AFIO Weekly Intelligence Notes #36-08 dated 15 September 2008

Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

US Increasing Use of Spy Drones in Hunt for Bin Laden. The United States is intensifying its use of unmanned Predator drones in the hunt for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the mountains of western Pakistan, according to US and Pakistani officials.

The strategic shift reportedly reflected the US failure to develop meaningful human intelligence in the remote region despite placing a 25-million-dollar reward for information that leads to the death or capture of the terrorist network's leader.

The United States has tripled the number of Hellfire missile attacks by Predators in Pakistan this year with 11 strikes reported, compared with three in 2007.

The attacks are part of a renewed effort to cripple al-Qaeda's central command that began early last year and has picked up speed as President George W. Bush's term in office winds down, the US and Pakistani officials said.

The tactics have prompted a rise in the number of civilian casualties but have also killed two senior al-Qaeda leaders with 5-million-dollar bounties on their heads. [MonstersandCritics/10September2008] 

French Minister Breaks Ranks on Spy System. French Defense Minister Herve Morin says he questions the purpose of President Nicolas Sarkozy's new internal intelligence computer system dubbed "Edvige."

Morin, a former centrist member of Parliament until he joined Sarkozy's Cabinet, broke ranks with the president over the size and scope of Edvige. It has been set up as a security measure to collect personal data on French citizens, ranging from their circles of friends to their sexual preferences.

French civil libertarians have raised alarms since the sizable scope of the data collection system was revealed in July after the National Commission on Information Technology and Freedom, the data privacy watchdog, forced the government to publish the secret decree creating it. [UPI/8September2008] .

Alleged North Korean Spy Admits to Charges. A woman from North Korea charged with espionage admitted in court that she spied for the communist country, an official said, in a spectacular case that has drawn wide attention in South Korea.

Won Jeong-hwa made the admission during the first court hearing in her trial at the Suwon District Court, south of Seoul, said Judge Lim Min-sung, who serves as a court spokesman.

Lim said he had no more details. Won, who is in custody, could not be reached.

It was the first time Won, 34, appeared in public since her July arrest on charges of passing classified information to her homeland.

News photos showed Won dressed in a light-blue prison uniform and wearing a cap and a surgical mask.

She is the first alleged North Korean spy arrested in South Korea since 2006, and the second in a decade. If convicted, she could be sentenced to between seven years in prison and execution.

Yonhap news agency reported that Won submitted a written statement to the court, admitting to the charges.

"I endured difficult training and worked hard to carry out missions as an agent, believing that rendering loyalty (to the North's leader) is everything," she said in the statement, according to Yonhap. "But while living in the South, I started to have doubts about the North Korean regime, and my mind was in emotional conflict," she said.

Yonhap said Won was tearful for most of the hearing.

Prosecutors said late last month that Won had admitted she was a spy trained and commissioned by the North's intelligence agency.

The information she sent to the North included the locations of key military installations, lists of North Korean defectors and personal information on South Korean military officers, prosecutors said.

The case has further frayed South Korea's already troubled relations with the North, as the communist nation protested angrily that Seoul has fabricated the case to sully Pyongyang's image. [Chung/AP/10September2008] 

Ex-CIA Exec Facing Trial Says He'll Expose Agents, Programs. A former top CIA official accused of corruption and fraud is threatening to expose the identities of numerous agents and programs as part of his defense, prosecutors said.

In a court filing, prosecutors allege that former CIA executive director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo is trying to gum up the works of his trial, scheduled for November, by delving into classified information that is irrelevant to his case. Foggo is charged with 28 counts of wire and mail fraud, unlawful money transactions and making false statements.

Prosecutors say Foggo has threatened "to expose the cover of virtually every CIA employee with whom he interacted and to divulge to the world some of our country's most sensitive programs - even though this information has absolutely nothing to do with the charges he faces."

Prosecutors also allege his lawyers are seeking to introduce classified evidence to "portray Foggo as a hero engaged in actions necessary to protect the public from terrorist acts" to gain sympathy from jurors.

Foggo's efforts to disclose classified information are "a thinly disguised attempt to twist this straightforward case into a referendum on the global war on terror," wrote prosecutors Valerie Chu, Jason Forge and Phillip L.B. Halpern in a court motion filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.

The government wants U.S. District Judge James Cacheris to hold a closed hearing on whether the information is admissible at trial and if it is relevant to Foggo's case.

In public filings, the defense has complained that prosecutors manipulated the grand jury process to gain an unfair advantage. Those arguments were rejected by a judge.

It is not unusual for defendants in national security cases to claim that they must disclose classified information in their defense, experts said. The practice has a name, "graymail," and Congress has passed laws instructing courts to protect classified information by crafting unclassified substitutions that can be released at trial.

The case against Foggo resulted from an investigation of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., who admitted taking bribes from defense contractor Brent Wilkes, a close friend of Foggo's.

Cunningham pleaded guilty and was sentenced to more than eight years in prison. Wilkes was sentenced to 12 years.

Foggo is accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts from Wilkes, and helped steer contracts to the contractor, including one for delivery of bottled water to covert CIA locations for a 60 percent markup.

Foggo, who was the CIA's third-ranking officer when he left in 2006, also is accused of pulling strings to get his mistress hired at the agency and stationed close to him. [News8/8September2008] 

Spy Agencies Turn to Newspapers, NPR, and Wikipedia for Information. A few days ago, a senior officer at the Pentagon called his intelligence officer into his office. The boss had heard a news report about China while driving to his office and wanted some answers. It wasn't a tough assignment, given the news coverage, but there was a hitch. "There was plenty of information in the public domain about the topic," recalls the intelligence officer, a 10-year veteran. "And yet, if there wasn't some classified information cited in my report, the boss would never believe it was accurate."

The officer calls it "the seduction of the 'top-secret' stamp."

That's a common refrain in the intelligence community when the subject of so-called open-source information comes up. It's the kind of anecdote recounted over and over again this week at the intelligence community's second annual conference on the use of open-source information.

Another anecdote involves public information - commonly newspaper reports - that is paraphrased or quoted verbatim and then stamped "classified" to make the report more appealing to superiors.

Yet it's a practice that might be changing. The use of nonclassified information, whether news accounts or other publicly retrievable information, is gaining credibility within the intelligence community. And officials say there can be good reasons for putting some of that open-source information under the secrecy umbrella. "The information might be unclassified but our interest in it is not," Gen. Michael Hayden, head of the CIA, told the conference.

More than 15,000 people in the intelligence community now use the limited-access opensource.gov portal for information.

In addition, open-source information is sometimes simply easier to access. Soldiers in Iraq, for instance, occasionally lacking maps of their area of operations in Baghdad, regularly used satellite imagery from Google Earth to plan operations last spring. Also on the intelligence community's radar: the new version of Picasa, a Google-owned application for digital photographs that allows users to use facial recognition software.

Indeed, the Open Source Center, an office overseen by the director of national intelligence, now has more requests for information than it can handle, according to officials. 

Open-source information is both a curse and a blessing to intelligence professionals. On the one hand, it makes information far more accessible, sometimes more timely, and easier to disseminate. That means that more people can be more informed in a shorter amount of time, even despite concerns about the reliability of some of the information - Wikipedia, for instance.

On the other hand, it means a loss of power for those very intelligence agencies. "The intelligence professional is no longer the most, or the only, authoritative source of information," says Don Burke of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology.

Burke's now in charge of Intellipedia, a classified, interservice version of Wikipedia for spies and analysts. When he began at CIA in 1988, Burke says, there were no personal computers on analysts' desktops. Now in its second year, Intellipedia, some of which is open source, has more than 35,000 registered users and some 200,000 pages of information, according to the CIA. [Kingsbury/USNews/12September2008] 

OSS, Basis for CIA, Has a Special Spot. Veterans, family and friends of an organization that was the predecessor to the CIA and the precursor to special forces gathered last Friday for the dedication of a new monument.

The Office of Strategic Services memorial now stands as one of 43 outside the Airborne and Special Operations Museum.

The OSS was "a truly unique organization, steeped in history and covered in secrecy," said Ret. Col. Edwin "Andy" Anderson Jr., a member of the OSS Society.

Formed in 1942, the OSS served as the first organization to centralize, collect, analyze and disseminate information. It was dissolved in 1945, following the end of World War II, but served as the basis for the CIA. The U.S. Special Operations Command uses an adaptation of the OSS insignia as its shoulder patch in honor of the organization.

"I think it's altogether fitting and proper that we add this stone to the splendid collection," said Ret. Maj. Gen. John K. Singlaub, chairman of the OSS Society and the dedication's speaker.

Singlaub said the war on terrorism reinforces the importance of the "fourth dimension of warfare" involving intelligence and psychological attacks in addition to the traditional land, sea and air battles.

"It is getting to be more and more a psychological war," he said.

Before World War II, Singlaub said, the country didn't allow spying, preferring to live by the code that "gentlemen do not read one another's mail."

"We learned at Pearl Harbor how foolish that attitude was," Singlaub said.

Other veterans of the OSS helped Singlaub unveil the memorial before they watched a 30-minute film chronicling the career of OSS founder, Maj. Gen. William "Wild Bill" Donovan.

In the downtime between the film and the dedication, the audience was encouraged to view an exhibit on the OSS inside the museum.

The exhibit included a history of the organization and featured some of the tools used by its members, including a gun that fit into the palm of a hand, a camera hidden inside of a matchbox and a tiny coffin, used as a calling card and placed on the bodies of enemies killed in raids.

The OSS exhibit will be on display at the museum until mid-October. [Brooks/FayObserver/13September2008] 

FBI Wants New Tools in Terrorism Assessments. The Bush administration proposed guidelines Friday that would give the FBI more tools to assess national security and foreign intelligence threats.

Agents would be permitted to use tactics only allowed in criminal cases: physical surveillance, recruitment of sources and "pretext interviews" - where the real purpose would not be revealed.

Justice Department and FBI senior officials briefed reporters on the draft guidelines, but would not be quoted by name because they were discussing proposals that are still likely to be changed.

Some Democratic senators and civil liberties groups have said the proposals would allow Americans to be targeted in part by their race, ethnicity or religion - and be spied on without any other basis for suspicion.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which was briefed by the FBI and Justice Department, quickly criticized the new guidelines. The rewritten rules would "give the FBI the ability to begin surveillance without factual evidence, stating that a generalized 'threat' is enough to use certain techniques," the group said.

The administration officials acknowledged those factors could play a role in national security and foreign intelligence cases. But they said they can already be considered under 2003 rules that are not changing.

According to the officials, the surveillance, recruitment and interview rules are too restrictive in allowing the FBI to become a post-Sept. 11 intelligence agency that can stop terrorists before they strike.

Commenting on the decision to leave the 2003 guidelines on race, religion and ethnicity unchanged, Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said, apart from the briefing, "It is simply not responsible to say that race may never be taken into account when conducting an investigation. The reality is that a number of criminal and terror groups have very strong ethnic associations."

He said the bureau cannot ignore La Cosa Nostra's Italian membership or that Hezbollah is largely Lebanese, "any more than it could ignore the identification of a bank robber as a short white male."

Existing guidelines do not allow an investigation based on factors like race alone; there must be some other evidence of a threat or crime, the senior officials said at the briefing.

The officials said they want the guidelines to take effect Oct. 1.

They described a threat assessment as an information-gathering tool - usually based on a tip or a news story - to determine whether a problem exists. An example would be learning whether Iranian agents are operating in a U.S. location to obtain technology secrets.

However, the assessment guidelines are important, because the threat assessment could trigger a formal investigation of Americans in foreign intelligence and national security matters.

The guidelines require that FBI agents use the least intrusive methods in their assessment. However, they would be able to work on the assessment - such as conducting Internet searches - without high-level approval from supervisors. [Margasak/AP/12September2008]

Suitcase-Scandal Judge Weighs Kickback Evidence. A judge said she is considering whether to let a witness tell jurors that a Venezuelan businessman paid kickbacks before helping cover up his government's role in an Argentine election scandal.

Franklin Duran, 41, is accused of helping Venezuela's intelligence agency cover up the source of a suitcase containing $800,000 that was seized Aug. 4, 2007, at an Argentine airport. Prosecutors say Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had the cash delivered to aid the Argentine presidential campaign of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who was elected Oct. 28.

Prosecutors asked the judge to allow Duran's business partner, Carlos Kauffmann, to testify that he and Duran made more than $100 million from Venezuelan agencies after paying kickbacks. A fear of losing access to contracts motivated Duran and Kauffmann to aid a cover-up directed by Venezuela's intelligence agency, known as DISIP, prosecutors said.

U.S. prosecutors argue they should be allowed to introduce kickback evidence to counter arguments by defense attorney Edward Shohat that Duran's actions were motivated by a desire to help the cash courier, Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson. Prosecutors said Duran entered the cover-up plot to protect his illicit wealth gained through kickbacks to Venezuelan government agencies.

Duran is accused of trying to help silence the suitcase courier in Florida to keep the scandal from escalating in Latin America. Kauffmann, 36, pleaded guilty to his role in the scandal and will testify as a government witness against Duran. They own Venezuela's largest private oil company, Industrias Venoco, and other businesses. [Voreacos&Kolker/Bloomberg/10September2008] 

Iranian "Secret Agent" Charged in Germany. German federal prosecutors said Wednesday they had indicted an Iranian "secret agent" for purchasing large quantities of weapons equipment for the Defense Industries Organization (DIO) of Iran.

The man referred to as Saeed Sadeghi E, aged 52, is to be tried in Munich for espionage and 29 counts of breaching German arms export regulations between 2002 and 2006, prosecutors in Karlsruhe said on Wednesday, Sept 10.

The DIO had ordered machinery, parts and raw materials through Sadeghi E valued at 600,000 euros ($860,000), the prosecutors said.

DIO oversees Iran's armaments factories and has been described by German authorities as using "secret service methods" to increase state armaments production.

The purchases were for plants making conventional weapons, not nuclear ones, according to the statement.

The statement said that Sadeghi E. had set up a front company in Switzerland to make the purchases from German suppliers, and used a Bavarian-based freight company to ship parts to Iran. He was in fact conducting the business from his home in Duesseldorf in Western Germany.

Sadeghi E, who had dual Iranian and German nationality, was arrested in Nov. 2006 and has been free on bail since Feb. 2007, the statement said. [DW-World/10September2008] 

US Navy Bolsters its Intelligence Footprint. Two new organizations have been formed with a mandate to inject fresh impetus into the US Navy's intelligence effort.

A discreet entity calling itself the Secretary of the Navy Advisory Panel is due to meet for a second time behind closed doors at the Pentagon's conference center on Sept. 25. Created last year by Navy secretary Donald Winter to mull a shake-up in intelligence and changes in the way the U.S. Navy buys its equipment, the panel is made up essentially of former CIA staffers and defense industry figures who worked in the past for the defense department. Among them are two representatives of private intelligence concerns: Jack Devine, who chairs the Arkin Group; and James Woolsey, former CIA director who chairs the advisory board of ExecutiveAction LLC. Four new advisers have joined the panel since its last meeting at the end of April. They include nuclear weapons specialists Richard Mies and Robert Joseph.

The panel's last meeting, moderated by former CIA and NSA director William Studeman, concerned changing the Navy's intelligence capacity and strategies.

Meanwhile, the Navy has just announced the creation of an Irregular Warfare Office tasked with defining a doctrine and beefing up the service's capacity to wage asymmetric warfare and conduct intelligence and psychological operations. Headed by Mark Kenny, who previously ran the Navy's Center for Submarine Counter-Terrorism Operations, the Office is expected to focus on maritime operations to fight terrorism and on counter-insurgency missions in South America, off the coasts of Somalia and Nigeria. [IntelligenceOnline/10September2008] 

US Working with Pakistan to Deal with its Spy Agency. With the Pakistani spy agency ISI coming under pressure following reports that it was involved in an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, the US has said it is working with Islamabad to deal with the issue.

"With regards to the Pakistani intelligence services, I think that's been historically an issue in that country. There are signs that it remains so. And we, our collect - our two governments are working to deal with those problems," said Geoff Morrel, Pentagon press secretary.

The Pentagon also said a "very, very small numbers of US special forces are operating in a training capacity in Pakistan, not out on joint missions, but on a fixed site, training Pakistani forces, at the invitation of the Pakistani government."

The US was particularly pleased to see that Pakistan is involved in operations in the federally administered tribal areas (FATA) but said "robust efforts" are needed to tackle the problem.

He said Pakistan is a key ally in war on terror and asserted that both the countries are trying to confront the common problem of terrorism. [HindustaniTimes/10September2008] 

German Foreign Minister Supported Spy Pact With U.S. Military. German Foreign Minister Frank- Walter Steinmeier supported a secret agreement in 2002 between two German spies in Baghdad and the U.S. military preparing the invasion of Iraq, Stern magazine said, citing secret documents.

In exchange for the intelligence provided by Germany's BND foreign intelligence service, the government in Berlin was able to place a liaison officer in the U.S. Central Command base in Qatar to keep track of events in Iraq, Stern reported.

Steinmeier, who was chosen Sept. 7 by the Social Democrats to challenge Christian Democratic Chancellor Angela Merkel in next year's elections, was former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's chief of staff, putting him in charge of intelligence in 2002.

The two BND spies in Baghdad, an air-force officer and a former paratrooper, provided information on Iraqi command structures and positions as well as locations later bombed by U.S. forces, including an officers club, Stern reported. In February 2006, a German parliamentary committee cleared the BND of charges that it helped the U.S. military conduct air strikes in Iraq. [Donahue/Bloomberg/10September2008] 

Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

British Spy in Longbow Plot to Kill Heinrich Himmler. A British spy who was a cross between James Bond and Robin Hood plotted to use a longbow to assassinate one of the most notorious Nazis, according to a new book.

Tommy Sneum lay in ambush in occupied Copenhagen armed with a bow and arrows to kill Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS. He planned to strike from a penthouse that belonged to a Danish film starlet he had seduced. Sneum chose a longbow because he did not want the sound of a bullet to be traced back to her flat.

The exploits of Sneum are told in a book published this week by Mark Ryan, who interviewed Sneum at length before the former spy died last year aged 89.

"He was a real-life 007, getting through a tremendous number of women and doing all kinds of spectacular stunts to evade the Nazis," said Ryan, the author of The Hornet's Sting, published by Piatkus. "When he was holed up in Copenhagen he was sleeping with both the mother and daughter of the house, without either knowing."

Himmler was due to visit Copenhagen in February 1941 en route to Berlin after visiting SS recruits in Norway. Sneum was a handsome 23-year-old Danish aviator who, dismayed at the capitulation of his country, had become a British spy. He had struck up a relationship with the actress Oda Pasborg, whose flat he wanted to use.

"He was so much in love with her that he did not want to kill Himmler in a way that would hurt her," said Ryan.

So he bought a steel bow that could be dismantled into halves to make it easy to transport unnoticed. He had a quiver of arrows, each marked April 9, 1940, the date the Nazis had overrun Denmark. In the end, however, Himmler failed to appear. After landing at Copenhagen airport he felt ill and flew on to Berlin.

Sneum had more success with other missions. He filmed German radar installations, often under the noses of the German guards, with a camera provided by MI6. He flew to Britain with his films in a Hornet Moth biplane he had found minus its wings in a barn. He and a friend, Kjeld Pedersen, rebuilt it and took off from a field. Halfway across the North Sea, Sneum had to venture out on the wing in thick fog to refuel the plane from a can of petrol while Pedersen tried to keep it steady. [Chittenden/TimesOnline/9September2008] 

Section III - TERRORISM

Facing Drug Trial, Afghan Says He Aided U.S. In May 2005, about a month after coming to New York and then being arrested on federal narcotics charges, an Afghan tribal leader, Haji Bashir Noorzai, sat down with United States prosecutors and offered some critical information.

Mr. Noorzai, whom President Bush had designated one of the world's most wanted drug kingpins, said he knew a lot about a man the American authorities had been seeking for years: Mullah Mohammad Omar, the one-eyed cleric and reclusive leader of the Taliban who has been in hiding since the 2001 terror attacks.

"He changes locations on a daily basis to avoid capture," a federal summary of Mr. Noorzai's comments quoted him as saying. Mr. Noorzai added that Mr. Omar traveled with a small entourage of four or five people to avoid detection, and that he used an intermediary, a bodyguard, to carry letters and taped messages to the Taliban.

Mr. Noorzai described the bodyguard and the pharmacist who supplied the bodyguard's seizure medication, and said the bodyguard even had a phone number for the elusive Mr. Omar.

Mr. Noorzai apparently wanted to trade his information to avoid prosecution. The government has not said what it did with Mr. Noorzai's information, or how accurate or valuable it was.

But as far as anyone knows, Mr. Omar is still a free man, and Mr. Noorzai goes on trial Tuesday morning in Manhattan, charged with conspiring to import tens of millions of dollars worth of heroin from Afghanistan and Pakistan into New York and elsewhere in the United States and other countries. If convicted, he could face up to life in prison, prosecutors say. The trial in Federal District Court has been widely anticipated because it may offer a window into the shadowy Afghan opium industry, where skyrocketing production and corrupt Afghan officials have turned the country into a kind of narco-state, American officials say.

But the case has also raised questions about the murky tactics that were used to lure Mr. Noorzai into captivity.

The defense has argued in court papers that the government relied on private contractors who bribed foreign officials to gain access to Mr. Noorzai, and then promised Mr. Noorzai that he would not be arrested if he agreed to meet with American officials and provide information about terrorism financing.

The court has ruled that even if such tactics occurred, they did not invalidate the charges and could not be used as a defense during the trial. But the details of the operation, as laid out in court papers, show a side of the government's counterterrorism effort that is not often revealed publicly.

The indictment says that from 1990 to 2004, Mr. Noorzai led an international heroin trafficking group in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He also provided weapons and manpower to the Taliban, the indictment says. In exchange, the indictment says, the Taliban provided him with protection for his opium crops, heroin laboratories and drug-transportation routes.

At the time of his arrest, Karen Tandy, then chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said the operation had "removed one of the world's top drug traffickers," and someone, she added, who "for too long, devastated the country of Afghanistan."

Ivan S. Fisher, Mr. Noorzai's defense lawyer, has painted a different picture of his client, who has pleaded not guilty and has been held for more than three years pending trial.

In papers filed by the defense, Mr. Noorzai repeatedly denies that he was involved in the drug business. He also says that a claim by a D.E.A. agent that he admitted to such a role during a discussion are wrong, and he blamed a faulty translation by the interpreter.

Federal prosecutors declined to respond to questions about the defense allegations.

Mr. Noorzai, who is in his 40s, was the chief of the Noorzai tribe, which has more than a million members and extends throughout southern and western Afghanistan and into the Baluchistan province of Pakistan, court documents filed by the defense show.

Mr. Fisher wrote that Mr. Noorzai was an ardent supporter of the United States-supported government in Afghanistan, and cooperated with American military and intelligence agencies in the years before and after the 2001 terror attacks.

Mr. Noorzai, in his own affidavit, said that in 1982 he began to lead a small force that grew to 1,000 mujahedeen fighters in the war between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union.

In 1990, he said, he used his network of tribal contacts to help the C.I.A. recover Stinger missiles that the United States had provided to the Afghan rebels. He eventually turned over about 12 missiles, he said.

After 9/11, Mr. Noorzai said, he was detained by the United States military at Kandahar airport, where he talked with the Americans about the Taliban's military and political structure and its financial sources.

After his release, he said, he and his tribe collected more than 3,000 Taliban weapons, loaded them onto 15 trucks and turned them over to American officials. "We did not ask for and did not receive any payment," Mr. Noorzai wrote.

He said he continued to work with American military commanders, who wanted to capture Taliban leaders. He said that after he persuaded one former Taliban official to meet with the Americans, the man "then disappeared into one of their confinement centers for two years."

After he persuaded another tribal leader, who was hiding in Pakistan, to return home to Kandahar, he said, American forces attacked the man's home and killed him. Afraid for his own safety, Mr. Noorzai went into hiding, he said.

In August 2004, Mr. Noorzai agreed to travel to Dubai, where he met with the two contractors, who are identified only as Mike and Brian in court papers filed by the defense. The two men had worked in the Defense Department and the F.B.I. respectively, the papers say, and were associated with a firm called Rosetta Research and Consulting.

Rosetta's goal, the defense papers say, was to collect important information about terrorist activities worldwide, and to sell that information, along with providing security services, to governments and private entities, like banks, airlines and security firms.

The court documents say the firm had "developed relationships" with high-level F.B.I. and Defense Department officials, including Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz.

The firm developed a list of names, which became known as the "the Kill" or "Key Informant List," according to the defense papers. Mr. Noorzai's name was on that list, the papers say.

In that first meeting in Dubai, the documents assert, Mike told Mr. Noorzai that "the project had nothing to do with arresting anyone or apprehending anyone."

In September 2004, the papers say, Mr. Noorzai met again with Mike and Brian, in Pakistan, where they asked him about various Taliban commanders and Afghan officials. They also discussed their project to study and impede the flow of money to the Taliban resistance and al Qaeda, and sought Mr. Noorzai's help, the documents contend.

Mr. Noorzai again asked whether he was being set up.

Mike and Brian assured him that he would be "allowed to come to the United States, meet with important government officials, and then return to Pakistan," the documents say.

About six months later, the Drug Enforcement Administration began working with Mike and Brian as confidential sources in connection with what officials say was the investigation into Mr. Noorzai's drug trafficking organization, documents show.

In April 2005, Mr. Noorzai came to New York, where he met with D.E.A. agents in the Embassy Suites Hotel for 11 days. On April 23, he was arrested. [Weiser/NYTimes/8Sept2008]

Section V - BOOKS, REQUESTS, OBITUARIES, LETTERS TO THE EDITORS, ANNOUNCEMENTS AND COMING EVENTS

Books

The Spy Within: Larry Chin and China's Penetration of the CIA, by Tod Hoffman, reviewed by Brian Kappler. Spying in fiction is much simpler than spying in real life. In fiction, motivations are clear, stakes are high, the focus is tight and the pace is lively. In true spy stories, however, developments are slow, motivations are murky, and no participant wants the full truth to become known.

So Montreal writer Todd Hoffman tackles a daunting challenge in his fourth book, the story of Larry Wu-Tai Chin, a CIA translator caught in the 1980s after 30 years of passing secrets to China.

Hoffman has some important assets in his quest. Having worked eight years for the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, he knows something of the milieu. He has studied the trial transcript. He has industriously interviewed everyone knowledgeable who would talk. End-notes demonstrate that he has studied a considerable bibliography of previous work on U.S. counter-intelligence failures.

So he has done everything he could do. The resulting book tells us as much as we'll ever know about Larry Chin, probably. Yet it also illustrates the limitations of the genre - which Hoffman admits in a preface: In real life, "spies are ghosts" and "the mystery is never absolutely resolved." We're left wanting to know more about what drove Chin.

Good interviews with the FBI investigators have allowed Hofmann to write a spy-trial procedural, animated in part by the culture-clash office politics within the U.S. intelligence community: The FBI's job is to detect espionage, get the case to court, and win it. At the CIA, however, "completing a thorough damage assessment (is) far more urgent than securing a conviction," and protecting sources is more important still.

Chin, who retired in 1981, was identified in 1982 but arrested only three years later. The delay drove the FBI nuts, but the CIA insisted: The tip that led to Chin's identification had come from a CIA agent within China's intelligence establishment, Yu Zhensan. Until he'd been safely extracted, an arrest of Chin could have exposed Yu.

The tip led the FBI to Chin, but getting evidence good enough for court was a challenge. Chin, born in China, was a translator in a CIA unit handling "open-source" information - collecting and collating what's published in Chinese media. Hoffman explains that even this innocuous-sounding job can yield plenty of useful intelligence material, and describes how Chin's trusted status made it easy for him to photograph documents and deliver films via clandestine meetings in Toronto and elsewhere.

One frustration inherent in the true-spy genre is that we don't get to know Larry Chin very well. In the better type of spy fiction, the bad guys - Len Deighton's Col. Stok, for example - have some personality. Chin emerges only as a womanizer and a gambler (or was that just a cover to explain his prosperity?). At trial, as in his interrogation, he insisted that his aim was to help both China and the United States, by improving the Chinese government's understanding of America. Could he really have believed that?

But if the personality remains murky, the hunt is electrifying. The section devoted to the day FBI agents arrived at Chin's apartment, interviewed him for hours, and finally arrested him, crackles with tension, but not of the spy-novel variety. This is more like a John Grisham legal novel: The FBI men never forget, through those long hours, that to get a conviction, they'll need a confession. Will they get it?

Throughout the book, Hoffman allows himself some novelist's techniques. Did the spymaster at China's Washington embassy really "scald the back of his throat as his first cautious sip of tea became a shocked gulp" when he read a newspaper account of Chin's arrest? There's no end-note for that little claim.

Elsewhere, Hoffman can find no alternative to conjecture. Somebody "would have" known this. "I imagine" that happened. "It is reasonable to assume" the other thing.

Counterbalancing these unavoidable irritants is Hoffman's knowledge of the espionage business, shared with us in vivid writing. An example: In counter- intelligence, "field agents see themselves as the vigorous blood and guts being unnecessarily obstructed by the bureaucrats, spongy, yellow lipids that sludge the entire system."

Hoffman fleshes out The Spy Within by retelling the history of U.S.-Chinese relations, including a long explanation of the "Ping-Pong diplomacy" of Richard Nixon's time. Because the link to the Chin case is slight, this feels like overkill.

Despite these flaws, The Spy Within does as much as can reasonably be expected to illuminate the thicket of deception, mis-direction and confusion that is the high-stakes real-world game of spy vs. spy. [Kappler/Gazette/13September2008] 

Requests

Iranians with high power rifles arrested at BWI Airport - Did You Witness?"I am trying to find out any information about an incident at Baltimore Washington International Airport in November 1979. Supposedly eight Iranians were arrested with high power rifles, ammunition and maps of Embassy Row. The incident is mentioned in the book entitled Fear of Fears by John B. Wolf, a professor of Criminal Justice at John Jay in NY. However, I can find no reference to the arrest or the rest of the incident anywhere, including the 'manifesto' read to the Senate, as referenced in the book. Any ideas?" Thank you Replies to John J Bebirian, Univ of Las Vegas at jbebirian@yahoo.com

Obituaries

Harold Hunter Callahan. Harold Hunter Callahan, 91, died on Monday, Sept. 1, 2008, at Riderwood Village in Silver Spring, Md., where he had been a resident for the past two years.
He was born on April 14, 1917, in Marion, Ohio, to the late Percy and Mabel Hunter Callahan.
After attending Ohio State University, he was among the first draftees into military service in 1941. During his career, he was posted to various assignments overseas in the Caribbean, Germany, Australia, England and South Korea. He retired as an Army Major in 1963 while assigned to the National Security Agency as the Aide-de-Camp to the Director. Upon retirement from the military, he joined NSA as a staff officer and retired in 1973.
On Dec. 16, 1950, he married Joan Malone in London, England. She preceded him in death on July 30, 1994.
Maj. Callahan lived in Silver Spring, Md., and Bromley Village, Peru, Vt., for many years.
He was a member of the Retired Officers Association, Association of Former Intelligence Officers, The Phoenix Society, Phi Delta Theta Social Fraternity and the Masonic Lodge.
Survivors include two sisters, Isabelle Barkley and Marjorie Fields of Marion, Ohio; 10 nieces and nephews, and many devoted friends. [MarionStar/8September2008] 

Letters to the Editors

Comments on Blake Article. [The following is in response to the article New Documents Shed Light on Cold War Spy which we ran in WIN 34-08 dated 2 September 2008.]

Dear Sirs:

I see no reason for the AFIO newsletter to carry purported news stories that reflect the viewpoint of current or former enemies of the U.S. unless AFIO adds some sort of editorial comment.

The article printed in WIN 34-08, excerpted from an English-language Indian newspaper in West Bengal, ends with Soviet spy George Blake's self-serving excuse, as he wrote in his memoirs, that he spied for the Soviets because of "his experience of America's indiscriminate bombing in Korea." This follows the KGB disinformation line that Blake was recruited by the North Koreans after the 1950 Korean War, and blames Blake's epiphany on his witnessing American attacks on North Korean civilians. But four days after the war started, Blake was taken prisoner at the British Embassy in Seoul and spent most of the next year in a prison camp on the Yalu River by the Chinese border. Then he volunteered to the Soviets to spy for them. Where and when did he experience America's indiscriminate bombing? In fact, elsewhere in his memoirs Blake writes "I joined (the Communist side) because of its ideals." 

The real facts are that "Blake" was born George Behar in Holland in 1922 to a Dutch Calvinist mother and a Jewish father from Turkey. At age 12, his father died and George went to live with his father's family, the Curiels, in Cairo. George spent three years there, much of it with his first cousin, Henri Curiel, eight years older than George and a co-founder of the Communist Party of Egypt. In his memoirs, George claims "I got on very well with Henri, but his example and the discussions I had with him had little or no influence on me." But George also says that in his talks with Henri at the time "I could not deny that the Communist ideals were in many ways admirable." 

The Communist Party and the KGB requires all members and employees to report on all non-party members they come in contact with. Henri was obliged to send to Moscow a spotting report on George, at least by the late 1930s. In 1943 George made his way to England and joined the British Navy, where he was recruited into British Intelligence. One of his co-workers in MI6 was the notorious KGB spy, Kim Philby, who also was obliged to send a spotting report on George to Moscow. At least by the mid-1940s, therefore, the KGB knew that one George Behar was an employee of MI6 who had immigrated to Britain at age 21, had no native loyalty to the British Government, and had been indoctrinated in Communism by his first cousin, a high-ranking Egyptian Communist. The KGB would have no more attractive a spy prospect than this, and would have quickly recruited Blake. But to hide their sources and methods, it is no surprise that, after Blake was caught, the KGB line is that Blake was recruited in 1951 only after he witnessed America's dastardly conduct in the Korean War.

The article also ends with the statement that "many thought Blake's prison sentence was too harsh a punishment." Many who? Blake was accused of betraying dozens of British spies, many of whom are thought to have been executed. In his memoirs Blake said that he was sure that the KGB had not executed any of the British spies he turned in "because I asked the KGB not to do so. I said that I would give them the names only on the guarantee that they would not be killed. They gave me that guarantee and I believe them." In fact, many of them had been executed. Blake's sentence was far less than the KGB gives its own traitors.

Thank you,

Leon Walsh

Announcements

THREATS TO AMERICA'S FUTURE, a lecture by Bruce D. Berkowitz at Georgetown University, Washington DC. Artemis G. Kirk, University Librarian, and the Georgetown University Library Associates cordially invite AFIO Members to Strategic Advantage: Challengers, Competitors, and Threats to America's Future, a lecture by Professor Bruce D. Berkowitz, Georgetown University, in conjunction with Georgetown University Press, on Thursday, September 25, 2008, 6:00 p.m.
Murray Room (5th Floor), Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, Book Signing and Reception to Follow, Please RSVP by Monday, September 22, 2008.
RSVP to libraryassociates@georgetown.edu or 202-687-7446
Bruce D. Berkowitz is an adjunct professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Dr. Berkowitz is the author of The New Face of War (Free Press, 2003), Calculated Risks (Simon and Schuster, 1987), and American Security (Yale, 1986), and is the coauthor of Best Truth: Intelligence in the Information Age (Yale, 2000), and Strategic Intelligence (Princeton, 1989). His articles have appeared in The American Interest, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and Issues in Science and Technology, and he serves on the editorial boards of Orbis and the Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence.
Dr. Berkowitz began his career at the Central Intelligence Agency and has since served in several senior government positions for defense, intelligence, and homeland security. He has also held appointments at the Hoover and Brookings Institutions and the RAND Corporation. 
A summa cum laude graduate of Stetson University, Dr. Berkowitz completed his graduate studies at the University of Rochester. He currently lives in Arlington, Virginia.

COMING EVENTS

EVENTS IN COMING TWO MONTHS....

September 15th-19th, 2008 - 3rd Annual Gulf Coast Terrorism Prevention Conference, hosted by the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office. A full week of counter-terror training!  Cost: $450.00 for the entire week! The conference will be held at the Hyatt Sarasota, 1000 Boulevard of the Arts, Sarasota, FL 34236.  Number for hotel reservations: 1-800-233-1234. The hotel is holding a limited number of rooms at a government rate for conference attendees. We urge you to make reservations as soon as possible in order to secure that rate. You can also visit www.sarasota.hyatt.com and enter G-SSOF under Group/Corporate# to reserve your room. 
Universal Detection Technology's anthrax detection kit included with each paid registration.
To register you can call us 866-573-3999 ext 101 or click on the following link:  http://www.homelandsecurityssi.com/ssi/content/view/214/160/

Monday, 15 September 2008 - New York, NY - AFIO New York Metro Chapter evening meeting on "How Baghdad Thieves Stole Iraq's Antiquities and CTTF Recovered the Stolen Loot." Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve -- the Author of "Thieves of Baghdad" explains how the Baghdad thieves stole Iraq's antiquities and how our counter-terrorism Task Force caught them and recovered their loot. Bogdanos led the investigation. He was awarded the Bronze Star for counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan. He is currently an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan. Buffet dinner and open bar - $40. per person. 5:30 PM - 6:00 PM Registration.  Meeting starts 6:00 PM. New Location: 4 Columbus Circle (58th Street and 8th Avenue) The showroom space of STEELCASE, the global leader in the office furniture industry. Further information available from afiometro@yahoo.com

17 September 2008, 10:30 am - 1 pm - Annapolis Junction, MD - The National Cryptologic Museum Foundation Fall Cryptologic Program features Dr. Michael Warner, Historian for ODNI, on "Evolution of the IC." As the DNI Historian, Warner coordinated the National Intelligence Strategy and writes and lectures extensively on intelligence history, theory and reform. His presentation will address the evolution of the intelligence community. Location: Event is at L-3 Communications Maryland Conference Center in the National Business Park at 2720 Technology Dr. in Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. Lunch will be served following the presentation at 1200. The fee is $25 to NCMF, POB 1682, Ft. Meade, MD 20755 by Wednesday, 10 September, if you plan to attend. Contact (301) 688-5436 or at cryptmf@aol.com with further questions.

18 September 2008 - Colorado Springs, CO - The AFIO Rocky Mountain Chapter meeting will feature Tim Matson, USAF(r) a AF Academy graduate who flew Air Force 2. He will present a PowerPoint presentation. For further information or to make reservations contact: riverwear53@aol.com

Thursday, 18 September 2008, 6-8 p.m. - Washington, DC - Networking in the Intelligence Community presented by the PRSA-NCC PRONet Committee - The Johns Hopkins University 1717 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 Metro stop: Dupont Circle (red line)
A panel discussion featuring intelligence community insiders • What is the intelligence community? • How should PR professionals interact with intelligence professionals? • How do intelligence professionals approach public relations? • How do you practice public relations outreach in a secure environment? Panelists: Richard Willing - public affairs director, Office of the Director of National Intelligence Dr. Peter Leitner - president, Maxwell USA; former senior advisor, Office of the Secretary of Defense Fred Lash, APR - senior advisor to the deputy secretary of defense (joint communication); former deputy chief of public and media affairs, National Security Agency; Dr. Kenneth deGraffenreid - professor of intelligence studies, Institute of World Politics; former deputy national counterintelligence executive to the President of the United States
Cost: $30 PRSA Members; $35 Non-members; $5 Students (with ID) Please RSVP online at www.prsa-ncc.org by September 15.
For more information about this event, contact Alex Meerovich at a.meerovich@max-well.com or call 202.454.3403

Saturday, 20 September 2008, 1100 - 1430 - West Haven, CT - AFIO New England Chapter meets to hear Dr. Richard H. Ward, Dean of the Henry C. Lee Criminal Justice & Forensic Sciences, University of New Haven. Dr. Ward, a veteran of the USMC will speak on his experiences training for the CIA’s Operation Zapata, the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
in the Faculty Dining Room in Bartels Hall on the campus of the University of New Haven in West Haven, CT. A map of the campus can be found here https://unh-web-01.newhaven.edu/wwwmedia/CampusMap/campusmap.html or at the bottom of this form, directions here http://www.newhaven.edu/17/ or at the bottom of this form. Our schedule is as follows: Registration & gathering, 11:00 - 1200, Luncheon at 1200 followed by our speaker, with adjournment at 2:30PM. The University of New Haven is at 300 Boston Post Rd, West Haven, CT 06516-1916.
Note, as a one-day meeting, no hotel arrangements have been made; however, those coming from some distance may wish to select one of the many excellent hotels in this town. An area map is here http://www.newhaven.edu/about/3947/ The university’s hotel list is here http://www.newhaven.edu/about/3958/ For additional information contact afionechapter@gmail.com
Luncheon reservations must be made by 12 September 2008 with Mr. Arthur Hulnick, 216 Summit Avenue # E102, Brookline, MA 02446, 617-739-7074 or hlnk@aol.com
Advance reservations are $25.00, $30.00 at the door - per person. The meeting adjourns at 2:30 pm

20 September 2008, Kennebunk, ME - Maine Chapter Meets to hear Col. David Hunt on Counterterrorism. The Maine Chapter meets at 2:00 p.m. at the Kennebunk Free Library, 112 Main St., Kennebunk. Guest speaker will be Fox News commentator Col. David Hunt. Col. Hunt is a graduate of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He served as counterterrorism coordinator at the Olympic Games in Seoul, Korea, and has had experience in special operations, counterterrorism and intelligence operations. Col. Hunt also served as tactical advisor on security in Bosnia for the FBI. He will speak on contemporary issues facing this country. The meeting is open to the public. For information call 364-8964.

Sunday, 21 September 2008, 4 pm - St Charles, IL - The AFIO Midwest Chapter meets at the St. Charles Place Restaurant at 2550 E. Main Street, St.Charles, IL. Contact Angelo DiLiberti for details: 847-931-4184. Please reply no later than September 15th if you are able to attend.

Thursday, 25 September 2008, 12:30-2:30 pm - Los Angeles, CA - AFIO L.A. Area Chapter hosts Jake Katz, Assistant Director Emergency Operations Bureau for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department will discuss "Open Source Intelligence - The Sheriff's Approach." Event being held at the Hilton business building located at the LMU campus (Playa del Rey). Complimentary buffet lunch will be served, guests are welcome. Please RSVP by Monday September 15, 2008 via email to Vincent Autiero: AFIO_LA@yahoo.com 

Friday, 3 October 2008 - Langley, VA -CIA-OSI Conference - AFIO members are invited to attend a conference at CIA Headquarters from 1:30 - 7:30 p.m. on the History of the Office of Scientific Intelligence. Attendees will receive a special program with declassified documents, and a DVD filled with thousands of pages of additional documents, photographs and videos as part of this new declassification. The conference is unclassified. Includes reception and tour of CIA Museum. Further details and Application Forms.....

6 October 2008 - Boston, MA - The New England chapter of CIRA [CIA Retirees Association] meets at Hampshire House, Beacon Street. For further information contact AFIO member Dick Gay raguay@adelphia.net

14 Oct 2008 - Tampa, FL - The Suncoast AFIO Chapter meets in the MacDill Room at the MacDill AFB. Speaker TBA. Lunch is $15.00 inclusive. For further information email garyg@suncoastafio.org

Tuesday, 21 October 2008, 6:30 pm - Washington, DC - Iran: An Intelligence Failure in the Making? at the International Spy Museum. WHAT: “Iran is one of the greatest threats in the world today. Getting the intelligence right is absolutely critical, not only on Iran's capability but its intent.”— Senator John Ensign (R-Nev.)
Our troubled relationship with this Middle Eastern powerhouse operates under the cloud of broken diplomatic relations, deepening concern about its regional aspirations, its involvement in international terrorism, and its nuclear ambitions. Explore the strategic and intelligence challenges posed by Iran in this timely panel. Is Iran a new Persian Empire or on the brink of collapse? Are there lessons from the Cold War that can help us deal with Iran now? Are we once again facing a situation where the current intelligence is inadequate to inform policy makers or that policymakers will again seek only the intelligence they want, or manufacture it? Join former CIA senior operations officer Robert Baer, author of The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower; Keith Crane, senior economist with the RAND Corporation and co-author of Iran’s Political, Demographic, and Economic Vulnerabilities; and David Thaler, senior analyst with the RAND Corporation and co-author of The Muslim World after 9/11 for a lively and insightful discussion. Co-sponsored by the RAND Corporation. Location: International Spy Museum, 800 F St NW, Washington, DC at Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail Station
Tickets: $15; Advance Registration required. Tickets are non-refundable and do not include admission to the International Spy Museum. To register, call 202.393.7798; order online at www.spymuseum.org; or purchase tickets in person at the International Spy Museum.

22 - 25 October 2008 - McLean, VA - AFIO National Intelligence Symposium -

AFIO 2008 Fall Intelligence Symposium - 22-25 October
Threats to U.S. Security
Technology Theft, Insider Threats, Economic Espionage
and International Organized Crime

Three Days: Day 1 [10/23] at MITRE Corporation; Day 2 [10/24] at U.S. Department of State:
Day 3 [10/25] at Sheraton-Premiere Hotel
Tentative Program
Wednesday, October 22: heavy hors d'oeuvres and early registration for hotel-based attendees,
Thursday morning, October 23: Chapter workshop/breakfast;
Thursday, October 23: MITRE Corporation;
Friday, October 24: U.S. State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research [INR];
Friday evening, October 24: Awards Banquet, Saturday morning, October 25: General membership meeting.
The program ends 11 a.m. Saturday October 25 leaving time for exploring local area Museums [International Spy Museum, the newly reopened Newseum, the new National Museum of Crime and Punishment, National Cryptologic Museum, Air & Space] and to make plans to return home.

SYMPOSIUM AGENDA and RESERVATION:
Agenda is here and you can make secure reservations here

HOTEL RESERVATIONS available now at special AFIO Event Rate:
Make your Sheraton-Premiere Hotel reservations here while low-rate window remains open.

Thursday, 23 October 2008, 12 noon - 1 pm - Washington, DC - The Lost Spy: An American In Stalin's Secret Service, at the International Spy Museum
When former New York intellectual Isaiah Oggins was brutally murdered in 1947 on Stalin’s orders, he became a forgotten Cold War footnote. Then in 1992, Boris Yeltsin handed over a deeply censored dossier to the White House which awakened interest in Oggins’ life and his death. In The Lost Spy, Andrew Meier at last reveals the truth: Oggins was one of the first Americans to spy for the Soviets. Based on six years of international detective work, Meier traces the rise and fall of this brilliant Columbia University graduate sent to run a safe house in Berlin and spy on the Romanovs in Paris and the Japanese in Manchuria. The author will reflect on the motivations of the American spy and the reason for Oggins’ hideous death by poisoning in a KGB laboratory.
Location: International Spy Museum, 800 F St NW, Washington, DC, Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail Station, TICKETS: FREE. No registration required.

October 27-29, 2008 - The Techno Forensics Conference - NIST Headquarters, Gaithersburg Maryland. Former KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin and Georgian Ambassador to the U.S. Vasil Sikharulidze to Keynote InfraGard Day on the 28th. 
AFIO member Donald Withers and TheTrainingCo., producers of the annual Techno Forensics Conference at NIST Headquarters in Gaithersburg, MD, has made our AFIO members a special FREE offer to attend this year's Techno Forensics Conference being held on October 27 - 29, 2008.   The first 100 members to register for the conference online will be allowed to register for FREE as a conference VIP. You MUST be registered for the conference prior to date in order to gain access through the main gate at NIST. Parking is free.  This will be the fourth year for Techno Forensics and the agenda has just been posted. This year will feature an InfraGard Day and will be hosted by the Maryland Chapter of the FBI’s InfraGard program. There will be some of the top practitioners in the world in the fields of e-Discovery, Digital Forensics and Information Security and Technical Business Continuity Planning. 
The registration price is currently listed at $895 on the website. Select that price but enter "0" for amount paid and enter "AFIO VIP" in the Promotional Code Section of the form. For any members who hold a CISSP or a CISA certification, this conference also provides 20 CEU hours.
Here's a link to the conference agenda. There will be more to come so visit often for agenda updates:
http://www.techsec.com/html/ForensicsAgenda08.html 
To register for one of the FREE VIP seats, visit the following online registration page.
https://www.techsec.com/conferences/register.cgi?c=TF-2008
Any questions, call Don Withers at 410.703.0332

Tuesday, 28 October 2008, 6:30 pm - Washington, DC - "Spy Magic: Disguise, Deception, Illusion and Espionage" at the International Spy Museum. WHAT: “If I could stand in the focus of powerful footlights and deceive attentive and undisturbed onlookers…Then I could most certainly…deceive German observers a mile away or more.”—Jasper Maskelyne
Magicians, like spies, excel at the art of misdirection and deception. Join Jonna and Tony Mendez, both former CIA chiefs of disguise, as they explore how magic and illusion have been used through the centuries to deceive the enemy. This survey ranges from the warfare philosophy of Sun Tzu to the CIA’s consultations with illusionists who helped them overcome the challenges of operating in denied areas of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Go inside well known World War II deception operations Mincemeat and Bodyguard and discover the trickery of war-time magician Jasper Maskelyne. Then it’s on to the Cold War and the Mendezes’ own work in the mean streets of Moscow which required a special blend of conjuring and chemistry. Using historical footage and film re-enactments, the Mendezes will enlighten the audience on the use of stage management and misdirection against the opposition
WHERE: International Spy Museum, 800 F St NW, Washington, DC, Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail Station.
TICKETS: $15 Advance Registration required. Tickets are non-refundable and do not include admission to the International Spy Museum. To register, call 202.393.7798; order online at www.spymuseum.org; or purchase tickets in person at the International Spy Museum.

Sunday, 9 November 2008, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. - Washington, DC - Parade of Trabants at the International Spy Museum. The ugly duckling of East Germany’s roadways finally gets its day. To celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall Trabant collectors will caravan to DC, parking their cars on F Street, NW in front of the Museum. When the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989 thousands of East Germans rushed to reunite with friends and family. Their typical mode of transportation? The Trabant. What was once the most common vehicle in East Germany, despite its poor performance and smoky two-stroke engine, was their automotive liberator. The Trabant is now an affectionately regarded symbol of East Germany and of the fall of communism. It is even featured in the International Spy Museum’s permanent exhibit within an East German streetscape. The Trabant has become a genuine collectors' car with a devoted following. Incredibly, it seems that this tiny car, often inaccurately described as having a cardboard body, has captured the hearts of car lovers all over the world.
Trabants are quite rare in the US, but on 9 November 2008, a caravan of the communist-bloc cars will converge on the International Spy Museum to celebrate the 18th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The public will have the unique opportunity to not only view nine of the cars, which will be parked in front of the Museum, but also have the chance to win a ride in a Trabant. While the cars are on display, experts will be on hand in front of the Museum on F Street, NW, to answer questions about Trabants, the Cold War, and Communism, while the local German band, Blaskapelle Alte Kameraden, creates a festive atmosphere. This event is free-of-charge.
Experts who will be available: Peter Earnest, Museum Executive Director; Dr. Thomas Boghardt, Museum historian and author; and Trabant Collectors. German music will be played. Where: International Spy Museum, 800 F Street, NW, Washington, DC. No charge to attend.

Thursday, 13 November 2008, 7 pm - 10 pm - Washington, DC - DINNER WITH A SPY: An Evening with Milt Bearden - at Spy Museum.

When Milt Bearden started at the CIA in 1964, he had little notion that his service around the world in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South Asia would lead him to become the most highly decorated operations officers in its senior service, a respected author, and a Hollywood advisor. His 30 years of service spanned the height of the Cold War to the demise of the Soviet Union and included leading the CIA covert war supporting the Afghan resistance in their fight against the Soviet army. This conflict, recently portrayed in Charlie Wilson’s War, is just one of the films for which Bearden has served as an advisor. His long time friendship with Robert DeNiro influenced 2006’s The Good Shepherd—an intense account of the early days of the Agency. Be one of only 20 guests at Zola for a three-course meal where you’ll talk with Bearden about his extraordinary career and cinematic connections and enjoy the dialogue between this insider and CIA veteran International Spy Museum executive director Peter Earnest. Please call 202.654.0932 or write kray@spymuseum.org to register or with special dietary needs.
WHERE: International Spy Museum, 800 F St NW, Washington, DC, Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail Station.
TICKETS: $250 includes three-course dinner with wines.  Space is extremely limited – advance registration required! Tickets are non-refundable and do not include admission to the International Spy Museum. To register, call 202.393.7798; order online at www.spymuseum.org; or purchase tickets in person at the International Spy Museum

Monday, 17 November 2008, 6:30 p.m. - Washington, DC - Rose Mary Sheldon on "The Secret History of History" at the International Spy Museum - OPERATION MESSIAH: APOSTLE PAUL, AGENT PROVOCATEUR?

WHAT: “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked.”—Galatians
Was the self-proclaimed successor to Jesus actually working for the Roman administration in Palestine and other parts of the Empire? Col. Rose Mary Sheldon, co-author of Operation Messiah: St. Paul, Roman Intelligence and the Birth of Christianity, challenges the idea that Apostle Paul was a true follower of Jesus much less a saint. Drawing from Paul’s biography and his own letters, Sheldon finds numerous clues to suggest that the former persecutor never left the ranks of the Roman government but instead went undercover by feigning conversion en route to Damascus. Sheldon’s shocking theories about Paul’s real purpose in promoting Jesus as the Messiah will give you a startling new perspective on the dramatic and turbulent early days of Christianity.
WHERE: International Spy Museum, 800 F St NW, Washington, DC, Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail Station. TICKETS: $15. Advance registration required. Tickets are non-refundable and do not include admission to the International Spy Museum. To register, call 202.393.7798; order online at www.spymuseum.org; or purchase tickets in person at the International Spy Museum.

20 November 2008 - Colorado Springs, CO - AFIO Rocky Mountain Chapter meets to hear Sheriff Terry Maketa on "Law Enforcement and Intelligence." Sheriff Maketa is Sheriff of El Paso County, Colorado. The program starts at 11 a.m. with the program starting at noon. Event takes place at the Falcon Club (Old Officers' Club) Inquiries and reservations to Riverwear53@aol.com

Tuesday, 2 December 2008 - New York, NY - AFIO NY Metro Chapter meeting features speaker Gordon Chang, author of NUCLEAR SHOWDOWN and THE COMING COLLAPSE OF CHINA.
Meeting location - 4 Columbus Circle in the NYC showroom of the office furniture manufacturer - Steelcase. Attractive, spacious, modern space overlooking Central Park.
58th Street and 8th Avenue. Buffet dinner and open bar: $40.00 per person 5:30 PM - 6:00 PM Registration. Meeting starts 6:00 PM. For inquiries or to register email afiometro@yahoo.com

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

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