AFIO Weekly Intelligence Notes #44-08 dated 17 November 2008

Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Intelligence Policy to Stay Largely Intact. President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies, advisers say, an approach that is almost certain to create tension within the Democratic Party.

Civil-liberties groups were among those outraged that the White House sanctioned the use of harsh intelligence techniques - which some consider torture - by the Central Intelligence Agency, and expanded domestic spy powers. These groups are demanding quick action to reverse these policies.

Mr. Obama is being advised largely by a group of intelligence professionals, including some who have supported Republicans, and centrist former officials in the Clinton administration. They say he is likely to fill key intelligence posts with pragmatists.

The intelligence-transition team is led by former National Counterterrorism Center chief John Brennan and former CIA intelligence-analysis director Jami Miscik, say officials close to the matter. Mr. Brennan is viewed as a potential candidate for a top intelligence post. Ms. Miscik left amid a slew of departures from the CIA under then-Director Porter Goss.

Advisers caution that few decisions will be made until the team gets a better picture of how the Bush administration actually goes about gathering intelligence, including covert programs, and there could be a greater shift after a full review.

The Obama team plans to review secret and public executive orders and recent Justice Department guidelines that eased restrictions on domestic intelligence collection. 

Most of those being discussed as candidates for director of national intelligence and director of the CIA have staked out a middle ground between safeguarding civil liberties and aggressively pursuing nontraditional adversaries.

Mr. Brennan is a leading contender for one of the two jobs, say some advisers. He declined to comment on personnel matters. Gen. James L. Jones, a former North Atlantic Treaty Organization commander; Thomas Fingar, the chief of analysis for the intelligence director; Joan A. Dempsey, who served in top intelligence and Pentagon posts; former Rep. Tim Roemer of Indiana, who served on the 9/11 Commission; and Ms. Harman have also been mentioned. Ms. Harman has also been cited as a potential secretary of homeland security.

Another option for Mr. Obama would be to retain current intelligence Director Mike McConnell, who has said he would stay on for a reasonable time until a successor is named. CIA Director Michael V. Hayden also is open to considering an extension of his time in office, according to a senior intelligence official.

However, Mr. Obama voted against Mr. Hayden's nomination as CIA director to signal his frustration with the administration's warrantless-surveillance program, which Mr. Hayden helped launch as National Security Agency director. [Gorman/WallStreetJournal/11November2008] 

Former Kazakh Spy Chief Hurt in Suspected Kidnap Bid. Kazakhstan's former spy chief Alnur Mussayev, who is living in exile in Austria, was seriously hurt in a suspected abduction bid, according to the Austrian prosecutors office.

Mussayev was attacked by three men in late September when he was walking near the city's university, in "what could have been an attempted abduction," according to prosecutor's office spokesman Gerhard Jarosch.

Michaela Renner, from the prosecutor's office, said Musayev had been "seriously injured" in the attacked, which happened on September 22. His attackers escaped.

Mussayev was the head of Kazakhstan's Committee for National Security (KNB) between 1997 and 2001. [Focus-Fen/4October2008] 

Jarrah's Spy Equipment Found in Lebanon. The Lebanese Army has raided the residence of two Lebanese brothers accused of spying for the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.

During the search operation, the army found sophisticated communication and surveillance equipment. The two brothers, identified as Ali and Yousof Jarrah, allegedly had been involved in passing information about various Lebanese activities to Mossad.

An earlier Lebanese Army statement said that the members of the spy ring had 'confessed to gathering information about politicians and their parties'. The detainees were also involved in 'espionage activities against Syria'. [PressTV/9November2008] 

Transition Vulnerability. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the United States is vulnerable to attack or other incidents during the presidential transition period and that the military is ready to respond.

"When you go back and look at the number of incidents that have occurred three or four months before an inauguration to about 12 months out, back to the '50s, it's pretty staggering the number of major incidents which have occurred in this time frame," Adm. Michael Mullen said, noting that the danger is compounded by current world conditions.

The Sept. 11 attacks, for example, occurred eight months after President Bush took office, at a time when many key appointments had not been made.

Recent preparations for the transition in the Pentagon were aimed at preventing any attacks, and if an attack or incident does take place, the military is ready to respond, Adm. Mullen told Sara A. Carter, national security reporter for The Washington Times.

The chairman said he is concerned about the transition because of the global threats and opportunities facing the United States at the present time, namely in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The four-star admiral, who is the designated chief military adviser, stated that the military serves "one commander in chief always" while at the same time he will be going to "great lengths" to respond to the Obama transition team.

The team is expected to show up "very rapidly in this building," and Adm. Mullen said he and his staff are ready to help. Adm. Mullen is halfway through his two-year term as chairman. [Gertz/WashingtonTimes/6November2008] 

German MPs OK Domestic Espionage Bill. Germany's lower house of parliament passes anti-terrorism legislation which will give the federal police the power to spy on computers. The measure which has taken months of debate will also allow tapping of conversations. At the moment, the only authority given such powers in the country is the foreign intelligence service.

Germany's lower house of parliament passed the measure at 375-168 with six abstentions and it is widely expected that the legislation will also pass the upper house and take effect before the end of the year.

The measures were proposed by the country's top security official, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, and will in effect increase the powers of the Federal Criminal Office, Germany's equivalent of the FBI. He also defended the measures as necessary tools in the fight against international terrorist networks saying the order 'meets the criteria of our constitutional law'.

Opposition and rights groups have meanwhile criticized the new measure as infringing on the privacy rights guaranteed by the constitution and members of the opposition Free Democrats have said they will challenge the law in the nation's constitutional court. [PressTvIR/13November2008] 

Russian Spy in NATO Could Have Passed on Missile Defence and Cyber-war Secrets. A spy at the heart of NATO may have passed secrets on the US missile shield and cyber-defence to Russian Intelligence.

Herman Simm, 61, an Estonian defence ministry official who was arrested in September, was responsible for handling all of his country's classified information at NATO, giving him access to every top-secret graded document from other alliance countries. 

He was recruited by the Russians in the late 1980s and has been charged in Estonia with supplying information to a foreign power. 

Several investigation teams from both the EU and NATO, under the supervision of a US officer, have flown to the Estonian capital Tallinn to assess the scope of what is being seen as the most serious case of espionage against NATO since the end of the Cold War. 

"The longer they work on the case, the more obvious it becomes how big the impact of the suspected treachery really is," according to Der Spiegel magazine. A German official described the Russian penetration of NATO as a "catastrophe". 

Comparisons are being drawn with the case of Aldrich Ames, the former head of the CIA counter-intelligence department who was in effect Russia's top agent in the US. 

"Simm became a proper agent for the Russian government in the mid-1990s," says the Estonian deputy Jaanus Rahumaegi who heads the country's parliamentary control commission for the security services. 

On the face of it, the Simm case resembles the old-fashioned Cold War spy story. He used a converted radio transmitter to set up meetings with his contact, apparently someone posing as a Spanish businessman. 

As in the 1950s and 1960s, it seems that the operation was a husband-and-wife team. His wife Heete - who previously worked as a lawyer at the national police headquarters - has also been detained on charges of being an accessory to treason. 

Mr. Simm was ensnared because of blunders that have dogged modern espionage ever since the KGB first pitted itself against the West. First, he bought up several pieces of valuable land and houses including a farmhouse on the Baltic Sea and a grand white-painted villa outside Tallinn. 

Second, his contact officer got careless and tried to recruit a second agent - who reported the incident to the security authorities. That is when the Estonian mole-hunters began to reconstruct the movements of the supposed Spaniard and followed the thread back to the agent inside NATO. 

But Mr. Simm was not some relic from the days of Kim Philby or other notorious deep-cover agents. He was at the cutting edge of one of NATO's most important new strategic missions: to defend the alliance against cyber-attack. 

Mr. Simm headed government delegations in bilateral talks on protecting secret data flow. And he was an important player in devising EU and NATO information protection systems. 

Estonia - described by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer as "NATO's most IT-savvy nation" - conducts much of its government and commercial business online. People vote and pay their taxes online, government meetings involve almost no paperwork. 

As a result, when it angered Russia in 2007, by removing a Soviet war memorial, it became the target of hostile attacks on the internet. Estonia has been lobbying hard to put cyber-defence on the NATO agenda, and has set up a Cyber Defence centre in Tallinn which is supposed to help the Alliance as a whole. Now that project could be compromised. 

The other important question in the Simm case is whether he was operating alone. A senior Estonian police officer claimed asylum in Britain in the 1990s reportedly telling the authorities that he was trying to escape pressure from the Russian secret service to sell secrets. 

The Russians, it seems, were keen to buy as many place-men as they could: the prospect of NATO forces hard up against the northern Russian border was too alarming for the Kremlin. Moreover, Mr. Simm was for many years in charge of issuing security clearance: he could have nodded through other Russian agents. 

Mr. Simm is likely to be formally arraigned at the beginning of next year after the damage control teams from NATO have completed their work. If found guilty he could face between three and fifteen years in prison. Neither the Simms, nor their defence lawyer, have commented on the charges. 

NATO too has refused to say anything. But there is no doubting that the case is a serious embarrassment. And though Russia may have lost an agent - "a gold card operative" according to one Estonian newspaper - it has achieved a tactical victory by sewing suspicion between western NATO members and the new east and central European entrants.  [Boyes/TimesOnline/16November2008]

Al Qaeda in Iraq on 'Verge of Defeat,' CIA Chief Says. Al Qaeda no longer sees Iraq as the central front in its war on the West, CIA Director Michael Hayden said Thursday.

"Al Qaeda in Iraq is on the verge of strategic defeat," Hayden said in a major speech on the continued threat posed by Osama Bin Laden's thugs.

"Today, the flow of money, weapons, and foreign fighters into Iraq is greatly diminished, and Al Qaeda senior leaders no longer point to it as the central battlefield," the spy chief told the Atlantic Council.

The politically astute official's remarks - and his argument the Afghan-Pakistan border is now ground zero in the global jihad - is in sync with President-elect Barack Obama.

The Bush appointee's remarks sharply departed from the current President's talking points, and came as Obama is deciding if he wants Hayden to stay or go.

On Sept. 9, Bush said, "Al Qaeda leaders have repeatedly declared that Iraq is the central front of their war with America."

Hayden - who is known to want to keep his job - also repeated his view that Bin Laden is too bent on staying alive to oversee his henchmen's plots against the West.

"He appears to be largely isolated from the day-to-day operations of the organization he leads," the CIA chief explained.

Of immediate worry is that Pakistan's lawless tribal belt bordering Afghanistan is a safe haven.

"Virtually every major terrorist threat my agency is aware of has threads back to the tribal areas," Hayden said. Intelligence officials say any future U.S. attacks will have been planned there.

The CIA is engaging in a massive offensive in those areas. Unmanned drones have fired missiles 20 times since August.

A rising fear is that Iraq insurgents will "bleed out" to commit terror elsewhere. "Iraq [insurgent] veterans have been involved in planning attacks in Europe and the U.S.," he said.  [Meek/DailyNews/14November2008]

GCHQ is Earmarked for Expansion. Spy base GCHQ wants to build huge new offices and a multi-storey car park at the site of the now famous 'doughnut' to house all of its staff in one place.

Completion of the plans would allow the remaining 800 staff still working at its Oakley site to move across to the newer hi-tech premises at Benhall in Cheltenham.

Initially the 'doughnut' was intended to house all staff because the workforce was shrinking following the thawing of the Cold War.

But the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and 7/7 brought an intense workload and GCHQ was forced to continue to use the premises at Oakley.

To accommodate the extra members of staff, intelligence chiefs are proposing to put up a three-storey office building on the doughnut's car park, near the main entrance.

And to replace the car parking spaces which will be lost, a two or three-storey car park could be built on empty ground nearby. [WesternDailyPress/14November2008]

Iran Detains 10 Spies with Cash. Iran detained 10 spies carrying $500,000 in cash who had entered the country illegally from Pakistan, state television said on Saturday.

Modern espionage cameras and maps of sensitive regions in Iran were found when the group was detained in Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province bordering Pakistan, the report said.

Television did not give any details on their nationality or say when they were detained.

Sistan-Baluchestan is a volatile province known for frequent clashes between security forces and well-armed drug smugglers.

Iran has in the past accused the US and Britain of trying to destabilise the country by supporting ethnic minority rebels operating in sensitive border areas. [Reuters/15November2008]

Labour Activist in 'Soviet Spy' Row. A former Labour activist spied for the Czech government when it was controlled by the Soviet Union, it has been claimed.

Left-winger Cynthia Roberts, who once stood as a parliamentary candidate for the party, worked for the communists under the codename Operation Hammer, according to the Mail on Sunday.

Czech security service documents obtained by the paper show she prepared files on Tory politicians, including Margaret Thatcher, after moving to Prague in 1985.

She also allegedly provided details of a British arms factory.

Before moving to the Czech capital Ms Roberts was involved with the Labour Action for Peace (LAP) group, which was widely held to have links with the Soviets at the time.

Robin Cook, who decades later went on to serve as Foreign Secretary in Tony Blair's first administration, was involved with the group during the same period. LAP is still in existence, and chaired by Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn.

The files held by the Czech secret service reportedly state that Ms Roberts' role was to "contribute towards the downfall of capitalism".

She is also said to have prepared a file on the then-Foreign Office minister David Mellor in 1988, in which she said it was not known if he had "any weakness for women".

Her handlers may have questioned her usefulness when four years later Mr. Mellor was embroiled in an explosive sex scandal, involving lurid claims that he made love to Antonia de Sancha in a Chelsea FC strip. He subsequently resigned from John Major's government.

Challenged by the MoS in Prague this week, 72-year-old Ms Roberts replied: "I have nothing to say. I was not a spy." [PressAssociation/16November2008]

Feinstein Might Head Secretive Intelligence Panel. Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California will find both spotlight and shadows if she becomes the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence .

Feinstein stands to become the first woman, and the first Californian, to chair the 15-member panel since it was established in 1976. She's the front-runner for the job, due to a cascade of other Senate leadership changes that will become final next week.

The Intelligence Committee chairmanship brings real power, as the committee sets the classified intelligence budget, which now exceeds $47.5 billion a year.

It conveys national stature and inside-the-Beltway panache, which could weigh on Feinstein as she considers a potential 2010 California gubernatorial race.

But however alluring, the job also comes with political risks. With national security at stake, mistakes have serious consequences. Intra-committee partisanship has been toxic. For the committee and the agencies it oversees, a cult of secrecy can complicate solving problems.

"There is a need-to-know culture, and it's like extraneous organisms are rejected," Rep. Jane Harman , a California Democrat who served eight years on the House of Representatives intelligence panel, said of the intelligence agencies.

Feinstein herself added in 2006 that "members of the committee are not provided with sufficient information on intelligence programs and activities to legislate or oversee the intelligence community."

This isn't unique to the Bush administration. A detailed history published this year by the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence , titled "The Agency and the Hill," noted that the CIA initially voiced "widespread unease" about congressional oversight.

The committee, in turn, keeps secrets of its own.

The Senate intelligence panel has held 37 hearings and briefings this year, its Web site shows. Of these, only five have been public.

The committee operates under its own set of rules. Every congressional panel, for instance, must report foreign travel expenditures. From April 2007 through June 2008 , public records show, the Senate Intelligence Committee spent more than $1 million on foreign travel. Unlike other committees, though, the intelligence panel doesn't divulge to which countries staffers and lawmakers traveled.

The committee has for years confined some of its business to a buttoned-up room, called a Secure Compartmented Information Facility, beneath the Capitol's dome. Strict design rules govern these facilities, illustrating the security zeal of the intelligence world. External door hinges are welded so they can't be removed. Walls, ceilings and floors are reinforced with steel plates, at least one-eighth-inch thick. Wristwatches are permitted inside, but personal computers aren't.

The committee's eavesdrop-proof facility is moving to a new underground Capitol Visitors Center, but it still will be impervious to some standard Capitol Hill practices.

"Many of the legislative tools available to other committees are not available to the intelligence panel," noted Steven Aftergood , an intelligence policy specialist with the Federation of American Scientists . "They cannot hold highly publicized investigative hearings. They cannot interrogate witnesses live on C-SPAN . . . and this means they can have a hard time mobilizing public opinion."

The committee has three basic responsibilities. It writes the annual intelligence authorization bill, which sets spending levels. It declares policy, covering everything from wiretapping to interrogation techniques. And it oversees the 16-agency intelligence community, spanning CIA spooks to National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency mapmakers.

"The point of a functioning intelligence committee is to speak truth to power," Harman said, adding that " Congress had virtually no insight into this world" during the Bush administration.

"Strong oversight of the intelligence community is critical to ensuring our national security, and to restoring America's reputation in the world," Feinstein said earlier this month.

The intelligence authorization bill appeared to be 108 pages this year, but that was misleading. The dollar amounts were confined to a "classified annex" that was available only to lawmakers and select staff.

The committee's four dozen or so staff members can be pretty exotic. They include a former Baghdad -based State Department attorney, a longtime counter-narcotics specialist and, as the Republicans' top staffer, a former Navy SEAL. Feinstein's Intelligence Committee staffer is a trained chemist with degrees from Cornell and Harvard who formerly advised Harman.

It isn't a pork barrel panel, but it matters to some powerful companies.

Some 70 percent of U.S. intelligence spending goes to private contractors, a director of national intelligence document revealed last year. Companies including Boeing , Lockheed Martin and Science Applications International Corp. have a piece of the intelligence pie, as do research centers including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory .

This means that the intelligence world is both parochial and far-flung. Harman, for instance, noted that her Southern California congressional district contains some of the nation's leading aerospace and intelligence contractors, including the makers of spy satellites.

"The committee is lobbied by contractors, who have a strong interest in a particular outcome," Aftergood said.

The intelligence panel's work definitely can touch a corporate bottom line.

Last year, for instance, Rep. Michael Honda , D- Calif. , secured in the House intelligence bill $2.5 million for a "cryptographic modernization system" that's being developed by a San Jose -based company. Honda is a member of the House intelligence panel. Then-Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi secured a $4.5 million intelligence earmark last year for the Mississippi -based National Meteorology and Oceanographic Command.  [Doyle/McClatchyNewspapers/14November2008]

Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

The Secret Life of Women Spies. January 1945. 8 a.m. Raining. More than 4,000 kilometres from her Ottawa home, 19-year-old Sally Carling sits at a desk in a Victoria, B.C., radio station. Like the 10 women in uniform beside her, she wears a headset, listening intently for coded Japanese messages.

Almost all the staff, recalls Carling, now 82, were members of the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service. It was hardly glamorous work. They worked in shifts. Some transcribed, some decoded, some decided which messages were significant.

This week, a new exhibition will pay tribute to the many women like Carling who worked in radio communications in North America and Europe during World War II. Toronto artist Nina Levitt's Relay will open shortly after Remembrance Day at Oshawa's Robert McLaughlin Gallery.

While the exploits of male fighter pilots is celebrated in movies and monuments, the work of women involved in wartime radio communications has been largely forgotten. 

Yet in Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, New York, Washington and especially London, England, women were involved in transcribing and translating coded messages. In Ottawa, for example, women worked in the Examination Unit, which tried to break enemy codes, says intelligence expert and University of Toronto history professor Wesley Wark.

It was thought that women's focused attention spans made them better suited than men to the tedious work, says Levitt, who teaches at York University's Department of Visual Arts. York University political science and women's studies professor Sandra Whitworth chalks up the collective amnesia to societal ideas about appropriate behavior for men and women.

University of Windsor history professor Christina Burr wonders if the forgetfulness is due to "a post-war shift in popular culture where we went back to notions of trying to redefine what was so-called normalcy and traditional family life."

Burr also suggests women's involvement in radio communications, as well as other intelligence activities, may have been overlooked partly because of the secrecy of the work. Carling's commanding officer, for instance, instructed her never to speak about it.

Relay hauls women's involvement in radio communications out of the shadows. (Two of Levitt's earlier installations, Little Breeze and Thin Air, explored women's intelligence activities during World War II. Relay completes the trilogy.) The impetus is "historical revision," says the artist, who spent last week installing the show at the gallery. It opens on Saturday and runs through Jan. 4. A symposium related to the exhibit takes place there Nov. 29.

Relay doesn't change the facts. It does, however, make them strikingly visible. For openers, a 10-metre-tall steel radio tower stands in the gallery's foyer, nearly grazing the ceiling. Beyond that, Relay takes place in two rooms. The first features a huge photograph of a radio that envelops those near it, "much like the women would have felt when they were sitting at those machines for hours," says the gallery's curator, Linda Jansma.

The space also houses a Quonset hut, a type of temporary building often found on airfields. Inside the hut, a black-and-white film plays silently. The recruiting film, created for the Women's Royal Naval Service, shows women transcribing coded radio messages.

Scattered outside the hut are eight vintage suitcases. These seemingly prosaic artifacts have a compelling significance: When women spies parachuted into France, they each carried two suitcases - one with clothing and another with a radio transmitter.

When a visitor picks one up, the suitcase emits a recording of a message in Morse code. It also sends a visual waveform of the message to the screen in the hut. If all eight are lifted at once, eight swerving lines bisect the recruiting film, and high-pitched sounds and static fill the room, giving the visitor a taste of what women listening to coded messages heard. The second room features three imposing steel radio towers that seem even taller than their four metres. Together, they're a monument to the women who spent hours listening to coded messages over the airwaves.

While the show pays tribute to women engaged in radio communications, it also honors Canada's role in the flow of information during World War II.

In the early 1940s, the British established a training camp for spies just outside Oshawa. Camp X taught mainly British and American intelligence agents. It's rumored that Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, trained there.

Less well known is that Camp X housed a radio-relay station, called Hydra. Any messages sent from London to New York, Washington or South America (and vice versa) came through Hydra. These coded messages, says Levitt, often contained intelligence reports.

Some women, such as Evelyn Davis, worked in Camp X's communications center. Davis joined the camp when she was 21. Like most of the women there, Davis, now 85, was a member of the Canadian Women's Army Corps. It's not clear if any were directly involved with Hydra. 

The title of Levitt's show is a reference to Hydra's role in relaying information all over the world from a single point.

Relay's radio towers reflect this activity. When a visitor in the first room picks up a suitcase, she unknowingly transmits a message in Morse code to the second room. One by one, the radio towers light up as if relaying the message, which is then translated and scrolled across a screen over pictures of women involved in wartime communications work.

For the McLaughlin Gallery, Relay is a chance to explore less-known regional history such as the existence of the radio relay station. 

Setting up the exhibit so that visitors in the first room don't know that they're sending messages to the second room, Levitt says, mimics the blindness of radio communications - women who listened to coded messages, such as the teenaged Sally Carling, often didn't understand the content of those messages.

Others, including the British female spies who parachuted into France - one British source states that of the 470 secret agents England sent to occupied France, at least 39 were women - didn't even know if the messages they sent were ever received, says Levitt.

In addition, the Morse code messages transmitted from one room to another in Relay are biographies of female spies. Lift one suitcase in the first room and words scroll across a screen in a second room telling the viewer about Andr�e Borrel, one of the first two women agents to parachute into France.

Relay invites viewers not only to remember female spies and the many women involved in radio communications during the war, it also encourages them to think about the stereotypes that caused these women's contributions to fade from memory. [Carniol/TheStar/9November2008]

In a New History of NSA, Its Spies' Successes Are [Redacted]. For much of its history, the government's most-secretive intelligence agency sought to conceal its very existence. So it was a surprise last year when university researchers persuaded the National Security Agency to hand over a top-secret, 1,000-page account of its Cold War spying.

George Washington University plans to release the report, giving historians a rare look inside the agency that gathers intelligence through eavesdropping. But one thing appears to be missing: Many of its biggest successes.

Not wanting to reveal too much, NSA blanked out sensitive chunks of the account that, according to intelligence experts, appear to chronicle espionage breakthroughs. What remains makes it appear that the world's largest ear has been a bit deaf.

According to the declassified report, government eavesdroppers generated half of their intelligence reports just after World War II from listening in on the French. Code breakers missed a key tip-off in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The report also suggests that, for the most part, the government couldn't crack high-grade Soviet communications codes between World War II and the 1970s.

"This was a perfect opportunity for NSA to put its best foot forward," says Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian who pressed the agency to release the report and plans to publish his own NSA history next year. "Instead what you're left with is a fair to middling picture of this agency."

The report's author, Thomas R. Johnson, declined to say how the edited history compares with the original version. But intelligence experts say it's common for failures to become more public than successes because such breakthroughs can be too good to reveal. Even making older successes public may reveal sources, hint at continuing intelligence efforts, or hurt diplomatic relations. When NSA declassified the government's World War II code-breaking activities, it faced criticism from State Department colleagues who were upset the U.S. had spied on allies, says Mr. Aid, a visiting fellow at the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

NSA, once dubbed "No Such Agency," was created in a secret executive order in 1952 to intercept electronic communications through eavesdropping. It wasn't until 16 years later that its power to eavesdrop on foreigners was established in public law.

On three separate occasions, the agency set out to write its history, but it aborted each effort because it was too overwhelming. In 1992, NSA tapped Mr. Johnson to take another crack at it.

He spent more than six years writing the report, divided into four intelligence eras, that draws on his 34 years in government eavesdropping around the world. When friends asked him when they would read it, the 68-year-old would say: "We'll all be dead before this is declassified."

In 1998, he completed the report before retiring from NSA the next year. All of its pages were stamped "TOP SECRET UMBRA," using agency jargon that signified it was particularly sensitive.

The most revealing portions of the history hint at U.S. failures to crack Soviet communications after a day in 1948 the agency dubbed "Black Friday," when the Soviets changed their communications codes. The following year, the NSA's predecessor, the Armed Forces Security Agency, inherited from the military services "a Soviet problem that was in miserable shape," Mr. Johnson wrote, in reference to cracking Soviet codes.

U.S. intelligence agencies were surprised to discover the Soviets exploded a nuclear device in September 1949, the history says. They were again caught off guard four years later when the Soviets detonated a hydrogen bomb. Some government officials believed the effort to decode Soviet communications "was hopeless and should not be funded," Mr. Johnson wrote.

NSA also fought internecine battles with its sister agencies, especially the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA didn't inform NSA Director Lt. Gen. Ralph J. Canine about its effort in the mid-1950s to tap East German and Soviet cables, dubbed the Berlin Tunnel, the history says.

In the lead-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, NSA and military spies missed the Soviets transferring a battery of offensive missiles to Cuba. That "marked the most significant failure" by government eavesdroppers to warn national leaders since World War II, Mr. Johnson wrote.

Bobby Ray Inman, a retired admiral and former director of NSA during the late 1970s, says the history doesn't acknowledge the successful tracking of Soviet ships that were heading toward Cuba. During the late 1970s, "there were several access breakthroughs that provided some extraordinary insights," he says.

Hinting at those successes, the declassified history says that as NSA entered that period, it made significant advances in unlikely circumstances. "Even with decreased money, cryptology was yielding the best information that it had produced since World War II" by that time, Mr. Johnson wrote.

In 1979, NSA successfully warned of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and White House postmortems called it an intelligence success. In the 1980s, he wrote, the NSA used "lots of shiny new toys to very telling effect.

The report also offers a glimpse inside the offices of the mysterious agency. In 1954, at its unairconditioned and overcrowded headquarters, then in Arlington, Va., NSA had a hot-weather policy that allowed employees to leave work "when conditions became fairly unbearable," Mr. Johnson wrote. The agency drew a chart listing the heat and humidity combinations that permitted employees to leave, starting at 95 degrees. In colder months, employees' metal badges proved "ideal for scraping ice off windshields," he wrote.

After Mr. Johnson turned in the report, it remained under wraps at the NSA. He mentioned it to Mr. Aid, the historian, after meeting him at an intelligence conference in Canada.

In 2006, Mr. Aid joined forces with George Washington University's National Security Archive and filed a request to get the report. The agency handed over Mr. Johnson's first three volumes the following year, except for about 75 to 100 pages that it deemed too sensitive.

Eager to get a copy after it was handed over to the university, Mr. Johnson called a friend at NSA. But she wouldn't give it to him. "She said, 'I'm not sure we want to do that because then you'll be talking on the record about this, so I'm looking into it,' " Mr. Johnson says. He didn't hear back and ended up getting a copy from Mr. Aid.

Historians are working to get their hands on a fourth volume that Mr. Johnson wrote about the NSA. Mr. Johnson says it includes "a couple of instances" during the 1980s where "somebody really made a bad error here and should have been fired. [Gorman/WallStreetJournal/8November2008] 

Section III - COMMENTARY

Iran's Latin America Push, by John Kiriakou. Iran, the ultimate mischief maker with global reach, astounding patience, a shameless marriage to mayhem and terrorism, and interests that fall squarely in opposition to those of the United States, is making major diplomatic inroads under Washington's nose.

Over the last year, Iran has worked diligently to expand relations with a host of Latin American countries, most of which have populist leaders who harbor a strong distrust of the United States and are looking for a powerful friend to help them rebuff Washington's influence.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, for instance, has held up his close ties with Iran as an example of what his revolution can do for the region. He has much to show for it, including an Iranian ammunition factory, a car assembly plant, a cement factory and other such examples of Iranian involvement. And just to make sure the U.S. can't interfere, Iran Air initiated direct air service between Tehran, Damascus and Caracas.

Paraguay's new president Fernando Lugo Mendez was lauded in the Iranian media as "an enemy of the Great Satan" after naming Hezbollah sympathizer and fundraiser Alejandro Hamed Franco as the country's new foreign minister. Hezbollah - which is Iranian funded and supported - already has a well-documented presence in Paraguay, and the U.S. State Department has banned the minister from entering the United States or from flying on a U.S. airline.

Bolivian President Evo Morales jumped into Iran's lap even more quickly than his neighbors, ordering his foreign minister to lift visa restrictions on Iranian citizens in exchange for a $1.1-billion Iranian investment in Bolivia's gas facilities. Morales then gushed that Bolivia would move its only embassy in the Middle East from Cairo to Tehran. Iranian state television even agreed to provide Bolivian state television with Spanish-language programming, making it that much easier for every Bolivian to receive Iranian-produced news and documentary shows.

The real danger here doesn't have to do with an arcane diplomatic battle over who has more friends in Latin America. The problem is visa-free Iranian travel and the potential creation of a terrorist base of operations in the United States' backyard. If anyone with an Iranian passport may enter Bolivia without a visa or any further documentation, the country will soon be open to covert officers of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, its Islamic Revolutionary Guard, which the State Department recently declared a terrorist organization, and the Quds Force, an Iranian military group whose mandate is to spread Islamic revolution around the world.

A further danger is if other Latin American countries follow the Bolivian lead and lift visa restrictions. Iran already has proved what it can do in Latin America with visa restrictions. In 1994, Iranian agents worked with Hezbollah terrorists to bomb a Jewish association's community center in Argentina, killing 85 people and wounding hundreds. An established Iranian intelligence presence traveling freely throughout Latin America would make counter-terrorism efforts in the region much more difficult.

The United States still has an opportunity to stop the Iranians in their tracks in Latin America. 

The new president must reverse the Bush administration's policy of ignoring Latin America and instead engage those countries in active diplomacy. Political and economic relations must improve to the point at which there is simply no benefit to breaking bread with Iran. Diplomacy will be slow, difficult and probably expensive. Iran is spending billions of dollars on the continent, and the U.S. must do the same. Trade agreements must be negotiated, an immigration policy must be conceived and implemented, and the new administration must pay our neighbors the attention that is necessary to win them over. 

John Kiriakou, now in the private sector, served as a CIA counter-terrorism official from 1998-2004.  [Kiriakou/LATimes/8November2008] 

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

Books

Operation Blue Light: My Secret Life Among Psychic Spies - A Memoir by Philip Chabot with Laurie Anne Blanchard. The ideal Christmas gift for those intrigued by governmental conspiracy, "Operation Blue Light: My Secret Life Among Psychic Spies," is one of the most scintillating memoirs ever to be written. A true story of deception and subterfuge, it took Philip Chabot 40 years to tell us about his amazing experience. Some book reviewers say it's hard to believe, but truth is often stranger than fiction. The fact is, Chabot was a vital player immersed in a fascinating American conspiracy.

Through mental technologies, the U.S. Government and the CIA shamefully exploited of a select group of people who had psychic abilities in order to covertly spy on other countries. This book reveals the government's never-ending fascination and involvement with "mental" technologies and their collusion with psychiatric types to master control of the human mind for their own purposes and schemes.

"Operation Blue Light: My Secret Life Among Psychic Spies," is the story of the Pentagon's attempts to develop the perfect tool for espionage: psychic spies. These "spoken telepaths" were able to infiltrate any target, elude any form of security, and never risk a thing. For 40 years, the government selected civilian and military personnel for psychic ability, trained them, and put them to work, full-time, at taxpayers' expense, against real intelligence targets. Before now, the only information the public has received was about the work of remote viewers in the 1980's and 1990's. The actual beginning of the use of psychics has not been told until today.

Chabot's abilities were monitored then tested by U.S. Government agencies including the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and maybe others. Most of this material is still officially classified or "conveniently missing." Chabot's story may explain why masses of CIA documents about the MKULTRA Mind Control project, including the material on Extra Sensory Perception, were destroyed in 1972 when Sid Gottleib and Richard Helms retired from the CIA.

Chabot finally leaves us his legacy and divulges his terrifying experiences as a Psychic Spy in the turbulent 1960's. This gripping story follows the path that lead a teenager from a small town in Indiana to become the focus of Worldwide covert attention. Chabot confronted the agencies that were trying to manipulate him, and in doing so, neutralized the Cold War threat they posed to his future. An unusual and compelling memoir, Chabot shows that the use of psychics started much earlier than previously revealed.

Traditional methods of gathering intelligence include using satellites, intercepting communications and recruiting agents. However, today top secret documents have emerged revealing that the Ministry of Defense ran a covert project to recruit psychic spies during the Cold War in the hope of tracking down people and items of interest to the government and the military.

Even more intriguing, according to Chabot, "The use of psychic spies may still be happening today. Most recently, by the 1990s, it was revealed that the Pentagon continued to employ a highly classified team of 'psychic spies,' who use a form of remote viewing to aid in the gathering of intelligence in foreign countries."

The author's frightening first-hand experience proves that the life of a psychic isn't as glamorous as it may seem. Even though Chabot discovered his abilities at a young age, the problems of having "the gift" greatly outweighed its benefits.

Why is Chabot telling his story? "Mostly I felt I owed it to 'the casualties of the cold war's psychic battlefields,' for whom this book is dedicated. I have gotten to a place where I don't care how unbelievable people find it. Also it needs to be told because it is unlike any other - the accuracy and details of my 'spoken telepathy' I had was not like any published experience. So my story needs to be put on the record."

"I also chose to publish it because it is just a good story, and I believe you will enjoy reading it even if you are not among the 42% that believe in telepathy. I hope that my book will be of value to those living with psychic abilities, as well as to those who have friends or relatives who have not understood them," Chabot explains.

Written in the first person, this story is lively and highly interesting to read - it actually resembles a spy film as it involves suspense, mystery and a lot of action. The dialogue is vivid and the characters well crafted. It is a gripping story that can be read in one sitting. It is both entertaining and enlightening as it regards the secret agents' field. It caters to all those who love action and spy stories and those who like stories about people with psychic abilities. [Send2Press/10November2008] 

Obituaries

Sam Edwards, 87; CIA Analyst Turned Carpenter. Sam Arlent Edwards, 87, a CIA analyst who later became a master carpenter at the Studio Theatre, died of leukemia Oct. 25 at his home in the Georgetown section of Washington.

A world traveler from a young age, he toured Europe in the summer of 1939 and left England on an overcrowded steamship on the day that Hitler invaded Poland and started World War II. After the war ended, Mr. Edwards was a regular in Paris at the Sunday salons of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.

Born in Bruges, Belgium, the son of a prominent British mezzotint engraver, Mr. Edwards was educated in England and traveled extensively with his parents, including on a year-long voyage around the world. He recalled in a memoir that he didn't spend Christmas twice in the same place until after World War II.

As a teenager, Mr. Edwards moved with his family to Scarsdale, N.Y., and then to Westport, Conn. He had just finished his freshman year at Princeton University when he spent the summer in Europe in 1939. He graduated in 1942, and was drafted into the Army, where he said his most memorable accomplishment was learning to type 30 words per minute. He liked to recall that he was among the troops who landed at Normandy in 1944 - 79 days after D-Day.

After the war ended, Mr. Edwards received a master's degree in government at Yale University in 1947. He worked for the CIA from 1948 to '65, then became business manager of St. John's Episcopal church at Lafayette Square in downtown Washington.

He was also a development consultant for the U.S. Agency for International Development on projects in Haiti, Morocco and Jamaica, and a management auditor for the technology and strategy firm Booz Allen Hamilton working on domestic anti-poverty projects.

He began building stage sets for local theaters in Washington as a volunteer for the Christmas Revels. He joined the staff of the Studio Theatre in 1980 and built sets for 26 productions, beginning with "Medea."

An expert sailor, he enjoyed boating with friends on the Chesapeake Bay and vacationing with family on Great Guana Cay in the Bahamas. He also enjoyed the arts, fine chocolate and backgammon.

Survivors include his wife of 58 years, Susan Edwards of Washington; four children, Addison Edwards of Carcassonne, France, Victoria Edwards of Berkeley, Calif., Andrew Edwards of Warsaw, Va., and Christopher Edwards of Honolulu; and five grandchildren. [Sullivan/WashingtonPost/3November2008] 

Announcements

Linkedin.com group available for AFIO Members: AFIO members with profiles on linkedin.com may now join an informal discussion and networking group through a group especially for them. AFIO member and former scholarship recipient, attorney and intelligence policy lecturer at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute, Andrew Borene has started a linkedin group for AFIO members. If you would like to join, please visit the group's page at:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/886047

The group uses to linkedin's functionality to allow for informal discussions, posting of important news stories, and sharing of professional contact information. For further information, Andrew Borene can be contacted through www.andrewborene.com

CTL Symposium.  St. Mary's University Center for Terrorism Law (CTL) is planning a day and a half Terrorism, Crime & Business Symposium in early March for the business community entitled Understanding the Fundemental Legal and Security Liability Issues for American Business.

This first of its kind symposium presents a unique opportunity for American business entities to receive critical information on the emerging area of civil liability lawsuits brought by victims of terrorism or crime against an "affected target," i.e., a particular business. Not only will internationally recognized subject matter experts in law and security provide the latest developments in this area, but participants will receive actionable information regarding specific ways that businesses - both in the United States and overseas - can mitigate potential legal liability as a result of acts of terrorism or crime. The symposium focuses on these issues as they operate in both cyberspace and the physical world.

The symposium will be held from March 5-6, 2009, at the Federal Reserve Bank, 1801 Allen Parkway, Houston, Texas. The registration fee is $300.00, which includes breakout refreshments, a hosted lunch, and extensive printed materials, e.g., Terrorism Law: Materials, Cases, Comments (5th Ed. 2009). Participants may qualify for Continuing Legal Education Credits (CLE). For registration information and details, contact Ms. Faithe Campbell at (210) 431-2219; fcampbell@stmarytx.edu. Additional information is also available at the Center for Terrorism Law website: www.stmarytx.edu/ctl.

Job Vacancies

FTS International, LLC (FTS) seeks a fulltime admin support candidate for an IMMEDIATE opening in a component located at HQS in McLean, VA. Full Scope Poly required.

Specifically, we are looking for a mature self starter who can work with little or no supervision. A retiree from the Agency's Support Officer Cadre or Senior IS Service with experience supporting senior executives would be a good candidate. If interested, please contact one of our FTS reps for additional details.

FTS International offers industry standard salaries and an exceptionally generous benefits package. Most importantly, however, we offer the opportunity to be part of a company where support to our customers is of paramount importance along with employee job satisfaction and long term career growth.

Interested candidates please call to discuss or email your unclassified resume to:

John Fitzgerald, President (ISSA/TS)
571-277-1660; c.john.fitzgerald@fts-intl.com
Or
Pete Waldorf, Chief Operations Officer (ISSA/TS)
703-981-1683; pete.waldorf@fts-intl.com 
Or
Frida Kim, Director of Programs (ISA/TS)
703-861-8108; frida.kim@fts-intl.com

Director – Intelligence and Analysis Division, Total Intelligence Solutions LLC (www.totalintel.com)
The selected candidate will be responsible for managing daily priorities, activities, output and performance of a team of up to 10 all-source intelligence analysts who perform a full scope of intelligence analysis activities for Fortune 500, US government and foreign clients.
The position is located in Arlington, VA. Compensation will be commensurate with experience and education – this position is roughly equivalent to a GS-13/14 civil service position. Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS) offers employees a full line of medical, dental, vision, term life insurance and retirement options delivered by industry-leading providers.
Applicants should direct a cover letter and resume to mredman@totalintel.com. TIS desires to complete the hiring process for this vacancy and seat the selected applicant by December 2008.

Letter to the Editors

Web Blogs

Dear AFIO WINs Editorial Pros:

I thought I'd share two Web Blogs with the AFIO members. One is called "Declassified Secrets" (DS). This lists a few Op-Eds and commentaries I've written about the IC for Gannett's North Central Ohio newspapers. DS has a nice site in the right margin that has daily newspaper headlines about the U.S. intelligence community. Sometimes, I get up to 15 headlines in one day about the CIA, NRO, NSA, from different newspapers across America and the world. http://declassifiedsecrets.blogspot.com/ A good way to keep updated in an instant!

The second WebBlog is titled "OSINT NEWS." It offers my attempts at obtaining open source intelligence data for my writings. It is still under construction but may be a nice resource for IC personnel, writers and teachers. In the right margin of OSINT NEWS are various "spy tools" that may be of some interest. I'm sure the CIA, NSA, NRO, etc. have similar and much better programs installed in their computers, but these tools may be worth looking at. Perhaps, they will spawn some creative ideas to utilize! Under the "spy tools" section is a section devoted to foreign intelligence services. I cross-referenced each country with it's foreign intelligence service(s), then with newspaper articles containing these formal names (updated daily). So, one can look up a particular country, say Estonia, and listed underneath will be today's newspaper headlines about the Estonia Security Police Board (Kaitsepolitseiamet, KAPO) and Estonia's Military Intelligence (MID). The website is http://osintdaily.blogspot.com/ 

I thought these two internet sites may be of interest to AFIO members. For the good of the order!!

Robert Morton
Member: AFIO

COMING EVENTS

EVENTS IN COMING TWO MONTHS....

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 Please RSVP to Tom Van Wormer at 719-570-8505 or robsmom@divide.net

Thursday 20 November 2008, 6:30 PM - Los Angeles, CA - The AFIO Los Angeles Chapter November meeting features Ambassador David Aaron former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Carter and currently Director of the RAND Corporation's Center for Middle East Public Policy. Please join us for this event, RSVP by November 17, 2008 via email afio_la@yahoo.com. Refreshments will be served. Please note that this meeting will take place in the evening. Location: Loyola Marymount University (Hilton Business Building) Room 302 LMU Campus Map http://www.lmu.edu/AssetFactory.aspx?did=7234

20 November 2008, 7:00 PM - Arlington, VA - The Defense Intelligence Alumni Association has the right idea! Not a meeting, not a lecture, no PowerPoint presentations.....but a special Evening Tasting of Five Single Malt Scotch Whiskies. They invite Members to this special Tasting of Whiskies Produced by The Balvenie Distillery. Event to be held at the Lyon Park Community Center 414 North Fillmore St in Arlington, VA. Light fare will be served. The price, only $30 per person. The Balvenie distillery is located in the town of Dufftown in the region of Speyside, which has the greatest concentration of malt distilleries in Scotland. Family owned for five generations, The Balvenie is unique in growing, malting, and kilning its own barley, having a full cooperage on site, a full-time coppersmith, and a Malt Master in David Stewart who has spent 45 years with the distillery. The Balvenie is Scotland’s most hand crafted whisky. We will taste five whiskies in The Balvenie range. The tasting will be conducted by "Dr. Whisky," Samuel Simmons, The Balvenie Brand Ambassador USA. Dr. Simmons has hosted tasting events and whisky tours, written and taught Scotch whisky history, and sat on prestigious whisky judging panels.
At Edinburgh University in Scotland, he earned a Ph.D. in English Literature and became both Poet Laureate and President of the Edinburgh University Water of Life Society. He was a tasting and selection panelist and the first ambassador for the international Scotch Malt Whisky Society. He has been featured in Scotland on Sunday and The Malt Whisky Yearbook 2008 and 2009. Dr. Whisky (www.drwhisky.com), his online blog of tasting notes and whisky history, is widely respected within the industry and received a people’s choice award in the 2007 Drammies.
RSVP by 10 November to DIAA, Attn: Whisky, P.O. Box 489, Hamilton, Virginia 20159 Enclose checks for $30 per person payable to DIAA, Inc. No refunds after 13 November. Inquiries to Marty Hurwitz at bshmh1@verizon.net.

1 December 2008 - Miami, FL - The Board of Directors and Members for The Ted Shackley Miami Chapter of AFIO cordially invites you to a membership cocktail party honoring Gen. John K. Singlaub. Hosted by our chapter, we will gather to honor this Great American and hope you will save the first week of December date. All paid members and those wishing to renew membership or join are welcomed. We will also welcome invited guests to enjoy cocktails plus dinner.  Location: TBA  Your printed invitation will be forth coming
Hosts:          Tom Spencer, Esq.,   Robert Heber and special guests
Time:           6:00 to 8:30pm   Food and Beverage will begin promptly at 6:00
Contact:       Tom Spencer:   TRSMiami@aol.com     Robert Heber: 786-473-7000

Tuesday 2 December 2008, 5:30 - 8 p.m. - New York, NY - " The Coming Collapse of China" is the theme of the AFIO NY METRO Chapter Dinner featuring author/lawyer Gordon Chang. "Beneath the surface, there is a weak China, in long-term decline and even on the verge of collapse.” A fascinating topic/speaker! Chang previously wrote "Nuclear Showdown."
5:30 PM – 6:00 PM: Registration; 6:00 PM: Meeting Start, BUFFET DINNER AND OPEN BAR – Until 8:00 PM. Location: STEELCASE BUILDING, 4 Columbus Circle, Manhattan Between 57th & 58th Streets on 8th Ave.
COST: $40. Per Person; $20. Per Student. RESERVATIONS: Strongly Suggested, Not Required.
Inquiries to Jerry Goodwin, President, AFIO - New York Metropolitan Chapter, at 646-696-1828 or at afiometro@yahoo.com

03 December 2008 - Ft Meade, MD - The National Cryptologic Museum Foundation conducts special Pearl Harbor Remembrance Program. Program will review the attack from the Japanese perspective and a Japanese historian will be part of this fascinating reexamination of history. Further information to appear here in coming weeks. Visit the NCMF website at http://www.nationalcryptologicmuseumfoundation.com/

Wednesday, 3 December 2008, noon - Washington, DC - Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda is the featured book at the Noontime Lecture Series at the National Archives. From James Bond to Maxwell Smart to Mission: Impossible, spies and their gadgetry have been captivating public interest for decades. Until now, however, much of the information about the tools used by real-life spies has been deemed "inappropriate for public disclosure." Join us as Robert Wallace, 32-year veteran of the CIA, former director of the Agency's Office of Technical Service, and AFIO member, discusses his book and brings to life the history of the OTS and its operations both in the engineering laboratory and in the field.
Event takes place in Jefferson Room at The National Archives. Further information: http://www.archives.gov/nae/visit/

Saturday, 6 December 2008 - Florida - The AFIO North Florida Chapter meets at the Orange Park Country Club. Meet and greet (and partake of Quiel's delectable hors d'oeuvres!) starts at 11:00 am, with lunch at noon, followed by program and Chapter business, then adjourn by 3:00 pm.
This is a very important meeting, as we will be attending to two key issues:  First, we will hold election of officers -- a proposed slate will likely be announced in either the next newsletter or via later e-mail, but of course nominations will also be accepted from the floor.  In addition, we are working on updating our Chapter Bylaws as required to bring them more in line with the 2008 Chapter Bylaws Policy & Bylaws Boilerplate published by National HQs -- We will have a list of proposed changes for review at the meeting or, with luck, published in the newsletter for review beforehand.  Information on a program will hopefully also be included in the newsletter.  One agenda item for the meeting will definitely be a report on the recent AFIO National Conference attended by Dane Baird.
Please RSVP to Quiel at qbegonia@comcast.net  as soon as possible -- now is not too early! -- and as usual family and guests are cordially invited.  See you there!

Thursday, 11 December 2008 - McLean, VA - CIA "Martial Law" Kuklinski Conference. Details are at top page, right column.

15 January 2009 – San Francisco, CA – The AFIO Jim Quesada Chapter hosts Stanislav Levchenko, former Russian KGB Major. Levchenko defected to the United States in October 1979, and was instrumental in detailing the KGB's Japanese spy network to the U.S government, including Congressional testimony in the early 1980’s. A Soviet court condemned Levchenko to death in 1981. Levchenko published his autobiography, On the Wrong Side: My Life in the KGB, in 1988. Major Levchenko's talk will focus on the new Russia and its imperial designs.
The meeting will be held at United Irish Cultural Center, 2700 45th Avenue, San Francisco (between Sloat and Wawona). 11:30 AM no host cocktails; noon - luncheon. $25 member rate with advance reservation and payment; $35 non-member rate. RSVP required. E-mail RSVP to Mariko Kawaguchi (please indicate meat or fish) no later than 5PM 1/05/09: mariko@cataphora.com or mail check made out to "AFIO" to: Mariko Kawaguchi, PO Box 117578 Burlingame, CA 94011. (650) 622-9840 X608.

20 -21 February 2009 - Baltimore, MD - Ethics in the Intelligence Community 2009 - The 4th Annual Conference of the International Intelligence Ethics Association
List of topics
• The Foundations of Ethics in Intelligence
• The Ethics of Intelligence Assassinations: The Israeli Experience
• The Application of Stakeholder Analysis to Covert Action
• Legitimizing Intelligence Ethics: A Comparison to Ethics in Business
• Surreptitious Physical Searches: An Ethics of Privacy
• Many Spheres of Harm: What's Wrong with Intelligence Collection
• The Ethical Implications of the Downing Street Memos
• The Role of Ethics Reform in Turkey's Bid to Join the EU
• Evolution of British Intelligence & Counter-Terrorism: Northern Ireland, 1969 - 1998.
Location: The Johns Hopkins University at Mt. Washington Conference Center Baltimore, Maryland
Register now and save $50.00. This year, on-line registration is available and encouraged by all attendees. You can reserve your space at the conference and get a hotel room at the same time!
Registration Fees: Individual - Institution - $450; Individual - $375; Student - $250
For more information about registration fees, including fees for early and late registration, go to http://intelligence-ethics.org/conference/09/index.html.
Registration fees include continental breakfast, lunch, and dinner on Friday, and continental breakfast and lunch on Saturday.
Lodging: The Mt. Washington Conference Center has 48 guestrooms for conference attendees. Single rooms with a queen-size bed and double rooms with two double beds are available.
The room rate is $150 per night.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contract us at conference2009@intelligence-ethics.org.

5 - 6 March 2009 - Houston, TX - "Terrorism, Crime & Business" Symposium - Understanding the Fundamental Legal and Security Liability Issues for American Business. A conference sponsored by St. Mary's University., School of Law, Center for Terrorism Law. Four Main Symposium Themes: • An overview of the aims and objectives of the global terror threat posed by al-Qa’eda-styled terror groups, sub-State terror groups, and “lone-wolf” terrorists.
• An analysis of the specific threats to American business sectors that are deemed part of the nation’s “critical infrastructure,” i.e., energy, petrochemical, electric utilities, communication, transportation, health, banking and finance, agriculture, water and shipping. • An understanding of the varied legal issues associated with terrorism and criminal negligence claims against businesses that have suffered a terror attack or serious criminal act in cyberspace or the physical world. • A comprehensive review of how to develop appropriate physical security methods.
SPEAKERS and LOCATION: The symposium will be held at the Federal Reserve Bank, 1801 Allen Parkway, Houston, Texas. The registration fee is $300.00, which includes breakout refreshments, a hosted lunch,
and extensive printed materials, e.g., Terrorism Law: Materials, Cases, Comments (5th Ed. 2009). Participants may qualify for Continuing Legal Education Credits (CLE). For registration information and details, contact Ms. Faithe Campbell at (210) 431-2219; fcampbell@stmarytx.edu. Additional information is also available at the Center for Terrorism Law website: www.stmarytx.edu/ctl.

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

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