SECTION I – CURRENT INTELLIGENCE

COUNTERTERRORISM POSTS REMAIN EMPTY, ADMINISTRATION LAUNCHES POLICY REVIEW - Key counterterrorism jobs remain unfilled five months into the President's second term, losing valuable time, Roger W. Cressey, a counterterrorism official at the NSC under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, told the Washington Post.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/28/AR2005052801171.html

    The vacant posts include the top position at State for combating terrorism, empty since November, and the directorship of the new National Counterterrorism Center.

    The NCTC, created nearly a year ago by Bush to be the main clearinghouse for terrorism-related intelligence, is not yet fully operational. It is being run by an acting director and has been caught up in bureaucratic reshuffling resulting from the creation of the office of DNI of which it is to be a part.

    A new Office of Strategic and Operational Planning, intended as the focal point for counterterrorism operations, is also not yet working fully, according to a senior counterterrorism official.

    The job vacancies, incomplete activation of new offices, and arguments over how best to confront the rapid spread of global Islamist jihad are the background against which a high-level review, ordered by the Bush administration, is being conducted into efforts to battle terrorism. The review is said to be aimed at moving policy away from stressing the capture or killing of al-Qa'ida leaders and toward a broader strategy against what some in the administrations are calling violent extremism.

    The review was initiated by the NSC in the spring and is led by Bush's senior homeland security aide, Frances Fragos Townsend. She recently hired a deputy, Juan Carlos Zarate, from the Treasury, to take over from her responsibility for the terrorism file at the NSC.

    Counterterrorism sources said the State job would soon be filled by CIA veteran Hank Crumpton and the NCIC post is to go to Gen. Charles F. Wald USAF, currently deputy commander of U.S. forces in Europe.

    The review comes as a heated debate has been taking place inside and outside the government about how to target not only al-Qa'ida, but also broader support in the Muslim world for radical Islam. Several sources familiar with the discussions said issues that are sticking points include how central is combating insurgency in Iraq to the anti-terrorist effort, and how to accommodate State's desire to normalize a foreign policy that has stressed terrorism to the exclusion of other priorities.

    Much of the discussion has focused on how to deal with the rise of a new generation of terrorists, schooled in Iraq over the past couple years. Top government officials are increasingly turning their attention to a return of hundreds or thousands of Iraq-trained jihadis back to their home countries in the Middle East and Western Europe. (DKR)

INTEL PANEL REPUBLICANS ACT TO PROTECT DOD CONTROL OF PERSONNEL- Despite opposition from the White House and Democratic members, Republican supporters of DoD on the House Intelligence Committee have approved legislation limiting the authority of the DNI to transfer personnel from one agency to another, the New York Times reported on 25 May.

www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/politics/26intel.html?pagewanted=all

    The measure was described by Republican proponents as an effort to insulate DoD from changes ordered by DNI Negroponte. Democrats said it would provide the Pentagon with veto power over personnel moves that are essential to the success of the new intelligence architecture. The measure was identical to one set aside last week by the House Armed Services Committee after opposition from the White House, Negroponte and DDNI Hayden. It was revived on 24 May by Representative Peter Hoekstra who heads the Intelligence Committee, and approved on a party-line vote.

    Current law allows the DNI, after consulting with Congress and with OMB approval, to transfer up to 100 personnel from IC agencies to any newly established national intelligence center. Under the changes approved by the Intelligence Committee, the DNI would be prohibited from making such transfers unless he first provided the appropriate Congressional committees with a detailed accounting of his reasons and received a response from them. (DKR)

FRANKLIN FACES MORE CHARGES, WASHINGTON POST REPORTER SAID TO BE INVOLVED - Lawrence Franklin, a DoD specialist on Iran, accused of disclosing classified information, now faces additional charges of possessing classified documents concerning Usama bin Ladin, al-Qa'ida and Iraq, the Washington Post reported on 25 May.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/24/AR2005052401350.html

    Franklin is implicated in an affair involving the powerful pro-Israeli lobbying body, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The Justice Department, announcing the new criminal complaint against Franklin, said 83 classified documents dating back three decades, including 38 marked Top Secret, were found in a search of Franklin's West Virginia home. Papers filed in U.S. District Court in West Virginia disclosed that the DIA knew as early as 1997 that Franklin was taking home classified documents. He was issued a written warning, but his security clearances were not suspended until the criminal investigation intensified last year, the court papers said.

    Earlier in May, federal prosecutors in Alexandria, VA, charged Franklin with illegally disclosing classified information related to potential attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. The formal charges did not reveal who received the information, but federal law enforcement sources have said he disclosed it to two senior Aipac officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman. Aipac has fired both men.

    Legal experts told the Post it was unusual for the government to file similar charges in two jurisdictions against the same person. Prosecutors appeared to be trying to press Franklin to cooperate in their investigation into whether the former Aipac officials passed classified U.S. material to the Israeli government.

    The monthly Washingtonian reported that on 17 May, 12 days after Franklin's arrest, the Jewish Telegraph Agency disclosed that Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post's State Department reporter, was involved in the affair as the recipient of classified information. The FBI reportedly had taped conversations between Kessler and Rosen and Weissman. The Post has not mentioned Kessler's involvement, the Washingtonian said.

www.washingtonian.com/inwashington/buzz/2005/0524.html

    JTA was established in 1917 and has headquarters in New York and bureaus in Washington, Moscow and Jerusalem. It serves as a major wire agency for Jewish and Israeli news media.

    According to JTA, Franklin told the Aipac pair that Iranian agents were expected to kidnap and harm American and Israeli operatives in northern Iraq. Franklin said he was giving them the information because they had better connections than he did. The two contacted Kessler to get the information out and, according to the JTA as quoted by the Washingtonian, this could provide a legal basis for charging them with espionage, according to the Washingtonian.

     Franklin, 58, turned himself in to authorities and appeared in federal court in Martinsburg, WVA, where he was expected to be freed on a $10,000 personal recognizance bond. His lawyer, Plato Cacheris, indicated that both cases will go to trial. "Mr. Franklin and I are not interested in any further cooperation with the government," he said.

    If convicted on both the Alexandria and West Virginia charges, Franklin would face up to 20 years in prison. (Joseph G., DKR)

SECTION II – CONTEXT AND PRECEDENCE

PAKISTANI ISI SEEN BEHIND AFGHAN ANTI-AMERICAN RIOTS – Sara Chayes, a veteran foreign correspondent helping run an Afghan NGO, Afghans for Civil Society, reported in the New York Times that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate is planting operatives in the student bodies who provoke anti-American agitation while affording the Islamabad government deniability.

www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/opinion/26chayes.html?th&emc=th

www.transom.org/guests/specialguests/sarahchayes.html

    Chayes contrasted a peaceful demonstration, protesting supposed U.S. desecration of the Qur’an, in the intensely conservative and anti-Western southern city of Qalat with violent protests in Kandahar and elsewhere in Afghanistan.  Chayes asked, “Why the disparity?” The tip off, she believes, is that university students led the violent demonstrations.

    “Afghans and Westerners living in Kandahar have often wondered at the number of Pakistani students in what passes for a university here,” she noted, writing from the former Taliban stronghold. “The place is pathetically dilapidated, the library a locked storeroom, the medical faculty bereft of the most elementary skeleton or model of the human body. Why would anyone come here to study from Pakistan?”

    The answer, she believes, is that ISI lay behind the demonstrations. “In both Kandahar and Kabul, alert Afghan government officials were able to calm demonstrations by holding discussions with student leaders, an indication of the degree to which protesters’ actions were manipulated and not the result of spontaneous outrage.”

    Chayes argues that the cause of the demonstrations was not the subsequently retracted Newsweek report on 9 May of a Qur’an being flushed down a lavatory at Guantanamo, but the 8 May announcement by President Hamid Karzai that Afghanistan would enter a long-term strategic partnership with the United States.

    “Such an alliance discomfits Afghanistan’s neighbors,” she writes. Prior to the U.S. intervention that overthrew the Taliban regime that was backed by the ISI, Pakistan treated Afghanistan as an all but subject territory. Although Pakistani officials have mastered their role as allies in the war on terrorism and play it convincingly, Chayes says, they would like nothing better than to see the United States pull out of Afghanistan. “What better, then, than to project Afghanistan as a volatile place, hostile to Americans?”

    Iran was also involved in the anti-American disturbances. “Several Afghan investigators looking into the instigation of the recent riots, especially in Kabul, told me that if anything, the involvement of Iranian agents was even more pronounced than that of Pakistanis.” Karzai’s Afghan opponents also played a role in inciting demonstrations. (DKR)

CANADIAN INTEL SEES WEST AFRICA AS BREEDING GROUND FOR ISLAMIST MILITANTS - A newly declassified Canadian Security Intelligence Service brief warns that parts of West Africa are a breeding ground for militant Islam, with significant potential for growth by groups such as al-Qa'ida, UPI reported on 23 May.

www.washingtontimes.com/world/20050523-094154-1290r.htm

    The brief, obtained by UPI, says religious and ethnic divisions, coupled with state corruption and severe poverty in the Sahel region provide fertile grounds for al-Qa'ida and affiliated groups to recruit supporters and plot attacks on Western interests. Ungoverned areas and the presence of members of foreign terrorist organization were sources of grave concern.

    Last week, a court in Mauritania charged seven men suspected of being members of the Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat, an Algerian-based movement with links to al Qa'ida, with plotting acts of terror. The brief identified the Salafi Group as an immediate concern and estimated it has 300 fighters in the region. The group is on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations and is accused of kidnapping dozens of European tourists in the Sahara Desert.

    Experts say that local authoritarian regimes, including that of Mauritania, denounce Islamic political groups as terrorists in order to stifle all opposition and in so doing may increase sympathy for the Islamist militants. (DKR)

SECTION III – CYBER INTELLIGENCE

CIA WAR GAME SIMULATES CYBER ATTACK – The CIA conducted a war game, dubbed “Silent Horizon,” last week to practice defending against an electronic assault on the same scale as the 9/11 attacks, AP reported.

ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/I/INTERNET_TERROR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME

    The CIA’s Information Operations Center, which evaluates threats to U.S. computer systems from foreign governments, criminal organizations and hackers, ran the game in Charlottesville, VA. About 75 people, mostly from the agency, participated in the exercise that ended on 26 May.

    The simulated attacks were set five years in the future and carried out by a fictional alliance of anti-American organizations, including anti-globalization hackers.

    The simulation was significant because its premise of a devastating cyberattack contradicts assurances by counterterrorism experts that far-reaching effects from such an attack are highly unlikely. Previous government simulations have modeled damage from cyberattacks more narrowly.

    FBI Director Mueller has said that while terrorists increasingly are recruiting computer scientists, most hackers do not have the resources or motivation to attack the U.S. critical information infrastructures. The government’s most recent intelligence assessment of future threats through the year 2020 said cyberattacks are expected, but terrorists will continue to primarily employ conventional weapons.

    An earlier cyberterrorism exercise for DHS and other federal agencies, concluded there were serious questions about government’s role during a cyberattack, depending on who was identified as the culprit: terrorists, a foreign government or teenage hackers. It questioned whether USG would be able to detect the early stages of an attack without significant help from private IT companies. (DKR)

HOUSE ADOPTS BILL RAISING CYBERSECURITY ROLE AT DHS - Information security could get greater focus now that the House budget bill calls for creating a high-level cybersecurity position at DHS, USAToday.com reported on 25 May.

www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2005-05-24-homeland-cybersecurity_x.htm

    The bill gives a higher priority to cybersecurity under a post of assistant secretary for cybersecurity in the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate. The person in that position would replace the current director of the National Cybersecurity Division and would oversee that division and the National Communications System

    The bill provides support for information sharing within DHS and with other federal, state and local agencies. It would accelerate the development of new technologies and aggressively recruit new talent.

    DHS would receive $34.2 billion in FY 2006 as the result of a bill that received almost unanimous approval in the House. It is the department's first complete reauthorization since the Homeland Security Act creating DHS was passed in 2002. (DKR)

COST OF BRITISH BIOMETRIC ID CARDS PUT AT $547 PER PERSON -The British government’s plan to introduce biometric ID cards could cost more than �18 billion (31 billion), over three times the official estimate, according to experts at the London School of Economics, the Observer (London) reported on 29 May. That would mean individual cards would cost �300 ($547) per person.

observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1494944,00.html

    The LSE findings, to be published in the next two weeks, are likely to spark a backbench rebellion from Labor MPs and be taken up by opposition Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, who oppose the biometric card plan currently working its way through parliament.

    Last week the Home Office (Interior ministry) issued a report that the cost of running the plan, in conjunction with a new biometric passport system, would be �5.8 billion ($10.6 billion) over ten years. The British Treasury insists the plan must be self-financing, making an average cost of �93 ($170) to each cardholder, up more than �20 ($36) since the scheme was first proposed three years ago, the Daily Telegraph (London) reported.

www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/26/ncard26.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/26/ixnewstop.html

    But the LSE experts believe the government grossly underestimated the cost of the technology involved in making the system work. The report also raises doubts about a government estimate of a 10-year life span for each card. “All technical and scientific literature indicates that biometric certainty diminishes over time, and it is therefore likely that a biometric - particularly fingerprints and facial features - will have to be re-scanned at least every five years,” the report said. “This cost must be taken into account.”

    A further problem the government appears not to have considered is 'refuseniks,' people who will not co-operate. “There is evidence that this population could create a substantial additional cost burden,” said the report. “The administrative costs of handling this group will be substantial.” the report states.

    The LSE also questioned the strain placed on the system by individuals notifying a change in their personal circumstances, as they will be required to do by law. “If human management is necessary to ensure changes are verified, this facet will add between �1billion ($1.8 billion) and �4 billion ($7.3 billion) to the 10-year rollout of the scheme.”

    The ID card would hold an iris scan, fingerprints and facial image, making it difficult to forge. But the trials have shown significant error rates, raising concerns about its efficacy.

    The government sees the system being introduced in phases. By 2013, it is expected that it will become compulsory to have an ID card, although holders will not have to carry them at all times. A recent poll showed that half of people questioned believed ID cards were the best weapon in combating identity theft.

    The United States wants Britain's proposed identity cards to have the same microchip and technology as the ones used on American documents, the Independent (London) reported. DHS Secretary Chertoff said on 26 May, "I certainly hope we have the same chip... It would be very bad if we all invested huge amounts of money in biometric systems and they didn't work with each other."

news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=641731

    Chertoff has held talks on the matter with Home Secretary Charles Clarke and British Transport Secretary Alistair Darling. (DKR)

SECTION IV -- BOOKS, SOURCES, AND ISSUES

BOOKS  

CIA’S LEAD MAN IN AFGHANISTAN TELLS HIS STORY - Gary Schroen, First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan (Presidio Press, 400pp. $25.95)

    Days before he was due to retire, Schroen, a former station chief in Pakistan, was named to lead JAWBREAKERS, a seven-man team that established relations on the ground with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. Thus the 35-year CIA veteran commanded the first U.S. team in Afghanistan post 9/11. Having obtained the front’s cooperation, he prepared the way for the deployment of Special Forces that played a key role in the Afghan war.

    Schroen leads the reader through events that range from the exhilarating to the terrifying to the frustrating. He describes how military back in the States nearly wiped out two of his team with a Predator, thinking one of them was Usama bin Ladin. Commenting on communications with his States-side superiors, Schroen writes, "Sitting in the Panjshir Valley, I seemed to be shouting down a deep, dark hole.”

    The Northern Front was dominated by members of Afghanistan’s Tajik minority and senior uniformed military and people at State sought to block it taking Kabul, fearing that if it did, the Tajiks would slaughter the Pashtuns there, the main ethnic group supporting the Taliban. Finally a Northern Front commander told Schroen, "I am going into Kabul regardless of what your NSC decides." The front did just that, to the consternation of some back on the shores of the Potomac.

    Schroen is critical of the Bush administration’s shift of interest to Iraq before the task in Afghanistan had been completed. He sees this as a strategic error that has left UbL at liberty and his friends continuing to make trouble in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (DKR)

‘PROGRESS’ AS DECEPTIVE POLICY - Robert W. Merry, Sands of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition (Simon & Schuster, 320pp. $26)

    President and publisher of Congressional Quarterly, Merry conducts the reader through two major concepts in U.S. foreign policy. One is the idea of progress, exemplified in Francis Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ hypothesis, published in 1992. The other concept is a cyclical view of history.

    In the progress perspective, Western liberal democracy is seen as the best and final form of government. In the cyclic view, stress on the importance of each civilization's culture is combined with a sense of mankind’s irrationality, as set out in the writing of Samuel P. Huntington of ‘clash of civilizations’ fame.

    Merry argues that the cyclical view is often and unwisely overlooked, while the persistent and, to him, false idea of progress continues to be widely held. The result is such failed efforts as the humanitarian interventions in Somalia and the Balkans and, most recently, U.S. policy planning that took us into Iraq with unintended consequences. (DKR)

THE MILITARY GOES NEW AGE - Jon Ronson, The Men Who Stare at Goats (Simon & Schuster, 320 pp. $24)

    Ronson has written an account of the U.S. military's effort to push the envelope to take in the para-normal. The result is both funny and troubling.

    In 1979, the military created a secret First Earth Battalion intended to form warrior monks, soldiers capable of walking through walls, becoming invisible, reading minds and even killing a goat simply by staring at it. The characters include a general troubled by not being able to walk through his wall.

    The battalion's ideas inspired some techniques that continue in use. One was to subject detainees to 24 hours of Barney the Purple Dinosaur's song, "I Love You." The song may have changed but the band plays on at places like Gitmo. (DKR)

ISSUES

LAWYERS FOR 9/11 SUSPECT FIND HELP IN U.S. INTEL REPORTS - Lawyers for Mounir Motassadeq, on trial in a Hamburg court as a member of the cell that led the 9/11 attacks, have changed their minds and now say they find evidence for his acquittal in U.S. intel reports derived from interrogations of captured al-Qa'ida leaders, the Washington Post reported on 25 May.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/24/AR2005052401432.html

    Last year, when U.S. officials agreed to submit the reports as evidence, the lawyers dismissed them as unreliable, citing prisoner abuse in Iraq and elsewhere. Now they find value in them, notably in a report in which one of the al-Qa'ida leaders asserts that only he and three of the 19 hijackers who died on 9/11 were core members of the Hamburg cell.

    The prosecution also has reversed itself, now saying the reports made public on 24 May, were unreliable, with Ramzi Binalshibh, believed to have been a core member of the Hamburg cell, giving conflicting statements about the conspiracy.

    The Hamburg court is retrying Motassadeq on 3,066 counts of accessory to murder and other charges. Motassadeq was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to 15 years in prison, but an appellate court overturned the verdict on the grounds that the evidence convicting him was weak.

    Dominic J. Puopolo Jr., a Miami Beach computer consultant whose mother was a passenger on one of the hijacked planes, told the Post he was convinced that Binalshibh and other captured al-Qa'ida leaders were concealing the truth to protect Motassadeq and others. "It's terrorists covering for other terrorists," said Puopolo, who has followed Motassadeq's retrial closely. "It's the whole modus operandi for how al Qa’ida works, which is to deceive. Ever since they've been caught, they've continued to mislead and misinform." (DKR)

SECTION V -- CAREERS, NOTES, LETTERS, QUERIES AND AUTHORS SEEKING ASSISTANCE, CORRECTIONS, OBITUARIES, COMING EVENTS

Careers

NEW OPENINGS AT DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY - 10 vacancy announcements for positions at DHS-headquarters. These positions are also posted on www.usajobs.opm.gov

Policy Analyst GS-0301-14
Special Assistant GS-0301-11
Security Specialist GS-0080-13/14
Staff Accountant GS-0510-5/9
Management and Program Analyst GS-0343-14/15
Physical Scientist GS-1301-14/15
Director, Office of Policy Planning 0301-14/15
Supervisory Staff Accountant GS-0510-15
Exercise Program Manager GS-0301-12/13
Managment and Program Analyst GS-0343-13/14
 

Notes

ARMY ANALYSTS GET PERFORMANCE AWARDS DESPITE INTEL FAILURE - Two U.S. Army analysts whose work has been cited as part of a key intelligence failure have received job performance awards in each of the past three years, officials told the Washington Post. The failure was in their assertion that aluminum tubes sought by Saddam Husayn's government were most likely meant for a nuclear weapons program rather than for rockets,

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/27/AR2005052701618.html

    The civilian analysts, former military men considered experts on foreign and U.S. weaponry, work at the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center, one of three U.S. agencies singled out for particular criticism by the Silberman-Robb presidential commission that investigated U.S. intelligence on WMD.

    The commission said DNI Negroponte should give serious consideration to whether the NGIC, the Defense Humint Service and the CIA's Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center should be reconstituted, substantially reorganized or made subject to detailed oversight.

The NGIC finding that it was highly unlikely the tubes were for use in Iraq's rocket arsenal bolstered a CIA contention that the tubes were destined for nuclear centrifuges. This contention was cited by the Bush administration as proof that Saddam was reconstituting Iraq's nuclear weapons program.

The problem, according to the commission, which cited the two analysts' work, is that they did not seek or obtain information available from the Energy Department and elsewhere showing that the tubes were indeed the type used for years as rocket-motor cases by Iraq's military. The panel said the finding represented a serious lapse in analytic tradecraft because the NGIC's personnel could and should have conducted a more exhaustive examination. The report did not name the analysts, but officials confirmed that the commission was referring to George Norris and Robert Campos.

    DoD spokesmen said the awards for the analysts were to recognize their overall contributions on the job over the course of each year. But some current and former officials, including those who called attention to the awards, said the episode shows how the administration has failed to hold people accountable for mistakes on prewar intelligence. (DKR)

Researchers Seeking Assistance / Participants

WASHPOST INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER SEEKS HELP ON COL YURI RASTVOROV, AKA MARTIN SIMONS:  "I am an investigative reporter at the Post--where I have been working as a journalist for 12 years, including four as a foreign correspondent in Latin America--and am now writing a piece about the lives of two fascinating men in the world of intelligence: one is former KGB Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Rastvorov, aka Martin Simons, and the other is my father, Fred Kovaleski, a former CIA officer. My dad lived with Yuri for about four months in a safe house in southern Maryland immediately after Yuri defected to the U.S. in 1954.  The article is about the parallel lives of these two men, how those lives intersected and how Yuri and Fred went on to be friends. My father had to leave the agency to marry his wife of today, a polyglot fashion model of Russian parents. Yuri settled in the D.C. area and married an American heiress. I saw Yuri several times when I was a child visiting with him and his American family at their horse farm in Potomac, Md. However, Yuri left a wife and young daughter back in Moscow; they were sent to a penal camp for several years as payback for Yuri's defection. Also, Yuri was a tennis fanatic. At the time, my dad was the 7th ranked tennis player in the world and used tennis as a cover while he worked as a spy in the Middle East. Both he and my mother are alive and vibrant, and my father was just inducted into the Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame. Alas, Yuri passed away last year.
I am hoping that some of the great minds at AFIO can help me with this story. I have three months to report and write the article. I am looking for a broad range of perspectives. I would love to talk to anyone who knew Yuri or was familiar with his case, or who could tell me about what Yuri's defection meant for both the U.S. and the Soviets. I would also like very much to get some context and background from AFIO members concerning intelligence gathering during the Cold War and how the U.S. government handled Soviet defectors." REPLIES TO: Serge Kovaleski at 202-277-7530 [cellphone], or at 202-483-7968 [home office], or via email at kovaleskis@washpost.com 

Obituary

Hans Jorgens Jensen - A 30-year CIA veteran and Olympic gold medallist, he died on 23 May in a Riverside County hospital in California, AP reported. He was 79.

sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/05/29/sports/s124853D62.DTL

    Jensen trained as an aviator at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida during World War II and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1949. At Berkeley, he raced in the eight-man shell team that won a gold medal in the 1948 Olympic Games in Britain. His Olympic jacket still hangs in the boathouse as an inspiration to young rowers who train with UC Berkeley's medal-winning teams.

    His ethnic heritage helped him land a job with the CIA as a Scandinavian specialist. His family traveled with him on assignments in Denmark, Norway and West Germany during which he posed as a Foreign Service Officer or political attach�.

    Jensen retired in 1976 and kept a home in Incline Village at Lake Tahoe, CA, so he could enjoy his favorite pastime, skiing. He also had a home in Carmel, CA.

    Participating in the Olympic Games remained his proudest moment, said his daughter, Andrea Jensen Gregg of Issaquah, WA.

    In addition to his daughter, Jensen is survived by his second wife, Lisa Vetter Jensen of Carmel; sons Peter Barron Jensen of San Clemente, CA, and Kurt Martin Jensen of Vallentuna, Sweden; and four grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his first wife, Joyce Freeborn Jensen.

    No memorial service was planned, but memorial contributions can be made to the UC Berkeley men's crew team: UC Regents/Cal Athletics, Cal Athletic Department, 2223 Fulton St., Berkeley, CA 94720.  (DKR)

Coming Events

2 - 3 June 05 - Arlington, VA - The Center for Security Policy hosts 2005 National Security Academy at The Leadership Institute – a unique opportunity for promising students and young professionals to interact with security policy practitioners and academics and participate in debates about contemporary defense and foreign affairs. Keynote Presentations and invited speakers are: Amb. J.D. Crouch, Deputy National Security Advisor; Rep. Chris Cox, Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee; John Rood, Senior Director for Counterproliferation, NSC; Amb. Robert Joseph, Under Secretary of State (designate) for Arms Control and International Security; and Michelle Van Cleave, National Counterintelligence Executive. The four keynoters will be: Alex Alexiev: “Islamofascism at Home and Abroad”; Victor Davis Hanson on “World War IV”; Roger W. Robinson, Jr.: “The Rising Power of Communist China”; and William Van Cleave on “Defending the Homeland.” Breakout Sessions - Each keynote address will be followed by several small, action-oriented breakout sessions, during which participants will have the opportunity to interact and share ideas with policymakers and other accomplished professors from across the country. Among the discussion leaders will be: Ken Alibek (George Mason University), Peter Leitner (GMU), Jeremy Rabkin (Cornell), Hedieh Mirahmadi (American Enterprise Institute), and Bob Kaufman (Pepperdine). COST: $250.00   Inquiries to: Center for Security Policy, 1920 L Street Suite 210 Washington, DC 20036 or send email to: mccormick@centerforsecuritypolicy.org  or call (202) 835-9077.  More information at www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org 

Thursday, 9 June 2005; 6:30 pm - Washington, DC - Wild Rose: The Dangerous Mrs. Greenhow by Amy Blackman. A highly dramatic evening of Civil War espionage. Washington, D.C. August 23, 1861: On orders from President Lincoln, detective Allan Pinkerton arrests charming high society widow Rose Greenhow. The lady in question had sweet-talked top-flight Union officials and lowly Union clerks alike, encoded their information, and smuggled messages South - with the help of her own spy ring! Ann Blackman, author of a new biography of Mrs. Greenhow, will expose the spy’s dramatic exploits and her convention-breaking role as a personal emissary of President Jefferson Davis. Wild Rose herself will join the presentation to reveal how she helped the South win the First Battle of Bull Run. Actress Emily Lapisardi recreates Greenhow from her words and deeds, and is ready to withstand interrogation from our audience of espionage experts. Ann Blackman will sign copies of Wild Rose, Civil War Spy, A True Story following the program. Tickets: $20 Advance registration required at http://www.spymuseum.org/calendar/index.asp#Register_Now

11 June 05 - Boston, MA - THE THIRD ANNUAL "BOSTON AFIO GROUP" AT THE POPS  - RED, WHITE, & BLUE - 8:00 PM Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue Boston, MA 02115 Conductor Bruce Hangen and the Boston Pops Orchestra celebrate Flag Day with Daniel Rodriguez the native New Yorker and “singing policeman,” by performing enduring patriotic favorites that will boost national pride. Join other Boston-based AFIO members in what has become an informal, annual Boston tradition. This year members are asked to purchase tickets directly from the Boston Pops. Tickets ($18.00 - $72.00) went on sale Monday March 7th and will need to be purchased by phone at 888-266-1200 or online at www.bso.org - if still available. If you also wish to provide. Support AFIO’s scholarship programs by donating here. The price of your ticket is not a donation to AFIO. This delightful social event is arranged by AFIO Board Member Al Ponte. Questions to: afponte@msn.com

11 June 05 - Orange Park, FL - . AFIO North Florida Chapter holds meeting. Speaker to be Frederick Wettering, who served in CIA from 1962-1998 in the Directorate of Operations. During the 1980s he was the NIO for Africa for three years. RSVP for details to Quiel Begonia at begonia@coj.net

16 June 05 - San Francisco, CA - AFIO's Jim Quesada Chapter, San Francisco Bay Area, hosts cocktails and luncheon at the United Irish Cultural Center (UICC), 2700 – 45th Ave., (45th between Sloat and Wawona). Event starts at 11:30 a.m. Speaker: Dr. Barton Bernstein, Professor of History, Stanford University, on "Intelligence, the A Bomb & the End of WWII." Dr. Barton Bernstein is an expert on Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. Dr. Bernstein will focus on the creation of the Atomic Bomb, the A bomb's role in ending WWII, and the role intelligence played in ending WWII. Relying heavily on declassified materials, Dr. Bernstein analyzed selected aspects of the WWII experience, including information little known or unknown in the US in 1941-1945. May 2005 is the 60th anniversary of Germany's surrender to the Allies and August 2005 is the anniversary of Japan's surrender to the Allies. Security rules during WWII blocked the flow of information, often appropriately, but sometimes not. Looking back after 60-65 years allows us to reexamine the WWII past and to consider, among other issues, how the war and the enemy were understood in 1941-1945 and how US policy was predicated on that sometimes flawed wartime understanding. Dr. Bernstein earned his PhD at Harvard University and has been at Stanford since 1965. He has written six books, 135 essays, and has given over 800 lectures. He is an expert on 20th Century History, especially WWII, the Atomic Bombings, early Cold War, Nuclear History and crises in International Relations, the Korean War, the Cuban Crisis and modern US Presidency. He is now working on: Nuclear History and the End of WWII, and his next work: Crisis in US Foreign Policy. Entr�e will be Chicken with Lemon Butter & Capers or Filet of Sole (please indicate selection). Cost: $25 per person, Member Rate - with advance reservations. $35 per person, Non-Member Rate or at door without reservation. Please respond to Mary Lou Anderson no later than end of day 6/10/05. Reservations not cancelled by end of day 6/10/05 must be honored. Please send your reservation and menu choice, and a check made to AFIO to: Mary Lou Anderson, 46 Anchorage Rd, Sausalito, CA 94965. Email inquiries to her at: mlanderson945@comcast.net or by telephone at 415-332-6440.

18 June 05 - Kennebunk, ME - AFIO Maine Chapter holds a lecture entitled "The Search For Leslie Howard: a World War II Mystery" Professor Douglas Wheeler will explore the confidential mission Howard undertook to Spain and Portugal in 1943 and the unanswered questions surrounding the circumstances of his death. Meeting is at 2:00 p.m. in Hank's Room at the Kennebunk Free Library, 112 Main Street, corner of Fletcher, in downtown Kennebunk. New members welcome. Chapter dues for 2005 are $25. For questions or information contact Barbara Storer, 9 Spiller Drive, Kennebunk, ME 04043. tel. 207.985-2392.

21-22 June - Winnepeg -- "Intrepid" Commemoration - The Intrepid Society of Canada ( www.mts.net/~syddavy/ ) has invited former CIA Historian Tom Troy, and former Case Officer Cord Hart to attend a two-day program of tours and a banquet in Winnipeg commemorating the work of Sir William Stephenson, code named Intrepid. Troy's book, Wild Bill and Intrepid, along with Bill Macdonald's The True Intrepid, for which Troy wrote the Introduction, are records of Stephenson's career superior to more widely-known accounts. Troy will be the prime speaker at the Winnipeg banquet, while Hart will comment on Intrepid's dealings with Ernest L. Cuneo, code named Crusader, who was in effect a founder of the CIA and President Roosevelt's personal intelligence representative to Sir William. Those interested in attending the gathering in Winnipeg, including members of the OSS, Camp X Society, or "Ernie's Gang," should contact Cord Hart at (301) 365-7780. 

Thursday, 30 June 2005; 12 noon to 1 pm - Washington, DC - The Literary Spy: The Ultimate Source for Quotations on Espionage & Intelligence He writes under the pseudonym Charles E. Lathrop, but you can trade quips and quotes with this CIA speechwriter and analyst face to face at this rare public appearance. A scholar of all-words-espionage, Lathrop went to great lengths to discover and document every reference to intelligence and espionage spoken aloud or put into print - from sources as diverse as the Bible, James Bond films, and presidential speeches. His selection process, favorite quotes, and research techniques are an open book - one that is as interesting to the serious researcher as to espionage aficionados and the armchair spies among us. FREE LUNCHTIME AUTHOR DEBRIEFING AND BOOK SIGNING Join the author for an informal chat and book signing at Spy Museum. No registration required!

21 July 05 - Colorado Springs, CO - AFIO Rocky Mountain Chapter meets at 11:30 a.m. at the Officers Club's Falcon Room, U.S. Air Force Academy. Cost is $12.00 for a choice of beef or chicken with salad and dessert. Contact Richard Durham, phone number 719-488-2884, or e-mail at: riverwear53@aol.com  Reservations due [to Durham] no later than 18 July. Speaker to be announced.

Thursday, 21 July 05 - FREE LUNCHTIME AUTHOR DEBRIEFING AND BOOK SIGNING with Tim Naftali, author of Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism. Join the author for an informal chat and book signing from. No registration required! 12 noon - 1 pm at International Spy Museum. http://www.spymuseum.org/calendar/debrief_2005_jul_21.asp

22-23 July 05 - Northampton, MA - AFIO NE Chapter meets at the Hotel Northampton, with its friendly atmosphere which offers a large variety of art galleries, museums, clubs & theaters. Nestled amongst Smith, Amherst, Hampshire and Mt. Holyoke Colleges and the University of Massachusetts this area has traditionally been a delightful weekend destination. The morning speaker will be AFIO's own Burton Hersh who, after graduating from Harvard College with high honors, has had a long career as an independent writer. Following a six-year stint as a Fulbright Scholar and military translator in Germany, he returned to New York in the sixties to more than a decade as a successful magazine article writer and author of many books. After lunch AFIO National President Gene Poteat will be speaking on successful spy efforts in our nation's history.  To register contact Art Lindberg at 732.255.8021

Wednesday, 27 July 05 - Washington, DC - Screening - Spies on Screen - "Battle of Algiers" at 6:30 - 9:15 pm. Insurgency, bombings, a military presence from abroad: Algeria, 1957. Blood ran in the streets of Algiers when French soldiers were pitted against Algerian Front de Lib�ration Nationale (FLN) terrorists in Algeria's fight for independence. The violence escalated as the Algerians resorted to explosives and the French responded with torture. Join Burton L. Gerber, who served 39 years as an operations officer in the CIA and was Chief of Station in three Communist countries, for a special screening of the brutally realistic 1965 film on the struggle. Gerber will draw upon his own experience to provide insight into how the French reaction to the FLN echoes the challenges that the U.S. faces in the war on terrorism and insurgency in Iraq, and what this means for an intelligence officer faced with these issues today. At International Spy Museum. Advanced registration required. http://www.spymuseum.org/calendar/prog_2005_jul_27.asp