AFIO Weekly Intelligence Notes #14-09 dated 21 April 2009

Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Privacy, Transparency Needed in Cybersecurity Policy. U.S. President Barack Obama's administration and Congress will have to address major civil liberties and transparency concerns as they create new policies to tackle ongoing cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the government and private industry, a digital rights group said.

The White House is scheduled to complete a 60-day review of federal government cybersecurity efforts this week, and questions about civil liberties, privacy and other issues must be addressed, said officials with the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a digital rights group. The Obama administration has so far talked about cybersecurity in broad terms, with the potential for new regulations that have wide-ranging effects, said Leslie Harris, CDT's president and CEO.

Policy makers need to treat the Internet differently than other critical infrastructure systems, such as the power grid and water control systems, Harris said. Government officials don't need to worry about free expression when regulating how the power grid should be protected, she noted.

In addition to the 60-day cybersecurity review by U.S. National Security Council adviser Melissa Hathaway, members of Congress have already introduced bills targeted at improving U.S. cybersecurity. Senators Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, and Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, introduced a bill April 1 that would allow the president to shut down public and private networks during a cybersecurity emergency and would allow some government regulation of private networks.

CDT also called for the U.S. government to be more transparent in its cybersecurity efforts than in the past and to work harder to share cybersecurity information with the private sector and encourage the private sector to share information with the government. The government needs to provide new incentives for private companies to share information about attacks and vulnerabilities, said Gregory Nojeim, CDT's senior counsel.

The CDT urged Obama not to put the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) in charge of federal cybersecurity efforts, despite some calls for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to lose its authority in the area.

In December, a panel of cybersecurity experts convened by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recommended that DHS be stripped of its cybersecurity leadership role after years of what the panel called ineffective efforts. Leaving cybersecurity efforts at DHS would "doom that function to failure," the CSIS report said.

While the CSIS panel recommended a cybersecurity czar in the White House, one other approach would be to give the NSA a leadership role, but that would be a mistake, Nojeim said. The NSA has cybersecurity expertise, but its role is to intercept Internet traffic on foreign systems, and CDT is concerned that it would have conflicting incentives for reporting and fixing vulnerabilities, he said.

NSA "wears two hats," Nojeim said. "One is to break into foreign government systems, to exploit weaknesses. The cybersecurity initiative is about plugging weaknesses and strengthening systems. The systems that need to be strengthened are available internationally."

DHS cybersecurity efforts can be improved with congressional help, and that agency has authority to protect critical infrastructure, Nojeim said. "It doesn't solve the problem to complain about it," he said. [PCWorld/15April2009] 

NSA's Intercepts Exceed Limits Set by Congress. The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews.

Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in "overcollection" of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional.

The legal and operational problems surrounding the N.S.A.'s surveillance activities have come under scrutiny from the Obama administration, Congressional intelligence committees and a secret national security court, said the intelligence officials, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because N.S.A. activities are classified. Classified government briefings have been held in recent weeks in response to a brewing controversy that some officials worry could damage the credibility of legitimate intelligence-gathering efforts.

The Justice Department acknowledged Wednesday night that there had been problems with the N.S.A. surveillance operation, but said they had been resolved.

In a statement on Wednesday night, the N.S.A. said that its "intelligence operations, including programs for collection and analysis, are in strict accordance with U.S. laws and regulations." The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the intelligence community, did not address specific aspects of the surveillance problems but said in a statement that "when inadvertent mistakes are made, we take it very seriously and work immediately to correct them."

The questions may not be settled yet. Intelligence officials say they are still examining the scope of the N.S.A. practices, and Congressional investigators say they hope to determine if any violations of Americans' privacy occurred. It is not clear to what extent the agency may have actively listened in on conversations or read e-mail messages of Americans without proper court authority, rather than simply obtained access to them.

The intelligence officials said the problems had grown out of changes enacted by Congress last July in the law that regulates the government's wiretapping powers, and the challenges posed by enacting a new framework for collecting intelligence on terrorism and spying suspects.

While the N.S.A.'s operations in recent months have come under examination, new details are also emerging about earlier domestic-surveillance activities, including the agency's attempt to wiretap a member of Congress, without court approval, on an overseas trip, current and former intelligence officials said.

After a contentious three-year debate that was set off by the disclosure in 2005 of the program of wiretapping without warrants that President George W. Bush approved after the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress gave the N.S.A. broad new authority to collect, without court-approved warrants, vast streams of international phone and e-mail traffic as it passed through American telecommunications gateways. The targets of the eavesdropping had to be "reasonably believed" to be outside the United States. Under the new legislation, however, the N.S.A. still needed court approval to monitor the purely domestic communications of Americans who came under suspicion.

In recent weeks, the eavesdropping agency notified members of the Congressional intelligence committees that it had encountered operational and legal problems in complying with the new wiretapping law, Congressional officials said.

Officials would not discuss details of the overcollection problem because it involves classified intelligence-gathering techniques. But the issue appears focused in part on technical problems in the N.S.A.'s ability at times to distinguish between communications inside the United States and those overseas as it uses its access to American telecommunications companies' fiber-optic lines and its own spy satellites to intercept millions of calls and e-mail messages.

One official said that led the agency to inadvertently "target" groups of Americans and collect their domestic communications without proper court authority. Officials are still trying to determine how many violations may have occurred.

The overcollection problems appear to have been uncovered as part of a twice-annual certification that the Justice Department and the director of national intelligence are required to give to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on the protocols that the N.S.A. is using in wiretapping. That review, officials said, began in the waning days of the Bush administration and was continued by the Obama administration. It led intelligence officials to realize that the N.S.A. was improperly capturing information involving significant amounts of American traffic.

Notified of the problems by the N.S.A., officials with both the House and Senate intelligence committees said they had concerns that the agency had ignored civil liberties safeguards built into last year's wiretapping law. "We have received notice of a serious issue involving the N.S.A., and we've begun inquiries into it," a Congressional staff member said.

Separate from the new inquiries, the Justice Department has for more than two years been investigating aspects of the N.S.A.'s wiretapping program.

As part of that investigation, a senior F.B.I. agent recently came forward with what the inspector general's office described as accusations of "significant misconduct" in the surveillance program, people with knowledge of the investigation said. Those accusations are said to involve whether the N.S.A. made Americans targets in eavesdropping operations based on insufficient evidence tying them to terrorism.

And in one previously undisclosed episode, the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant, an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The agency believed that the congressman, whose identity could not be determined, was in contact - as part of a Congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 - with an extremist who had possible terrorist ties and was already under surveillance, the official said. The agency then sought to eavesdrop on the congressman's conversations, the official said.

The official said the plan was ultimately blocked because of concerns from some intelligence officials about using the N.S.A., without court oversight, to spy on a member of Congress. [Lichtblau&Risen/NewYorkTimes/16April2009] 

Fed Contractor, Cell Phone Maker Sold Spy System to Iran. Two European companies, a major contractor to the U.S. government and a top cell-phone equipment maker, last year installed an electronic surveillance system for Iran that human rights advocates and intelligence experts say can help Iran target dissidents.

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), a joint venture between the Finnish cell-phone giant Nokia and German powerhouse Siemens, delivered what is known as a monitoring center to Irantelecom, Iran's state-owned telephone company.

A spokesman for NSN said the servers were sold for "lawful intercept functionality," a technical term used by the cell-phone industry to refer to law enforcement's ability to tap phones, read e-mails and surveil electronic data on communications networks.

In Iran, a country that frequently jails dissidents and where regime opponents rely heavily on Web-based communication with the outside world, a monitoring center that can archive these intercepts could provide a valuable tool to intensify repression.

Lily Mazaheri, a human rights and immigration lawyer who represents high-profile Iranian dissidents, said she had suspected that the government had increased its capability to monitor its perceived enemies.

Recently, one of her clients was arrested because of instant messaging he had participated in with Ms. Mazaheri, she said.

"He told me he had received a call from the Ministry of Intelligence, and this guy when he went to the interrogation, they put in front of him printed copies of his chats with me. He said he was dumbfounded, and he was sent to prison."

The sale also highlights a rift between the government of Germany, which has endorsed diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran to curb its nuclear program, and German corporations that continue to export sensitive technology to Iran. On March 31, NSN sold the portion of its business that services the monitoring center to a private German holding company called Perusa Partners Fund LLP.

Since 2005, Siemens had done more than $900 million worth of business with the U.S. government and employs about 70,000 people in the United States. Nokia is one of the leading mobile handset providers in the United States.

A spokeswoman for Siemens AG, Elizabeth Cho, said that Siemens "retains only a non-controlling financial interest in NSN, with the day-to-day operations residing with Nokia." She added that Siemens has been "exiting out of the telecom business" throughout the last five years.

Promotional literature says the monitoring center's "modular architecture allows the monitoring and interception of all types of voice and data communication in all networks, i.e. fixed, mobile, Next Generation Network (NGN) and the Internet. The MC's [monitoring center's] unified view-concept greatly facilitates investigative work and opens completely new and efficient ways to pursue leads."

Ben Roome, a spokesman for NSN, said, "We provide these systems to be used under the applicable laws in their countries and make sure we are abiding by U.N. and [European Union] export regulations and code of conduct. We provided the monitoring center to Irantelecom. We are not going to comment on the use of it. It is there to record lawful intercepts."

But William Daly, a former CIA signal-intelligence officer for the agency's Office of Science and Technology who retired in 2000, said the monitoring center in Iran will be used to "monitor dissidents and those ayatollahs who oppose the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]."

Mr. Daly, who provided technical assistance on surveillance missions for the CIA, said that lawful intercept as a concept was created by the cell-phone industry to provide law enforcement agencies the ability to track criminals and terrorists.

Indeed, the telecommunications industry's own international standards require that data networks allow law enforcement to intercept phone calls, e-mails and other electronic data.

Mr. Daly said, however, that the technical switches telecommunications companies embed in their systems can easily be abused.

"The concept of 'lawful intercept' came about with the development of cellular phones," he said. "They had no way of monitoring them if it did not go through a landline switch. With [Global System for Mobile communications, or GSM], it is possible to communicate in the cell without going to the switch. This was part of the basic argument for why they developed it. But the real answer is that governments want to know what their people are doing."

Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said the monitoring center NSN sold to Iran last year should be regulated as though it were "dual-use technology" - items that can have military as well as civilian applications.

"There are a lot of export controls in place in Western countries on technology that might have a dual military purpose," he said. "But there are virtually no restrictions on the export of high-tech equipment that can be used to monitor or control free expression."

Mr. Roome said he did not consider the Iranian monitoring center to be dual-use technology. Indeed, NSN also provides telecommunications equipment to support the wireless telephone network used by Iranian citizens inside the country, he said.

The Iranian mission to the United Nations did not reply to requests for comment on the issue.

Iranian dissidents reacted with anger to the news about the sale.

Mohsen Sazegara, a founder of Iran's Revolutionary Guards who became a democracy advocate and was arrested in 2003 for his opposition to the Islamic republic, said there were rumors in Iranian opposition circles that the Germans had sold the state powerful new technology that would make their monitoring efforts more effective.

"My first reaction is, 'Wow! Why do they do this?' Don't they know that this will be used against the people of Iran?" said Mr. Sazegara, who now lives in the United States.

"They facilitate a regime which easily violates human rights in Iran and the privacy of the people of Iran. They have facilitated the regime with a high technology that allows them to monitor every student activist, every women's rights activist, every labor activist and every ordinary person."

Hadi Ghaemi, spokesman for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said 12 women's rights activists were arrested late last month at a private meeting to celebrate the Persian New Year. He said the raid suggested the state had access to private communications.

"This is an absolute threat to the privacy of all Iranian activists. It puts them in danger of being constantly monitored by the intelligence services, something that we know is already happening," Mr. Ghaemi said. [Lake/WashingtonTimes/13August2009]

MI5 and MI6 Cannot Stop Publication of Spy Book. The British intelligence services have failed in their bid to stop the publication in Britain of a book said to contain the names of as-yet unidentified intelligence officers. The book, Secret Wars: One Hundred Years Of British Intelligence Inside MI5 And MI6, could not be kept from the public using an injunction.

Officials said this was because it is already widely available in America - and in some places on the internet complete with the index.

The book, by Gordon Thomas, marks the centenary of MI5 and MI6.

MI5 is releasing an official history in October, written by Cambridge historian Christopher Andrew, and MI6's official history by Queen's University Belfast professor of history, Keith Jeffrey, will be released next year.

Secret Wars was published two months ago in America and will be published in Britain on 4 May.

Despite opposing the book's British release, Whitehall officials have already said no officer has had to be taken away from operations.

Thomas's sources include former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson; Annie Machon, former partner of David Shayler; and former MI5 officer Peter Wright.

Past governments unsuccessfully tried to ban Mr. Wright's memoirs Spycatcher and Mr. Tomlinson's, The Big Breach.

The author is also said to have relied heavily on former senior CIA and Mossad officers, including their directors, as well as the late, legendary chief of East Germany's Stasi, Markus Wolf. [Leach/Telegraph/16April2009] 

Demjanjuk Granted Stay of Deportation. A US court has granted a stay of deportation against John Demjanjuk, a man accused of war crimes in the Second World War. The stay was granted after he was taken from his house by officers of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service. His lawyer and son said the US authorities want to place him on a plane bound for Germany, where he is to be tried for the murder of 29,000 Jews at the Sobibor death camp in Poland.

In 1981, Mr. Demjanjuk was stripped of his US citizenship after a federal court found him guilty of being the guard known as 'Ivan the Terrible' at the Treblinka concentration camp in Poland. He was extradited to Israel in 1986 and convicted of crimes against humanity.

In 1993, however, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned his conviction when new evidence from KGB files contradicted testimony from the camp's survivors. He then returned to the US and regained his citizenship in 1998, only to be stripped of it again in 2002 after a judge ruled there was proof he worked at several Nazi concentration camps. In March of this year, a German court issued a warrant for his arrest. [RadioNetherlands/14April2009] 

Report Claims Israeli Spies Infiltrated Hizbullah. An espionage network uncovered in Lebanon earlier this week was able to infiltrate Hizbullah, according to London-Based Arabic-language newspaper al-Hayat.

According to the report, Hizbullah officials have decided to adopt new steps in order to prevent further infiltration into the organization and detained suspects connected to the case. The group reportedly feared that the espionage efforts would affect "the organization's security and the wellbeing of its commanders."

In addition, the full name of the main suspect in the affair was published for the first time - a Lebanese army officer called Adib al-Alam, ranked brigadier general. He was arrested along with his wife and his nephew. According to the report, the three were arrested by Lebanon's intelligence service after being followed for a year and a half.

Two espionage cells operated by Israeli intelligence services in Lebanon have been arrested in connection with the affair, Lebanese daily al-Akhbar reported on Friday.

According to the report, the arrests were carried out following precise coordination between Lebanon's internal security service and Hizbullah, with each party responsible for the arrest of one cell.

The report said that the main suspect in the affair, al-Alam, confessed to undergoing three training courses in and being equipped with three advanced communication devices, a camera and objects that have secret compartments. [Niemahas/Ynews/18April2009]

Raul Castro's Proposal Isn't for Classic Spy Swap. Cuban President R�ul Castro's offer to free political prisoners in exchange for five Cuban agents envisions no classic Cold War era spy-for-spy swap.

Instead, Castro pointedly called for the United States to free the five men serving 15 years to life in American prisons for conducting espionage in Miami.

And in exchange, he vowed to send political prisoners and their families to U.S. shores.

"Release our prisoners and we'll send them over there, with their families and whatever else you want - those so-called 'dissidents' and 'patriots.'''

Whether and how Obama could actually do it was unclear.

A look back at the Ronald Reagan era showed those famed spy swaps across an East-West bridge involved foreign agents snagged but never tried by the United States.

In one of the best known cases, involving Soviet Jewish dissident Anatoly Sharansky, a former CIA employee named Karl Koecher was traded on Feb. 11, 1985, along with his wife at Berlin's Glienicke Bridge. But Koecher's case had never come to trial. He had been arrested three months before Reagan made the trade.

A federal jury, however, convicted the so-called ''Cuban Five'' in 2001 in downtown Miami, in a trial the Bush administration portrayed as getting justice for the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown. Three of the men are serving life sentences, one for his involvement in the shootdown. Two others got 15- and 19-year sentences.

Lawyers familiar with the case said a U.S president might need to commute the Cubans' sentence - not actually pardon them - in order to send them home.

They also note that the Obama administration is facing a May 6 deadline on the Cuban Five case at the U.S. Supreme Court. The convicted spies have asked the justices to hear their case alleging they were unjustly convicted in politically charged Miami, and should have had their trials moved elsewhere.

Convicts do sometimes get sent overseas to finish their terms in a foreign jail, said Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci L. Billingsley. Since the U.S. and Cuba have no relations, and Castro says they were wrongly convicted, that formula would not fit.

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter commuted the sentences of Lolita Lebron and three other Americans, sending them home to Puerto Rico after 25 years in prison for shooting up the U.S. Capitol in 1954 in a pro-independence protest.

Carter said he freed the Americans as a humanitarian gesture.

But Fidel Castro had promised for years to free four captured ''CIA agents'' in exchange for the Puerto Ricans; he did.

A former Carter administration official, Robert Pastor, who negotiated Cuban prisoner releases, called it a "non-trade trade.''

Friday, he drew a comparison to any possible future release of Cuban political prisoners, whom the United States considers innocent, should Obama send home the Cuban spies, whom the Cuban government considers heroes.

If past releases are any guide, the trade would mean putting Cuba's jailed political prisoners on aircraft for exile abroad - the latest wave of political prisoners to reach the United States across the five-decade Cuban exile drama.

Exile Miami considers them freedom fighters, island Cubans who worked for democracy from within. But the Cuban government casts them as ''U.S. paid mercenaries and terrorists'' for allegedly receiving U.S. funds.

Castro even sweetened the spy-trade swap pot by offering prisoners whose release the U.S. had never sought - some Central Americans whom Cuban courts convicted and sentenced to death in a series of 1997 tourist industry bombings.

Prisoner releases have long been a tool in the Cuban revolution's acrimonious relations with the United States.

In December 1962, Castro sent to the United States the 1,000-plus Brigade 2506 members who had been captured in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion a year earlier.

A few of the exiles were tried and executed; a handful were jailed for decades.

But the U.S. got most of the men back.

And Cuba got 500 farm tractors - and several million dollars worth of medicine.  [Rosenberg/MiamiHerald/18April2009] 

Summer Job: US Intelligence Analyst. Forget mowing lawns, or thankless corporate internships: How about a two-week summer gig as an analyst under US Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair?

Blair's office announced it was looking for about 30 smart, motivated students in graduate school or their final year of undergraduate studies for a first-of-its-kind July 13 - July 24 "hands-on seminar."

Applicants must be US citizens at least 21 years old, with a strong academic background and the ability to pass a background security investigation before they study "Political Instability - International Systems in Transition."

"The program will include lectures, field trips to agencies and work on an intelligence problem under the direction of analysts drawn from the Intelligence Community," Blair's office said in a statement.

"Students who qualify will receive secret-level security clearances for the duration of the seminar," as well as travel expenses, room and board, course materials, and a 1,000-dollar stipend, the statement said.

The curriculum for the two-week program will be the brainchild of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, the deputy US director of national intelligence for analysis, and office of the intelligence community centers for academic excellence. [AFP/14April2009] 

Iran's Ahmadinejad Denounces Conspiracies After U.S. Spy Case. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denounced efforts to destabilize Iran after an Iranian court sentenced a U.S.-born journalist to eight years in prison for espionage.

"The country must remain vigilant against outside threats to its sovereignty and security," the official Islamic Republic News Agency cited Ahmadinejad as saying. Iran will stick to its policies "with no brake and reverse gear," Ahmadinejad told security officials.

The U.S. yesterday said it was "deeply disappointed" after an Iranian court convicted Roxana Saberi, a U.S.-Iranian freelance reporter, of spying in a closed-door trial last week.

The case risks exacerbating tensions with the U.S. just as President Barack Obama is making overtures to ease the dispute over Iran's nuclear program and end a 30-year diplomatic freeze.

"Iran is sending a clear message that Iranian security is a priority which will not be compromised," said Mustafa Alani, a regional expert at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. The decision to jail Saberi is designed to strengthen Iran's negotiating hand, he said by phone.

Saberi, 31, who has been held at Tehran's Evin prison since late January, was convicted last week and received notification of the verdict and sentence yesterday. Her lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, said she would appeal.

Iran routinely accuses the U.S. of sending agents and seeking to topple the Islamic regime. In January, Iran said it dismantled a network that benefited from American funds and Central Intelligence Agency guidance in planning a "soft overthrow" of the Shiite Muslim cleric-led government.

Iranian officials first said Saberi was arrested for continuing to report after authorities declined to extend her press accreditation, which expired more than a year ago. Earlier this month, prosecutors said she had confessed to having engaged in espionage activities under the guise of a reporter.

Saberi came to Iran six years ago and has since reported for news organizations that include National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corp.

Her Iranian-born father, Reza Saberi, told NPR yesterday that his daughter had been "deceived" into making incriminating statements after being promised she would be freed in exchange. Saberi's father and Japanese-born mother, who live in North Dakota, traveled to Iran to try and help their daughter.

"We will continue to vigorously raise our concerns to the Iranian government," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday. "Our thoughts are with her parents and family during this difficult time."

Clinton said the U.S. is working closely with Swiss diplomats who represent American interests in Iran to get details of the ruling on Saberi, and "to ensure her well- being."

There has been a crackdown on dissent in Iran as the country prepares for a presidential election June 12. At least five editors and writers are imprisoned in Iran, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

The Obama administration has launched efforts to reach out to Iran, inviting the country to participate in talks on Afghanistan and offering dialogue on the disputed Iranian nuclear program.

Ahmadinejad has welcomed the U.S. decision to take part in the international negotiations on the Iranian nuclear activities and on April 15 said Iran will soon present new proposals to end the dispute. The U.S. and its European allies say they suspect the nuclear work is a cover for a weapons program, while Iran insists it is a peaceful program to generate electricity.

The U.S. cut diplomatic relations with Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution, when student militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 diplomats for 444 days. [Meyer/Bloomberg/19April2009] 

Despite Heavy Recruitment, CIA Still Short on Bilingual Staff. Just 13% of CIA employees speak a foreign language, nearly five years after the 9/11 Commission urged the agency to expand its ranks of bilingual operatives and analysts to help thwart future terrorist attacks, according to CIA data.

The overall number of CIA workers with foreign language skills has risen 70% in the past five years amid broader recruiting efforts that have included Internet ads on YouTube and Facebook, the figures show. The data are limited to percentages because specific staffing levels are classified.

Still, bilingual employees account for 18% within the agency's Directorate of Intelligence, which handles all analysis of information gathered by the agency. Within the National Clandestine Service, which runs foreign spy operations, 28% of employees speak a foreign language.

The CIA's lack of foreign language speakers has fueled criticisms from congressional committees and commissions since the 9/11 attacks of 2001.

CIA Director Leon Panetta said after his confirmation earlier this year that expanding foreign language proficiency among new and existing staff is a top priority. "I'd like to... get to a point where every analyst and operations officer is trained in a foreign language," he said. "Foreign languages are extremely important... to understanding that part of the world that we have to gather intelligence from."

Besides Internet and TV ads, CIA officials are recruiting first- and second-generation Americans in immigrant communities, such as Detroit, which has a large Arab-American population. The CIA also offers hiring bonuses of up to $35,000 to recruits with "mission critical" languages, such as Arabic, Chinese, Dari, Korean, Pashtu, Persian, Russian and Urdu.

House Intelligence Committee member Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., wants the CIA to do more to make foreign language development an integral part of its operation for both new and existing staff.

"Does this look like significant progress after eight years of... pressure?" he said of the new figures. "Their performance is mediocre at best."

The agency's need for more foreign language speakers, particularly Arab linguists, was raised in various assessments of problems that helped enable the 9/11 attacks, including the independent 9/11 Commission report. In 2004,

President Bush ordered the CIA to boost its ranks of foreign language speakers by 50%. [Eisler/USAToday/19April2009]

Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

A New Q: MI5 Search for Spy Science Chief. Any fan of James Bond will know that science and technology have always been the fictional spy's most potent weapons.

Without his cigarette capable of shooting a jet-powered projectile accurately up to 30 yards, the Rolex watch equipped with a small laser beam cutting tool and, of course, his trademark Aston Martin with machine guns, missiles and ejector seat, Bond would have been finished long ago.

His famous gadgets have gotten MI6 officer 007 out of several tight spots - though much to the anguish of the agency's chief boffin, "Q", the ingenious devices produced with such loving care have often ended up battered or blown up during Bond's escapades.

Now it seems that the UK's domestic intelligence agency, better known as MI5 or the Security Service, has taken a leaf out of MI6's book.

It is about to appoint its own Q, with a job advert to recruit a chief scientific adviser.

The appointment is intended to assist MI5 in harnessing developments in science and technology that will help the service combat terrorism and support field officers in counter-intelligence activities.

The job has been advertised on MI5's website. According to the ad, the successful applicant will "lead and co-ordinate the scientific work of the Security Service".

Candidates for "this unique and challenging role" will need to have world-class scientific expertise, excellent strategic skills and outstanding influencing and communication skills.

MI5's post is part-time, requiring a commitment of two to three days a week.

But it is not clear from the ad if the job involves designing cool gadgets. So I asked Professor John Beddington, the top scientific adviser in the UK government.

"I think it's unlikely that the person will be required to develop a weapons system for the latest Aston Martin," was his reply.

However, Professor Beddington said that the new science adviser's work would help UK intelligence officers dealing with real problems.

"There is a really important role in providing scientific and technological advice on addressing problems agents in the field will face.

"[The chief science adviser] has a role to frustrate terrorism, to prevent espionage hurting the UK, protect our critical national infrastructure, and to frustrate the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. There's an enormous amount of scientific content in this role," he added.

So how, specifically, will the new Q do all that? Unsurprisingly, that is something that MI5 is keeping, well, secret.

Applications for the job close on April 24. [Ghosh/BBC/14April2009] 

Spy Versus Spy in Iran, North Korea. The case of the American freelance journalist sentenced to eight years in prison in Iran for spying for the United States has a disquieting relevance to the dangers facing two American journalists held at the other end of former United States president George W Bush's "axis of evil" - North Korea.

While Roxana Saberi, 31, appeals her weekend conviction in Tehran after an in-camera trial that lasted one day, the two Americans, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, seized by North Korean soldiers on March 17, are in a "state guest house" near the capital Pyongyang on charges of "hostile acts", including espionage.

They were on China's northeastern Tumen River border with North Korea filming for former US vice president and environmental activist Al Gore's Current TV network on an especially sensitive topic - the flight of North Korean defectors from the horrors of starvation, disease, jailing, torture and beatings.

United States President Barack Obama said he was "gravely disappointed" over the sentence meted out to Saberi. The issue now is whether an appeals court will significantly reduce or suspend the sentence - or even throw out the conviction. Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad even wrote to the prosecutor, requesting that she and a Canadian blogger have the chance to "freely and legally defend themselves" - and possibly win a reprieve.

Saberi and the blogger share an Iranian heritage. Saberi's father, Rezi, is Iranian and is now in Tehran to try to bring his daughter back to the home in North Dakota that she left six years ago to report from Tehran. The blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, born, raised and educated in Iran before moving to London and Toronto, was operating a pioneering website until his arrest in November. He, too, faces charges of espionage - in his case, spying for Israel, which he visited in 2007 in a highly publicized bid for Iran-Israel reconciliation.

The parallels between the case of Saberi and that of Ling and Lee may be obvious, so much so that the US State Department, working behind the scenes, hopes the North Koreans will see the benefits of letting them go. If North Korean authorities insist on a trial at which Ling and Lee will inevitably be convicted and sentenced, Obama may be expected to issue a similar statement of disappointment.

The coincidence between the jailing of these three American broadcast journalists who were by all accounts in aggressive pursuit of exclusive stories, goes to the larger issue of the nuclear programs of both Iran and North Korea - and their cooperation with each other.

Saberi was interested in Iran's nuclear program, which the US charges has military implications well beyond the peaceful uses claimed by Iran. Ling and Lee were not necessarily going to report on North Korea's program, linked to that of Iran through exchanges of technology and the sale of North Korean Scud and Rodong missiles, but North Korean authorities can make up any story they want about what they were doing. Unlike Iran, they've manufactured nuclear warheads and vow to go on doing so now that the United Nations Security Council has condemned their launch of the long-range Taepodong-2 missile on April 5.

The cases, however, have highly disturbing differences. Iran may seem like a forbidding place, to judge from reports of what's happening to Saberi, but it's a free and open society compared to North Korea.

While Saberi's father remains in Tehran, pleading on his daughter's behalf with Iranian officials, diplomats and journalists, the parents of Laura Ling, of Chinese ancestry, and Euna Lee, Korean-American, are not able to see their daughters. Nor do Ling and Lee have a loquacious lawyer, as does Saberi, appearing on TV, arguing their case.

In Tehran, as in Pyongyang, the US relies on diplomats from other countries to visit US citizens in jail in the absence of diplomatic relations with either Iran or North Korea. Swiss diplomats have seen Saberi behind bars in Tehran, and a Swedish diplomat has visited Ling and Lee at the "guest house", as it's described, near Pyongyang.

Unlike Saberi, Ling and Lee are not believed to have had any other foreign visitors, certainly not their parents. North Korean authorities like to say they are following all the rules of diplomacy in dealing with criminal cases, but that single conversation that each of them has had with the Swede is the only chance they've had to get a message through to anyone on their side.

Another enormous difference is that Ling and Lee had not spent years reporting from inside North Korea, as had Saberi - they had never been there until the guards detained them.

Whether they had actually stepped across the line in the Tumen River, frozen solid when they were picked up, is not clear. They were with a Chinese-Korean guide who is suspected of having been informing for the North Koreans and to have put them into the hands of North Korean soldiers after bringing them to the river bank on the lure of exclusive TV footage. It's also not clear what happened to the guide, whether he got away from the North Koreans or was also detained. In any case, he's believed now to be in Pyongyang.

One person does know what happened - or as much as he could tell from having been a part of the incident. That's cameraman and producer Mitch Koss, who was with Ling and Lee and escaped. He was arrested by the Chinese, but has left China, probably for San Francisco, the home of Current TV, an Internet-based operation.

To judge from Koss' silence, he has been told in no uncertain terms to keep his mouth shut while negotiators try to spring Ling and Lee. It's assumed, if and when he does talk, that he will be able to clarify how the guide led them into what appears to be a trap and exactly where everyone was standing.

It would not be correct, however, to think that Ling and Lee were not well briefed beforehand on the horrors of life in North Korea - or the risks they were taking by venturing down to the bank of the Tumen River, a shallow stream that defectors can cross by foot whether it is frozen or not. Nor did they rely solely on interviews with South Korean defectors, arranged through a South Korean non-governmental group called Durihana, whose leader, the Reverend Chun Ki-won, was imprisoned for 10 months in China years ago for trying to help defectors escape to Mongolia.

Ling, at the age of 32, was following in the footsteps of her older sister, 36-year-old Lisa Ling, who's gained celebrity status as a far-ranging reporter for Oprah and National Geographic television. Lisa may well have encouraged Laura on her North Korean documentary after having scored one of her greatest coups three years ago with an epic "Inside North Korea" for National Geographic.

Some of Lisa's dialogue in that extraordinary piece of reporting was eerily prophetic of the ordeal now confronting her younger sister. As she said near the opening, "North Korea is the most terrifying country on Earth."

Lisa in the documentary shows how she filmed on a skillfully hidden camera while posing as a volunteer for a Nepalese eye doctor who went to North Korea to cure hundreds of North Koreans, most of them blinded by advanced cataracts. She minced no words as she reported, "Immediately, there's a feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world."

That same scary sense pervades the case of Lisa's sister Laura and Euna Lee. Now, whether North Korean authorities will want to release the two, enabling them to embellish on Lisa's words, is anyone's guess.

Tim Peters, whose organization, Helping Hands Korea, works closely with North Korean defectors, notes the film was definitely "embarrassing for the regime", especially in a re-enactment scene showing defectors trying to leave. In case anyone missed the point, Lisa Ling recounted what she called the "unimaginable horrors that people risk their lives to escape".

The ordeal of Ling and Lee has become all the more politicized since North Korea on April 14 said it was resuming its nuclear weapons program and expelled inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency after the UN Security Council condemned the launch. At the same time, North Korea said it would "never" again join in six-party talks under which it agreed in 2007 to disable and then dismantle all its nuclear facilities in return for a vast infusion of aid.

Kim Sang-hun, active for years on behalf of North Korean defectors, fears North Korean outrage may complicate pleas for the women's release. North Korean authorities, he said, may see the two "as an opportunity for revenge" for the insults heaped on the North by Lisa Ling.

There is no doubt that Lisa Ling's report was one of the most severe indictments of North Korea ever to appear on television - for what she said as well as what she saw and surreptitiously filmed. "North Korea is ruled by an absolute dictator who has nuclear weapons," Lisa concluded. "What happens here in the Hermit Kingdom may touch everyone in the world."

Now, Laura Ling and Euna Lee are caught up in a system in which sister Lisa professed to have "started to get a sense of what it's like to be trapped under the iron grip of Kim Jong-il" - one in which "Kim Jong-il controls everything."

Kim Sung-han was cautiously optimistic that the two would eventually go home. He made a distinction between their case and those of approximately 500 South Koreans, mostly fishermen, picked up within North Korean territorial limits, as well as 20 or 30 Japanese kidnapped from Japanese soil in the late 1970s and early 1980s for whom the North has made no real accounting.

The difference is that North Korea says all of those either do not exist or are living in North Korea voluntarily, whereas the North acknowledges holding Ling and Lee. The best hope is that North Korea, after a prolonged process in which it extracts some concessions from the US in the form of promises of aid or diplomatic relations or both, will hand them over as a "goodwill gesture".

Kim doubts that they are being subjected to the beatings and torture that are routine in North Korean interrogations. After all, if they do get out, they might be inclined to speak well of their captors if treated properly.

Or, if they stay long enough, maybe they, too, will become professed believers, teaching English to North Koreans, interpreting and translating, as have others who have fallen into the North Korean net. Lisa Ling suggested that eerie fate when she remarked in her documentary, "Finally, it hit me, there may not be a difference between true belief and true fear." [Kirk/AsiaTimes/19April2009] 

CIA, Civil Services Follow Same Rules. So how much money and vacation time does the American-equivalent of James Bond get? Of course if I told you, then I'd have to kill you. But it is probably safe to discuss generalities and use round numbers.

In terms of dollars, senior secret agents earn anywhere from about $115,000 to $177,000. Given what they do, where they do it and the long, often dangerous hours they put in, that isn't very much money. The typical American doesn't have the brain, muscle or will to make it through the CIA's training facility, sometimes called the Farm, near Williamsburg.

Other than the top secret nature of their work, employees of the CIA, the Secret Service, Defense Intelligence Agency, Senior Cryptologic Executive Service and a dozen other outfits, live pretty much by standard civil service rules. Most get annual (not very big) pay raises, and sometimes (not very big) bonuses.

Although some have special retirement deals, most are under the same age and length of service rules that cover regular federal workers, or law enforcement personnel in other agencies.

Members of the various top-secret services are in the same health plans as other federal workers and retirees, and have the same investment options in the Thrift Savings Plan. The TSP is the government equivalent of the best 401(k) plans available in the private sector.

The benefits counseling that people in the silent services get is usually much better than that available to rank-and-file feds in other agencies. That's because the CIA, FBI, DEA and DIA, among others, want to be sure their people are happy, make the best use of their benefits and aren't overly distracted by things that worry workers in and outside of government.

Agencies with overseas stations and employees often go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that their people are kept current about job-related benefits, ranging from life insurance to the annual open seasons when feds can change health plans or set up pretax accounts to help pay for uncovered medical expenses or day care for a child or dependent relative.

"At the end of the day," one senior benefits expert told us, "these people are just like everybody else in and out of government. They have good marriages and bad one's, they have kids who are outstanding or who have problems, and they worry about paying bills and what's going to happen to them in retirement."

Senior members of various agencies got a break last week, when the Office of Personnel Management extended a major recruiting perk to them. Under current rules members of the Senior Executive Service earn eight hours of annual leave every two weeks. That benefit generally isn't available to non-SES people who don't earn that much annual leave until they have been in federal service for 15 years.

Last week OPM issued a memo to officials in 22 agencies - from the State Department and the CIA to the Farm Credit Administration - telling them they can now use the higher-annual-leave accumulation benefit as a recruiting and retention tool. In other words, they can tell a new employee that he or she will qualify for the higher vacation accrual benefit from Day One.

Current employees in equivalent systems to the SES in their agencies will also qualify to earn annual leave at the more generous rate even if they don't have 15 years of service. While this will be an excellent recruiting and retention benefit for those agencies, it raises another question. Will people who have just been added to the vacation fast-track now be able to carry over more unused annual leave from year to year? Regular SES personnel can accumulate up to 700 hours of annual leave and cash it in at retirement.

Most feds, however, are limited to carrying over about 240 hours of leave from year to year. While that's still a sizable chunk of change in their final lump-sum leave check, the ability to save up more would be an added incentive.

When they get close to retirement age, many federal and postal workers would like to phase out by working part time for a couple of years. But complex retirement rules now on the books discourage it because going part time late in your work life can reduce, sometimes drastically, your federal annuity. But relief may be on the way.

One of several fed-friendly provisions in the so-called Tobacco bill (H.R. 1804) would remove that obstacle to part-time employment. Backers of the change say it would benefit both old-timers who could work less (and sometimes from home) and newcomers who would have been-there-done-that-mentors on hand.

The legislation sailed through the House and President Obama has indicated that he is prepared to sign it. The Bush administration opposed the overall bill last year because it would give the FDA more power to regulate tobacco - a major cash crop in a dozen states. The bill bogged down in the Senate last year for that reason.

The Senate will take it up shortly after it returns next week from its extended Easter-Passover break.  [Causey/WashingtonTimes/13April2009] 

Mission Impossible: The Code Even the CIA Can't Crack. The most celebrated inscription at the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, used to be the biblical phrase chiseled into marble in the main lobby: "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." But in recent years, another text has been the subject of intense scrutiny inside the Company and out: 865 characters of seeming gibberish, punched out of half-inch-thick copper in a courtyard.

It's part of a sculpture called Kryptos, created by DC artist James Sanborn. He got the commission in 1988, when the CIA was constructing a new building behind its original headquarters. The agency wanted an outdoor installation for the area between the two buildings, so a solicitation went out for a piece of public art that the general public would never see. Sanborn named his proposal after the Greek word for hidden. The work is a meditation on the nature of secrecy and the elusiveness of truth, its message written entirely in code.

Almost 20 years after its dedication, the text has yet to be fully deciphered. A bleary-eyed global community of self-styled cryptanalysts - along with some of the agency's own staffers - has seen three of its four sections solved, revealing evocative prose that only makes the puzzle more confusing. Still uncracked are the 97 characters of the fourth part (known as K4 in Kryptos-speak). And the longer the deadlock continues, the crazier people get.

Whether or not our top spooks intended it, the persistent opaqueness of Kryptos subversively embodies the nature of the CIA itself - and serves as a reminder of why secrecy and subterfuge so fascinate us. "The whole thing is about the power of secrecy," Sanborn tells me when I visit his studio, a barnlike structure on Jimmy Island in Chesapeake Bay (population: 2). He is 6'7", bearded, and looks a bit younger than his 63 years. Looming behind him is his latest work in progress, a 28-foot-high re-creation of the world's first particle accelerator, surrounded by some of the original hardware from the Manhattan Project. The atomic gear fits nicely with the thrust of Sanborn's oeuvre, which centers on what he calls invisible forces.

With Kryptos, Sanborn has made his strongest statement about what we don't see and can't know. "He designed a piece that would resonate with this workforce in particular," says Toni Hiley, who curates the employees-only CIA museum. Sanborn's ambitious work includes the 9-foot 11-inch-high main sculpture - an S-shaped wave of copper with cut-out letters, anchored by an 11-foot column of petrified wood - and huge pieces of granite abutting a low fountain. And although most of the installation resides in a space near the CIA cafeteria, where analysts and spies can enjoy it when they eat outside, Kryptos extends beyond the courtyard to the other side of the new building. There, copper plates near the entrance bear snippets of Morse code, and a naturally magnetized lodestone sits by a compass rose etched in granite.

"People call me an agent of Satan," says artist Sanborn, "because I won't tell my secret."

The heart of the piece, though, is the encrypted text, scrambled, Sanborn says, by "a coding system that would unravel itself slowly over a period of time."

When he began the work, Sanborn knew very little about cryptography, so he reluctantly accepted the CIA's offer to work with Ed Scheidt, who had just retired as head of Langley's Cryptographic Center. Scheidt himself was serving two masters. "I was reminded of my need to preserve the agency's secrets," Scheidt says. "You know, don't tell him the current way of doing business. And don't create something that you cannot break - but at the same time, make it something that will last a while."

Scheidt schooled Sanborn in cryptographic techniques employed from the late 19th century until World War II, when field agents had to use pencil and paper to encode and decode their messages. (These days, of course, cryptography is all about rugged computer algorithms using long mathematical keys.) After experimenting with a range of techniques, including poly-alphabetic substitution, shifting matrices, and transposition, the two arrived at a form of old-school, artisanal cryptography that they felt would hold off code breakers long enough to generate some suspense. The solutions, however, were Sanborn's alone, and he did not share them with Scheidt. "I assumed the first three sections would be deciphered in a matter of weeks, perhaps months," Sanborn says. Scheidt figured the whole puzzle would be solved in less than seven years.

During the two years of construction, there were moments of intrigue and paranoia, in keeping with the subject matter and the client. "We had to play a little on the clandestine side," says Scheidt, who talks of unnamed observers outside armed with long-range cameras and high-intensity microphones. "We had people with ladders climbing up the walls of my studio trying to photograph inside," Sanborn says. He came to believe that factions within the CIA wanted to kill the project. There were unexplained obstacles. For instance, he says, "one day a big truckload of stone for the courtyard disappeared. Never found. I saw it in the evening, went back in the morning, and it had vanished. Nobody would tell me what happened to it."

Sanborn finished the sculpture in time for a November 1990 dedication. The agency released the enciphered text, and a frenzy erupted in the crypto world as some of the best - and wackiest - cryptanalytic talent set to work. But it took them more than seven years, not the few months Sanborn had expected, to crack sections K1, K2, and K3. The first code breaker, a CIA employee named David Stein, spent 400 hours working by hand on his own time. Stein, who described the emergence of the first passage as a religious experience, revealed his partial solution to a packed auditorium at Langley in February 1998. But not a word was leaked to the press. Sixteen months later, Jim Gillogly, an LA-area cryptanalyst used a Pentium II computer and some custom software to crack the same three sections. When news of Gillogly's success broke, the CIA publicized Stein's earlier crack.

James Sanborn buried his sculpture's message so deeply that a CIA staffer took seven years to solve just the first three sections. Here's what we know.

The first section, K1, uses a modified Vigen�re cipher. It's encrypted through substitution - each letter corresponds to another - and can be solved only with the alphabetic rows of letters on the right. The keywords, which help determine the substitutions, are KRYPTOS and PALIMPSEST. A misspelling - in this case IQLUSION - may be a clue to cracking K4.

K2, like the first section, was also encrypted using the alphabets on the right. One new trick Sanborn used, though, was to insert an X between some sentences, making it harder to crack the code by tabulating letter frequency. The keywords here are KRYPTOS and ABSCISSA. And there's another intriguing misspelling: UNDERGRUUND.

A different cryptographic technique was used for K3: transposition. All the letters are jumbled and can be deciphered only by uncovering the complex matrices and mathematics that determined their misplacement. Of course, there is a misspelling (DESPARATLY), and the last sentence (CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING?) is strangely bracketed by an X and a Q.

Sanborn intentionally made K4 much harder to crack, hinting that the plaintext itself is not standard English and would require a second level of cryptanalysis. Misspellings and other anomalies in previous sections may help. Some suspect that clues are present in other parts of the installation: the Morse code, the compass rose, or perhaps the adjacent fountain.

But if anyone expected that solving the first three sections would lead to a quick resolution of the whole puzzle, their hopes were soon dashed. The partial solutions only deepened the confusion.

K1 is a passage written by Sanborn. "I tried to make it sound good and be inscrutable enough to be interesting," he says. Judge for yourself how well he did: "Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion." Yes, iqlusion - one of several misspellings that Sanborn says are intentional. The second section reads like a telegraph transmission. There's a reference to a magnetic field and information transmitted to a specific latitude and longitude - geo-coordinates for a location a couple of hundred feet south of the sculpture itself (a spot where nothing of apparent interest lies).

K3 paraphrases a diary entry of anthropologist Howard Carter from his 1922 discovery of King Tut's tomb, ending with a question: "Can you see anything?" When Gillogly turned up that passage, he says, he had "the same excitement and exultation that Carter described. In a way, it seems that the plaintext is a metaphor for the work of the code breaker, or perhaps of the CIA itself."

The 97 characters of K4 remain impenetrable. They have become, as one would-be cracker calls it, the Everest of codes. Both Scheidt and Sanborn confirm that they intended the final segment to be the biggest challenge. There are endless theories about how to solve it. Is access to the sculpture required? Is the Morse code a clue? Every aspect of the project has come under electron-microscopic scrutiny, as thousands of people - hardcore cryptographers and amateur code breakers alike - have taken a whack at it. Some have gone off the deep end: A Michigan man abandoned his computer-software business to do construction so he'd have more time to work on it. Thirteen hundred members of a fanatical Yahoo group try to move the ball forward with everything from complex math to astrology. One typical Kryptos maniac is Randy Thompson, a 43-year-old physicist who has devoted three years to the problem. "I think I'm onto the solution," he says. "It could happen tomorrow, or it could take the rest of my life." Meanwhile, some of the seekers are getting tired. "I just want to see it solved," says Elonka Dunin, a 50-year-old St. Louis game developer who runs a clearinghouse site for Kryptos information and gossip. "I want it off my plate."

Making the effort more complicated is the fact that the puzzle maker is alive and, in theory at least, a potential resource. For years, there has been a delicate pas de deux between the artist and the rabid Kryptos community. Every word Sanborn utters is eagerly examined for hints. But they also have to wonder whether he's trying to help them or throw them off track. Scheidt says that this process parallels the work of the CIA: "The intelligence picture includes mirrors and obfuscation."

"It's not my intent to put out disinformation," Sanborn says. "I'm a benevolent cryptographer." Some think otherwise, and Sanborn occasionally receives messages from people enraged that he knows the secret and they don't. "It's the fact that I have some sort of power," he says. "You get stalkers. I don't know how they get my cell numbers and everything off the Internet, but they do. People have called me and said pretty terrible things. There are some who say I'm an agent of Satan because I have a secret I won't tell."

Though Sanborn's usual practice is to stay in the background, every so often he feels obliged to comment. In 2005, he refuted author Dan Brown's claim that the "WW" in the plaintext of K3 could be inverted to "MM," implying Mary Magdalene. (Brown included pieces of Kryptos on the book jacket of The Da Vinci Code and has hinted that his next novel will draw on the CIA sculpture, a prospect that deeply annoys Sanborn.)

Intentional or not, Sanborn's comments (or lack thereof) seem to generate an added layer of confusion. Even a straightforward question, like who besides him knows the solution, opens up new wormholes. The official story is that Sanborn shared the answer with only one person, the CIA director at the time, William Webster. Indeed, the decoded K3 text reads in part, "Who knows the exact location only ww." Sanborn has confirmed that these letters refer to Webster (not Mary Magdalene). And in 1999, Webster himself told The New York Times that the solution was "philosophical and obscure."

But Sanborn also claims that the envelope he gave Webster didn't contain the complete answer. "Nobody has it all," he says. "I tricked them."

So, Webster really doesn't know?

"No," says Sanborn, who has taken measures to ensure that someone will be able to confirm a successful solution even after he dies. He adds that even he doesn't know the exact solution anymore. "If somebody tried to torture me, I couldn't tell them," he says. "I haven't looked at the plaintext of K4 in a long time, and I don't have a very good memory, so I don't really know what it says." What does the CIA make of all this? "When it comes to the solution," says spokesperson Marie Harf, "those who need to know, know."

If anyone manages to solve the last cipher, that won't end the hunt for the ultimate truth about Kryptos. "There may be more to the puzzle than what you see," Scheidt says. "Just because you broke it doesn't mean you have the answer." All of this leads one to ask: Is there a solution? Sanborn insists there is - but he would be just as happy if no one ever discovered it. "In some ways, I'd rather die knowing it wasn't cracked," he says. "Once an artwork loses its mystery, it's lost a lot."

The day I visited Kryptos, a rare snowstorm in Virginia had blanketed the courtyard in white. I circled the sculpture carefully, marveling at the way the colors and texture of the surrounding landscape affected the panels, as some character strings became highlighted in white and other phrases shimmered, reflecting the dull light bouncing off the windows. I examined all the pieces, brushing aside the snow to uncover the Morse code and the compass rose. It was like unearthing hieroglyphs in some ancient ruin. Agents and bureaucrats shuffled past, deep in thought, clutching cups of coffee from the onsite Starbucks. In their midst, Jim Sanborn's statement in copper, wood, and granite remains, proof that even in the house of spies, some truths may never be found. [Levy/Wired/20April2009] 

Section III - COMMENTARY

Not Very Intelligent. Bureaucrats don't make good spies. That's the lesson the Obama administration needs to learn from the U.S. inspector general's report on the Office of Director of National Intelligence. Completed in November and declassified this month, the government's oversight office has determined that director's office has not served the intelligence needs of the nation.

According to the unclassified version of the inspector general's report, the nation's spy chief was unable to do his job because of an unwieldy number of overlapping layers of authority at the 16 different intelligence agencies he oversees. It also stated that the two previous national directors of intelligence spent too much time briefing the White House and Congress at the expense of actually managing the nation's intelligence apparatus.

Created by a Republican-controlled Congress and President George W. Bush in 2004, the new intelligence office was intended to create one chain of command within the intelligence network so that the numerous spy agencies could create synergies and work on a shared agenda. The vision has yet to be realized. In fact, many intelligence officials aren't sure the office has a vision.

The inspector general's report states that "many" intelligence officials, including senior personnel, "were unable to articulate a clear understanding" of the national intelligence director's role and responsibilities. Stovepipes limiting agency interactions largely remain in place, which restricts access to data "essential for analysis" across multiple "largely disjoined and incompatible" information networks that are still not integrated. A common complaint among intelligence officers was that they did not know who was actually in charge of the U.S. intelligence community.

The constipation that resulted from trying to create a new super-intelligence office provides a cautionary tale for the Obama administration as it considers creating a new cyber-security czar and other new governmental offices. Adding more bureaucracy is not a way to effect change. The nation's intelligence failures before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were largely due to the existence of too many competing intelligence agencies that did not share information or work together. It is no surprise that yet another layer of bureaucracy hasn't made the intelligence community work. [WashingtonTimes/13April2009] 

Section IV - RESEARCH REQUESTS, BOOK REVIEWS AND COMING EVENTS

Research

The Psychology and Military Intelligence Casebook on Interrogation Ethics— Psychologists and interrogators researching the Casebook seek consultations with knowledgeable health personnel and intelligence personnel for understanding the systems issues.  Sample transcripts of previous consultations are posted at http://www.pmicasebook.com/PMI_Casebook/Consults.html.  Research materials will be deposited in Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University (http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt709nf1v2).   Please contact Jean Maria Arrigo, PhD, at peat@peat-intel.org.

Book Review

Nazi War Crimes: Intelligence Agencies and Selective Legal Accountability, by Michael Salter, Reviewed by Norman J.W. Goda. One of the less understood matters in postwar justice for National Socialist criminals concerns the degree to which western intelligence agencies shielded Nazi suspects from prosecution in return for services rendered during the war or in its immediate aftermath. Since the 1980s, journalists have argued that the use of former SS and SD officers by western agencies, the U.S. Army and CIA in particular, was systematic and directed from the very top. The practice, it was argued, not only allowed Nazi perpetrators and their east European collaborators to escape justice, it also accelerated the onset and hardening of the Cold War, demonstrating as it did to the Soviets that the West would work with highly placed Nazis. The recent declassification of millions of pages of OSS, CIA, FBI, Army Counterintelligence, and State Department records due to the U.S. Congress's passage of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act in 1998 tells a more nuanced story and will continue to do so in the years ahead as more historians sift through the new records and situate them within older ones. What can be said at present is that the American use of former Nazi officials, while surely mistaken, was more ad hoc than critics have suggested. The Soviets, moreover, probably played this game better than the Americans did, having penetrated West German intelligence with their own former creatures from the SS, Geheime Feldpolizei, and other Nazi agencies.

The larger question for Michael Salter concerns the degree to which intelligence agencies are by nature a hindrance to postwar justice, since the latter involves the handover of secret information to judicial agencies and the potential punishment of informants. The question is as much contemporary as historical, since today's intelligence agencies enjoy a far greater capability of collecting evidence of mass atrocities and of locating perpetrators for eventual capture and trial. But Salter is specifically interested in the institutional life of the OSS's successor agencies (Strategic Services Unit and CIA) in the immediate aftermath of the war. Did the U.S. intelligence establishment help or hinder the prosecution of the major Nazi criminals at Nuremberg and the prosecution of lesser perpetrators afterwards? To what degree did it protect assets who had once served the Nazi regime to the detriment of justice? Salter uses newly declassified OSS and CIA records as well as other newly available sources, such as the papers of Robert Jackson, U.S. chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, the papers of OSS chief William Donovan, and the papers of Allen Dulles, OSS station head in Bern, who collected reams of information on Hitler's Germany.

The book covers several loosely connected themes. The lengthy section on Donovan's role in the preparation of the Trial of the Major War Criminals in 1945 does not reveal for the first time that the OSS played an important role, but it does make clear the sheer extent of the help that the OSS chief provided in terms of trained personnel; intelligence analysis of the Nazi state from OSS experts like Franz Naumann; the location, collection, and translation of key captured German documents in London; the provision of Dulles's informants from within Nazi Germany such as Fritz Kolbe, Hans Gisevius, and Fabian von Schlabrendorff; and even courtroom presentations such as the stirring film used at the Tribunal, Nazi Concentration Camps. Donovan, Salter shows, had an interest in punishing the guilty almost from the moment OSS was formed in 1942, and while the U.S. and British diplomatic and military establishments dithered in arriving at a war crimes policy, Donovan and the OSS Research and Analysis staff assembled lists of likely defendants while thinking about the laws under which postwar trials might take place. Donovan, an accomplished legal mind whose views are often left out of books covering the legal debates leading to Nuremberg, wanted German trials under Allied supervision under existing German law to avoid later accusations of victor's justice and ex post facto law, charges that have bedeviled Nuremberg to this day. He even considered plea bargains for certain defendants (including Hermann G�ring and Hjalmar Schacht) on the assumption that they would reveal much about their former comrades and completely de-legitimize the Nazi state. Donovan lost these and other arguments and had left his post as Jackson's top lieutenant by the time the trial started in October 1945. But his role in terms of institutional help from OSS and in terms of presenting legal alternatives was enormous and indispensable.

The darker side of Salter's book involves the well-known story of Operation Sunrise - the secret surrender of May 2, 1945 in Italy arranged between Dulles and SS-Obergruppenf�hrer Karl Wolff, Heinrich Himmler's one-time chief of staff and Higher SS and Police Leader Italy. Dulles presented the story very carefully after the war and it made the reputation upon which his future career in the CIA was built. Wolff, according to Dulles, was an idealistic soldier who risked his life to spare thousands of combat-related deaths, while Dulles himself skillfully brought the negotiations to fruition. The mysteries concern what Dulles really knew about Wolff and the degree to which Wolff and his subordinates were promised and then given legal immunity from prosecution. Earlier literature has shown that Dulles was fully aware of the scale of German atrocities even as he took up residence in Bern. Salter shows that Dulles was likely aware as early as 1944 of Wolff's complicity in the deportation of Italian Jews, to say nothing of postwar dossiers assembled on Wolff that linked Wolff to altitude experiments on Dachau inmates; contracting with German firms for slave laborers; Order Police shootings of Jews; the deportation of three hundred thousand Jews to Treblinka; bloody reprisals against more than nine thousand Italian civilians, and many more war crimes. Many of the documents in question were used at the Trial of the Major War Criminals itself.

As for legal immunity, such could only be mentioned under the vague rubric of "honorable treatment," since President Roosevelt would not consider such quid pro quos after 1944. Yet whatever this state of affairs meant, Wolff insisted on full compensation after the war. Salter's best work concerns Dulles's various interventions to protect Wolff from prosecution lest Wolff, whose extensive crimes would come out at trial, also spill the details of the entire Sunrise affair, endangering Dulles's reputation and the institutional life of the OSS while providing the Soviets and Italian communists with anti-American fodder. Wolff was thus never prosecuted at Nuremberg, either at the international trial or the subsequent American ones; he was not handed over to the Italians or to the Czechs, though both countries wanted him; and the British, at U.S. insistence, rigged Wolff's 1948 German denazification hearing in Hamburg so that little incriminating material would be revealed and so that Wolff would receive minimal punishment. Salter includes fascinating material on the writing and rewriting of defense affidavits for the Hamburg trial aimed at getting everyone's Sunrise stories straight while omitting Wolff's crimes as well as the anti-communist aspect of the Sunrise negotiations. Wolff settled into a comfortable postwar life until West German authorities tried him in 1964. With no occupation authorities left to protect him, the full measure of his guilt came out, though owing to age and illness he escaped the punishment he deserved.

The remainder of Salter's book covers the convoluted tales of Wolff's subordinates, including the dangerous SD agent, Guido Zimmer, and the more foppish SS translator, Eugen Dollmann. Zimmer was hired as an American counterintelligence agent in Italy and Germany and given a false past that included helping rather than smashing Italian resisters and which omitted his anti-Jewish measures in Milan. He was always a security risk. Dollmann was briefly hired and then simply protected by U.S. intelligence because he would prove an embarrassment if ever tried by the Italian authorities. As time went on, opinions varied within the U.S. intelligence community about whether protecting such men was worth the risk and bother. But the story of Dulles's aplomb with Sunrise was, for the time being, protected.

Salter's book will appeal to scholars of wartime intelligence and postwar justice. The book unfortunately carries a number of sloppy copyediting errors, including redundancies and misspellings of German names and places. It also tends to emphasize relationships between American and British agencies in the lead-up to the Nuremberg trial, while giving less attention to the roles of the Soviets, the French, and the United Nations War Crimes Commission, all of whom had opinions on the politics of postwar justice and espionage. The book is also ridiculously priced, meaning that only libraries will purchase it. Regardless, it is important for what it tells us about the multifaceted and nuanced relationship between intelligence and justice, for its incorporation of the OSS into the narrative of the pre-history of the Nuremberg Trials, and for its new revelations on the long afterlife of Operation Sunrise.  [Goda/WarAndGame/8April2009] 

COMING EVENTS

EVENTS IN COMING TWO MONTHS....

Tuesday, 21 April 2009, noon - Newport News, VA - The new AFIO Norman Forde Hampton Roads Chapter meets in Room 207 of the Trible Library on CNU campus, Newport News with representatives of CNU's Center for American Studies and Civic Leadership (CASCL). Drs. Nathan E. Busch, co-director of the Center; Tatiana Rizova from the Department of Government and Andrew Falk from the History Department. The first hour of the meeting with be discussion about a possible partnership between AFIO Hampton Roads and CASCL; some proposed activities of the partnership include an annual regional workshop on a national security/ intelligence topic, speakers' forums, etc. The last 30 minutes of the meeting will be discussion of AFIO chapter matters -- next meetings, update on bylaws, etc. Questions to Melissa at MWSaunders@cox.net.or call her at 757-897-6268

21 - 24 April 2009 - Chicago, IL - the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals host their annual conference in Chicago.
The SCIP Annual Conference and Exhibition provides unique opportunities for education and networking, as well as showcasing the newest in products and services. See everything that SCIP09 has to offer and join us in Chicago!
Visit http://www.scip.org/content.cfm?itemnumber=5782 for more information and easy registration. $100 discount on main conference on registrations received by March 31, 2009. Special room rates and travel discounts are offered. http://www.scip.org/content.cfm?itemnumber=5782
Learn - SCIP09 has more than 60 CI sessions in five key tracks of critical and pertinent education topics, and provides access to pre-conference workshops with themes crucial to your professional development, delivered by thought leaders in the field.
Network - SCIP09 is the premiere venue for expanding your professional and personal network of CI peers from around the globe.
Shop Around - Gather information about CI vendors and consultants. SCIP09 provides the world’s most comprehensive gathering of experienced CI vendors and consultants.
Keynote speaker Michael Treacy is a world-renowned author and expert in the field, on tap to excite the audience with his CI-focused address.
Stock Up - Access to the largest collection of CI publications available, at greatly reduced prices - including the “Topics of CI” series published by the CI Foundation.
For information on the event and/or to register visit: http://www.scip.org/content.cfm?itemnumber=5782
Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, 1700 Diagonal Rd Ste 600, Alexandria, VA 22314 www.scip.org

Wednesday, 22 April 2009, 7 pm - Miami, FL - The Ted Shackley AFIO Miami Chapter invites members to hear Victor D. Comras, Esq., on "Monitoring Terrorism Abroad." He speaks at their dinner meeting at the 94th Aero Squadron , 1395 NW 57th Avenue , Miami. (305) 261 4220 ( near the Miami International Airport off Perimeter Road)
PARKING: Free/ be careful of low flying aircraft landing at Miami International Airport. Dinner is choice of Salmon or Steak, $30.00 prepaid by mail. Mail check to Tom Spencer, 999 Ponce de Leon Blvd. Suite 510, Coral Gables Florida 33134. HOSTS: The Board of Directors of the Miami Chapter. ; Robert Heber;
and Tom Spencer at TRSMiami@aol.com; Carlos Melendez. RSVP: to Tom Spencer
Victor D. Comras, a retired career diplomat of the United States, is special counsel to The Eren Law Firm. Mr. Comras joined the firm from the United Nations, where he served, under appointment by Secretary General Kofi Annan, as one of five international monitors to oversee the implementation of Security Council measures against terrorism (al-Qaeda) and terrorism financing.

Wednesday, 22 April 2009 - Arlington, VA - The Defense Intelligence Forum Meets on "Cuba Wars: Castro, the U.S., and the Next Revolution." The group will meet at the Alpine Restaurant, 4770 Lee Highway, Arlington, VA 22207. The speaker will be Daniel P Erikson, who will speak on his recent book, The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the Next Revolution. Mr. Erikson is a senior associate for U.S. Policy and director of Caribbean programs at the Inter-American Dialogue, where his work focuses on U.S. foreign policy in the region. His articles have appeared in Current History, the Miami Herald, SAIS Review, the Washington Post, and World Policy Journal. He frequently speaks on radio and television and is often cited by the U.S. and international press. His past positions include research associate at Harvard Business School and Fulbright scholar in U.S.-Mexican business relations. Pay at the door with a check for $29 made payable to DIAA, Inc. Copies of his latest book will be for sale at this event. Social hour starts at 1130, lunch at 1200. Make reservations for you and your guests by 13 April by email to diforum@verizon.net. Give names, telephone numbers, email addresses, and choices of chicken, veal, or salmon. Pay at with a check. WE DON’T TAKE CASH!

23-26 April 2009 - Great Lakes, IL - The Midwest Chapter of AFIO will host its annual conference at the Great Lakes Naval Station. Registration is $10 per person. Hotel reservations ($65 per night) can be made through April 10th by calling the Navy Lodge at 1-847-689-1485. Mention that you are with the Midwest AFIO Chapter. For more information and to confirm your attendance, please contact Angelo Di Liberti ASAP at 847-931-4184.

24 - 26 April 2009 - Nashua, NH - The Naval Cryptologic Veterans Association New England Chapter (NCVA-NE) will hold its Spring Mini-Reunion at the Radisson Hotel Nashua.
The hotel is located at 11 Tara Boulevard, Nashua, New Hampshire 03062. For information, please call (518) 664-8032 or visit their website at http://ncva-ne.org. Local individuals who served with the U.S. Naval Security Group or with its counterpart in NETWARCOM are eligible and welcome to attend the mini-reunion. New members are welcome.
Point of Contact: Vic Knorowski, NCVA-NE Publicity Chair. 8 Eagle Lane, Mechanicville, New York 12118 (518) 664-8032

Saturday, 25 April 2009, 1100 - 1430 - North Andover, MA - AFIO New England Chapter meets to hear: Problems and Prospects on U.S. Intelligence. Guest speaker: Joseph Wippl, a retired CIA Senior Officer who served as Chief of the European Division in the National Clandestine Service and as Chief of Station in key posts throughout Europe. He is now teaching at Boston University. Mr. Wippl will address the Problems and Prospects for US Espionage. Where: In the Murry Lounge located in the Sakowich Campus Center on the campus of Merrimac College, 315 Turnpike St, North Andover, MA 01845. A map of the campus can be found here http://kahuna.merrimack.edu/map/map_new.html and on a separate page, directions here http://www.merrimack.edu/maps_directions/Pages/default.aspx or on the map page.
Local hotels can be found here http://www.merrimack.edu/about/visiting/Pages/Hotels.aspx
Schedule: Registration & gathering, 11:00 - 1200, Luncheon at 1200 followed by our speaker, with adjournment at 2:30PM.
Note, as this meeting is a one day event we have not made any hotel arrangements.
For additional information contact us at afionechapter@gmail.com
Advance reservations are $20.00, $25.00 at the door - per person.
Luncheon reservations must be made by 15 April 2009.
Mail your check and the reservation form to:
Mr. Arthur Hulnick 216 Summit Avenue # E102 Brookline, MA 02446 617-739-7074 or hlnk@aol.com

30 April - 1 May 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.

2 May 2009 - Washington, DC - The OSS Society William J. Donovan Award Dinner Honors General David H. Petraeus, USA, Commander, United States Central Command at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, 1330 Maryland Ave SW, Washington, DC. Black Tie/Dress Mess. Cocktails, $150 pp. 6:30 p.m., Dinner 7:30 p.m. For further information or to register call 703-356-6667 or visit oss@osssociety.org

Saturday, 9 May 2009, 11 .m. - 3 p.m. - Gainesville, FL - The North Florida Chapter speaker will be Gary Loeffert, Supervising Special Agent for Counter Terrorism, FBI Jacksonville. His emphasis will be on port security – an update, as it were, to a presentation in September 2004 by Steven Roberts of Jacksonville Homeland Security – since Jacksonville’s growth in port activity has raised our global footprint. Compatriot and previous speaker Ken Nimmich is our source for this important subject, and Ken might be prevailed upon to comment on his important contracting experience in Kuala Lumpur.
Again, very timely and important subjects, well worth the time, a nice lunch and great fellowship, so hope everyone can find a warm spot on their calendar for this meeting.
Chapter meeting will be held at the Orange Park Country Club on Loch Rane Boulevard, west of Blanding Boulevard.
Social hour runs from 11:00 am to noon, lunch from noon until about 12:45 pm, followed by a brief break. Guest speaker presentation will begin at about 1:00 pm, and Chapter business and discussions at 2:00 pm. Adjournment will be by 3:00 pm. A reminder that all compatriots and their spouses, guests and potential members are cordially invited...indeed, encouraged!
Please RSVP right away for the 9 May meeting to Ken Meyer at kmeyer12@bellsouth.net or 904-777-2050. The cost will be $16 each, pay the Country Club at the event.

Wednesday, 13 May 2009; 7 pm - Coral Gables, FL - The Ted Shackley Miami AFIO Chapter hosts a Dinner at the 94th Aero Squadron. The special guest speaker at this event will be Luis Rueda. Rueda is currently serving as the Officer in Residence at the University of Miami. He joined the CIA as an Operations Officer in 1981 and served multiple tours in Latin America before returning to Washington. He has served as head of the CIA’s operations training course, chief of East European operations, Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, chief of Iraq Operations, and chief of operations and Counterintelligence for the Middle East.
WHERE: 94th Aero Squadron, Miami International Airport Perimeter Rd, The 94th Aero Squadron Restaurant is located near the intersection of Highway 836 and North Red Road. 1395 NW 57th Avenue.
PARKING: Free, but DUCK YOUR HEAD !
EVENT: DINNER, with SPECIAL GUEST. Do not miss this Event !
COST: $35.00 prepaid. Send check payable to AFIO to Thomas Spencer at 999 Ponce de Leon Blvd., Suite 510, Coral Gables, Florida 33134. TRSMiami@aol.com
305 648 0940.
HOSTS: The Board of Directors of the Miami Chapter.
RSVP: Please RSVP to Tom Spencer. Space is limited. Guests must be cleared in advance.

14 May 2009 – San Francisco, CA – The AFIO Jim Quesada Chapter hosts Dr. Amir Hamidi, Resident Agent in Charge, DEA SF field office. Dr. Hamidi has provided training to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) and State and local agencies in the area of International Terrorism and Middle Eastern Affairs. The topic will be Executive Survival & International Narco Terrorism in Your Community.
RSVP required. 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. E-mail RSVP to Mariko Kawaguchi (please indicate chicken pomodoro or filet of fish) no later than 5PM 4/7/09: mariko@cataphora.com and mail your check made out to "AFIO" to: Mariko Kawaguchi, P.O. Box 117578 Burlingame, CA 94011. (650) 622-9840 X608.

14 May 2009, 11:30 a.m. - Scottsdale, AZ - The AFIO Arizona Chapter hosts Dr. Guntram Werther on Improving U.S. Intelligence Collections in the 21st Century. Dr. Guntram F. A. Werther will speak Thursday, May 16. He earned his doctorate (defended with “distinction”) from Washington University in St. Louis (1990): having it also twice nominated as the best work in comparative politics nationally (APSA Gabriel Almond Prize nominations for both 1991 & 1992).
The official title of talk:“A presentation on those factors that might move intelligence assessment forward in ways that improve our collective ability to navigate the 21st century”
Dr. Werther’s current specialization is in developing holistically integrative training and assessment techniques for better forecasting emerging international trends and patterns of international change; perhaps currently the most serious defect within our business and government intelligence analysis capability.
Currently, he is Executive in Residence at Thunderbird—The School of Global Management, is Associate Faculty (graduate level strategy) at Arizona State University’s W. B. Carey School of Management, and is a Professor at Western International University, as well as a contractor to Fortune 100 firms and U.S. government projects addressing senior level operational decision-makers.
New Location: McCormick Ranch Golf Course, 7505 McCormick Parkway, Scottsdale AZ 85258 ~ Phone 480.948.0260)
RSVP: email Simone sl@4smartphone.net or simone@afioaz.org or call and leave a message on 602.570.6016

15 May 2009 - Tysons Corner, VA - AFIO Spring Luncheon featuring Shawn Henry, FBI.

17 May 2009, 6:00 to 10:00 pm - Tysons Corner, VA - The National Military Intelligence Association holds the annual awards banquet.
The banquet supports and acknowledges the contributions of the U.S. Military Intelligence community and the individual accomplishments of its professionals.
Location: Hilton McLean Tysons Corner. Further details are here:
For further information about the event visit https://www.123signup.com/Member?PG=1522955182400&P=1522955132314133158594700&Info

20-21 May 2009 - Washington, DC - Alexander Vassiliev’s Notebooks and the Documentation of KGB Operations in the United States, 1930-1950 - a special program by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Cold War International History Project

Tentative program:
20 May 2009, 3 p.m.  - Welcome by Christian F. Ostermann, director, History & Public Policy Program, Woodrow
Wilson Center; 3:30 - 5 - Speaker TBA; 5:30 p.m. Panel 1 Provenance of the Notebooks and their use in Spies: the Rise and Fall of the KGB in America - Chair: James G. Hershberg
Alexander Vassiliev: “How I came to Write the Notebooks”; John Earl Haynes: “Digesting the Notebooks: Transcription, Translation, and Concordance Preparation”; Harvey Klehr: “Highlights and Findings (Expected and Unexpected) in Spies”. Comments by Mark Kramer (Harvard U), Katherine Sibley (St. Josephs) and James G. Hershberg (George Washington)
Discussion
5:30 p.m. Reception in Moynihan Board Room

21 May 2009, 10 a.m. - Speaker TBA; 12:00 p.m. Panel 2: Hiss, Stone, and Counterintelligence Chair: G. Edward White; Eduard Mark: “In Re Alger Hiss: A Final Verdict from the Archive of the KGB.”; Max Holland: “Three Tales of I.F. Stone and the KGB: Kalugin, Venona, and the Notebooks”; John Fox: “What the Spiders Did: U.S. and Soviet Counterintelligence before the Cold War”; Comments by G. Edward White (U. VA Law), Bruce Craig (independent scholar)
Discussion
2:00 p.m. Panel 3: “Atomic and Technical Espionage”; Chair: Ronald Radosh; Steve Usdin: “The Rosenberg Ring: Industrial-Scale Technical and Atomic Espionage”; Greg Herken: “Target Enormoz: Soviet Atomic Espionage on the West Coast, 1942-1950”; Robert S. Norris: “George Koval, A New and Unusual Manhattan Project Spy”; Comments by Ronald Radosh (CUNY, emeritus), Barton Bernstein (Stanford U)
Discussion
4:00 – Speaker TBA
4:30 p.m. Concluding Panel
Chair: Mark Kramer - Panelists and Audience Discussion

TO ATTEND or FOR MORE INFORMATION: visit Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson Center, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, D.C. 20004-3027; Email: coldwar@wilsoncenter.org, Tel: 202/691-4110.
Reservations are not required. All meetings take place at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. Please see the map and directions here. Allow time for routine security procedures. A photo ID is required for entry. To confirm time and place, contact Maria-Stella Gatzoulis on the day of the event: tel. (202) 691-4188. Check this page for the latest updates and notices.

21 May 2009 at 12:30 pm - Los Angeles, CA - The AFIO Los Angeles Chapter luncheon features Dr. Jeffrey Richelson, on U.S. surveillance satellites. Richelson, a senior fellow with the National Security Archive, will talk on the topic of domestic applications of U.S. reconnaissance and surveillance satellites. Dr. Richelson's recent work examined the Nuclear Emergency Support Team, U.S. intelligence efforts against foreign nuclear weapons programs, and various elements of satellite reconnaissance activities.
Where: on the campus of Loyola Marymount University. Cost: Lunch will be provided for $15, payment accepted at the door. For attendance reservations please forward email confirmation by no later than 5/15/09: AFIO_LA@yahoo.com

21 May 2009 - Arlington, VA - The Defense Intelligence Forum meets to hear Provost, Defense Intelligence College -- Dr. Susan Studds The speaker will be Dr. Susan M. Studds, National Defense Intelligence College Provost, speaking on the Defense Intelligence College.  Dr. Studds joined the college from the National Defense University where she was a professor in the Information Resources Management. She was Deputy Director of Assessment, Accreditation, and Faculty Development at NDU and later became NDU Assistant Vice President and Acting Provost. She was on the executive committee of the Program for Accreditation of Joint Education and the Substantive Change Committee of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. She taught strategic leadership and decision making, education as a national security factor, and American Studies for International Fellows, a course that she established.  Dr. Studds has been Director of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities' National Retention Project and Director of its Center for Educational Opportunity and Achievement. She served as Special Assistant to the Provost at George Mason University.
Event occurs at the Alpine Restaurant, 4770 Lee Highway, Arlington, VA 22207. Pay at the door with a check for $29 per person payable to DIAA, Inc.  Social hour starts at 1130, lunch at 1200.  Make reservations for you and your guests by 14 May by email to diforum@verizon.net.  In your response, give your name and the names of your guests.  For each, choose chicken, veal, or salmon.  Include also telephone numbers and email addresses for you and your guests.  Pay with a check.  WE DO NOT TAKE CASH!

26 - 28 May 2009 - Adelphi, MD - International Association for Intelligence Education hosts annual meeting and Conference at University of Maryland. Conference features series of concurrent workshops on "Teaching Intelligence” from teaching intelligence culture, law enforcement analysis, to competitive intelligence. An impressive program of proposed speakers and topics. Confirmed speakers to be announced. The conference features presentations by the winners of the Outstanding Teacher of the Year and winning intelligence essays by a variety of students.
LOCATION: University of Maryland University College Inn and Conference Center
FEES:  $20,000 for conference sponsorship to serve as conference co-host. $10,000 for dinner sponsorship for a May 27 dinner; $5,000 Sponsor for Luncheon either Wednesday, May 27 —or— Thursday, May 28 OR Tuesday, May 26 Opening Reception; $1,000 for For-Profit members of IAFIE: $1,000 EXHIBIT Booth/Display fees. Other prices available. For individuals: $400 for both days of conference; $200 for one day only. To register, call (814) 824-2131 or email iafieconfreg@gmail.com

9 June 2009 - Newport News, VA - The AFIO Norman Forde Hampton Roads Chapter is planning a meeting and address by member Dr. Larry Wortzel on U.S.-China relations.... details TBA. Questions to Melissa at MWSaunders@cox.net or call her at 757-897-6268

13 June 2009 - Boston, MA - AFIO Boston Pops Committee commemorates the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. Join AFIO Boston-based members at Symphony Hall for a special Boston Pops Concert celebrating our nation’s triumphant achievement. Historic footage of the lunar landing provided by NASA will accompany a program of stirring patriotic music including Holst’s The Planets. Honor one of America’s proudest moments in space exploration with a spectacular Pops concert.  The AFIO Pops Committee has relocated the event back to Boston for our seventh annual Pops social event. Conductor Keith Lockhart will lead the Pops at Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue Boston, MA 02115. Join other AFIO members and friends in the Hatch Room lounge located behind the orchestra level for a social hour before the performance begins. For tickets, call Symphony Hall Charge at 888-266-1200 or online at www.bso.org. Tickets sell from $18.00 to $85.00 and are now on sale.  After purchasing your tickets, please contact Gary at wassinmaryland@aol.com  so I can add your name to the list to look for at the 1 hour social prior to the concert. Ticket prices for attending this concert does not include a gift to AFIO however the Association of Former Intelligence Officers relies greatly upon the generosity of members, corporations, foundations, and the general public who understand and wish to encourage sound intelligence policy and education in the United States.  These gifts allow AFIO and its chapters to carry out important activities in the areas of education, advocacy, seminars, publications, and conferences. Please help by making a financial donation to AFIO. Tax receipts will be issued for donations of $100 or more (does not include Pops ticket cost).  All gifts to AFIO are tax deductible.  AFIO is an IRS approved 501(c)(3) charity. We request this be done separately if you are able to contribute to AFIO. Gifts may be made here.

Wednesday, 8 July 2009, 6 p.m. - New York, NY - The AFIO Metro NY Chapter hosts Lt. General Deptula, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance HQ USAF. The topic being the Predator program and its future. Further information available from Jerry Goodwin, President, AFIO - New York Metropolitan Chapter,
347-334-1503

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

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