• 19 - 21 February 2008 - Brussels, Belgium - EASTWEST INSTITUTE�S 5th WORLDWIDE SECURITY CONFERENCE
• 7 - 11 April 2008 - Boston, MA - The International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts (IALEIA) Conference

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Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Blackwater's Owner Has Spies For Hire. The Prince Group, the holding company that owns Blackwater Worldwide, has been building an operation that will sniff out intelligence about natural disasters, business-friendly governments, overseas regulations and global political developments for clients in industry and government.

The operation, Total Intelligence Solutions, has assembled a roster of former spooks - high-ranking figures from agencies such as the CIA and defense intelligence - that mirrors the slate of former military officials who run Blackwater. Its chairman is Cofer Black, the former head of counterterrorism at CIA known for his leading role in many of the agency's more controversial programs, including the rendition and interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects and the detention of some of them in secret prisons overseas. Its chief executive is Robert Richer, a former CIA associate deputy director of operations who was heavily involved in running the agency's role in the Iraq war.

Total Intelligence Solutions is one of a growing number of companies that offer intelligence services such as risk analysis to companies and governments. Because of its roster and its ties to owner Erik Prince, the multimillionaire former Navy SEAL, the company's thrust into this world highlights the blurring of lines between government, industry and activities formerly reserved for agents operating in the shadows.

Richer, for instance, once served as the chief of the CIA's Near East division and is said to have ties to King Abdullah of Jordan. The CIA had spent millions helping train Jordan's intelligence service in exchange for information. Now Jordan has hired Blackwater to train its special forces.

The heart of Total Intel operations is a suite on the ninth floor of an office tower in Ballston, patterned after the CIA counterterrorist center Black once ran, with analysts sitting at cubicles in the center of the room and glass offices of senior executives on the perimeter. A handful of analysts in their 20s and 30s sit hunched over Macintosh computers, scanning Web sites, databases, newspapers and chat rooms. The lights are dimmed. Three large-screen TVs play in the background, one tuned to al-Jazeera. The room, called the Global Fusion Center, is staffed around the clock, as analysts search for warnings on everything from terrorist plots on radical Islamic Web sites to possible political upheavals in Asia, labor strikes in South America and Europe, and economic upheavals that could affect a company's business.

Total Intel was launched in February by Prince, who a decade ago opened a law enforcement training center in Moyock, N.C., that has since grown into a half-billion-dollar business called Blackwater Worldwide. Prince has nine other companies and subsidiaries in his Prince Group empire, offering a broad range of security and training services. (One, Blackwater Security Consulting, is under scrutiny because of a Sept. 16 shooting incident in Iraq that involved some of its armed guards and in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed.) Prince built Total Intel by buying two companies owned by Matt Devost, the Terrorism Research Center and Technical Defense, and merging them with Black's consulting group, the Black Group. Devost, a cyber security and risk management expert, is now president of Total Intel.

Devost runs the day-to-day operations, overseeing 65 full-time employees. At the Global Fusion Center, young analysts monitor activities in more than 60 countries. They include a 25-year-old Fulbright scholar fluent in Arabic and another person with a master's degree in international affairs, focused on the Middle East, who tracks the oil industry and security in Saudi Arabia. Black and Richer spend much of their time traveling. They won't say where. It's a CIA thing. Black called at midnight recently to talk about Total Intel from "somewhere in the Middle East."

The company won't reveal its financial information, the names of its customers or other details of its business. Even looking at an analyst's screen at its Global Fusion Center wasn't allowed. Since 2000, the Terrorism Research Center portion of the company has done $1.5 million worth of contracts with the government, mainly from agencies like the Army, Navy, Air Force, Customs and the U.S. Special Operations Command buying its data subscription or other services. To Black and Richer, one of the most surprising things about being in the private sector is finding that much of the information they once considered top secret is publicly available. The trick, Richer said, is knowing where to look. [Hedgpeth&Tate/WashingtonPost/3November2007] 

East Germans Drew Blueprint for Cuban Spying. Jorge Lu�s V�zquez, a Cuban exile who was jailed by the Stasi in 1987, has found hundreds of East German government documents on Stasi relations with Cuba's own feared Ministry of the Interior, known as MININT, and is nearly finished writing what may well be the most thorough report to date on the links between the two security agencies. V�zquez says he found the MININT is ''almost a copy'' of the repressive Stasi security system, exported by East Germany to Cuba in the 1970s and '80s, and that the ties between the two organizations run far deeper than previously known.

From how to bug tourist hotel rooms to an intriguing mention of the hallucinogenic LSD, the degree to which the Stasi trained and provided material and technical support to the security arm of Fidel Castro's regime had a sweeping and harsh impact on Cuba. Germans taught the Cubans how to mount effective camera and wiretap systems for eavesdropping - for example, at what height on the wall to install microphones, which color wallpaper provides the best concealment, and which shade of lighting for the best video recordings. The Stasi provided computers and introduced new archiving methods that better organized, protected and sped up the Cubans' processing of security information. It delivered one-way mirrors used for interrogations and provided equipment to fabricate masks, mustaches and other forms of makeup so that when the Cubans sent out covert agents, ''they went in dressed with wigs, false noses - the works - credit of the Stasi,'' V�zquez says.

U.S. experts on Cuban security agencies agree with V�zquez's findings. ''East Germany had a major role in building up Cuban counterintelligence as well as its foreign intelligence services, providing training for decades . . . right up to the final days of East Germany,'' said Chris Simmon, a career U.S. counterintelligence officer and expert on Cuban intelligence.

And Cubans are still using what they learned from the Stasi, added V�zquez, 48. ''The repressive system that existed in East Germany . . . is the same one that exists today in Cuba,'' he says. "What MININT learned from the Stasi has not been forgotten. On the contrary, [the strategies and techniques] are alive today despite the fall of the Berlin Wall.''

According to the documents uncovered by Vazquez, the Stasi reconstructed MININT's telephone and communications system in 1988 to better facilitate eavesdropping. Before that, in 1981, it modernized MININT's printing press to enable better, faster production of party propaganda - and false passports used for espionage and subversion, V�zquez says. The Stasi also overhauled the security system at Jos� Mart� International Airport in Havana, installing cameras, migration control booths and state-of-the-art X-ray equipment that mirrored identically the security methods in East Germany.

Coordinated espionage efforts between the Stasi and MININT also helped widen the Cuban secret service's intelligence gathering. V�zquez's study reveals that in 1985, Operation Palma Real, a cooperative action of ''electronic espionage'' by German and Cuban agents, resulted in valuable interceptions of U.S. telephone and telegraph communications from the U.S. Navy base at Guant�namo, Cuba.

Furthermore, the Stasi trained Cuban guerrillas who were being sent abroad to subvert other governments, teaching observation, espionage and interrogation techniques that considerably expanded Cuba's impact on conflicts ranging from Central America to Africa, according to the documents V�zquez has gathered.

V�zquez said the Stasi frequently criticized its Caribbean counterparts for being disorganized, carelessly leaking information to American spies and failing to master the use of secret codes. And some Stasi methods simply didn't work in Cuba. Storing the scents of dissidents so they could be tracked down by dogs if needed, a technique used in East Germany, did not work in the hot and humid tropics, according to the documents that V�zquez located.

In the 18 years since the Berlin Wall fell, the former East Germany has made perhaps more effort than any other Soviet Bloc country to open up the security files kept on its citizens, and face the dark questions that still haunt its past.

Now, V�zquez hopes, his study's publication can serve as ''a base for others, from Poland to Bulgaria, to do similar investigations'' across Eastern Europe. [Levitin/MiamiHerald/6November2007] 

Spy Officials Tracking Key Scientists. Tracking scientists moving from country to country to share their expertise in building biological weapons is a major challenge, according to a top U.S. intelligence official. Unlike nuclear weapons or missiles, biological weapons can be manufactured in relatively nondescript facilities that are hard to detect. That makes tracking the people with the know-how to build the weapons themselves even more critical, said Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. The agency analyzes imagery intelligence that comes from aircraft and satellites.

Biological weapons use viruses, bacteria or toxins rather than explosives to target people, animals or agriculture. They can be loaded onto a traditional warhead or dispersed by less sophisticated methods, like the letters containing deadly anthrax spores mailed to Congress and media outlets in 2001. Because they are easier to hide than nuclear weapons or missiles, biological weapons are best tracked by monitoring those with expertise to make them - a formidable challenge in itself, Murrett said. "The kind of challenge we have for proliferation which I think is tougher is, for example, the transfer of individual scientists from country A to country B," he said at a breakfast with defense reporters. Tracking individuals trying to spread biological weapons know-how is beyond the capabilities of his agency alone, Murrett said. It requires multiple intelligence agencies to combine their intercepts, data bases and analyses. "That's probably working as well today as maybe it ever has," he said.

The NGA's classified annual budget has increased significantly in the past five years, in large part to support the demands of war commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. Murrett said he has sent additional people to Iraq to help with U.S. efforts to target insurgents at the neighborhood level and more recently to Afghanistan to focus on the Pakistan border, where al-Qaida has re-established itself. [Hess/AP/6November2007] 

NSA/CSS Inducts Four Pioneers into the National Cryptologic Museum's Hall of Honor. Four pioneers of American cryptology were inducted into the NSA/CSS Hall of Honor at the National Cryptologic Museum. In his keynote remarks during the induction ceremony, Mr. John C. Inglis, Deputy Director, National Security Agency, highlighted the distinguished achievements of each of the inductees:

* Mr. Jacob "Jack" Gurin - an innovative language officer, who helped prepare the Agency for modern language tasks and developed new ways to use language resources to solve older problems.

* Dr. Robert J. Hermann- a technical expert and thinker about space systems who developed many of the technologies and techniques for the Cryptologic use of satellites.

* Mr. Samuel S. Snyder - made significant contributions to the development of the modern computer, as we know it, as well as its specific application to cryptologic problems.

* Mr. Milton Zaslow - developed information that predicted the Chinese intervention in the Korean War; as an executive, he discovered innovative management solutions to perplexing problems across several production groups.

The Hall of Honor, created in 1999, pays tribute to the pioneers and heroes who have made significant and enduring contributions to American cryptology. For more information on the NSA/CSS Hall of Honor or the National Cryptologic Museum, visit the NSA Homepage at www.nsa.gov.  [NSA/October2007] 

Syria Denounces US Sanctions. Damascus on Tuesday denounced a U.S. decision to impose sanctions against two Syrian officials as a "pathetic'' move by an American administration struggling with a failed Mideast policy. The condemnation followed Monday's announcement by the Treasury Department that it was freezing any assets that two Syrians and two Lebanese might have in U.S. financial institutions. The action also prohibits any U.S. citizen from engaging in transactions with them. The measure is part of American attempts to curb Syrian influence in Lebanon.

The U.S. decision sanctioned Hafiz Makhluf, a colonel and senior official in the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate and a cousin of Syrian President Bashar Assad; and Muhammad Nasif Khayrbik, identified as a close adviser to Assad. It accused the Syrian government of working through Lebanese proxies to exert control over the Lebanese political system and weaken the pro-government coalition.

Khayrbik is assistant to Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa. A statement issued late Tuesday by al-Sharaa's office in Damascus said the decision and previous similar ones "aim at continuing the pressure and intimidation against Syria and Lebanon to impose American hegemony in the region.'' "This pathetic decision confirms the failure of American policy in the Middle East and its inability to make any significant achievement in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon,'' the Syrian statement said.

For Lebanon, the U.S. Treasury decision came at a crucial time. The country has plunged deeper in a political crisis, now centering over the election by Parliament of a president to replace pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud when his term expires Nov. 24. The stalled election has become a showdown between the pro-Western government and the opposition, backed by Syria and Iran. The Treasury statement said Syria's efforts include bribing politicians, intimidation, support for violence and providing arms to militias and terrorist groups. [Ghattas/AP/7November2007] 

Israeli Foreign Ministry Gains Access to Raw Military Intelligence Reports. For the first time, the Foreign Ministry will be given access to raw military intelligence relevant to political analyses, under a new agreement signed this week. Under the agreement, the Foreign Ministry will receive a great deal more raw intelligence collected through signals intelligence - namely, communications surveillance - in particular developments in Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority. The main Foreign Ministry bureau to use intelligence data is the Center for Political Research, which was formed on the recommendation of the Agranat Committee, set up to investigate the intelligence failures in the Yom Kippur War. 

The committee concluded that the Foreign Ministry needed a bureau that could act as a counterweight to the assessments of the defense establishment. However, since its establishment, the Center for Political Research has never received raw intelligence data, and its officers have had to rely on intelligence summaries, where most of the specifics were deleted for reasons of security. As a result, the Foreign Ministry was not exposed to much intelligence relevant to its function.

As part of the agreement, the Foreign Ministry will not use the intelligence to prepare reports sent to delegations abroad, unless it is "cleansed" of sensitive information. [Ravid/Haaretz/6November2007] 

Georgia to Expel Russian Embassy Staff. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said he would expel several Russian embassy staff from Tbilisi, after accusing Russian special services of stirring civil unrest in his nation. "The Georgia's Foreign Ministry today declared several Russian embassy employees persona non grata," Saakashvili said during a televised address to the nation. He added they were accused of "espionage activity". [Faulconbridge/Reuters/7November2007] 

Russian Defense Forces Stop Employing Foreigners. A new Russian law bans foreigners and Russian citizens with dual citizenship to serve in any of the Russian defense forces, including the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Federal Security Service (FSB), and Federal bodies of State Security. Russians who hold dual citizenship are only allowed to serve in non-command positions in the military. If an officer holds dual citizenship, he is to resign immediately. [Russia-IC/7November2007] 

African Intelligence Services Meet in Rwanda. Senior intelligence and security detectives from 46 African countries began a five-day workshop in Kigali on 9 November to devise appropriate mechanisms the continent should embrace to fight genocide ideology. The workshop has attracted delegates from member countries of the Committee of Intelligence and Security Services of Africa (CISSA), a forum established in 2004 to help address the continent's security concerns. The workshop, at Prime Holdings in Kimihurura, is being held behind closed doors, except for the opening ceremony and some selected presentations. According to the source, the workshop comes after Rwanda developed a concept paper highlighting indicators of Genocide ideology and suggesting preventive measures. Rwandan participants will seek to expound on that document.

Resolutions from the workshop will be forwarded to a CISSA conference meeting due next June in South Africa. The intelligence and security chiefs will then make recommendations to the AU, which according to sources, would later be adopted for implementation by the African Union Peace and Security Council. Main presenters will include Presidential Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region, Ambassador Dr Richard Sezibera who will discuss the implications of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide on regional security; President of Institute of Peace and Research, Prof. Pierre Rwanyindo, who will present a paper titled 'Retrospective of Rwanda Genocide' exploring how it all unfolded. Justice minister Tharcisse Karugarama will also present a paper on the ramifications of the Genocide. The spy officials will also discuss security implications of a proposed AU government although sources said they would not take a stand on whether to support or discourage an AU government.

Analysts say hosting the high-level intelligence technical workshop is an opportunity for Rwanda to demonstrate the far-reaching consequences of the 1994 Genocide and how far the country has gone in the recovery process. Delegates are expected to visit Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, where remains of an estimated 250,000 Genocide victims are buried. "Such experience will help understand the magnitude of Genocide, and why we all need to put together our efforts to prevent it from happening anywhere else again," an official said.

The workshop is also expected to provoke participants to re-focus their attention to areas such as Darfur in Sudan, where at least 200,000 blacks have been killed by suspected Janjaweed militias, Arab warriors who are pro-government. The US and some humanitarian agencies have described the Darfur crisis as Genocide. Rwanda maintains over 2,000 solders in Darfur where a 26,000-strong hybrid UN-AU mission is due to deploy in January.  [TheNewTimes/9November2007]

Nigerian Government Withdraws Espionage Charges Against American Citizen. The Federal Government on Wednesday asked a Federal High Court in Abuja to stop the trial of an American woman, Judith Asuni, and three others charged with felony and espionage. The office of the Attorney General of the Federation, which was the prosecutor, filed a nolle prosequi [latin for "unwilling to pursue'] to end the trial. The Director of Public Prosecutions of the Federation, Mr. Salihu Aliyu, who confirmed the development to the Nigerian Tribune, said the action was taken in the public interest, though he noted that the Attorney General was not under any obligation to give reasons for filing such application.

Asuni, who was also accused by the Federal Government of being in possession of sensitive documents that could undermine the internal security of Nigeria, was eventually granted bail on tough conditions by the trial judge, Justice Binta Murtala Nyako, on October 25. [Tribune/8November2007] 

Former Finnish Presidential Aide Awarded Damages Over Espionage Allegations. A top Finnish diplomat was Thursday awarded damages over being wrongly fingered as a spy for the former East German Ministry of State Security, known as the Stasi. The Helsinki District Court ruled that Alpo Rusi, a close aide to former president Martti Ahtisaari during most of his presidency 1994 to 2000, should be awarded 70,000 euros (102,000 dollars) for psychological suffering and financial losses. The court also said the state should pay Rusi's legal fees. During the trial that ended in August, Rusi demanded damages of 500,000 euros.

Rusi and his elder brother Jukka Rusi, who is now dead, were both suspected of having passed on classified documents to the East German intelligence service from the late 1960s to 1976. A probe was launched in 2002, but the state prosecutor dropped the case the following year. In his testimony, Ahtisaari said the head of the security police informed him about suspicions against Rusi in 2002, adding he was surprised over the information.

The Finnish security police have investigated some 20 people over possible ties with Stasi, deputy security police head Petri Knape said during the trial, but only two cases including the Rusi brothers were ever handed over to a prosecutor for assessment. The security police and the state's lawyer denied any wrongdoing during the trial while Rusi's lawyer said sensitive information was leaked by police. [Deutsche Presse-Agentur/8November2007] 

I Spy Some Really Happy Spies. The fallout from the outing of former CIA operative Valerie Plame and the internal teeth-gnashing during the short tenure of embattled spy master Porter Goss haven't had much of an impact on the new kids at Langley. In fact, insiders tell us that job turnover at the nation's top spy agency has settled down. We're told that the rate of retirements, resignations, and firings is at a 15-year low. And in the class of newbies, those with five or fewer years' service and the most likely group to quit early, the resignation rate has dropped sharply from 4.3 percent last year to 2.9 percent this year. Some credit CIA boss Michael Hayden for turning the ship around. Others say it's simply a cool place to work because of the war on terrorism. Just ask the wave of new workers. Nearly half the CIA's staff was hired after 9/11, and in a startling statistic, the agency has boosted its corps of officers that can speak other languages by 50 percent since 2003. [Bedard/USNews/2November2007] 

Section II - TERRORISM

U.S. Military Aid to Pakistan Misses its Al Qaeda Target. Despite billions of dollars in U.S. military payments to Pakistan over the last six years, the paramilitary force leading the pursuit of Al Qaeda militants remains underfunded, poorly trained and overwhelmingly outgunned, U.S. military and intelligence officials said.

But rather than use the more than $7 billion in U.S. military aid to bolster its counter-terrorism capabilities, Pakistan has spent the bulk of it on heavy arms, aircraft and equipment that U.S. officials say are far more suited for conventional warfare with India, its regional rival. That has left fighters with the paramilitary force, known as the Frontier Corps, equipped often with little more than "sandals and bolt-action rifles," said a senior Western military official in Islamabad, even as they face Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters equipped with assault rifles and grenade launchers.

The arms imbalance has contributed to Al Qaeda's ability to regroup in the border region, and reflects the competing priorities that were evident even before this weekend between two countries that are self-described allies in the "war on terrorism" but have sharply divergent national security interests. The situation also has emerged as a significant obstacle as the United States and Pakistan seek new approaches after a series of failed strategies in the frontier region, where Osama bin Laden and other top Al Qaeda leaders are believed to be hiding.

U.S. officials have urged Pakistan to move more aggressively against militants and bolster the capabilities of the Frontier Corps, an indigenously recruited force of about 80,000 troops, half of them based in the tribal areas, that was formed under British rule and is traditionally used to guard the border and curb smuggling. Even front-line units with upgraded weapons are woefully unschooled in counterinsurgency tactics, other officials said. Late last month, Islamic militants captured dozens of fighters and paraded them before Western journalists, the latest in a series of embarrassing encounters. Pakistan has recently indicated that it will enlarge the corps and expand its role in pursuing Al Qaeda. But because the Frontier Corps has been all but shut off from U.S. military aid and payments to Pakistan, U.S. officials said the new strategy amounts in some ways to starting from scratch more than six years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The view in Washington is that the Frontier Corps is the best way forward because they are locally recruited, speak the language, and understand the culture, terrain and local politics," said a senior Pentagon official, discussing internal deliberations on Pakistan policy on condition of anonymity. But transforming the corps into a force that can contend with militants in the tribal area "will take years to bring to fruition," he said.

Partly because of that timetable, the goal of dismantling Al Qaeda and its hub of operations in the border region has given way to expectations among U.S. intelligence and military officials that the United States and Pakistan face a years-long struggle simply to contain the terrorist network and keep it from expanding.

Plans to build up the Frontier Corps are not universally supported by U.S. military officials. Loyalties within the corps are thought by many observers to be divided. Members are recruited mainly from Pashtun tribes with long-standing mistrust of outsiders. Most reject militant ideology, and have suffered hundreds of casualties in the fighting. But many also are devoutly religious and feel some degree of sympathy for the Islamists' cause.

Perhaps as a hedge against those concerns, the U.S. Special Operations Command has recently begun exploring efforts to pay off tribal militias in the region that are not affiliated with the Pakistani government, and arm them to root out Al Qaeda and Taliban militants, a source familiar with the discussions said. The CIA also operates in the area, and has doubled the number of case officers based in Pakistan in recent years, former agency officials say.

Despite the concerns, U.S. officials said there is widespread agreement that boosting support to the Frontier Corps is worth the risk, a position that reflects deep frustration with a string of failed strategies in the border region. An early failure was a plan to keep Al Qaeda operatives from crossing into Pakistan when U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan in late 2001. That was followed by ineffective forays by thousands of Pakistani regular army troops and aborted peace agreements with tribal leaders who did not fulfill pledges to clamp down on the militants. By last summer, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that the peace deals had given Al Qaeda room to regroup and rebuild its ability to train and plan attacks on Western targets.

Under new pressure from the United States, Musharraf resumed military incursions earlier this year, with Frontier Corps fighters teaming up with Pakistani regular army units. The effort produced a series of bloody and clumsy confrontations that may have strengthened the militants' position in the tribal areas. Especially demoralizing was the Aug. 30 capture of about 250 troops, most of them members of the Frontier Corps, who surrendered without a fight. Over the next two months, a few dozen were released but at least three were beheaded. Over the weekend, 211 were freed in exchange for 25 militants held by the army.

Taking on Al Qaeda and Taliban militants represents a significant departure for the Frontier Corps, whose members are typically outfitted with castoffs from the regular army. Led by army officers who often disdain the assignment, Frontier Corps units have obsolete artillery pieces, have to travel by foot because they have no ground transport, lack night-vision equipment, and have almost no air power.

Reluctant to offend a crucial ally, the United States has placed few conditions on the military aid, part of a larger package of U.S. aid and payments totaling more than $10 billion. As a result, Pakistan used much of it to acquire big-ticket weapons systems and other items to shore up its conventional defense capabilities, U.S. officials said. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees U.S. weapons transfers, said that shipments to Pakistan since the Sept. 11 attacks had included some equipment that could be useful in pursuing militants in the tribal areas, including 4,000 radios and 12 refurbished attack helicopters. But even those items went to the regular army, the agency said, and are unlikely to be shared with the Frontier Corps, which falls under a separate branch of the Pakistani government.

The majority of Pakistan's purchases have been of items that would be difficult to deploy in counterinsurgency fights, including harpoon missiles designed to sink warships, F-16 fighter jets, maritime surveillance aircraft and refurbished howitzers that have to be towed into position.

The U.S. and Pakistan have spent part of the last year developing what one Pentagon official described as a "multiyear plan" to bolster the Frontier Corps' capabilities, U.S. officials said. Pakistan has already begun recruiting more troops, with plans to expand the corps to 100,000.U.S. funding would help pay for the increase, as well as a training center that will focus on counterinsurgency tactics. The Pentagon has budgeted $55 million in counter-narcotics funds for the Frontier Corps this year to pay for night-vision equipment and communications gear. But the Pentagon is also seeking additional funding in a separate category that could be used for weapons. Officials declined to discuss specifics. [Miller&King/LATimes/5November2007]  

MI5 Says Russian Spying Distracts from Qaeda Threat. Russian spying against Britain remains at Cold War levels, diverting intelligence resources that would be better devoted to fighting al Qaeda, according to the head of the MI5 intelligence agency. Jonathan Evans said espionage by a number of countries, including Russia and China, was a distraction from countering militant Islamists who were growing in number and now targeting children as young as 15 in Britain.

"Since the end of the Cold War we have seen no decrease in the numbers of undeclared Russian intelligence officers in the UK - at the Russian embassy and associated organizations conducting covert activity in this country," Evans said. "So despite the Cold War ending nearly two decades ago, my service is still expending resources to defend the UK against unreconstructed attempts by Russia, China and others to spy on us," he added in his first public speech since taking over as head of MI5, the domestic spy agency, in April.

Evans said a number of countries were still actively seeking to steal sensitive civilian and military technology, political and economic intelligence, including via sophisticated electronic attacks on computer networks. "It is a matter of some disappointment to me that I still have to devote significant amounts of equipment, money and staff to countering this threat," Evans said.

His singling-out of Russia underlined the poor state of relations between the two countries' governments and between their security agencies. Each expelled four of the other's diplomats in July in a row over Moscow's refusal to extradite the chief suspect in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent turned Kremlin critic who was poisoned with radioactive polonium in London a year ago. The two sides have also suspended cooperation on counter-terrorism.

In his speech, Evans said MI5 knew of at least 2,000 British-based individuals who posed a direct threat to national security because of their support for terrorism, "and we suspect that there are as many again that we don't yet know of". A year ago, his predecessor put the figure at about 1,600.

Evans said plots were now being driven from an increasing range of overseas countries, including Somalia. He noted the emergence of a new al Qaeda arm in North Africa, and said the network's Iraqi branch was also intent on promoting attacks outside Iraq. He said Britain could expect more attacks. "I do not think that this problem has yet reached its peak." [Trevelyan/Reuters/6November2007] 

Australia's Top Cop Says It's Hard to Spy on Muslims. Security agencies are struggling to infiltrate extremist Muslim groups using the undercover methods they employ to tackle organized crime, one of Australia's leading counter-terrorism experts believes. NSW Assistant Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas warned that the line between terrorism and crime has blurred as terrorists try new ideas in pursuing their ideological goals.

"They're very innovative about working up new ways to communicate with each other," Mr Kaldas said. "There's obviously enormous difficulty in penetrating these groups, unlike organized crime groups where you still have a chance of getting an undercover operative."

Mr. Kaldas, head of the NSW police counter-terrorism unit, said community programs were useful in reducing the likelihood of Muslims turning to extremism, and in improving relations with authorities.

Mr. Kaldas said terrorists, unlike criminal groups, often stepped up their efforts when they discovered they were under surveillance. "When they feel they're being watched, they don't back away but pick up the pace," he said. "That's something we've really got to grapple with."

Mr. Kaldas said the internet was one of the main sources used by terrorists to obtain propaganda material.

He expressed concern about members of the Muslim and Arab communities relying too heavily on foreign news to shape their views of the world. Mr. Kaldas said while NSW police did not want to ban people from watching television networks such as al-Jazeera, they were interested in introducing community members to Australian views through grassroots programs. [AustralianNews/5November2007]

Al Qaeda Threat Grows in UK, Spy Chief Says. British security officials suspect that at least 4,000 people are involved in terrorism-related activities in Britain and that Al Qaeda's "deliberate campaign" against Britain poses the "most immediate and acute peacetime threat" to the nation in a century, the head of Britain's domestic spy agency said. "Terrorist attacks we have seen against the UK are not simply random plots by disparate and fragmented groups," said Jonathan Evans, director general of Britain's Security Service, commonly known as MI5. "The majority of these attacks, successful or otherwise, have taken place because Al Qaeda has a clear determination to mount terrorist attacks against the United Kingdom."

Addressing the Society of Editors in Manchester, England, Evans said that security agents are watching about 2,000 suspected terrorists in Britain and that they suspect "there are as many again that we don't yet know of." The remarks by Evans, who took over as head of MI5 in April, amplified the threat described a year ago by his predecessor, Eliza Manningham-Buller, who said agents were tracking 1,600 people in at least 200 cells. 

Manningham-Buller's public speech was a rarity for the secretive agency, but Evans has been slightly more public and has defended his agency against criticism in unprecedented postings on its website. Noting that his speech yesterday, to a media group, was still "fairly unusual," Evans said he was speaking because MI5 has "a responsibility to keep the public informed about the threats they face and what we are doing to counter them."

The rise in the number of identified terrorism suspects in Britain is partly attributable to increased efforts by security services to track plotters, Evans said. British agencies have refocused on potential domestic terrorists since suicide bomb attacks on the London public transit system in July 2005 killed 52 passengers. In the past 18 months, British officials have broken up alleged plots to bomb trans-Atlantic jetliners and detonate car bombs outside a crowded central London nightclub.

Echoing Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who recently described the fight against radical Islamic terrorism as a "generation-long challenge," Evans said that Al Qaeda's campaign against Britain is expanding and that "there remains a steady flow of new recruits to the extremist cause." He said youths as young as 15 have been involved in terrorist plots in Britain.

Evans also noted that the plots against Britain are being increasingly organized overseas. He said that in the past five years, much of the "command, control and inspiration" for attack planning in Britain has come from Al Qaeda's core leadership in tribal areas of Pakistan, while British citizens have mounted the actual attacks. In several recent cases, police said some of the suspects had visited Pakistan and trained in terrorist camps there. [Sullivan/WashingtonPost/6November2007] 

Section III - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

The WIN Editors would like to wish a happy 55th Birthday to the NSA. We have included two pieces in this WIN to commemorate the Agency. 

The History of the NSA. The National Security Agency was created in November 1952 and has provided timely information to U.S. decision makers and military leaders for more than 50 years. However, even before President Truman signed the memorandum establishing the Agency, pioneer cryptologists laid the groundwork for an organization that would play a critical role in the outcome of all major conflicts. Cryptologist legends such as William and Elizebeth Friedman, Frank Rowlett, Agnes Meyer Driscoll and Herbert O. Yardley are remembered for their brilliant contributions but thousands of other men and women have quietly served their country, altering the course of this nation's history and ensuring a free and safe America. The history of cryptology is their story.

The NSA/CSS boasts a rich heritage and the people who have served their country in any cryptologic capacity understand a legacy unknown to most Americans. From pre-WWI efforts to the most recent conflicts, this nation's cryptologists have been there quietly protecting and exploiting signals intelligence.

Their efforts and the use of radio intercept, radio direction finding, and processing capabilities gave the United States and its Allies a unique advantage in WWI. The lessons learned here and advances in technology played a critical role in the cryptologic successes in WWII. It was finally realized that cryptanalysts needed to be coordinated under one agency so the Armed Forces Security Agency was formed in 1949. The mission of this newly created agency was to conduct communications intelligence and communications security activities within the National Military Establishment.

However, with its restrictive organizational structure and a lack of a central agency for cryptologic efforts, AFSA could not achieve its mission. It had merely become the military branch for cryptology. The agency was therefore redesigned and all cryptologic activities both military and nonmilitary were brought together to form the National Security Agency.

Since its inception, the Agency has taken responsibility for securing the nation's communications while exploiting foreign signals intelligence. Although inherently a secret business, a public museum devoted to the history of cryptologists and their work opened to the public in December 1993. Memorabilia ranging from the German Enigma to the recently declassified Cray computer decorate the museum hallways. The National Cryptologic Museum attempts to pull back the veil of secrecy and gives visitors an insight into the history of making and breaking codes. Visitors can get a feel for the legacy and rich heritage that is the cornerstone of the National Security Agency. [From the NSA Web Site: NSA.GOV] 

The VENONA Program.  The U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service, the precursor to the National Security Agency, began a secret program in February 1943 later codenamed VENONA. The mission of this small program was to examine and exploit Soviet diplomatic communications, but after the program began, the message traffic included espionage efforts as well.

Although it took almost two years before American cryptologists were able to break the KGB encryption, the information gained through these transactions provided U.S. leadership insight into Soviet intentions and treasonous activities of government employees until the program was canceled in 1980.

The VENONA files are most famous for exposing Julius (code named LIBERAL) and Ethel Rosenberg and help give indisputable evidence of their involvement with the Soviet spy ring.

The first of six public releases of translated VENONA messages was made in July 1995 and included 49 messages about the Soviet's efforts to gain information on the U.S. atomic bomb research and the Manhattan Project. Over the course of five more releases, all of the approximately 3,000 VENONA translations were made public.

Following are the remarks of Mr. William P. Crowell, Deputy Director of NSA when the declassification of the VENONA project was announced at CIA Headquarters on 11 July 1995. 

"In the early 1960's, shortly after joining NSA, I was one of a small but fortunate group of agency employees invited to a meeting with Frank Rowlett, one of the eminent NSA cryptologists who had been so successful during World War II. For over an hour Frank told us stories about the successful exploitation of codes and ciphers during the war. He spoke about how those successes had helped U.S. military leaders and the forces under their command win crucial battles and make strategic choices. But, he was very careful to avoid claiming that cryptography had won any battles. That distinction - between providing information that can make a difference - and using information to make a difference is still an important one and certainly applies to the results that were achieved in the successful breaking of the codes and ciphers known as VENONA.  

Twelve years later I was assigned as a manager in an NSA division that included the VENONA project. In a very short time I came to appreciate that VENONA was an absolutely fascinating story of the personal determination and dedication of a small group of cryptanalysts. It was, in addition, a brilliantly intellectual cryptanalysis effort. Lastly, VENONA was a model of outstanding interagency cooperation.

I also realized it was a story of considerable historical moment and that someday, when the need and responsibility to protect the sources and methods involved was diminished, it would be made public. That time has now come and today we give the first of the over 2200 VENONA translations to historians to judge. But, as we make this release, I think it is most appropriate that we recognize the extraordinary people who did the work.

The story of the efforts to attack Soviet KGB and GRU traffic began in February 1943 when a young woman, Miss Gene Grabeel, was assigned to organize, characterize, and analyze thousands of encrypted Soviet diplomatic messages. Through nearly a decade following, a number of analysts, by dint of their dogged determination, slowly made headway against a family of extremely sophisticated, double-encrypted cryptographic systems. They painstakingly extracted information, a word or two at a time, from one of the most challenging systems that had ever been exploited.

The first and most significant breakthroughs against the VENONA cryptosystems were made without even the most rudimentary computers or other sophisticated tools which we are accustomed to using today.

While the Soviet traffic that was ultimately read under the VENONA project spanned the years 1942-46, efforts to exploit it continued for decades. This was due to the agonizingly slow and difficult process in which sometimes only one or two words at a time were wrenched grudgingly from the code. Each new recovery came with the elation akin to finding a pearl in an oyster. But each recovery also led to renewed work as each message had to be reviewed to see if that code group was present and, if it was, then the enlarged context was checked and scrutinized to see if it provided clues to other unrecovered code groups. Similarly, as counterintelligence information based on the decrypts was passed to the FBI and the FBI investigated the leads, new information was developed which sometimes enabled new breaks into the code. Then the process would begin all over again.

People continued to work on VENONA so long as the possibility remained that counterintelligence information might be developed that could possibly reveal new agents or espionage activities that might still be active. When it was no longer reasonable to expect that those named in 1942-45 might still be alive or active in an espionage role, then ongoing efforts to continue to break the VENONA cryptosystems was terminated.

From the early days of WWII, Arlington Hall assembled teams of gifted linguists and cryptographers of the highest intellectual caliber to work against the German and Japanese codes and subsequently on the VENONA project. These were linguists like the brilliant and dedicated bookbreaker, Meredith Gardner, who came with outstanding credentials in six or seven languages and who made some of the first, really vital breakthroughs against the VENONA systems - like 1st LT Ferdinand Coudert who came with a BA and an MA from Harvard in Slavic studies, a law degree from Columbia University, and a working knowledge of French, German, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, and Japanese - and like CAPT William B.S. Smith, a contemporary of Coudert's from Harvard who knew French and Breton and who had been an editor at the prestigious Columbia University Press. It included cryptographers like Genevieve Feinstein, Gene Grabeel, Cecil Phillips, and Dr. Richard Leibler, just to name a few. They and their colleagues brought a fearsome intellectual firepower to bear on various aspects of the VENONA puzzle with astounding, but hard won success.

As I mentioned, VENONA also was characterized by unprecedented interagency cooperation. First and foremost was the cooperation between the intelligence and law enforcement communities. This cooperation began with Wes Reynolds, the FBI liaison to Arlington Hall, and is typified by the close, cooperative efforts of Bob Lamphere who became the FBI's direct link to VENONA. There is no clearer example of synergism in the early days than these cooperative relationships. VENONA also included cooperation with HUMINT collectors and international intelligence partners in prosecuting counterintelligence leads.

A word about the VENONA cryptosystems - they should have been impossible to read. They consisted of a code book in which letters, words, and phrases were equated to numbers. So a code clerk would take a plain text message and encode the message using numbers from the codebook. This would have presented a significant challenge itself depending on how long the code book was used. However, the messages were further modified, in other words double-encrypted, by use of a one time pad. The use of a one time pad effectively randomizes the code and renders it unreadable. The key to the VENONA success was that mistakes were made in the construction and use of the one time pads - a fact that was discovered only through brute force and analysis of the message traffic.

Once sufficient breakthroughs had occurred, it became clear that the Soviet diplomatic traffic was encrypted in several similar systems and that it included KGB and GRU espionage traffic in addition to diplomatic and trade messages. Gradually a picture of a massive Soviet espionage effort began to emerge from the work of the VENONA team.

In deciding to declassify and release the VENONA translations, we gave the utmost consideration to the appropriate protection of individuals' privacy rights. It is not our desire or our responsibility to further interpret the VENONA translations - they will speak for themselves and the historians will help us understand and put them in context. But today, it is also our privilege to recognize the efforts and sacrifices of the VENONA team members publicly for the first time. Seldom do intelligence officers get the chance to talk about successes. The VENONA project is one of the best, and I am proud to have had a small part in telling the story." {From the NSA Web Site, NSA.GOV]

Section IV -  BOOK REVIEWS, OBITUARIES AND COMING EVENTS

Book Reviews

The Memory Room, by Christopher Koch. The mystique of secrecy has always fascinated Christopher Koch. It has glimmered in books he has written in the past, such as Highways to a War, and it lies at the heart of his mesmerizing new novel, The Memory Room, set in the last days of the Cold War. The Memory Room is a psychological study of someone who decides to lead the life of a spy, a choice that isn't as straightforward as many might imagine.

Koch's examination of what motivates the brilliant if eccentric Vincent Austin, an orphan who grows up in Tasmania with an elderly aunt and is recruited by ASIS, Australia's overseas secret intelligence service, is written partly as a memoir. But the book is an exploration of the complicated friendship between three people: Vincent; Derek Bradley, his friend from university years who joins Foreign Affairs; and the woman Vincent introduces to Bradley while they are all still living in Tasmania, Erika Lange.

Vincent's "fatal attraction" to the secret life begins when he's young. By a strange twist of circumstance he meets Erika, a little girl who in many ways is his double. Not quite 13 years old, she's already a strange one - hiding in people's gardens, spying on them. Their game playing continues into adolescence, becoming a type of folie a deux. Later on, no longer children, Erika encourages Vincent to go out at night with a camera, taking pictures of people through their windows.

As adults, the shared obsession with covert behavior takes Vincent and Erika in different directions. Erika, who has a passionate affair with Bradley in China, could never have become a spy - her chaotic emotions and unpredictable behavior make that clear. Vincent is a different case and, it can be argued, his decision to become a secret intelligence operative feeds a more complex desire for a fugitive existence.

Koch has always written brilliantly about landscape and place - in particular Tasmania, his birthplace - and in The Memory Room he also manages to weave secrecy's mystique into the descriptions of Bradley's boyhood scenes.

The secret life begins to go badly wrong for Vincent in China in 1982. He, Bradley and Erika, by now in their 30s, are all working at the Australian Embassy in Beijing. Vincent attempts an espionage coup that doesn't come off and he's recalled to Canberra.

His eventual fate is a reflection of how the "sad mists of the world of deceit" often leave former spies with mental burnout. "The thing is, my boy, people like Vincent are attracted to the service for all sorts of odd reasons. They often have too much imagination - and that can cause crackup," a senior ASIS officer remarks to Bradley towards the end of the book.

Erika's destiny is almost predictable and here the novel does become more spy-thrillerish and less layered. It's left to Bradley to make sense of their lives and to contemplate how he and Vincent may have been formed most by the scenery they grew up in - the sunlight touching roofs and garden trees, the telephone poles receding up the road until they become minute, "seeming to lead to a region of illusion". [SMH.COM/9November2007] 

In Memoriam

Norman Mailer - AFIO member and speaker.  As WIN readers probably are aware, author Norman Mailer died last week on 10 November 2007.  Less well known was the fact that he was an AFIO member and speaker, and that after the publication of "Harlot's Ghost" - which critics called "surprisingly sympathetic to the cold warriors, despite his left-leaning history" - Mr. Mailer was invited to speak at the Agency.  Instead of a traditional obituary on Mr. Mailer, we offer the WIN readers a brief biography and an archived 1992 article from the New York Times about Mr. Mailer's visit to the CIA. 

*  *  *

Norman Mailer was born Jan. 31, 1923, in Long Branch, N.J., into a Jewish family with origins in Russia. Mailer was the anglicized reading of their name, given to Mailer's grandparents when they emigrated. "Nobody knows what the name was originally," he once said. "Mailorovski? Mailorovich? Yeh, something out of Dostoevsky! Norman Isaacovich Mailorovski!" 

Mailer earned an engineering science degree in 1943 from Harvard University, where he decided to become a writer, and was soon drafted into the Army. Sent to the Philippines as an infantryman, he saw enough of soldiering to provide a basis for his first book, "The Naked and the Dead," published in 1948 while he was a postgraduate student in Paris.

His military career was varied. He served in the Pacific initially in regimental intelligence, then as an aerial photograph expert, a rifleman in a reconnaissance platoon, and finally as a cook. He was discharged in 1946. 

He was an AFIO member and speaker. 

*  *  *

Mailer Visits CIA. and Finds He's in Friendly Territory. Really. Like the narrator of "Harlot's Ghost" who devised convoluted schemes to avoid detection in his spy posts overseas, Norman Mailer quietly slipped in and out of the Central Intelligence Agency last week.

Although the veteran novelist spent seven years writing his 1,310-page book on the agency and its role in American life, the visit marked the first time he had set foot in its sprawling headquarters on the banks of the Potomac, invited as part of its guest speaker program.

But why was Norman Mailer, the lifelong promoter of the left, receiving a standing ovation from a standing-room-only crowd of more than 500 officials who crammed into the bubble-topped auditorium to hear him?

And why did three dozen senior officers meet him afterward in the private conference room of Robert M. Gates, the Director of Central Intelligence, for a two-hour debate on subjects as wide-ranging as his definition of treason to the demise of Communism?

Had they all forgotten that this was the same Norman Mailer who between belts of bourbon at his 50th birthday party in 1973 announced the creation of a "people's CIA." to rein in a devious agency that he said threatened American democracy? 

A Reversal of Roles

Forgotten, no, but perhaps forgiven. Over the years, as the cold war waned and then ended, both the author and his subject have mellowed. At one point during the long afternoon encounter it seemed that the world had changed so much that the two sides had reversed roles.

When Mr. Mailer confessed that he was not opposed to the CIA. conducting "wet jobs," E.G.. slang for murder and assassination, and that the American people would not be upset if the agency assassinated President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, one career officer in the clandestine service said he was shaken.

"It really shocked me when he said that," the officer said. "We've been so conditioned to the fact that such operations are wrong, that they're illegal. Then you hear this and you gasp."

Mr. Mailer's novel is a glorification of the godless, life-and-death struggle against Communism from the mid-1950's to the mid-1960's and the men and women who waged it, a rare validation of an institution unaccustomed to accolades from the outside.

For him, the invitation to address the agency was an opportunity not only to see first hand the institution he had studied so long from the outside but also to get its stamp of approval.

For the agency, the embrace of a former adversary proved just how far removed it is from its reputation as a plotter of coups and assassinations.

The visit, as described by officers and analysts interviewed later, also seemed to be splendid entertainment.

One longtime agency official recalled that in a gushy introduction Richard Kerr, the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, "talked about how Mailer was a World War II veteran, how he wrote 27 books, how he won the Pulitzer Prize twice, how he ran for the mayoralty of New York, how he went into the ring with Jose Torres."

"When Kerr said, 'Who would have ever thought I'd be here introducing Norman Mailer at Langley,' well, it brought the house down," the official said.

Mr. Mailer surprised his audiences when he told them that even without a cold war the agency had a more important role than ever, a message that fit nicely with Mr. Gates's pronouncements that the agency's mission has not evaporated just because the Soviet Union has disintegrated.

"I told them that ideology distorts intelligence and that during the cold war they ended up being seen by the world at large as spoilers," Mr. Mailer said in an interview.

He called the danger of nuclear proliferation to the developing world "staggering," adding, "Now that the cold war is over, the CIA. can get out of the beartrap of ideology and begin to provide serious and needed intelligence on the rest of the world." 

Novel Draws Criticism

As for the novel itself, several agency officials dismissed Mr. Mailer's CIA. as not at all believable, not now, not ever. They seemed to share the sentiment expressed last November by E. Howard Hunt, the former agent who played a leading role in the Watergate break-in and who is a character in the book, in his review of "Harlot's Ghost" for GQ: "The writer who presumes to reveal the inner world of espionage without having experienced it is comparable to a young man haunting a brothel exit and asking patrons what it was like." One veteran operations officer familiar with American intelligence even before the CIA. was created after World War II said the agency was never the free-for-all that Mr. Mailer describes, not even in the days of William J. (Wild Bill) Donovan, the creator of the O.K.'S., America's first coordinated intelligence agency.

"Anyone who worked for Bill Donovan knew perfectly well that you didn't run riot," he said. "Yes, he was a flamboyant man of endless ideas, 90 percent of which were wild. But in the last analysis, he was a sane, rational man, and the impression that his people were running off doing things with no sense of responsibility is not true."

A female CIA. analyst was more blunt. The aristocratic, larger-than-life, East-Coast, Ivy Leaguers with insatiable appetites for sex and duplicity, she said, "would never have passed the polygraph."

But when you have Norman Mailer in your presence, why quibble over facts? The audiences did not dwell on the inaccuracies in their craft or on his mixing up cryptonyms and pseudonyms. Neither did they break it to him that unlike his narrator, agency officials do not spend much of their time rock-climbing, writing endless letters or taking three-month vacations in Maine.

"As a reader," one operations officer said, "you have to get beyond the retired-British-colonel mentality which says that jasmine don't smell in the Kashmir in September," and that as result the whole book is worthless. 

Delight About Mistakes

On the contrary, some officials were delighted that in a world where secrecy is sacred, Mr. Mailer got it wrong. "It bothers you most when someone has a lot of sources in the agency and what is written is totally accurate," said one official who has worked both as an analyst and administrator. "You like to see inaccuracies."

During his presentations, Mr. Mailer was asked whether he realized that the real CIA. was much grayer than his portrait, and why he paid only fleeting attention to the basic function of the organization: the collection and analysis of information for policy makers. "If you want to write a novel about bureaucracy and not write satire, you need a writer of Thomas Mann's status," he said he told them. But one agency official had a less diplomatic response: "Coordinating and drafting assessments is pretty boring."

What most struck Mr. Mailer about his audiences was just how mainstream and well, polite, they were. "If I was told I was in a seminar at Georgetown or Harvard where intelligence was being discussed, I wouldn't think twice," he said of the small group meeting.

When asked about Mr. Mailer's observation that his audiences were not very confrontational, one official explained: "We were polite because we didn't have a lever. If you read a book by someone who pretends to be an expert, who pretends to know about the CIA., then you can argue what an idiot he is. But here was this extreme liberal, and he's telling you he favors wet jobs. He's telling you this as a novelist, so there's no point arguing with him."

Said another: "What did he expect? Guys with guns?" [Sciolino/NewYorkTimes/3February1992] 

Obituaries

Sophia Dziadura, Air Force Intelligence Officer. Retired Air force Major Sophia Dziadura died on Oct. 5, 2007 at the Army Distaff Retirement Center in Washington, D.C. She was 80. Major Dziadura spent 26 years on active duty, and was also recognized for her efforts in developing the Deinheim Orphanage in Germany in the years following World War II.

In 1944, at age 17, Sophia Dziadura enlisted in the Navy, where she served for 12 years. She then received a commission with the Air Force, where she spent another 14 years. While in the Air Force, she attended Hofstra College on Long Island, N.Y., University of Maryland, and Maenz University in Germany, where she received her master's degree in political science.

As an intelligence specialist, Maj. Dziadura was one of the first female Air Force officers to be sent to Vietnam, which was followed by tours of duty in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Following her discharge from the military in 1970, Maj. Dziadura continued her devotion to those who served by remaining active with Military Family Services - an organization geared to helping families with parents on active duty.

A military funeral at the Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. is scheduled for Dec. 13, 2007. [Vondas/Tribune-Review/4November2007] 

Col. Ronald E. (Baron) Mintz, USAF.  Colonel Ronald E. (Baron) Mintz, USAF, retired, died the morning of the 31st of October. His distinguished military career started with service in the Marine Corps. While working undercover (as a restorer of old paintings) in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, he sustained a rifle butt blow to his chest that bothered him the rest of his life. Baron's SAC assignments included tours with the original Defense Meteorological Satellite Program office when it was an NRO project. Baron was ever speaking truth to power, and insisted on absolute integrity in himself and all around him. He was a proud member of AFIO.

Barbara Martin. Barbara Martin, an employee at AFIO headquarters, who had assisted with the arrangements for the recent AFIO Symposium, died suddenly on 5 November 2007, in her sleep. She had been taking care of her husband who had just been diagnosed with cancer and undergoing chemotherapy. Mrs. Martin was a retired clinical psychologist and loved music and travel. We will all miss her wonderful smile, spirit, and "can-do" manner. Her death is a shock to all of us....and a major loss. She leaves behind two sisters, her mother, three stepsons, and her husband, Charles. A private funeral was held last Saturday in Alexandria, VA.

Harvey Gerald Miller: CIA Analyst. Harvey Gerald Miller, 81, a former senior analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency, died Oct. 25 of a heart attack at his home in McLean.

Mr. Miller joined the CIA in 1956 and spent 12 years, including several as chief, with the agency's East Asian staff in the old Office of National Estimates. He also conducted geographic analyses and reviewed intelligence on East Asian affairs. When he retired in 1978, he received the CIA's Career Intelligence Medal.

Mr. Miller was born in New York and was in the Army during World War II. He began studying the Japanese language at the University of Chicago in 1944, while he was with the Army. After the war, he was an interpreter with the Army's 11th Airborne Division in Japan. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and was elected to the Beta Gamma Sigma national honorary business fraternity. He received a master's degree in geography from the University of Wisconsin in the early 1950s and pursued further graduate studies in geography at George Washington University and in Asian studies at American University.

During the Korean War, Mr. Miller was a civilian geographer with an Army intelligence unit in Tokyo.

After his retirement, he pursued his interests in political geography and world affairs.

Survivors include a sister. [Schudel/WashingtonPost/4November2007] 

Kenneth A. Boulier. One of the last survivors of the Battle of Corregidor in the Second World War, Kenneth Alexander Boulier, died at his home in Glen Burnie, MD, on Nov. 4th at the age of 91. A native of Cedar Buffs, Nebraska, son of George and Effie Boulier, Chief Warrant Officer Boulier served 21 years in the US Navy. Ken Boulier served aboard the USS Houston and the USS New Mexico and was a code breaker while stationed in the Philippines during WWII.

In March 1942, he escaped Corregidor to Australia on the submarine USS Permit days before the Japanese took control of the island. The USS Permit was chased and depth charged several times by the Japanese and at one point was submerged for 22 1/2 hours before escaping. Ken helped decipher the Japanese transmissions that led to the shooting down of Admiral Yamamoto's plane on April 18, 1942. Yamamoto was the Commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet and the architect of the Pearl Harbor bombing. His death greatly benefited the Allied cause. 

While stationed in Australia, his life-long friend and fellow code breaker, William Tremblay, recognized the code word for "attack" and the code for Midway Island amidst a group of "junk" Japanese traffic. The code breakers were able to warn US Forces before the attack in June 1942. The Battle of Midway is one of the greatest Naval victories in history. Many American and Allied lives were saved and the Japanese were prevented from sweeping eastward toward the mainland of the United States. 

Boulier was awarded the Army Distinguished Unit Badge with oak leaf cluster The Good Conduct Medal, The American Theater National Defense Service Medal and The Philippine Defense WWII Victory Medal. He retired from the National Security Agency at Ft. Meade in 1972. 

Boulier also became interested in lapidary while stationed on the island of Adak in Alaska in 1953. He became an internationally known carver and his cabochons were displayed for several years at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C. He taught his craft for many years and was a multiple trophy winner in competitions sponsored by the American Federation of Mineralogical Societies. Kenneth Boulier died peacefully at his home surrounded by his family, including his wife of 61 years, Eileen O'Toole Boulier. He is also survived by their 8 children; Brian Boulier of Virginia Beach, Va., Patricia Rowan of Annapolis, Md., Pamela Chapman of Jupiter, Fl., Dianne Bailey of Bethesda, Md., Maureen Ashley of Marblehead, Ma., Kevin Boulier of Marriottsville, Md., James Boulier of Millersville, Md., Michael Boulier of Gambrills, Md.; 18 grandchildren and 8 great grandchildren. He is also survived by his sister, Betty Olson of Omaha, Nebraska, and predeceased by his brother, Marine S. Boulier. Ken Boulier was a member of The American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, The U.S. Naval Cryptologic Veterans Association, The Chesapeake Gem and Mineral Society, The Gemcutters Guild of Baltimore, The International Ivory Society, and was a parishioner of St. Bernadette's Catholic Church.  [ViaNSA]

Coming Events

EVENTS IN COMING TWO MONTHS OF 2007....

Wednesday, 14 November 2007 - 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM - Arlington, VA - The SCIP Greater Washington Chapter Meets to discuss War Gaming: The Key to Competitive Victory. The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals discusses War Gaming ... a process by which your department can take a leadership role in defining company strategy and tactics. This transforms the Competitive Intelligence/Market Research department from being a provider of information to a facilitator gathering and using information. With a seat at the table with senior management formulating strategy and tactics, Competitive Intelligence/Market Research departments will be better positioned to fulfill their organizational mission. A War Game exercise is a facilitated session designed to simulate potential competitor actions (or reactions) in order to identify potential threats or opportunities for your company. War Games use cross-functional teams from across the organization to help diagnosis situations, predict competitor’s actions, and formulate responses. War Gaming therefore is a great tool for any company to use in order to ensure it is fully prepared for potential market or competitive event. Location Tivoli Restaurant, 1700 N. Moore Street, Arlington, VA. Contact Information - August Jackson, Greater Washington Chapter Chair, email: august@augustjackson.net , 703.989.9588. Dionedra Dorsey, SCIP Chapter Relations Coordinator, email: ddorsey@scip.org , 703.739.0696 x111. Or visit: http://members.scip.org/scriptcontent/BeWeb/events/eventdetail.cfm?&PRODUCT_MAJOR=GDCHP1107

Thursday, 15 November 2007 - Colorado Springs, CO - AFIO Rocky Mountain Chapter holds luncheon meeting on Terrorists in Colorado. The chapter meets at the Falcon Room of the Air Force Academy, starting at 11:30 am. Price: $10.00 payable at the door. Our speaker is Warren Gerig, a new AFIO member. Warren will talk about a well known major terrorist and how their lives crossed in four different countries. Yet, they never met each other and today the terrorist lives 60 miles from Warren and The Air Force Academy. Reservations to Dick Durham by November 12, 2007 at Riverwear53@aol.com or call him at Telephone: (719) 488-2884

17 November 07 - Kennebunk, ME - the AFIO Maine Chapter hosts Jeffrey H. Norwitz, Special Agent of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and Professor of National Security Studies at the U. S. Naval War College. Norwitz will speak on "Spy Catching and Tales Of Counterintelligence" from the American Revolution to the present time. Special Agent Norwitz holds a degree in Criminal Justice from Eastern Kentucky University and a Masters in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U. S. Naval War College. He has written for a number of prestigious journals and frequently lectures at some of the nation's most influential academic institutions as well as overseas to foreign navy and military audiences. He is recipient of numerous awards in the fields of teaching and public service and currently holds the John Nicholas Brown Academic Chair of Counterterrorism at the Naval War College. The meeting will be held at 2:00 p.m. at the Kennebunk Free Library, 112 Main Street, Kennebunk and is open to the public. Information at 207-985-2392.

21 November 2007 - Phoenix, AZ - The Arizona AFIO Chapter will hold its November meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn, located one block West of Central Avenue on Clarendon and one block South of Indian School Road in Phoenix at 11:30 AM. The Speaker will be John Zebatto who has 32 years experience in Intelligence and National Security, including high impact intelligence activities related to traditional and non-traditional challenges, recent work on terrorism, counter intelligence, weapons of mass destruction involving direct interaction with the senior levels of the U.S. government. Mr. Zebatto served in the Directorate of Intelligence from 1073-1986, and in the Directorate of Operations from 1986-2003 with the CIA. He will speak on a Counter Intelligence Officer's view of Intelligence and the case against Saddam Hussein. He gained his experience while he was temporarily assigned to the National Intelligence Council where he had the unusual task of assessing the impact of our sources and methods in using intelligence publicly in the Administration's "Case Against Saddam Hussein." For information or to register please call Bill Williams at (602) 944-2451 or fireballci@hotmail.com

26 November 2007; 5 pm - Las Vegas, NV - AFIO Las Vegas Chapter meets at at Nellis Air Force Base Officers' Club. Join us at 5 p.m. in the "Check Six" bar area for Fellowship, beverages and snacks/dinner. Our featured speaker for the evening will be: Colonel Sully de Fontaine. Colonel de Fontaine has over forty years' of military and government service, which began in the European Theater of World War II when he served with the Special Operations Executive and the Special Air Service in England. After the liberation of France, he was attached to the Office of Strategic Services and Special Operations Executive in Brussels, Belgium. He has also served with United Nations, the 10th and 5th Special Forces, the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, and Criminal Investigation Division. He has been awarded over twenty U.S. and Foreign decorations and awards. Colonel de Fontaine will speak about his personal experiences in WW II, parachuting into occupied France where he escorted downed aviators to safety in Spain. Additional biographical material will be made available at the meeting.
Due to the holidays, if you plan to bring a guest(s), please RSVP to 702-295-0073 with name(s) no later than Friday, November 16. Entrance to the Base
for your guest(s) cannot be guaranteed. All guests must use the MAIN GATE located at the intersection on Craig Road and Las Vegas Blvd. Address: 5871 Fitzgerald Blvd., Nellis AFB, NV 89191 Phone: 702-644-2582.
Email Christine J. Eppley, Chapter Corresponding Secretary at EPPLEY@nv.doe.gov

Wednesday, 28 November 2007; 6:30 pm - Washington, DC - Robert Hanssen: Colleague, Friend, and Traitor. Former senior FBI official David Major at the International Spy Museum. “One might propose that I am either insanely brave or quite insane.” —Robert Hanssen, November 2000 With the recent release of Breach, Robert Hanssen is once again in the public eye and the topic of much discussion. Who was the real man who betrayed his country and may be the worst spy in U.S. history? David G. Major knows. Major worked with Hanssen for 14 years at the Bureau. He was the FBI executive supervisor in Hanssen’s chain-of-command for three years and considered him a fellow employee and friend for over two decades. Major, retired FBI supervisory special agent, founder of the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, and International Spy Museum board of directors member, provides a glimpse into the real personality and psychology of one of the most damaging spies in U.S. history. He will explore why Hanssen’s betrayal was so difficult to uncover, his own theories on what motivated the spy, his perspective on Breach, and the status of U.S. counterintelligence in the wake of this profoundly important spy case. Tickets: $23 REGISTER: http://www.spymuseum.org/programs/register.html

28 - 30 November - Rome, Italy - International Conference, "The Battle for Hearts and Minds: Soft Power in the Struggle against Global Jihadism" at the Matteo Ricci conference center of the Pontifical Gregorian University (Piazza della Pilotta, 4 , Rome, Italy).  
Conference speakers will include experts on the subject of terrorism, radical Islamism and strategic intelligence, from Europe, the United States, Russia, the Middle East and the Vatican.  There is no entrance fee.  For further information please contact Diego Cazzin or prof. Sergio Germani, academic director of the conference (l.germani@unilink.it) . To register please contact Mr. Francesco D'Arrigo (f.darrigo@ceasonline.eu).

Friday, 30 November 2007; 12 noon – 1 pm - Washington, DC - Chief of Station, Congo - Station Chief Larry Devlin at the International Spy Museum. As station chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin fought the Cold War in one of its hottest arenas. On 1 July 1960, the Congo declared independence from Belgium; and on 5 July, the army mutinied and governmental authority collapsed. When Devlin arrived five days later he found himself in the heart of Africa, fighting for the future of perhaps the most strategically influential country in the continent, its borders shared with eight other nations. In his memoir, Chief of Station, Congo, Devlin describes his life as a master spy in Africa, one whose assignment to assassinate political leader Patrice Lumumba (which he didn’t carry out) is back in the news with the June release by the CIA of the “family jewels.” Free! No registration required! Join the author for an informal chat and book signing.

Saturday, 1 December 2007, 11 am to 3 pm - Gainesville, FL - The North Florida AFIO Chapter holds its meeting in the Faculty Dining Room (Room BBB) of Bruton-Geer Hall at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. Maj Gen David E. Kratzer, USAR (ret.) has been invited. He was a very well-received speaker in March 2004, talking at length about "The Drive to Baghdad" in Operation Iraqi Freedom, during which he was the logistics commander with over 40,000 troops in a myriad of support roles reporting to him, but now 3 1/2 years later and retired he has a slightly different perspective on our progress and situation there, which is most insightful and thought provoking -- there should be some spirited discussion after this one. For further information write Vince Carnes at clancairns2003@yahoo.com

4 December 2007 - Annapolis Junction, MD - The fascinating tradecraft techniques of the infamous Walker-Whitworth Espionage Case, is the theme of the National Cryptologic Museum Foundation's Seventh Annual Pearl Harbor Commemorative Lecture. Do Not Miss This One.
The Walker-Whitworth perfidy is the subject of the National Cryptologic Museum Foundation's Seventh Annual Pearl Harbor Commemorative Lecture. Most Americans are familiar with the details of the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and its impact on the nation, but few realize the perilous position the country was in for a period of twenty years where -- had the Soviet Union chosen to attack the us -- their knowledge of our codes would have resulted in the immediate destruction of one leg of the nuclear Triad - the US nuclear submarine force. Made possible because of the traitorous activities of four Americans - John Walker, his brother, Arthur, John's son, Michael, and John's friend, Jerry Whitworth - who stole and sold over one million classified documents to the KGB between 1968 and 1985.
The presentation at this NCMF lecture will feature tradecraft, operations, motivations, and the ultimate downfall of the Walker-Whitworth Spies as observed by FBI Special Agent Gerald B. Richards. Richards -- now retired -- had been assigned to the FBI laboratory where he specialized in document and photograph examinations and espionage tradecraft. During the Walker-Whitworth investigation he examined hundreds of items including documents, film, cameras, photographs and espionage "concealment" items.
Plan to attend on 04 December for what promises to be an informative and alarming presentation about this little known "potential 'Pearl Harbor'." The program will be held at the L3 Communications Maryland Conference Center in the National Business Park, 2720 Technology Dr, Annapolis, Junction, MD 21046, from 1030-1330 hours.
Send $15.00 by 29 November to by check to NCMF, POB 1682, Ft. Meade, MD 20755. Questions? Call 301-688-5436.

4 - 5 December 2007, 7:30 am - 5 pm - Washington, DC - Blackwater Worldwide hosts "Public/Private Partnership in Peacekeeping" Conference.This theme will look at those areas where the military and government can use private sector expertise to successfully accomplish security and reconstruction operations. To most effectively and efficiently accomplish stability and reconstruction missions requires using the most appropriate skill sets. Frequently those skill sets reside in the private sector. To best use the taxpayer’s resources may require leveraging the private sector. Event being held at Ronald Reagan Bldg & International Trade Center, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20004, Business Attire. Fees: Military or Government $295.00; Industry $395.00.
Registration or more info: http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Agenda.aspx?i=9ac7f55c-1cdd-4b29-8e59-d47f4e34bf45 or write to events@blackwaterusa.com

Friday, 4 January 2008, 5:30 - 9 pm - New York, NY - AFIO NY Metro Chapter hosts Prof. Arthur Hulnick, former CIA, on "Intelligence Reform: Fix, Fizzle or Flop?" Location: Club Quarters, 40 W 45 St. More information available from afiometro@yahoo.com

Just announced for 2008:

19 - 21 February 2008 - Brussels, Belgium - EASTWEST INSTITUTE�S 5th WORLDWIDE SECURITY CONFERENCE. The EastWest Institute (EWI) is proud to announce its 5th Worldwide Security Conference (WSC5) in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan and the World Customs Organization. WSC5 will be held from February 19th through February 21st, 2008, at the World Customs Organization Headquarters in Brussels.

WSC5 will gather 750 leaders from businesses, civil society, governments and academia over the course of 3 days to discuss the security of people, economies and infrastructure. Workshops will discuss individual topics, some of which will be carried on after the conference as Working Groups within EWI's Worldwide Security Network.

Day 3 of the conference will be an innovative 'horizon-thinking' exercise, where the participants in Brussels will contribute to a set of global seminars on such topics as the weaponization of science, energy security and religion and human security. This session will construct a vision of 'a day in the future', identifying channels to overcome political obstacles, mistrust and differing perceptions.

7 - 11 April 2008 - Boston, MA - The International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts (IALEIA), and the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit (LEIU), will be co-hosting the 2008 Annual Conference in Boston, Massachusetts April 7-11 at the Park Plaza Hotel! This is the only event of its kind for law enforcement intelligence, serving an international audience, and is a "must attend" conference. The training will be first-rate and the opportunities to foster professional relationships with colleagues and peers from around the world will be extraordinary. To register on line, or for more information about the conference, please go to
http://leiu-homepage.org/events/index.php For hotel information and registration, please go to:
http://www.starwoodmeeting.com/StarGroupsWeb/booking/reservation?id=0707030645&key=5C3A5

For Additional Events two+ months or greater....view our online Calendar of Events

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