that 300,000 troops would be needed in postwar Iraq. Shinseki was pilloried by the civilian leadership at the Pentagon for contradicting their belief that the job could be done in Iraq with less than half that number of troops.
Since retiring in September 2000 as Commander in Chief, U.S. Central Command, Zinni has been outspoken about his experience of the uses and abuses of the U.S. military. This work, part of Tom Clancy’s non-fiction series on commanders, includes dozens of pages of Zinni’s direct comments. The book begins with the 1998 Desert Fox attack on Saddam Husayn, coordinated by CENTCOM. Then it moves to the Philadelphia-born Zinni’s early years as a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam, his subsequent service on Okinawa, his time in Europe at the end of the Cold War and onto his work in the 1991 war against Iraq. He joined CENTCOM in time for the Somalia fiasco and speaks frankly about the failings there. As commander of CENTCOM, Zinni’s responsibilities took him to Pakistan and Central Asia and had him fencing with Saddam over weapons inspections. What makes the book important reading for a wide public is the 24-page closing section in which Zinni sets out his concern that his generation’s military legacy is under threat. (DKR)
THE ART OF DECEPTION -- Thaddeus Holt, The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War, (Scribner, 1,184 pp, $55.) Holt is a lawyer and former deputy secretary of the Army who has compiled a massive account of the many operations conducted by the Allies to deceive the Axis during the Second World War. The best known of the operations in misleading the enemy was persuading the Germans that the Allies would certainly land in France but not where the Germans were led to expect. Holt tells the reader about many other successes, such as Operation Mincemeat that inspired the book and film about The Man Who Never Was. For scholars this work is a splendid compendium of information on the art of strategic deception. For the general public, it reads like a good spy thriller. (DKR)
HOW THE SOVIETS STOLE THE ATOM BOMB – Nigel West, Mortal Crimes: The Greatest Theft in History: Soviet Penetration of the Manhattan Project, (Enigma, 360 pp., $27). West will be known to many with an interest in twentieth century espionage; he has written prolifically about it. In his latest book, he calls on recently declassified information from both Soviet and U.S. archives to piece together the Russians efforts to acquire the secrets of the Allies’ development of the atom bomb and especially their effort in the United States.
West painstakingly reconstructs the warren of espionage networks set up by the NKVD and its successor, the KGB, in the United States, beginning in the 1930s and continuing through World War II. The players are a myriad of shadowy characters that it has taken decades for investigators to track down and some of who will probably never the identified.
At the heart of West’s story lie the Venona files, declassified by the United States in the 1990s. West has written before about these files that provided the Soviet code names for British and American spies in the service of the Kremlin. But Mortal Crimes paints a much larger canvas that encompasses successes and failures on both sides. Among the failures was that of the FBI to comprehend as quickly as they might have the large scale of Soviet espionage on the West Coast. It was a failure that West sees as the result of the U.S. Army refusing to take the bureau into its confidence about the work being done at Los Alamos. What could be more relevant to the present day debate on reforming the Intelligence Community than this story of close holding secrets by one government agency from others?
SECTION V -- NOTES. LETTERS, AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
NOTES
INSIDE CIA UNIVERSITY: HIGHER ED FOR ANALYSTS -- To listen to this National Public Radio program broadcast on 28 May go to audio link. NPR. (Joe C., DKR)
U.S. ARMY NEW FIELD MANUAL ON INTELLIGENCE -- On 17 May, the U.S. Army published its new intelligence field manual, FM 2-0. Prepared by the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and School, it covers every aspect of intelligence operations and, according to its preface, provides MI guidance for all commanders, staffs, trainers, and MI personnel at all echelons. The manual, the preface says, forms the foundation for MI and the Intelligence BOS doctrine development, and applies equally to the U.S. Army Active Component, Army Reserve and National Guard. It is also intended for commanders and staffs of joint and combined commands, U.S. Naval and Marine Forces, units of the U.S. Air Force, and the military forces of multinational partners. The full 211-pages of the manual may be viewed at FAS (FAS Secrecy News,28 May; DKR)
AFIO MEMBER HELPS IRAQI SCOUTS TO REVIVE -- Dictatorships whether Nazi, Communist or Ba’ath, do not like independent youth organizations. Such was the case in Saddam Husayn’s Iraq concerning the Boy Scouts. Yet in spite of Saddam efforts to deny them funds, meeting places and communication between brother and sister organizations, Iraqi scouting councils have survived in all of the countries 18 provinces, according to Cmdr. Chip Beck (U.S. Navy ret.), an AFIO member. Beck is helping the Iraqi scouts resurrect themselves. FOX News. “You still have some older scout leaders in their 40s who had been trained by the world scouting organization and knew the ethics and training and maintained it. They kept it up,” Beck said. “They’re emerging battered and tattered, but in relatively good shape.”
Beck, who has been working with the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Pentagon on communications systems in Baghdad, set about helping the Iraqis restore their scouting system earlier this year. Scouting in Iraq goes back to the 1920s. He placed articles in Arabic newspapers to garner support that generated excitement among scouts in and around Baghdad. By leaving the security of the Green Zone and mingling with ordinary Iraqis, Beck found 40 to 50 scout leaders. He said that despite differences in color, religion and politics, the Iraqi scouts and former scouts he has found in Coalition forces shared the symbols of scout patches, scarves and the fundamental code of scouting that transcend the daily violence of present day Iraq. “It was really kind of an instant family,” Beck said. “It’s like brotherhood and sisterhood.”
Besides helping establish communication between scout troops, Beck is also aiding them raise upwards of $4 million from private donations to establish a national camp for boys and girls in an old military training facility on the Tigris River outside of Baghdad. He has won the blessing of local clerics and other religious leaders as well as an approving nod from several members of the Iraqi Governing Council. Gregg Shields, spokesman for the Boys Scouts of America, said it was important to emphasize that Beck's program is a distinctly Iraqi project. “We’re thrilled to see scouting again in Iraq,” Shields said. “We’d like to encourage it and to help but it has to be an Iraqi-born program."
COMING EVENTS
8 June - THE GREATEST THEFT IN HISTORY: SOVIET PENETRATION OF THE MANHATTAN PROJECT -- International Spy Museum, Washington, D.C.
Soviet spies stole our biggest secret to date…here’s how they did it. Hear the most up-to-date intelligence on the Soviet espionage inside the United States that shaved years off their atomic bomb production schedule. Renowned British intelligence expert and author of the newly released book, Mortal Crimes, Nigel West will describe the breathtaking scale and sophistication of the Soviet espionage network that infiltrated the Manhattan Project. With information uncovered from the long-secret VENONA files, and declassified documents from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, West will narrate the true story behind this extraordinary intelligence success. Tickets: $20. Members of The Spy Ring (Join Today!): $16. Space is limited – advance registration required! For more info. visit http://www.spymuseum.org/do/programs.asp#1.
10 June - HANDBOOK OF PRACTICAL SPYING -- The International Spy Museum Washington, DC, International Spy Museum -- FREE LUNCHTIME AUTHOR DEBRIEFINGS AND BOOKSIGNINGS. From the belly of the beast...Forget the fancy James Bond weapons from “Q,” the Ninja’s concealed dagger, and even the Museum’s own lipstick pistol. The spy’s most potent weapon is his or her own mind. In this first-ever “how-to” handbook from “inside” the International Spy Museum, Executive Director Peter Earnest shares insights into the thoughts and strategies of successful spies. All the tradecraft and specially designed “tools of the trade” are useless if the mind behind them does not “think like a spy.” Learn how you can! For more info. visit http://www.spymuseum.org/do/programs.asp#1.
13 June - NPIC REUNION. SPRING FLING 2004 AT POTOMAC, MD-- Open to all NPICers (anyone who worked at Building 213 or the Steuart Building, no matter what the parent organization, retired or not), spouses and families. The event will be held at the Carderock Recreation Area - Beltway/I495 Exit #41 - follow signs to Carderock, about one mile north of the Beltway. 1:00 PM until dusk. Food/beverage: BYO picnic. Beer/wine permitted in Pavilion only. Grills available. To defray cost of mailings and charge for the Carderock Pavilion, please mail $10 for each family that will attend. There is no charge if just requesting to be added to the mailing list for future events. To reserve and/or to get on the future mailing list, provide your contact info with check to: Anne Allen, 6925 Greenvale Street, NW, Washington, DC 20015. For info, contact: Jim Richey at 703-971-4812, jimrichey2@juno.com; Carol Lynch at 301-464-1116, Clynch12014@comcast.net; Anne Allen at 202-244-6863; or Don McMullin at 202-244-7137, dmcmullin@juno.com.
16 June - HERBERT YARDLEY: READER OF OTHER GENTLEMEN’S MAIL -- International Spy Museum, Washington, D.C. A drunk? A womanizer? A traitor? In 1917, Herbert O. Yardley founded the nation’s first code breaking agency, making a dramatic and permanent impact on American intelligence. But years later, “one of the most colorful and controversial figures in American intelligence,” set off a firestorm with his best-selling tell-all book about the secrets of cryptography. He stood accused in the court of public opinion of selling WWII code secrets to Japan. Come hear about this American original and his seemingly bizarre story from code-breaking expert, military intelligence historian, and International Spy Museum Board member, David Kahn. Kahn’s new biography, The Reader of Gentleman’s Mail, traces the full trajectory of Yardley’s fantastic life. Tickets: $20. Members of the Spy Ring (Join Today!): $16. Space is limited – advance registration required! For more info. visit http://www.spymuseum.org/do/programs.asp#1.
19 June - AFIO NIGHT AT THE BOSTON POPS 2004 -- 'An Evening of Spy Music.' The second AFIO fundraising night at the Pops event takes place Saturday 19 June 2004 in Boston, MA. Conductor Keith Lockhart will lead the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra in an exciting energetic evening full of surprises including James Bond spy themes. The event begins at 6:00 featuring a pre-concert hors d'oeuvres reception and a glamorous sultry-spy fashion show by Yolanda. Register now online before events sell out! Contact the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel for room reservations for the night of June 19th which can be made by calling 1-800-441-1414 and asking specifically for the “Boston Symphony Orchestra Corporate Rate,” which is $249 plus tax of 12.45% or for equal or possibly lower rates at other nearby hotels, go to www.hotels.com or www.expedia.com or www.orbitz.com or www.pricewatch.com.
OBITUARY
MAJOR GENERAL RUDOLF KRZAK -- Rudolf Krzak was the last surviving member of the Czech resistance group that arranged the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. Aged 90, Krzak died on 22 April. Telegraph UK. As Hitler's Reichsprotektor in Bohemia-Moravia, Heydrich was responsible for the murder of thousands of Czechs. In 1942, assassins attempted to kill him as he was being driven through the streets of Prague. When the ringleader's stun gun jammed, another member of the squad tossed a grenade into Heydrich’s car, wounding him. He died in hospital eight days later. The Nazis took their revenge by exterminating the entire population of the villages of Lidice and Lezaky, then flattening their homes. Krzak's mother, father and the rest of his extended family were shot in German reprisals.
Rudolf Krzak was a graduate of the Hranice Military Academy in Moravia. After Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and dissolved its army, Krzak organized a roundabout escape to France for himself and a group of comrades. He took with him a heavy sack of dictionaries, explaining that they would be invaluable in the countries they were planning to pass through, and three suits. One was for daily wear, another as a reserve, and the third a more elegant suit he intended to wear when trying to raise money to cover living expenses. The group traveled through Poland, then took ship to Boulogne. In France, they joined the French Foreign Legion, training in Algeria before being attached to the 1st Infantry Division in the south of France. Krzak's unit saw its first action in eastern France following the German invasion. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the first of 24 military honors he was to receive.
Having helped cover the retreat of the French army, the Czech units sailed to Britain where he was soon appointed a regimental sergeant major. Having grown restive at the lack of action, he took a demotion and, in January 1941, joined the 2nd MoD Department, commanded by GS Col Frantisek Moravec, the chief of the Czechoslovak secret service between 1940 and 1945. Krzak went to special group D as a deputy commander in charge of paratroopers who were to take part in special operations with the underground groups in occupied Czechoslovakia. Krzak continued in Special group D until July 1944. On one occasion they were sent to the Italian Alps, where their mission was to recruit Czech soldiers who had been conscripted into the German army to fight alongside Italian partisans. Krzak's group landed safely, but, waiting to come out after their mission was over, was pinned down by enemy fire. It was 11 days before an aircraft could fly them to safety, the plane taking off with Krzak hanging on to the fuselage. Early in 1945 Krzak was posted to the Eastern front, and then to Slovakia to fight the retreating Germans. He finished the war as a commander of the 5th Infantry Brigade with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
After the war, he continued training paratroopers and studied at Staff College in Prague. However, when the Communists took power in 1948, he was discharged from the army, and a year later arrested for treason and sentenced to nine years in prison. He served four years, then took a job as a blacksmith, before moving into chemical production and geological drilling.
In the 1968 Prague Spring, he returned to the army and was promoted colonel. However, after the Russians invaded he was pensioned off, and returned to his drilling work. With the "Velvet Revolution", Krzak was finally rehabilitated. He was promoted to the honorary rank of Major General and became head of the Association of Antifascist Fighters. He spent his last years as chairman of the Czech Legionnaires. Maj. Gen. Krzak is survived by a son and a daughter. (Cameron L.C., DKR)
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