SAUDIS ARREST 170 AL-QAEDA SUSPECTS INCLUDING PILOTS PLOTTING SUICIDE FLIGHTS The government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) announced last Friday that over the last few months it had rounded up and arrested 170 individuals suspected of plotting terrorist attacks on oil production facilities and military bases. The group of suspects included pilot trainees who were planning to conduct suicide attacks on unidentified targets. In addition to personnel, the round up netted weapons from seven terrorist cells and $5 million in cash. Not all of those arrested were Saudi, with some of the detainees coming from neighboring Arab countries and Africa. Officials said some of the fighters and money were destined for Iraq, but said none appeared to have been returning from Iraq. The government statement said the group had been influenced by the "deviant ideology," which is how Saudis refer to Al-Qaeda. According to an unnamed Saudi government source, the group was plotting assassination of public figures and attacks on oil installations in the Kingdom. Members of the group were participating in weapons training within the country while others had gone outside the region to obtain flight training. The pilot trainees had returned to the KSA in order to carry out suicide attacks inside the country. KSA officials said the weapons caches appear to have been in placed since as early as 2004, and were probably left by a group of earlier Al-Qaeda operatives whom the Saudis killed or arrested. The Saudi official said the group's primary mistake was trying to plan operations and train simultaneously while staying below the radar of Saudi security services. [CL/FT 27Apr07/Fidler]

NUMBER OF CONTRACTORS SUPPORTING INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY CALCULATED, BUT KEPT SECRET Ronald P. Sanders, chief human capital officer for the director of national intelligence, announced that after months of counting and tallying the government now knows how many contractors work for the sixteen intelligence community agencies. However, that number is classified. “I can’t give you anything that would allow you to impute the size of the IC civilian workforce,” Mr. Sanders said in a telephone interview. Sanders did reveal that contractors comprise about 25% of the civilian workforce in the IC, but would not say 25% of what. He also said that the increase in the number of contractors resulted from caps congress had emplaced on the size of the government civilian workforce, and escalating demand on the IC since the September 11th attacks. Steven Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists points out that keeping the number of contractors secret shows just how dysfunctional some government views are. “It reveals how confused the government is about what is really sensitive and what is not,” Mr. Aftergood said. “What would Osama bin Laden do with the fraction of intelligence workers who are contractors? Absolutely nothing.” The study resulted from congressional concern about the increasing size and cost of contractor support and worries that contracting companies are luring away skilled government workers with better pay and benefits. [CL/NYT 26Apr07/Shane]

INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY WARNED PRESIDENT ABOUT IMPENDING CHINESE TEST OF ANTI-SATELLITE MISSILE The intelligence community had detected pre-tests of the Chinese anti-satellite missile that successfully struck and destroyed a target satellite in January. As early as July 2005 and again in February 2006, US intelligence detected launches of the Chinese SC-19 anti-satellite missile. The IC monitored the tests and concluded that both had missed their targets, although the February missile missed by a narrow margin which intelligence analysts thought might have been the goal. In the wake of the successful January test, the Bush administration protested loudly. However, prior to the launch there was debate inside the administration as to whether to approach the Chinese and ask them to forego the test. In the end it was decided that it would not be possible to stop the Chinese test without making concessions on the US's own anti-missile defense system, which could be involved in any initiatives to ban space-based weapons. Further, the intelligence community concluded that China was determined to conduct the test, and therefore weakening the argument to reveal sensitive US intelligence. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) had warned in early January that the Chinese test was imminent and even believed they knew the target of the test, an old Chinese weather satellite known as the Feng-Yun-1C. The Air Force began tracking the satellite and checked its position six times a day, vice the normal two times a day. The Bush administration was hopeful that international protest over the test would dissuade the Chinese from additional tests. However, during a visit to Beijing by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace, he said that he had little luck broaching the subject of the anti-satellite missile test recounting, “There were certain things that they were very open about, but they were not open about that.”  [PJK/NYT 23Apr07/Gordon and Cloud]

US CAPTURED A TOP AL-QAEDA LEADER WITH CONNECTIONS TO LONDON SUBWAY BOMBING AND ESTABLISHING AL-QAEDA IN IRAQ The US announced that it captured Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, a Kurd from northern Iraq whose real name is Nashwan Abdulbaqi. Hadi is suspected of being a top Al-Qaeda leader who may have been part of Osama bin Laden's original core organization when the terror group formed in the late 1980's. The Pentagon revealed that Hadi was arrested last Fall when attempting to return to his home country. He was arrested just weeks after President Bush declared that all detainees held in secret CIA prisons were transferred to Guantanamo. Hadi remained in CIA custody until his own recent transfer to Guantanamo. Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said Hadi would have managed Al-Qaeda's operations in Iraq and planned operations against Western targets. Intelligence officials believe the Kurd may have installed Abu Musab Al-Zaqawi as the leading Al-Qaeda operative in Iraq. MI-5's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre said Hadi was planning attacks in the UK ideally before Prime Minister Tony Blair leaves office this summer. A letter from Hadi to a colleague said that the attack had to be "successful and on a large scale." MI-5 also believes Hadi helped to plan the attacks on the London underground that killed 52 people in 2005. Hadi was born in Mosul, Iraq in 1961 and attained the rank of major in Saddam Hussein's army. He left Iraq in the 80's to join the mujahideen movement in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets. The US believes he fought along side the Taliban and led attacks on US forces in 2002-03. Hadi speaks Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Kurdish and Pashtu and has been linked to an assassination attempt on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.  [CL/Telegraph 29Apr07/Spillius and Gardham]

SECTION II - CONTEXT AND PRECEDENCE

AS MANY AS FIFTY FORMER CIA FEMALE STAFFERS FILING CLASS ACTION SUIT AGAINST AGENCY FOR SEXIST PRACTICES In the summer of 2004, ten former CIA female staffers joined together to file a class action suit against the Agency claiming they were unfairly forced out for intimate and close relationships with foreign nationals, although their male counterparts were let off for similar indiscretions. Their case is now before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and has grown to include 25 women, with attorneys predicting that as many as fifty may join the case. The group includes high-ranking veterans to fresh-faced rookies.
    The EEOC will decide later this year if the case should move forward. It has largely gone unnoticed until now, perhaps because none of the women involved have spoken out publicly. The women mostly will not reveal their true identities for fear of violating secrecy agreements and agency retribution. U.S. News interviewed five of the women, all but one remained anonymous. They recounted how after they were found in relationships with foreigners overseas they faced rumor and innuendo, abusive polygraph operators, and secret hearings from which they were banned. One of the litigants who was among the top ranking females at the CIA said, "You have two organizations. There's the organization I worked in and thrived in, but there's a dark underbelly that nobody knows about unless you have a run-in with it. Nobody knows about it because you're not allowed to talk about it."  At the heart of the abuse, the women say, is the CIA's Centers for Security and Counterintelligence which is the organization responsible for investigating "close and continuing relationships" between staffers and foreign nationals. The women say the center is dominated by machismo males who believe women are too vulnerable to get emotionally entangled with foreigners.
    Mark Mansfield, the CIA's chief spokesman says the CIA does not play favorites, and insists the women have no case. "Our code of conduct-and the very high standards to which CIA officers are held-apply to all our officers regardless of their gender," Mansfield claims. Some CIA insiders who would speak on the condition of anonymity said that the decision to terminate someone's employment is taken seriously and that many of the women were not fired for having an affair, but for trying to conceal it or insubordination. The source said, "Invariably there's a darn good reason [for firing someone]."  The women, however, do not deny that they behavior was inconsistent with the rules, but that men in the same situation did not receive the same punishment.
    However, the CIA has been on the losing end of a class action suit filed by female employees before. In 1995, the CIA was forced to pay out $1 million in damages to 400 women who alleged sexual discrimination. The Agency then was accused of lack of promotion, harassment on the job, dead-end assignments. Just before that case, the CIA paid a single award of $410,000 to one of its most senior female officers, Janine Brookner. Brookner was the chief of station in a Latin American country when agents she had reprimanded for wife-beating and drunkenness alleged she herself was a lush and a sexual provocateur. Brookner used the award from the CIA case to put herself through law school and has since represented 40 clients in lawsuits against the CIA. Brookner is now lead attorney for the current class action suit.  [CL/USNews 22Apr07/Kaplan]

SECTION III - CYBER INTELLIGENCE

NEW UNDERSECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR INTELLIGENCE CLAPPER SEEKING TO END THE TALON PROGRAM After just two weeks in office, the new Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence (USDI) James R. Clapper, Jr. is seeking to end the TALON program that was created in 2003 to report on suspicious activity within the United States. TALON stands for Threat and Local Observation Notices and came under scrutiny was it was discovered in 2005 that the TALON database included information and anti-military protesters and peaceful demonstrators. The program took an additional shot when the American Civil Liberties Union discovered that the TALON program was tracking data on over 2,000 U.S. persons. A Pentagon spokesperson said that Clapper "has assessed the results of the Talon program and does not believe they merit continuing the program as currently constituted, particularly in light of its image in Congress and the media." The TALON program is managed by the Counterintelligence Field Activity which was created in 2002 by then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to coordinate policy and oversee the domestic counterintelligence activities of Pentagon agencies and the armed forces. [CL/WashPost 25Apr07/Pincus]

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE BACKING RESEARCH TO FIELD ROBOT SOLDIERS The Pentagon wants to replace a third of its armed vehicles and weaponry with robots by 2015. The military has enjoyed success with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), such as the Predator that fired two hellfire missiles and killed Al-Qaeda's chief of military operations in November 2001 as he drove near the Afghani capital city Kabul. However, UAVs and its ground equivalent the Sword are controlled remotely by human operators. The new Pentagon push is to field more autonomous robots that can make their own decisions including whether to use deadly force. Georgia Institute of Technology Research Dr. Ronald Arkin is developing a set of rules of engagement for battlefield robots that will constrain the robots' actions within an ethical framework. Arkin believes robots on the battlefield can be made more humane than their human counterparts. He says stress and fear do not affect an robot's judgment in the same way it does a soldier's. In other words, robots do not react emotionally. Arkin is creating what he calls a "multidimensional mathematical decision space of possible behavior actions”. There are other moral questions involved in the debate over robots than whether they can ethically and correctly judge when to use force. Some believe that robots may make easier for policymakers to engage in wars when no American bodies will be returning in flag-draped coffins. [PJK/Economist 17Apr]

GOOGLE'S NEW WEB HISTORY SERVICE RAISES PRIVACY CONCERNS The web search giant Google is offering a new voluntary service that tracks a registrant's web surfing and keeps a record of all the sites the user has visited. The outward benefit of the service is that users will be able to find easily a site they visited in the past. The feature is similar to the history records maintained by most web browser software, except Google offers unlimited storage, so links won't disappear overtime as they do with histories stored on the user's own computer. Also, users can access their history when they are away from their home computer. This new service comes at a time that Google is under fire from privacy activists as it attempts to acquire DoubleClick, and web-based advertisement company that tracks users' movements on the web. The Electronic Privacy Information Center and two allied groups claim that Google is deceptive in its privacy policies already because users are not award that their searches can be tied to them. A 2006 poll by the Ponemon Institute, a Michigan-based research group that studies privacy issues, showed that 77% of survey respondents did not believe that information Google captured information that could be used to identify them. In reality, Google maintains the IP address for each search. The company now says it will expunge the IP address information from its databases after 18-24 months. [PJK/LATimes 21Apr07/Menn]

SECTION IV - BOOKS, SOURCES AND ISSUES

Books

At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA by George Tenet, Harper Collins, ISBN: 0061147788, $30.00 The long awaited memoirs from the embattled former Director of the CIA comes out 30 April. In the much hyped pre-publication media about the book it is said that Tenet takes a number of strong shots at Bush administration insiders such as Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Tenet also explains the famous "slam dunk" characterization of the evidence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. [Amazon]

SECTION V - CAREERS, NOTES, LETTERS, QUERIES AND AUTHORS SEEKING ASSISTANCE, CORRECTIONS, OBITUARIES, COMING EVENTS
[IMPORTANT: AFIO does not "vet" nor endorse career offers, research inquiries or announcements. Reasonable-sounding inquiries are published as a service to members. Exercise your usual caution and good judgment when responding or supplying any information or making referrals to colleagues. Members should obtain prior approval from their agencies before answering questions that would impact ongoing military or intelligence operations - even if unclassified. Never assume public inquiries about classified projects means they've been declassified. Be attuned to false-flagging.

Careers

Online University Seeks Instructors. Henley-Putnam University (formerly California University of Protection and Intelligence Management) is seeking qualified professionals to become online instructors for Protection, Intelligence and Counterterrorism programs, starting course development in spring or summer of 2007, and teaching responsibilities in calendar 2008.
Qualified candidates will have a minimum of a Bachelors degree, however a Masters degree or higher is preferred plus at least five years of “Field” experience or verifiable research and study background in the Protection, Intelligence and/or CT field. A record of publications in the field is a plus. Should have experience in developing and/or delivering instructional materials and a real desire to teach and mentor the professionals of tomorrow.
Instructors will need to manage several classes at once (students may start classes on the first day of every month), stay in regular contact with students offering assistance, encouragement and correction as needed and completing administrative tasks in a timely fashion. Instructors will take part in course development and will be required to keep their courses up-to-date. Currently open are part-time positions with no associated benefits. Depending upon individual performance, positions could become full-time. All instructors will need to sign a contract which includes a Non-Disclosure Agreement. This is a good opportunity for retirees or professionals who already have another "day job" who want to be part of an exciting new organization dedicated to changing the landscape of intelligence, counterterrorism and security, and who want to stay in contact with many of their former colleagues. Henley-Putnam is an online university, so most contact takes place via the Internet or telephone discussion. Some travel to the San Francisco Bay Area may be necessary for occasional onsite training or seminars, however no relocation is necessary.
Please email your resume with cover letter to sgreaves@henley-putnam.edu.
About Henley-Putnam: Henley-Putnam is a nationally accredited university offering state-approved undergraduate and graduate degree programs in the areas of Management of Personal Protection, Intelligence Management and Terrorism and Counterterrorism Studies. Henley-Putnam University is accredited by the Accrediting Commission of the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC). DETC is listed by the U.S. Department of Education as a nationally recognized accrediting agency, and is a recognized member of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. The University is approved to train veterans and other eligible persons. The University is affiliated with the Defense Activity for Non-Traditional Education Support (DANTES).

Obituaries

George L. Chesnut, 1917-2007, NSA analyst, accomplished linguist and translator George Leoni Chesnut, Jr. died April 20, 2007 in Arlington, VA after a very brief illness. He was a long time employee of the National Security Agency where he translated more than 50 languages over a lifetime of work. His worked included ancient tomes as well as modern texts. He served on the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia's Environmental Stewardship committee. Mr. Chesnut is survived by his wife of 55 years, Louise, and two children, Anne Giddings Chesnut of Charlottesville, Virginia and John Winston Chesnut of Los Osos, California. Mr. Chesnut has two grandchildren, William Orion Chesnut and Andre Giles Cabe. [WMKSLB/WashPost 25Apr07]

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