AFIO Weekly Intelligence Notes #44-05 dated 14 November 2005

CIA ASKS FOR INVESTIGATION OF COVERT PRISON LEAK

JORDAN SAID TO BE CIA�S BEST MIDEAST BUDDY

ITALY HOLDS OFF SEEKING CIA EXTRADITIONS

SECTION II - CONTEXT AND PRECEDENCE

CIA WARNED INTERROGATIONS COULD VIOLATE CONVENTION

OPEN SOURCE CENTER CREATED

SECTION III - CYBER INTELLIGENCE

LAPTOP EVIDENCE OF IRANIAN NUCLEAR AMBITIONS

NGA AWARD GOES TO VIRGINA SOFTWARE FIRM

SECTION IV -- BOOKS, SOURCES, AND ISSUES

Books

IN PRAISE OF OUR MILITARY

DEALING WITH THE NEW GENERATION OF TERRORISTS

AN INFORMED VIEW OF EUROPE

Issues

CIA VET CITES DO OFFICERS AS OPPOSING TORTURE

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

Notes

SENIOR CIA OFFICER LETS SLIP SIZE OF BUDGET

PARTY REBELS HELP DEFEAT BLAIR ANTI-TERROR MEASURE

MI5 WANTS 800 MORE TO TAKE ON ISLAMISTS

DZERZHINSKY BACK ON A PEDESTAL

SLOVAKS DENY CIA PRISONERS ON THEIR TERRITORY

Queries by Researchers

INFORMATION SOUGHT ON OSS GRANDFATHER

16 November 05; 7 - 10 pm - Washington, DC - International Spy Museum Dinner with Kremlin Spy Oleg Kalugin
17 November 05 - Colorado Springs, CO - Rocky Mountain AFIO Chapter holds luncheon speaker meeting
17 November 05 - Washington, DC - Undercover Washington: Where Famous Spies Lived, Worked and Loved. Talk and Book signing
19 November 05 - Kennebunk, ME - AFIO Maine Chapter CERT Training
1 December 05 - San Francisco, CA - AFIO Jim Quesada Chapter holds Luncheon
3 December 05 - Orange Park, FL - AFIO North Florida Chapter Meeting
5-7 December 05 - Chantilly, VA - The MASINT Association 4th Annual MASINT Conference
13 December 05 - Tampa, FL- AFIO Suncoast Chapter Meeting
13-14 December 05 - Chantilly, VA - AFCEA Hosts their Fall Intelligence Symposium at the National Reconnaissance Office
16 December 05 - New York, NY - AFIO New York Metro Chapter Meeting -Intelligence Challenges in the Post 9/11 World.
27-28 January 06 - Springfield, VA - Conference on "INTELLIGENCE AND ETHICS"
17-20 February 06 - Arlington, VA - The Intelligence Summit - 2006
4 March 06 - Orange Park, FL - AFIO North Florida Chapter Meeting
8 March 2006 - College Station, TX - Future of Transatlantic Security Relations
7-9 May 06 - Bethesda, MD - 2nd Annual INTELCON Exhibition and Symposium
3-8 September 2006 - Oxford, England - Spies, Lies & Intelligence Conference

SECTION I - CURRENT INTELLIGENCE

CIA ASKS FOR INVESTIGATION OF COVERT PRISON LEAK - The CIA has asked DoJ to open a criminal investigation to determine the source of a Washington Post article that said the agency had set up a covert prison network in Eastern Europe and other countries to hold important terrorism suspects, the New York Times reported on 9 November, citing government officials.
www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/politics/09inquire.html?pagewanted=all
The request, known as a crimes report or criminal referral, means DoJ will undertake a preliminary review to determine if circumstances justify a criminal inquiry into whether any government official unlawfully provided information to the newspaper.
Post spokesman Eric Grant said the paper would have no comment on new developments concerning its article. The front-page article, published on 2 November, said the agency had set up secret detention centers in as many as eight countries in the last four years.
The article said that previously undisclosed detention facilities existed at highly classified black sites in several democracies in Eastern Europe.
Meanwhile, the Senate requested a report from DNI Negroponte on whether the CIA was running secret prisons, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/11/685C6E19-DEDA-4F79-A036-5964794FF9EB.html
In a vote on 10 November, senators asked Negroponte to give a report in secret to two congressional intelligence panels. (DKR)

JORDAN SAID TO BE CIA�S BEST MIDEAST BUDDY - Jordan's General Intelligence Directorate has surpassed Israel's Mossad America's most effective allied counterterrorism agency in the Middle East, according to the Los Angeles Times.
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/644451.html
GID cooperation with the CIA has grown even closer since 9/11, according to the Times.
Last year, Jordanian operatives arrested several associates of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of the extremist group al-Qa�ida in Iraq, who were reportedly planning truck bomb attacks on the US Embassy and government Jordanian targets in Amman.
The US provides secret financial assistance to subsidize the GID's budget, former senior US intelligence officials told the Times, adding that the two intelligence agencies conduct sophisticated joint operations and routinely share information.
Jordan's intelligence partnership with the US is so close that the CIA has had technical personnel virtually embedded at GID headquarters, a former CIA officer in the Middle East said. Most recently, Jordan has emerged as a hub for extraordinary renditions.
GID personnel are characterized as highly capable interrogators by Frank Anderson, a former CIA Middle East division chief. In two previously undisclosed cases, however, citizens of Yemen said they were detained in Pakistan and Afghanistan, then transported to Jordan and held by the GID. One of the detainees said he was tortured by the Jordanians and then handed back to US authorities.
The State Department has credited cooperation between the CIA and the GID with disrupting numerous terrorist plots and intercepting insurgents trying to cross the Jordan-Iraq border.
Marc Lynch, an expert on US-Jordanian relations at Williams College, MA,, said the Amman government received a free pass on human rights because it has been so useful strategically.
According to a State Department report released this year, Jordan's reported torture methods include sleep deprivation, beatings on the soles of the feet, prolonged suspension with ropes in contorted positions and extended solitary confinement. (PJK, DKR)

ITALY HOLDS OFF SEEKING CIA EXTRADITIONS - Italian Justice Minister Roberto Castelli said on 12 November he planned to wait before making a decision on whether to formally ask the Bush administration to extradite 22 past and present CIA operatives, KRT reported.
www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/13152709.htm 
The operatives are accused by a Milan prosecutor and an investigative magistrate of kidnapping a radical Islamist preacher there nearly three years ago.
Castelli told reporters in Milan that "we'll see the (legal) papers and then we'll decide" whether to forward to the United States the extradition request, which was forwarded to the Justice Ministry along with a 477-page, 190,000-word arrest warrant naming the 22 individuals.
Asked whether he had discussed the politically sensitive request with US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during his visit last week to Washington, Castelli replied, "Who knows?" according to Italian news agencies.
AP quoted an unnamed DoJ official as saying the extraditions had come up during Castelli's meeting with Gonzales.
According to the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, a German prosecutor, Eberhard Bayer, has opened a separate investigation into the February 2003 kidnapping of the imam, known as Abu Omar, who was flown from Italy to Ramstein air base in Germany,
According to the Milan investigation, Abu Omar was put aboard a different plane at Ramstein for the final leg of the flight to Cairo, where he has been interrogated and imprisoned except for a brief release in April of last year.
Martin Hoffman, the public prosecutor in Munich, has also opened an investigation. Into the case of Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese national and German citizen who was arrested in Macedonia in late 2003 and put aboard a plane that flew him to Afghanistan, where he was jailed for five months.
El-Masri told the CBS� 60 Minutes that his American captors told him at the time of his release that his detention had been a mistake caused by a mix-up of names. (DKR)

SECTION II - CONTEXT AND PRECEDENCE

CIA WARNED INTERROGATIONS COULD VIOLATE CONVENTION - A classified report issued last year by CIA IG John Helgerson warned that interrogation procedures approved after 9/11 might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, current and former intelligence officials said, according to the New York Times on 9 November.
www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/politics/09detain.html?pagewanted=all
Previously undisclosed findings from the report, completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep unease within the agency about the interrogation procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques authorized early in 2002 for use against terror suspects included one known as waterboarding, and went well beyond those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of war.
The United Nations convention bans torture which it defines as the infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering. It also prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if they are cruel, inhuman or degrading.
The United States is a signatory to the convention with some reservations set when it was ratified by the Senate in 1994.
Helgerson did not find that the techniques constituted torture, but he did find they appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
On 8 November the CIA reaffirmed a March statement that all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture.
The officials who described the report said it discussed particular techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, It referred to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, said to have organized the 9/11 attacks and detained in a secret location by the CIA since he was captured in March 2003. KSM is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.
Helgerson�s report, officials said, expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not US citizens.
Some former intelligence officials said Helgerson�s findings had been vigorously disputed by the agency's general counsel. To date, DoJ has brought charges against only one C.I.A. employee in connection with prisoner abuse, and prosecutors have signaled they are unlikely to bring charges in several other cases.
But the current and former intelligence officials said the IG�s report had added to apprehensions within the agency. "The ambiguity in the law must cause nightmares for intelligence officers who are engaged in aggressive interrogations of al-Qa�ida suspects and other terrorism suspects," said John Radsan, a former assistant general counsel at the agency who left in 2004. (DKR)

OPEN SOURCE CENTER CREATED -- DNI Negroponte announced on 8 November creation of an Open Source Center to gather and analyze information from the Web, broadcasts, newspapers and other unclassified sources around the world, the New York Times reported.
www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/politics/09center.html?pagewanted=all
"Just because information is stolen, that doesn't make it more useful," DDNI Michael Hayden told a news briefing.
The new center will absorb the CIA�S Foreign Broadcast Information Service that as well as translating foreign broadcasts and periodicals now also studies Web sites and more obscure sources like T-shirt slogans in countries of interest. FBIS Director Douglas J. Naquin was named director of the Open Source Center.
The center is situated at Langley and will be operated by the the CIA and overseen by an Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Open Source, a position not yet filled. A leading candidate for the post was said to be Eliot A. Jardines, 35, a former intelligence officer who ran and recently sold a software company, Open Source Publishing
Mark M. Lowenthal, an assistant director of the CIA from 2002 until earlier this year, said that open source information had long been undervalued. A classic case of the failure to use such information, he said, came when India's http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/india/index.html?inline=nyt-geo  nuclear test surprised American intelligence in 1998. Analysts, who failed to predict the test on the basis of information provided by agents, eavesdropping and satellite photos, had simply to read the platform of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. "It said, 'If we come to power, we'll test a nuclear weapon,' " Lowenthal said. (DKR)

SECTION III - CYBER INTELLIGENCE

LAPTOP EVIDENCE OF IRANIAN NUCLEAR AMBITIONS - US intelligence used the contents of an Iranian laptop to support its argument to the International Atomic Energy Agency that Tehran is engaged in seeking a nuclear warhead, the New York Times reported.
www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/international/middleeast/13nukes.html?th&emc=th
Last July, US intel displayed more than a thousand pages of Iranian computer simulations and accounts of experiments, the Times cited as saying a half-dozen European and American participants in the meeting at IAEA headquarters in Vienna.
The computer contained studies for crucial features of a nuclear warhead, said European and American officials who had examined the material, including a sphere of detonators to trigger an atomic explosion. The documents specified a blast roughly 2,000 feet above a target, considered a prime altitude for a nuclear detonation.
The computer contents provided the strongest evidence yet that the Tehran regime is trying to develop a compact warhead to fit atop its Shahab missile. This missile can reach Israel and other countries in the Middle East, according to the Times.
Doubts about the intelligence among some foreign analysts were attributed In part to US refusals, so as to protect sources, to provide details of the origins of the laptop beyond saying that it was obtained it in mid-2004 from a longtime contact in Iran. (DKR)

NGA AWARD GOES TO VIRGINIA SOFTWARE FIRM - A privately held software company, Image Matters LLC, won an innovation award from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency for its proposal on Automated Information Triage for Deep Geospatial Analysis, the Washington Post reported on 14 November.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/13/AR2005111300851.html
A $1 million contract went with the award to the firm in Leesburg, VA. whose chief executive is Harry Niedzwiadek. NGA spokeswoman Susan Meisner said it was the third year the agencyhas given an innovation award and the first time it has gone to a single company.
Niedzwiadek said his company earns about $2.5 million a year, nearly all from IC and homeland security agencies. (DKR)

SECTION IV -- BOOKS, SOURCES, AND ISSUES

Books

IN PRAISE OF OUR MILITARY - Robert D. Kaplan, Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground (Random House, 448 pp. $27.95)
Kaplan is a fan of the US military, particularly those in it below flag rank such as the captains and sergeants. His dislikes include liberal-leaning journalists, academics, diplomats and think-tank types.
In travels to seven countries, he got to know the soldiers, often with special forces, and marines and writes with admiration for their camaraderie, their realism and therefore politically incorrect views, and their practical approaches to the tasks before them. The tasks include helping friendly governments stay in power, training local security forces, combating terrorism and winning over the locals� hearts.
At the end of Imperial Grunts, Kaplan sums up the book�s message this way: "Rarely have I so thoroughly enjoyed the company of a group of people as much as I have Americans in uniform." (DKR)

DEALING WITH THE NEW GENERATION OF TERRORISTS -Jonathan Schanzer, Al-Qaeda's Armies: Middle East Affiliate Groups and the Next Generation of Terror (Specialist Press, paperback, 222 pp. $17.95)
Schanzer surveys the homegrown, organic Islamist terror groups with nationalist objectives affiliated with al-Qa'ida in the Middle East. These are groups whose members have been trained in Afghanistan and elsewhere, that are in communication with al-Qa'ida's command structure and that share its view of Islamic law and its goal of Islamic world dominance.
Following 9/11, 2001 al-Qa'ida changed from a centralized organization to a decentralized movement. Schanzer shows how it did this by relying on the infrastructures of like-minded groups. These, he believes, are the next generation of global Islamist terrorists.
To defeat tge threat they pose, Schasnzer calls for hunting down both the surviving central leadership and the affiliates.
. With troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States should consider small-scale operations against affiliates, which, he suggests, might prove a less complicated, time consuming, and expensive way of combating terrorism. The rub is that doing this would require, as he recognizes, the cooperation of Muslim governments. To what degree and in what countries such cooperation would be given is the big question. King Abdallah of Jordan contributed a positive element to an answer last week by declaring Islamist terrorist the proper targets of jihad. But it is hard to imagine Afghanistan doing the same. (DKR)

AN INFORMED VIEW OF EUROPE - Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (Penguin Press, 960 pp. $37.9
Judt, a Briton who is a professor of European history at New York University, is a man of the left worth reading because of the depth and breadth of his knowledge.
In his new book, he offers a deeply informed account of how Europe has developed since the end of World War II. Not everyone will agree with all that he has to say. For instance, he asserts that the United States did not bring down the Soviet Union; that instead, it imploded. Implode it certainly did but under pressure applied by the United States. (DKR)

Issues

CIA VET CITES DO OFFICERS AS OPPOSING TORTURE - Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA officer and He was a deputy director of State�s Office of Counterterrorism from 1989 to 1993, wrote in the Los Angeles Times that three good friends, themselves DO officers who have worked on terrorism at the highest levels agree, that torturing detainees will not help and rather will hurt in many ways.
www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-johnson11nov11,0,7794527.story
"I have some experience of my own with �duress interrogation,� Johnson wrote, when he undewent paramilitary training at a CIA facility in 1986.
"We were deprived of sleep for 36 hours, given limited rice and water and forced to stand in place. Our interrogators all US military personnel -- coaxed and harangued us by turns. Those of us who declined to cooperate were stuffed into punishment boxes -- miniature coffins that induced claustrophobia. After 30 hours, one of my classmates gave me up in exchange for a grape soda and a ham sandwich."
While the lesson was that everyone has a breaking point, instructors did not recommend breaking detainees but emphasized the need to build rapport and trust with people who had wanted information, said Johnson.
"What real CIA field officers know firsthand is that it is better to build a relationship of trust -- even with a terrorist, even if it's time-consuming -- than to extract quick confessions through tactics such as those used by the Nazis and the Soviets, who believed that national security always trumped human rights," said Johnson.
"I am not advocating that terrorists be given room service at the Four Seasons. Some sleep deprivation -- of the sort mothers of newborns all endure -- and spartan living conditions are appropriate. What we must not do is use physical pain or the threat of drowning, as in �waterboarding,� to gain information. Tough, relentless questioning is OK. Torture is not." (DKR)

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

Notes:

SENIOR CIA OFFICER LETS SLIP SIZE OF BUDGET - DDNI for Collection Mary Margaret Graham, a 27-year veteran of the CIA, accidentally let slip last week the size of the annual intelligence budget, long a tightly held secret, UPI reported.
www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20051108-015047-8977r
Speaking at a conference in San Antonio, TX on satellite and photographic intelligence at which a reporter for US News and World Report was in attendance, she let out that the budget came to $44 billion.
A spokesman for DNI Negroponte would neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of the figure, nor would Graham give a statement about the incident.
The government has repeatedly gone to court to keep the current intelligence budget and even past budgets as far back as the 1940's from being disclosed. (DKR)

PARTY REBELS HELP DEFEAT BLAIR ANTI-TERROR MEASURE -- Reinforced by 50 Labor members, Parliament last week rejected a key anti-terrorism measure backed by Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Washington Times reported.
www.washingtontimes.com/world/20051109-111647-8228r.htm
Drafted following July attacks on London's public transport system by British-born Muslims, the measure would have allowed police to hold terror suspects for up to 90 days without charge. Instead, the House of Commons voted for a watered-down measure that would let police detain suspected terrorists for up to 28 days, double the present detention period. (DKR)

MI5 WANTS 800 MORE TO TAKE ON ISLAMISTS -- MI5 wants 800 more operatives to take on the Islamist threat, The Sunday Times (London) reported on 13 November.
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,2087-1869844,00.html
Ministers were expected to approve the expansion that would contribute to doubling the size of the spy agency by 2009. Staff numbers are expected to increase from 2,000 last year to nearly 4,000.
The bid for extra funding will be used to expand the operations of G branch, the MI5 division that investigates international and Islamist terrorism. The agency wants to hire street-wise young Muslim men who are capable of infiltrating groups of Islamic hardliners. (DKR)

DZERZHINSKY BACK ON A PEDESTAL -- A bust of the founder of the Cheka, Felik Dzerzhinsky, appeared in Moscow last week in front of the Interior ministry, the Los Angeles Times reported. It succeeded a full-length statue torn down by angry crowds in 1991 from in front of the old KGB headquarters in Moscow.
www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-statue10nov10,0,4446474.story?track=tothtml 
An upright sword, part of the old KGB badge, was engraved on the bust�s granite column. Erected on 15 November, the monument was surrounded by the next day with a carpet of red carnations. (PJK, DKR)

SLOVAKS DENY CIA PRISONERS ON THEIR TERRITORY - Slovak President Ivan Ga�parovič says there are no secret American prisons for Iraqi terrorists in Slovakia, nor has the US submitted any proposals concerning this issue, the TASR news wire reported.
www.slovakspectator.sk/clanok.asp?cl=21545
"We wouldn't allow it anyway," Ga�parovič said at a joint news conference with Romanian President Traian Basescu on 9 November.
Basescu also ruled out the existence of secret prisons in Romania. (PJK, DKR)

Queries and Authors Seeking Assistance:

INFORMATION SOUGHT ON OSS GRANDFATHER -- Rick Burritt is seeking information about his late grandfather, Charles H. Burrit, born 12 May 1914 and Charle�s activities with the OSS during WWII and then with the CIA. Burritt, his grandson says, was listed as being a USAF Master Sergeant as part of his cover.  Please contact Rick at RBurritt@Dentsply.com  (DKR)

Thursday, 17 November 2005 - Washington, DC - Undercover Washington: Where Famous Spies Lived, Worked and Loved. Talk and Book signing by author Pamela Kessler 12 noon - 1pm, 2nd Floor Museum Complex at International Spy Museum. More spies come to Washington than any other city in the world-and surreptitious as they may be, they still leave their mark. Nobody knows the secret sites of Washington spy life better than Pamela Kessler. Her newly revised guide to the spots where spies lived, loved, and sometimes died is hot off the press, and Kessler will reveal her favorites-from Foxstone Park to the Hotel George. If you appreciate the art of dead drops, brush contacts, decrypts, and disinformation and want to know where they happened, when, and why, join us for this inside look at the spy capital, Washington, DC. Free. No registration required. www.spymuseum.org

5-7 December 05 - Chantilly, VA - The MASINT Association 4th Annual MASINT Conference - "Progress through Partnership" at the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, VA. The conference is classified SI/TK, open to U.S, Canadian, British and Australian citizens. For information contact Phil Edson at 571-214-2415, masintassoc@earthlink.net  or the AOC at https://www.myaoc.org/EWEB/dynamicpage.aspx?webcode=120505_MASINT 

13 December 05 - Tampa, FL- AFIO Suncoast Chapter meets at 11:30 a.m. at the Officers Club's, MacDill Air Force Base. The speaker at this meeting is Fred Wettering, a 36 year veteran of CIA, who served as the National Intelligence Officer for Africa. In addition to Africa, he served in Europe, the Middle East, and taught at the National War College. Details are available from COL Nathaniel Alderman, Jr., AldermanNJ@aol.com.

7-9 May 06 - Bethesda, MD - 2nd ANNUAL INTELCON [NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE CONFERENCE AND EXPOSITION] - To Emphasize Practical Applications and Techniques  INTELCON combines a high quality educational program which emphasis on practical applications and techniques, along with a full-scale vendor exposition of intel products and services, to attract a wide audience of intelligence practitioners and vendors from both the public and private sectors.
WHO: Dr. William A. Saxton, Conference Chair; Dr. Peter Leitner, Program Chair. Supported by a prestigious Program Advisory Group.
WHERE: Marriott Bethesda North Hotel and Conference Center in Bethesda, MD. For more information, contact: Conference: Dr. William A. Saxton, Chairman
DrWASaxton@aol.com; Tel. 561-483-6430; Exposition: George DeBakey at debakey@ejkrause.com and Barbara Lecker at lecker@ejkrause  of E.J. Krause and Associates; Tel. 301-493-5500 Web sites: www.IntelConference.US  (2006)

3-8 September 2006 - Oxford, England - Spies, Lies & Intelligence Conference - From the historical certainties of World War II, through the treacheries and ultimate triumphs of the Cold War, we have emerged into an age when �Terror� is the West's new political and security watchword. This five-day conference brings together authors, experts and intelligence practitioners of international standing and examines the evolution of intelligence, espionage and deception across more than half a century. Please direct all enquiries and bookings to: The Steward's Office, Christ Church OXFORD OX1 1DP. Tel: +44 (0)1865 286848 Email: conflict@chch.ox.ac.uk or to kerry.deeley@chch.ox.ac.uk   (DKR)