Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Foreign Spies Hack Into Australian Government. Foreign spies are increasingly using the internet to hack into Australian Government computers, including in an attempt to get information that could be used for weapons of mass destruction, according to Australian intelligence.

Australian intelligence director-general David Irvine said internet-enabled espionage was a rapidly growing threat to the national interest.

''Whereas our focus was once on nation states and their human agents, the threat is now more varied and today's response requires high technology to be joined with traditional tradecraft. ASIO's counter espionage expertise is being combined with specialist capability residing in other national security community agencies,'' he said.

''Today's increasingly interconnected world has great benefits, but it also provides new opportunities for state and non-state actors to advantage themselves at Australia's expense. Espionage and foreign interference, for example, threaten not only the integrity of our national institutions but also our economic competitiveness and community cohesion.

''Like terrorism, espionage and foreign interference is enabled by technology and the free flow of people, goods and ideas across borders.''

Australia would remain a terrorist target for the foreseeable future. It said East Africa joined the Middle East and South Asia as the ''primary sources of motivation and capability for extremists in Australia''.

''Small numbers of Australians continue to look to conflict theatres overseas for inspiration and some aspire to participate in the violence or seek to learn from the tactics and techniques employed by extremists there,'' it said.

The number of ''known Islamic extremists - those willing to use violence in pursuit of political objectives in Australia - is very small but significant and did not change substantially in 2008-09''.

Australians were more likely to be targeted overseas than at home, and ASIO said Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba was ''particularly noteworthy in light of the Commonwealth Games to be held in New Delhi, India in 2010''. Indonesian based Jemaah Islamiyah blamed for the Bali bombings was ''in a consolidation and rebuilding phase, but has not abandoned its violent Islamist goals''. [Mclennan/CanberraTimes/27October2009] 

Danish Intelligence Says Planned Attacks Not Imminent. Danish intelligence officials say they worked closely with the FBI to thwart an alleged terrorist plot by two Chicago men against a Danish newspaper.

The Danish Security and Intelligence Service, or PET, said Tuesday that attacks against the newspaper were not imminent.

Prosecutors say 49-year-old David Coleman Headley and 48-year-old Tahawwur Hussain Rana planned to attack the Danish newspaper that sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world by publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

The men were charged in separate complaints filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago. Prosecutors say Headley traveled to Denmark to identify potential targets for a terrorist attack and that Rana helped arrange Headley's travel. [AP/27October2009] 

Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll. Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country's booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.'s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai's home.

The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America's increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.'s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

More broadly, some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large swath of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, undermines the American push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.

Ahmed Wali Karzai said in an interview that he cooperates with American civilian and military officials, but does not engage in the drug trade and does not receive payments from the C.I.A.

The relationship between Mr. Karzai and the C.I.A. is wide ranging, several American officials said. He helps the C.I.A. operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents and terrorists. On at least one occasion, the strike force has been accused of mounting an unauthorized operation against an official of the Afghan government, the officials said.

Mr. Karzai is also paid for allowing the C.I.A. and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city - the former home of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's founder. The same compound is also the base of the Kandahar Strike Force. "He's our landlord," a senior American official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Mr. Karzai also helps the C.I.A. communicate with and sometimes meet with Afghans loyal to the Taliban. Mr. Karzai's role as a go-between between the Americans and the Taliban is regarded by supporters of working with Mr. Karzai as valuable now, as the Obama administration is placing a greater focus on encouraging Taliban leaders to change sides.

Some American officials said that the allegations of Mr. Karzai's role in the drug trade were not conclusive. "There's no proof of Ahmed Wali Karzai's involvement in drug trafficking, certainly nothing that would stand up in court," said one American official familiar with the intelligence. "And you can't ignore what the Afghan government has done for American counterterrorism efforts."

At the start of the Afghan war, just after the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States, American officials paid warlords with questionable backgrounds to help topple the Taliban and maintain order with relatively few American troops committed to fight in the country. But as the Taliban has become resurgent and the war has intensified, Americans have increasingly viewed a strong and credible central government as crucial to turning back the Taliban's advances.

Now, with more American lives on the line, the relationship with Mr. Karzai is sparking anger and frustration among American military officers and other officials in the Obama administration. They say that Mr. Karzai's suspected role in the drug trade, as well as what they describe as the mafia-like way that he lords over southern Afghanistan, makes him a malevolent force.

These military and political officials say the evidence, though largely circumstantial, suggests strongly that Mr. Karzai has enriched himself by helping the illegal trade in poppy and opium to flourish. The assessment of these military and senior officials in the Obama administration dovetails with that of senior officials in the Bush administration.

American officials say that Afghanistan's opium trade, the largest in the world, directly threatens the stability of the Afghan state, by providing a large percentage of the money the Taliban needs for its operations, and also by corrupting Afghan public officials to help the trade flourish.

The Obama administration has repeatedly vowed to crack down on the drug lords who are believed to permeate the highest levels of President Karzai's administration. They have pressed him to move his brother out of southern Afghanistan, but he has so far refused to do so.

Other Western officials pointed to evidence that Ahmed Wali Karzai orchestrated the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of phony ballots for his brother's re-election effort last August. He is also believed to have been responsible for setting up dozens of so-called "ghost" polling stations - existing only on paper - that were used to manufacture tens of thousands of phony ballots.

In an interview, Ahmed Wali Karzai denied any role in the drug trade and that he takes money from the C.I.A. He said he received regular payments from his brother, the president, for "expenses," but said he did not know where the money came from. He has, among other things, introduced Americans to insurgents considering changing sides. And he has given the Americans intelligence, he said. But he said he is not compensated for that assistance.

"I don't know anyone under the name of the C.I.A.," Mr. Karzai said. "I have never received any money from any organization. I help, definitely. I help other Americans wherever I can. This is my duty as an Afghan."

Mr. Karzai acknowledged that the C.I.A. and special forces stay at Mullah Omar's old compound. And he acknowledged that the Kandahar Strike Force is based there. But he said he no involvement with them.

A former C.I.A. officer with experience in Afghanistan said the agency relied heavily on Ahmed Wali Karzai, and often based covert operatives at compounds he owned. Any connections Mr. Karzai might have had to the drug trade mattered little to C.I.A. officers focused on counterterrorism missions, the officer said.

"Virtually every significant Afghan figure has had brushes with the drug trade," he said. "If you are looking for Mother Teresa, she doesn't live in Afghanistan."

The debate over Ahmed Wali Karzai, which began when President Obama took office in January, intensified in June, when the C.I.A.'s local paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, shot and killed Kandahar's Provincial police chief, Matiullah Qati, in a still-unexplained shootout at the office of a local prosecutor.

The circumstances surrounding Mr. Qati's death remain shrouded in mystery. It is unclear, for instance, if any agency operatives were present - but officials say the firefight broke out when Mr. Qati tried to block the strike force from freeing the brother of a task force member who was being held in custody.

Counternarcotics officials have repeatedly expressed frustration over the unwillingness of senior policy makers in Washington to take action against Mr. Karzai - or even launch a serious investigation of the allegations against him. In fact, they say that while other Afghans accused of drug involvement are investigated and singled out for raids or even rendition to the United States, Mr. Karzai has seemed immune from similar scrutiny.

For years, first the Bush administration and then the Obama administration have said that the Taliban benefits from the drug trade, and the U.S. military has recently expanded its target list to include drug traffickers with ties to the insurgency. The military has generated a list of 50 top drug traffickers tied to the Taliban who can now be killed or captured.

Senior Afghan investigators say they know plenty about Mr. Karzai's involvement in the drug business. In an interview in Kabul earlier this year, a top former Afghan Interior Ministry official familiar with Afghan counter narcotics operations said that a major source of Mr. Karzai's influence over the drug trade was his control over key bridges crossing the Helmand River on the route between the opium growing regions of Helmand Province and Kandahar.

The former Interior Ministry official said that Mr. Karzai is able to charge huge fees to drug traffickers to allow their drug-laden trucks to cross the bridges.

But the former officials said it was impossible for Afghan counternarcotics officials to investigate Mr. Karzai. "This government has become a factory for the production of Talibs because of corruption and injustice," the former official said.

Some American counternarcotics officials have said they believe that Mr. Karzai has expanded his influence over the drug trade, thanks in part to American efforts to target other drug lords.

In debriefing notes from Drug Enforcement Administration interviews in 2006 of Afghan informants obtained by The New York Times, one key informant said that Ahmed Wali Karzai had benefited from the American operation that lured Haji Bashir Noorzai, a major Afghan drug lord during the time that the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, to New York in 2005. Mr. Noorzai was convicted on drug and conspiracy charges in New York in 2008, and was sentenced to life in prison earlier this year.

Habibullah Jan, a local military commander and later a member of parliament from Kandahar, told the D.E.A. in 2006 that Mr. Karzai had teamed with Haji Juma Khan to take over a portion of the Noorzai drug business after Mr. Noorzai's arrest. [Filkins&Mazzetti&Risen/NYTimes/28October2009] 

South Korea Announces Arrest of North Korean Spy. South Korean security authorities announced the arrest of a college lecturer on charges of spying for North Korea, saying he was recruited by Pyongyang's agents in India.

The man, identified only as Lee, is accused of passing information on South Korean military operations and facilities to the communist North, state prosecutors and the National Intelligence Service said in a joint statement.

Lee, 37, who was recruited in 1992 while studying at a college in New Delhi, visited Pyongyang twice to become a communist party member and received a total of 50,600 dollars in operational funds, they said.

He allegedly stole classified information using his status as a member of the National Unification Advisory Council, a state organization promoting unification of the peninsula.

Information he passed to the North between 1997 and February this year included locations of key government facilities as well as US and South Korean military facilities, the statement said.

Lee had accumulated military information and data while serving as a troop information and education officer in the army in 2001, it said.

He received a North Korean decoration during a trip to Singapore in 2003 and used some of his operational funds to study in India and also for a doctorate in South Korea, the statement said.

The two nations have remained technically at war since their 1950-1953 conflict and Seoul several times in recent years has announced the arrest of spies for the North.

In the most famous case last year, a 35-year-old woman who came from the North in the guise of a defector and used sex to secure military secrets was jailed for five years.

North Korea denied she was its agent, calling her "human scum" and describing the trial as a "threadbare charade" orchestrated to heighten tensions.

Seoul's official data shows more than 4,500 people have been exposed as spies for the North since the peninsula was divided in 1948. [AP/28October2009] 

Obama Strengthens Espionage Oversight. President Obama this week strengthened the authority and independence of an espionage oversight board made up of private citizens with top-level security clearances and a mandate to uncover illegal spying activities.

In an executive order released Thursday by the White House, Mr. Obama rolled back several changes made by the Bush administration that had weakened the so-called Intelligence Oversight Board, a panel that helps presidents make sure spy agencies are obeying federal laws and presidential directives.

Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, said an executive order about the oversight panel issued by President Bush had "cast a cloud of uncertainty upon the Board's independence and powers." Mr. Obama's revision, he said, "is designed to correct those deficiencies."

Mr. Obama's order restored to the oversight board a duty to forward to the attorney general any information it encounters about illegal intelligence activities.

The responsibility to refer illegal matters to the Justice Department - setting in motion a possible criminal investigation - had long been a core function of the oversight board. But in February 2008, President Bush issued an executive order eliminating the board's mandate to do so.

Instead, Mr. Bush's order said it would be up to the Director of National Intelligence to make any such criminal referrals. Mr. Bush told the oversight board to notify only the president of potentially illegal activity - and even then, to do so only if top executive officials were not already "adequately" addressing the problem.

Mr. Obama's order also made clear that the Intelligence Oversight Board gets to "determine" for itself what information and assistance that spy agencies must furnish in order for the panel do its job.

Before Mr. Bush's order, board members had long had clear authority to decide for themselves what information spy agencies had to furnish to them. But Mr. Bush's order muddied that water by using language that did not make clear who got to decide whether the board really needed certain information or assistance, raising the possibility that an agency might refuse to comply with a panel request.

Suzanne E. Spaulding, a former deputy counsel at the C.I.A. who has also worked for lawmakers of both parties as a former top staff member on the House and Senate Intelligence committees, had sharply criticized Mr. Bush's changes last year, saying that they had reduced the oversight board to little more than "paper pushers." On Thursday, she praised Mr. Obama for partially rolling them back.

"What this does is to restore some of the independence to this advisory board and that's very important," she said. "It gives the board greater credibility, which is essential for maintaining public trust in, and support for, intelligence activities shrouded in secrecy. The secrecy demanded for effective intelligence operations presents challenges in a democracy. It only works if you have effective and credible oversight."

Mr. Obama has not yet announced whom he will appoint to serve on the body. But on Wednesday, he appointed Charles Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, and David Boren, a former Democratic senator from Oklahoma, to be co-chairs of the Intelligence Advisory Board, which focuses on making spy agencies more effective. The oversight board is a component of the advisory panel.

President Ford created the oversight board within that larger panel in 1976, following an investigation by the congressional Church Committee into domestic spying, assassination operations, and other abuses and questionable activities by intelligence agencies.

Mr. Obama's order did not fully undo the ways that the Bush administration had changed the oversight board's authority.

For example, the Bush order played down the board's mandate to carry out its own independent investigations by allowing the board to instead, if it chose, request that agency directors carry out investigations and report back to it.

The Bush order also deleted the board's authority to oversee how each intelligence agency's general counsel and inspector general search for and report on illegal activity. And it terminated a requirement that each inspector general file a report every three months about recent activities he is looking at.

Mr. Obama's order left those three changes in place. But White House officials said that the administration decided that restoring those provisions was unnecessary "micromanagement," since the board could use its enhanced powers to perform robust oversight as it saw fit.

Mr. Obama's order made a few other changes. It established that the board must be made up of people who are not "full-time" employees of the government. Previously, there was no suggestion that "part-time" employees could serve on the panel.

The White House said the change would ensure that private citizens who serve on other part-time advisory panels, and so are sometimes referred to as "special government employees," would be eligible for appointment to the panel, too.

Mr. Obama also changed the Intelligence Advisory Board so that it could have two co-chairs instead of a single chairman. The White House said that was done because Mr. Obama wanted the panel to have bipartisan leadership.

When announcing that Mr. Hegel and Mr. Boren would co-chair the advisory board on Wednesday, Mr. Obama told the heads of the government's spy agencies that he welcomed robust outside help in managing the intelligence community.

"The organizations represented here have made real progress in recent years," Mr. Obama said. "But we all agree that more needs to be done - to improve the collection of intelligence, to ensure that analysis reaches senior decision-makers in a timely way, and to provide strong oversight to ensure that our intelligence activities are consistent with our democratic values and the rule of law." [Savage/NYTimes/29October2009] 

Spy Agencies Differ on "Significant" Intel. An aide to the national intelligence director says each U.S. intelligence agency is responsible for keeping Congress informed of its sensitive activities.

Robert Litt, general counsel for National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, in a hearing by two subcommittees of the House intelligence panel, also said determining what constituted "significant intelligence activity" is driven by an individual agency's judgment.

"Generally speaking, each individual agency, or each individual component of the intelligence community, is responsible for its own notifications" to Congress, Litt said.

The hearing was part of a congressional inquiry about how well the nation's intelligence agencies follow the law requiring Congress be apprised of key operations. The inquiry was called after CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed that in 2001 the agency proposed forming assassination teams to target al-Qaida leaders but did not alert Congress, the Post said.

Responding to a question about why Congress would not to be informed, Litt said deciding what was a "significant intelligence activity" involves "the exercise of judgment," and "different people are going to have different judgments."

Litt said criteria for what is significant includes factors such as whether an operation could involve loss of life, its impact on foreign policy decisions and the risk of exposure, the Post said.

Although Blair encouraged the 16 intelligence agencies to compare their congressional notification procedures to standards established by his office, Litt said, the director has not required them to follow those guidelines. [UPI/28October2009] 

Historic South Korean Spying Case Was Inflated. A Korean National Intelligence Service truth commission on Thursday concluded that a 1967 case in which its precursor agency accused some 194 academics, artists and students of spying for North Korea was not a complete fabrication but grossly trumped up. The Korea Central Intelligence Agency in the so-called "Tongbaengnim" spy ring case accused victims of spying and contacts with the North Korean Embassy in East Berlin.

The commission said the case was not a pure invention, as many believed. "Some of the accused actually did receive money or special training from the North in violation of South Korean laws," it said.

According to the committee, some Koreans living in Europe from the late 1950s contacted North Korea in one way or another, which constituted a violation of the National Security Law or the criminal code. Some 12 visited the North, 26 exchanged money and other articles with the country and 17 were specially trained by the Stalinist country. Three or four of them even let the North know that they safely arrived when they returned to South Korea. But the KCIA then went overboard, denouncing any contact as espionage and tortured suspects under interrogation, the commission said.

Those implicated include the famous Korean-German composer Yun I-sang, who the commission said visited the North, received money from the country and arranged visits to a North Korean Embassy for a friend at the North's behest. [Chosun/26October2009]

Ex-KGB Spy Gunned Down in Moscow. A Russian businessman who was convicted in Israel as a KGB spy has been shot dead in Moscow, police say.

Investigators said Shabattai Kalmanovich, 60, was killed by gunmen who fired at his Mercedes from a passing car, Russian media reported.

His driver was seriously wounded in the attack but tried to chase the killers, reports said.

Mr. Kalmanovich was well known in Russia as a music concert promoter and as a basketball sponsor.

His killing appeared to have been "carefully planned", a police official was quoted by ITAR-Tass news agency as saying.

In televised remarks, Moscow Investigative Committee chief Anatoly Bagmet said the killing could have been related to Mr. Kalmanovich's business affairs or have been driven by "personal revenge".

Mr. Kalmanovich emigrated from the former Soviet Union to Israel in 1971 and in 1988 was jailed for spying for the KGB, media reports said.

He was released after serving five years and relocated to Sierra Leone, where he made a fortune in the diamonds trade.

He later returned to Russia where he ran a large shopping centre in Moscow and promoted concerts for stars including Michael Jackson and Liza Minnelli.

Mr. Kalmanovich also sponsored basketball clubs and in 2008 became general manager of the Russian women's basketball team. [BBC/2November2009]

Court to Reconsider CIA 'Torture Flight' Ruling. The 9th Circuit on Tuesday granted the Obama administration's request to rehear the case of five former detainees who accused a Boeing subsidiary of helping the CIA fly them to foreign countries, where they were interrogated and tortured.

In April a three-judge panel rejected arguments by the Bush and Obama administrations that the case needed to be dismissed to protect state secrets.

The men, all foreigners, claimed the torture and abuse included being beaten, shocked, deprived of sleep and food, cut with a scalpel, blindfolded and handcuffed, kept in squalid conditions and threatened with sexual torture.

Three men were eventually released; two are serving prison terms in their native countries of Morocco and Egypt.

The five men sued Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, claiming it participated in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program by providing logistical support to the planes and flight crews that took the men to their detention sites.

The 9th Circuit panel overturned the district court's dismissal of the case after the government intervened, claiming the government's contract with Jeppesen had been made on the condition of secrecy.

The judges said they needed more information to determine if the state-secrets privilege applied.

A majority of the 9th Circuit judges on Tuesday agreed to rehear the case.

Judges Reinhardt, McKeown, Gould, Bybee, Milan D. Smith Jr. and Ikuta did not participate in the deliberations or vote, according to the order. [Youderian/CourthouseNewsService/28October2009]

FBI Still Lacks Translators, Eight Years After 9/11, Says Report. An internal audit by the US Justice Department's inspector general has found that the FBI faces a critical shortage of foreign-language specialists, eight years after 9/11. The audit report, issued last Monday by inspector general Glenn Fine, reveals that the lack of translators prevented the FBI from accessing 31 per cent of the foreign-language material it collected in counter-terrorism operations from 2006 to 2008. 

This means the Bureau, which serves as America's primary counterintelligence and counterterrorism force, has been unable to read tens of thousands of pages and listen to or review 1.2 million hours of audio intercepts in the last two years alone. Remarkably, despite the well-understood need for foreign-language specialists in the post-9/11 security environment, the audit found that the total number of FBI translators dropped from 1,338 in March 2005 to 1,298 in September last year. And this despite the FBI's "100 percent" increase in workload since 9/11. US government auditors and Congressional committees frequently issue warnings about the low numbers of foreign-language linguists working in US law enforcement and intelligence agencies. 

The most recent such warning was issued in June by the US House Intelligence Committee, which authorized the 2010 US intelligence budget while drawing attention to "the continuing lack of critical language-capable personnel in the Intelligence Community, and the need to address this shortage". [Allen/IntelNews/29October2009]

Hunt Intensifies for Al Qaeda 9/11 Plotter Said Bahaji After His Passport is Found in Pakistan. The CIA is hunting a 9/11 plotter in Pakistan who was a roommate of one of the lead hijackers who struck the twin towers with hijacked jets, the Daily News has learned.

Pakistani military officers yesterday displayed a cache of newly-captured weapons and documents including the German passport of Said Bahaji.

Bahaji, 34, lived with 9/11 plot leaders Mohamed Atta and Ramzi Binalshibh and was part of their Hamburg, Germany, cell, helping to plan the 9/11 attacks.

Ziad Jarrah, the hijacker of the United Airlines jet that crashed in Pennsylvania, attended Bahaji's wedding.

Bahaji is believed to be alive and has rank in Al Qaeda as "a senior propagandist," a U.S. counterterror official told The News.

He also is involved in operational activity.

The passport - which CNN video showed with a Pakistani entry stamp of Sept. 4, 2001 - is evidence the CIA's hunt for Bahaji may intensify.

It was shown to reporters in South Waziristan, the tribal agency where the CIA has launched dozens of missile strikes at Al Qaeda safe houses in the past year.

Operatives typically fork over their passports to the group when they enter the tribal areas.

"Atta and Binalshibh used Bahaji's computer for Internet research," the 9/11 commission's 2004 report said.

"Diskettes seized from Bahaji's residence also contained bomb-making instructions." [Meek/NYDailyNews/29October2009]

Obama Administration Moves to Stop Release of Classified Information. The Obama administration invoked the state secrets privilege on Friday in a lawsuit pertaining to government eavesdropping intended to intercept terrorist communications, and one privacy advocacy group called the decision "incredibly disappointing."

Attorney General Eric Holder issued a statement saying the government was making the move "to protect against a disclosure of highly sensitive, classified information that would irrevocably harm the national security of this country."

The California lawsuit challenges the warrantless wiretapping program begun by the Bush administration after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The current administration is asking the court to dismiss the case.

In his statement, the attorney general said that the Department of Justice had used a new process designed to ensure that the privilege is used only when absolutely necessary, but had determined there was no way for the case to proceed without exposing intelligence sources and methods.

Holder said that U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who is hearing the case, had been given a classified submission so he could make an independent assessment of the government's claim.

But Kevin Bankson, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the decision to invoke the state secrets privilege represented a continuation of Bush administration policy. He said it is a sharp contrast to the promises of greater government transparency and accountability made during the Obama campaign.

"It turns out that 'change we can believe in' hasn't really resulted in any change at all when it comes to government secrecy," Bankson said. [Meserve/CNN/31October2009]

Spying Row Intensifies as Both Sides Fire Salvos in War of Words. The dispute concerning Israeli spy activity in Lebanon intensified over the weekend, with officials from both countries speaking bullishly on the issue. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon on Saturday confirmed that Israel was operating spy networks in Lebanon, an admission which prompted a swift riposte from Lebanese Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud. 

Speaking during a visit close to the Blue Line, Yaalon said that Israel would continue its espionage activities in Lebanon for as long as Hizbullah posed a threat. 

"The moment Hizbullah renewed their attacks, we began to collect intelligence," Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted him as saying. "We will stop when Hizbullah disarms itself and the [Israel-Lebanon] border is a border of peace." 

Baroud responded with a promise to root out all Israeli spy networks currently operating in Lebanon. 

"Our enemy's declaration of pursuing its espionage activity in Lebanon is rude and constitutes a clear violation of international resolutions; thus we have no choice but to stand firm against Israeli spying networks," Baroud said during a tour of southern villages on Saturday. 

The interior minister added that any espionage activity was targeted at all Lebanese - not merely Hizbullah members - irrespective of where in the country it takes place. 

The issue of spy networks resurfaced on October 18 when suspected Israeli reconnaissance devices were blown up in south Lebanon. 

"At least two" of the devices exploded near the villages of Mais al-Jabal and Houla, according to a spokesperson for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). 

UNIFIL subsequently launched an investigation to determine the cause of the blasts and initial indications suggested the equipment was planted during the 2006 summer war between Lebanon and Israel, a claim that Hizbullah rejected. 

The Shiite group maintains that Israel planted the devices after the conflict was ended under UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which stipulates that Lebanese sovereignty not be breached. 

In remarks printed in Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Anbaa on Sunday, Tyre MP Nawaf Musawi, from Hizbullah's Loyalty to the Resistance bloc, suggested that Israel was conducting a war with Lebanon through its spy networks and ongoing violations of Lebanese territory by land, sea and air. 

"Israel has the right to collect investigatory information from inside Lebanon in all means possible," Yaalon was quoted as saying on Saturday. "Israeli secret service agents are maintaining their activities inside the Lebanese territories." 

More than 70 people have been arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel since the beginning of the year, including a number of Lebanese military and security officials. 

Yaalon's comments are likely to trouble international envoys in Lebanon and Security Council officials, many of whom expressed concern last week at the deteriorating security situation along the Blue Line - the boundary of Israeli military withdrawal from Lebanon and de facto border between the two countries. 

US Special Coordinator for Lebanon Michael Williams on Friday urged restraint from both sides, warning that any additional violations of Resolution 1701 "could easily destabilize the situation in the area and increase the threat of potential conflict." 

Yaalon pointed to last week's exchange of rocket fire between positions in Israel and south Lebanon as justification for continuing espionage programs. 

"We cannot get used to a situation when our territories in the north and south become the target of rockets while we sit still, without a harsh response that thwarts the succession of such attacks," he said. 

"When we are in conflict with an enemy," he continued, "we gather information about them." 

Baroud said Lebanon had "total determination in uncovering spying networks - especially [regarding Israel's] persistence in planting spying networks in Lebanon." [Galey/DailyStar/2November2009]

The 'James Bond' Taking Top Job at MI6. Sir John Sawers has taken up his new role as head of the UK's intelligence service MI6, bringing Sir John Scarlett's five-year tenure to an end.

Most recently the UK's permanent representative to the UN, Sir John takes over at a time when the actions of MI6 are under the microscope like never before.

Police are probing claims its agents were complicit in the torture of terrorist suspects overseas, while Parliament's Joint Human Rights Committee has also called for an independent inquiry into a "disturbing number of credible allegations" against agents from both MI6 and domestic security service MI5.

So, among Sir John Sawers' most pressing tasks will be ensuring that strict new guidelines on the questioning of terror suspects are enforced.

His new high-profile may also take some adjustment.

In a far cry from the days when Britain was in the grip of Cold War tension and the head of its Secret Intelligence Service was known only as "C", these days the public not only know Sir John's name but his preferred brand of swimwear (Speedo, according to Foreign Secretary David Miliband).

Indeed, the hasty withdrawal of his personal details from Facebook, which featured holiday snaps of him on a beach posted by his wife Shelley, marked an inauspicious welcome to life at the head of MI6 after his appointment was announced in June.

But such embarrassment has not been a regular occurrence for a man known for his sound judgment and slick delivery when dealing with journalists.

Indeed, he is said to cut a deft figure on the dance floor and his suave manner has led to him being likened by the press to James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan.

Born in Warwick in 1955, Sir John attended school in Bath before studying physics and philosophy at Nottingham.

A keen academic, he also attended the universities of St Andrews, Witwatersrand in South Africa and Harvard in the US.

Announcing his appointment, Downing Street referred to him "rejoining" MI6 but gave no further details of his former career as a spy which reportedly began in the late 1970s.

Nevertheless, giving the job to someone more recently associated with diplomatic service was regarded as a break from the tradition.

As Britain's permanent representative to the UN since 2007, Sir John has built a strong relationship with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

He became adept at delivering sound bites summing up both the issue and Britain's position, and played a central role in negotiating and drafting resolutions on Iran, North Korea and the Middle East.

Previously Sir John had been political director at the Foreign Office, an envoy in Baghdad and also a foreign affairs adviser to then prime minister Tony Blair.

Between 1999 and 2001 he was involved in the Kosovo conflict and Northern Ireland peace process.

He has also worked in the British Embassy in Washington, as an ambassador to Cairo and in South Africa from 1988 and 1991 as apartheid was ending.

An athletic sort, the father of three grown-up children still holds his school's 400m hurdles record. He maintains his fitness through hiking and sports such as tennis and cycling.

Not a typical diplomat, Sir John was the only ambassador to visit a camp for people displaced by the fighting in Darfur, Sudan, while his peers were criticised for not seeing how they were forced to live.

After his hands-on role in foreign affairs, he will now have to lead from the front in the struggle to stop global terrorism at a time when treatment of detainees is under intense scrutiny. [BBC/1November2009]

Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

Robert Kelly Says He Says He Infiltrated Castro's Spy Service And Tricked Miami Exiles, by Tim Elfrink. "He talks in mysterious acronyms, like "NOC" - which stands for "no official cover." He refuses to have his photo taken. He talks about elaborate take-downs and ruses straight out of a Burn Notice plot.

Getting the full truth is much harder. But as hard as it is to verify, Kelly's story as he tells it, at the very least, is fascinating.

Kelly first approached me over the summer, with a great hook: A white American without a lick of Spanish, Kelly says he infiltrated Castro's spy service, known as the Intelligence Directorate or DI, and spied on a range of Miami's exile community - including Rep. Illeana Ros-Lehtinen - for the dictator.

And Kelly says that, in reality, he was working as a double agent for the FBI the whole time.

Verifying Kelly's tale is much, much trickier, which is why I never ended up writing a story about his claims. But now Kelly is appearing on MegaTV, the Spanish language Channel 22, to tell his tale.

In light of Kelly's local TV interviews, I think it's worth revisiting what he told me.

I met Kelly in an empty food court with his wife, Suad Leija.

Kelly's connection to Suad is the easiest part of his story to verify. Leija, a pretty, raven-haired Mexican about half Kelly's age at 23-years-old, has been interviewed on CNN and profiled in the Chicago Tribune.

Leija was born into an extensive Mexican crime family, the Castorenas, who dominated the fake-documentation business around the country for years. Her step-father, Manuel Leija-Sanchez, ran the family's Chicago ring, until Suad started cooperating with the FBI and a federal sting took down the family.

Robert Kelly, a muscular man in his 40s, says he met Suad in Nicaragua and helped convince her to cooperate in the investigation into her family.

But Kelly says the untold side of Suad's saga is his own role as a double agent working for Castro's secret service and the FBI. Here's how he says it happened:

Kelly was working in Costa Rica, running an Internet business. He hints that he may have also been working undercover for U.S. agencies, but won't go into details. Kelly says when the Elian Gonzalez saga erupted in Miami, he saw the controversy as a way to infiltrate Cuba.

Kelly says in 1999 he set up a site called The Voice of Cuba that was rabidly in favor of returning Elian to Cuba, and helped seed it around the web. Within months, he says Cuban agents in Costa Rica contacted him and asked him to visit the embassy.

Over the course of the next year, Kelly says he refined his relationship with the Cubans. Eventually, they flew him to Havana, where Kelly says he passed a long vetting process with a handler in the DI.

"I played the role of the dumb, white American to a tee," Kelly says. "My lack of Spanish was a major asset in convincing them I was the real deal. What spy agency would send a guy who doesn't speak Spanish to infiltrate Cuba?"

Once he'd earned an assignment from the DI, Kelly says he approached the FBI and let them in on his game. They code named him "Lazarus," Kelly says, and ran him out of their Miami office.

Kelly says his assignments included missions to spy on prominent exiles including former South Florida Democratic chairman Gus Garcia, Ros-Lehtinen, Julio Basulto of Brothers to the Rescue, and current County Commissioner Jose "Pepe" Diaz.

I called Diaz, and he said he didn't remember anyone by the name of Robert Kelly, although he allowed that "I'm really bad with names." He laughed at the idea that he'd been spied on by a double agent, but added, "I'm pretty sure I was followed a couple times by Castro's guys during the Elian saga."

So is Kelly the real deal? His story is certainly detailed enough to be true.

But without some serious inside sources at the FBI or the DI, it's almost impossible to say. Judy Orihuela, the spokeswoman for Miami's FBI office, declined to comment when I called her about Kelly's tale.

"That's your proof right there," Kelly told me with a gleam in his eye. "They would have denied my story up and down if it weren't true. Instead they just gave you a 'no comment.'" [Elfrink/MiamiNewTimes/26October2009] 

Second World War Blunder that Doomed 50,000 British PoWs. A fateful blunder by British military intelligence allowed the Nazis to seize 50,000 Allied prisoners of war from the Italians during the Second World War and transport them to camps in Germany and Poland where thousands are believed to have perished.

Newly published evidence reveals that a top-secret branch of the Ministry of Defense known as MI9 ordered British PoWs in Italy to remain in their camps after Italy surrendered. The order, issued in June 1943 as Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery was planning the invasion of the Italian mainland, and revealed for the first time in a new book, Where the Hell Have You Been?, was transmitted in code on a BBC religious broadcast. In some camps, British officers posted their own guards to prevent the men from leaving, even after the Italians had laid down their weapons.

As a result, the German army was able to walk into dozens of camps and round up the PoWs. According to War Office records, more than 50,000 Allied soldiers were transported from Italian camps by cattle train to far worse conditions in Germany and Poland during the summer of 1943. Thousands are estimated to have died, either shot while trying to escape from the trains or in the camps over the course of the following two winters.

MI9 was created in 1940 by Norman Crockatt, the former head of the London Stock Exchange. Based in Wilton Park in Buckinghamshire, its role was to help bring home Allied soldiers stuck behind enemy lines. It employed some colorful figures, including stage magician Jasper Maskelyne, who designed saws and collapsible shovels that could be hidden inside baseball and cricket bats and maps concealed in packs of playing cards.

During the early summer of 1943, MI9 came to the bizarre conclusion that Italy would be out of the war in a few days and decided to order the 80,000 PoWs in Italy to "stay put" and wait for Allied forces to arrive. The organization had never had to deal with the possibility of thousands of PoWs escaping simultaneously.

Order P/W 87190, issued on 7 June 1943, stated that "in the event of an Allied invasion of Italy, officers commanding prison camps will ensure that prisoners of war remain within camp. Authority is granted to all officers commanding to take necessary disciplinary action to prevent individual prisoners of war attempting to rejoin their own units."

MI9 used one of the most popular programs on the BBC, The Radio Padre, a weekly talk every Wednesday evening at 7pm, to transmit its instructions. Thanks to the Rev Ronnie Wright's simple, unpatronising manner, The Radio Padre was the second most popular show on the BBC after Tommy Handley's ITMA comedy show. MI9 inserted the order into the text of the minister's talk using a secret code known as HK. Wright was told to open his talk with the words "Good evening, forces" instead of "Hello" or just "Good evening" - the signal for any PoWs listening on their radios that there was a hidden message between the lines of Christian reassurance.

By midsummer 1943, as German troops poured into Italy, it became clear that the country was going to take months to conquer. Despite this, MI9 continued to transmit the order. Its unofficial history states proudly: "It is a tribute to the efficiency [MI9] had attained that almost every camp's SBO [senior British officer] received the message in time." Brigadier Crockatt, the head of MI9, "was happy at what was being done". Later, MI9 tried to blame the order on Montgomery, claiming that Monty "probably gave his directive... in late May or early June when nominally on leave in London", but no evidence has emerged to confirm this.

MI9 did not inform Churchill or the War Cabinet of its actions. Churchill wanted all PoWs to be released immediately in the event of an Italian surrender and insisted that the condition be inserted in the agreement. Article 3 states: "All prisoners or internees of the United Nations to be immediately turned over to the Allied commander-in-chief and none of these may now or at any time be evacuated to Germany."

The Italian War Ministry fulfilled the agreement on the day of the surrender, telling camp commandants to remove their guards, but because of MI9's order thousands of Allied prisoners failed to take the opportunity to run. When the commandant withdrew his guards at Camp PG 57near Trieste, the senior British officer, loyal to the "stay put" order, kept the gates closed and ordered the men not to leave. Within 24 hours, the camp was surrounded by Germans and the window of opportunity had closed.

The Italian guards abandoned Camp PG 21 in Chieti in the middle of the night. When the SBO, a Colonel Marshall, threatened to court-martial any PoW who left, there was a near mutiny, so he appointed his own phalanx of guards and ordered them to man the watchtowers. German paratroops were astonished to discover the prisoners milling around inside the camp compound. Some 1,300 soldiers were transported to camps in Poland and Germany.

In all, 50,000 soldiers were seized. What happened to most of the remaining 30,000 is a mystery. After the war, the MoD estimated that 11,500 escaped, by risking a perilous crossing of the Alps into Switzerland or getting through German lines to reach Allied forces.

Of those captured by the Germans, at least 4% to 5% are believed to have died in captivity. After the war, several families threatened to sue MI9.

The original order has disappeared from the War Office archives at Kew, perhaps destroyed by someone who did not want to be linked to the blunder. The truth of who was responsible for creating one of the untold scandals of the Second World War may never be known. [Guardian/UK/1November2009] 

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier...Illusionist? How the CIA Used Magic with Spies. "The instant the performer sees the spectator take a cigarette, cigar, or pipe, he takes the packet of matches from his pocket, tears off one match, and holds packet and match ready to ignite the match," the magician John Mulholland wrote in a manual in the 1950s. "He does these things openly because what he does can only be looked upon as a friendly and courteous gesture."

Mulholland's instructions were written not for stage magicians, but for the covert operatives of the CIA. At the height of the Cold War - in the era of nuclear missiles and submarines, amid the tangled cloak-and-dagger maneuverings of espionage and counterespionage - the agency was also secretly doing something else. It was trying to learn to do magic.

The CIA hired Mulholland to explain techniques of sleight-of-hand and surreptitious signaling so that agents could use them in the field. His text, which was originally supposed to have been destroyed, has now been recovered, declassified, and reprinted as "The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception." It deals mostly with basic stagecraft, minus the stage. If, before you struck a match, Mulholland advises the reader, you had stuck a pin into the back of the matchbook, it would be possible to pull the pin out with the fingernail of the left ring finger, the whole maneuver physically concealed by the matches and psychologically concealed by the broad, open gesture of lighting a match.

Or instead of a pin, one could glue a small pill to the back of the matchbook. And with practice, one could pick the pill off and make it fall at the moment the matches were passing above a drink belonging to the - what was the word? - "spectator." Words, too, require a little legerdemain, when the readers are secret agents and the point of the maneuver is to drug or poison someone. Here is a trick with a pin that also works with a pill. Foreground, background.

Former CIA deputy director John McLaughlin writes in a forward to the manual that "[a]s best we know," the drink-spiking techniques "were never actually used." The assurance would be more reassuring if the authors who had recovered the manual, H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace, had not included their own historical overview of CIA trickery. In it, they explain that Mulholland's writing was part of the secret MKULTRA program, whereby the CIA sought methods and materials "capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior." And part of MKULTRA did involve dosing unsuspecting subjects with LSD and other drugs.

The Soviets were doing it, after all, or were believed to be. The trickery manual and Melton and Wallace's accompanying history usher the reader into the closed loop of ethics of the Cold War, as it was waged in both the covert and overt arenas: The Reds were a foe so ruthless, they had to be fought ruthlessly. Techniques of stage magic - developed and taught in secrecy, according to the magicians' code, for the sake of entertaining willing audiences - were transferred to the realm of nonconsensual secrecy, to be used on people who were not asking to be fooled.

At the time, so was every other form of deception. In the superpower struggle for power and influence around the world, the CIA was secretly funding and engineering everything from literary journals to coups and armed rebellions. It was total warfare, but with creeping breadth in place of nuclear intensity. Both the ideas and techniques of secret war pervaded the culture - the corrosive belief in hidden conspiracy and the nifty thrill of spycraft itself, the codes and disguises and miniature cameras.

Melton and Wallace have rounded up some of the extreme forms of covert activity. The Soviets deployed a cyanide-bullet gun concealed in a cigarette pack; the Americans countered with a "nondiscernable bioinoculator" gun shooting tiny poison darts. A pop-up dummy took the place of an agent diving out of a moving car. A person was transported in a St. Bernard costume in a crate to a fake veterinary office. A radio was hidden in an artificial scrotum, to be worn over the real scrotum; miniature lock-picking tools were packaged in a suppository capsule.

Mulholland's actual manual evokes a more understated, but eerier, figure - not a dashing hero with infinite James Bond-ian technology at his disposal, but a gray, anonymous person who "should be so normal in manner, and his actions so natural, that nothing about him excites suspicion."

Beyond a few points of conjuring philosophy - the hand is not quicker than the eye; "[a] trick to be good must be simple in its basic idea" - Mulholland focuses on a few tricks for secretly dropping things or picking them up, and on how to do those tricks in an unremarkable manner. He supplies instructions on making and concealing droppers for liquids, a protocol for handling multiple small items so that one of them ends up in a pocket, and advice on how to put on a stupid face: "The more facial muscles are relaxed and eyes thrown out of focus, the greater the effect. Doing these actions to a mild degree merely shows a lack of alertness or disinterest."

Today Mulholland's account of real-world stagecraft amounts to an etiquette manual for a lost moment of history. The matchbook trick depends on people smoking and drinking. There is a survey of the many pockets found in every man's suit, and which ones are most natural for casually slipping objects into. Mulholland dwells on the particular challenges faced by a female agent dumping powder into someone's drink with a hollowed-out pencil - when she sketches a map or diagram, as pretext for bringing the loaded pencil into play, a male mark will inevitably try to commandeer the pencil himself to correct her drawing. Perhaps if she finds an excuse to sketch women's clothing, Mulholland allows, "he will not wish to redraw the sketch."

Such finesse is hard to detect in the present-day scandals over the crude and brutal treatment of captives by the CIA. The agency that came up with this manual - to say nothing of the dog costume, hollowed-out silver dollars, and schemes to put depilatory drug powder in Castro's boots to make his beard fall out - is the same agency currently complaining that its employees will be unable to do their jobs if the United States enforces the existing laws against torture. Agents who would have been willing to stab themselves with a needle laced with shellfish toxin and die anonymously behind enemy lines have given way to people worried about possibly being investigated and prosecuted stateside. Reading the manual, you wonder: When did the brave men with a wealth of tricks concealed in their suit pockets become such hapless crybabies?

Or, on second thought, maybe they just want us to think they're hapless crybabies. [Scocca/BostonGlobe/1November2009] 

Section III - COMMENTARY

China Will Outsmart You. China is making no secret of the fact that they intend to rely heavily on Information War in any future conflict. This is reinforced by the extent to which China has been using Internet based espionage to steal military secrets. China is also spending more than any other nation to develop ways to control Internet use. Up until now, that has applied only to Chinese Internet users, but many of those techniques can be used against other nations. Electronic warfare techniques (jamming, confusing and generally nullifying enemy electronic tools), first developed and used during World War II, are being adapted to Chinese needs.

While the details of Chinese military plans are secret, the general strategy isn't. The weapons, equipment and techniques the military uses, as well as discussions in professional journals, makes it clear how the Chinese plan to fight the United States in the next war. That's how many Chinese military experts describe it. The U.S. is the principal foe, and some kind of conflict is inevitable. All that may seem strange to Americans, but for most Chinese, it's just the way it is.

China plans to disrupt the American military, not destroy it. China takes for granted that they will be on the defensive, and forced to deal mainly with American air and naval forces. Methods discussed include attacks via the Internet (hacking and such) and electronic warfare (jamming and deceptions). China has been very active in controlling its domestic Internet users, and an increasing number of hacker attacks on U.S. military targets are being traced back to China. There, the government denies everything. Yet their professional journals talk about all the opportunities in this area. There are similar discussions of electronic warfare opportunities. In addition, the professional journals are full of exhortations to develop insights into the details of how the American armed forces operates, and adapt Chinese tactics to take care of any U.S. weaknesses.

These Chinese efforts are under the control of the highest military leaders and their staffs. All national resources (human and technical) are to be made available for this effort. This stuff is considered very important, and details are hard to come by. But if you look at the history of Information War, you can form some accurate ideas of how it will work.

This sort of thing is nothing new in the history of warfare, and that's where the Chinese are coming from. The Chinese are big on learning from the past. It has, so to speak, often worked in the past. Chinese troops achieved some success with these traditional deception and Information War methods during the Korean War (1950-53), but their eagerness for outthinking the enemy has not resulted in any major battlefield successes for quite a while. Chinese military commanders are eager to change that. Only an actual war, or another revolution (that reveals their current secrets), will determine if the new methods might work. [StrategyPage/27October2009]

What Do We Know, How Can We Know Better? by Paula A. DeSutter. Few intelligence assessments have proved more controversial than the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities," which stated that Iran's nuclear weapons program had been halted in 2003.

Mostly because of this conclusion, the NIE was received with incredulity and suspicion. Those on the right viewed the NIE as an effort by Bush administration opponents within the intelligence community to undermine the administration's credibility and policy efforts. Having finally succeeded at getting the Iran nuclear issue referred to the United Nations Security Council from the International Atomic Energy Agency after a five-year effort, the Bush administration was trying to bring additional pressure on Iran, including the possible threat of force under U.N. auspices.

Those on the left also saw the NIE as part of a political plot. They suspected that Bush administration political appointees had manipulated the intelligence so the assessment would promote the administration's feckless efforts to rein in the Iranian nuclear program. These Bush detractors believed the NIE was an effort to turn the failure of Bush policies on Iran and nonproliferation into a success.

My view on the NIE was that it reflected not political motivations in either direction, but arrogance that allowed the U.S. intelligence community to be victim to a likely Iranian denial and deception program.

On Sept. 25, in both a statement by President Obama and a background briefing by senior administration officials, the public was first informed about a covert Iranian nuclear facility. Senior administration officials said the U.S. intelligence community had "been aware of this facility for several years; we've been watching the construction, we've been building up a case so that we were sure that we had very strong evidence, irrefutable evidence, that the intent of this facility was as an enrichment plant." We learned that Mr. Obama, as president-elect, was briefed on the matter during the transition but that the intelligence oversight committees were not briefed on the facility until Sept. 23. The Obama administration asserted that the Sept. 23 briefings met the requirement that the intelligence community keep Congress "currently and fully informed."

The senior administration briefers, moreover, refused to answer several questions regarding how the newly revealed information could be reconciled with the 2007 Iran NIE. To revisit the salience of those questions, recall that the NIE stated: "We judge with high-confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." Though a now infamous footnote defined the Iranian nuclear weapons program to exclude the once covert but by then publicly exposed elements of the Iranian program, even the 2007 NIE defined "nuclear weapons program" to include "covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work."

By any reasonable standard, construction of a covert uranium enrichment facility such as the one near Qom constitutes "uranium enrichment-related work." Yet the NIE states that "we assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007."

According to the definition the intelligence community used in the 2007 NIE, only covert enrichment facilities can be part of a nuclear weapons program. This has lent support to false assertions by Iran and others that once a facility is known and visited by the International Atomic Energy Agency, it can be considered part of a "peaceful" program even if Iran tried to keep it covert, as it did with Natanz and the facility it destroyed and bulldozed to keep the IAEA from taking samples.

Now the Qom facility has been "outed." The 2007 NIE definition may now be used to support acceding to Iran's request that we agree to Russia or France providing assistance to Iran's "peaceful program," which could include that nuclear facility at Qom as well as Natanz. This is dangerous business.

The ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, has proposed an excellent way to sort out this mess. He has called for bipartisan support for the establishment of an Independent Red Team of outside experts to examine the recent revelations about Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Given that the 2007 NIE was completed during the Bush administration, Democrats should be able to put aside concerns regarding an independent outside review. Since the Democrats control both the Senate and House, they certainly could ensure that the Democratic perspective gets a majority voice in any outside panel.

This call for support and assistance for congressional oversight is both timely and essential. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, Sen. Christopher S. Bond, Missouri Republican, and Rep. Silvestre Reyes, Texas Democrat and chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, should urgently support the call for the Independent Red Team. [DeSutter/WashingtonTimes/28October2009] 

Leak on CIA, Karzai's Brother Changes Everything, by Pamela Falk. The leak of information about Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother and his alleged connection to the CIA and tribal drug lords is curious. Leaks always are. But in this case, the release of this sensitive information is troublesome and potentially game-changing in a dangerous war.

Ahmed Wali Karzai admitted to giving the agency information, but has denied receiving any money from the CIA, or being part of the lucrative Afghanistan opium trade - making him, at least in Washington-talk, that much more guilty.

The information, published in the New York Times, first stated that the president's brother was, in effect, the southern sector's political boss, running the election, communicating with the Taliban for the U.S. government, informing the U.S. government of possible attacks, and overseeing several bridges vital to opium traffickers.

The U.N.'s report on the drug trade in Afghanistan, "Afghan Opium Survey 2009," released in Kabul by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) last month, said the drug lords and the government in Afghanistan had a "marriage of convenience," that the traffickers had built a stand-alone empire similar to South America's Colombian cartels, and that both the Taliban and the Afghan government extracted tariffs on their trade.

The analysis of the New York Times' information took it to new levels: Wali Karzai was reported, in other news, to be a major drug lord and a CIA operative. But regardless of the exaggeration, the fact remains that the president's brother has some connection to drug lords - even if it is personally-enriching political expediency - and that relationship is unacceptable by any American foreign policy standards.

Senate hearings have been called for - in the day since the information surfaced.

The report itself will change the political and military landscape in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The insurgents will use it as proof of the U.S. meddling at the highest level of the Afghan government. In Pakistan, where the use of drones is already being questioned by the U.N. envoy for extrajudicial killings - and the Pakistani Parliament questions the strings on the $7.5 billion U.S. aid package - the equation of the U.S. government to the CIA is devastating.

So, the obvious, unanswered question is: who leaked the information?

Speculation has begun, but the most curious aspect of the most recent Washington leak is the fact that there is not a major outcry from the administration, from the U.S. military or from the public, for that matter, about the security breach itself.

Leaks are to Washington as milk is to a baby. International politics has always run on the politically unsavory use of them.

In early October, staffers inside the usually airtight International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) leaked a report that is in draft form, of questionable intelligence, and still unpublished, that Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device, in order to imply that IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, cautious and with only one month to go in his unblemished tenure, was not allowing the report to be published.

More infamous leaks were the Pentagon Papers in the Vietnam era and the Valerie Plame saga, where she was exposed as a CIA agent married to former Bush Administration official, Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

The Karzai story may not help the Afghan President's principal opponent in the November 7 election, Abdullah Abdullah, that much, but it will certainly damage Hamid Karzai's credibility and ability to govern. It will also take Ahmed Wali Karzai out of the information trade.

The impact could be enormous and, more to the point, it brings to the surface a cavernously deep division between U.S. military intelligence - cited several times in the report - and the administration on Afghan strategy. The speculation is that the request by U.S. and NATO General Stanley A. McChrystal is strengthened by the need to combat the drug lords directly and because the drug trafficking has truly corrupted the Afghan government, implying as well that the Taliban has deeper stakes in the running of the country.

The alternative to the political theater of leaks in Washington, are whistleblowers: someone who is willing to commit personal and professional self-destruction by releasing the information with fingerprints. Peter Gabriel, the deputy of the U.N. Mission in Afghanistan, did that a few weeks ago on the extent of the fraud in the Afghan election, and was summarily fired.

To a certain extent, General McChrystal already has spoken out publicly for the need for more troops, and has been less outspoken in recent days.

Thus, the leak. Somewhere is Washington; someone has an interest in getting the information out, regardless of the possible danger to U.S. strategy and perception of the U.S. role in the war. That is not amazing. The only remarkable thing is that the Obama Administration is not outraged by it. In Washington tealeaf reading terms, that means the administration has the key motive for the leak.

With no fingerprints on the information, the speculation will continue. Meanwhile, U.S. war room deliberations on Afghanistan strategy just got a whole lot more complicated. [CBSNews/Falk/29October2009]

Section IV - OBITUARIES, BOOKS AND COMING EVENTS

Obituaries

 LtCol John J. Guenther, USMC(Ret) - AFIO was saddened to receive news from the Marine Corps Interrogator-Translator Teams Association [MCITTA] of the passing of LtCol John J. Guenther, USMC (Ret) on 29 October 2009, with Gerrie, his wife of 50+ years by his side. John Guenther was awarded AFIO's David Atlee Phillips Founders Award in 2000 for service to AFIO and the Intelligence Community. He was recognized by all who knew him as a Marine's Marine. The following is reprinted from the MCITTA announcement:
 John Guenther was a leader of Marines, a mentor to many, and a creator and pioneer  of so many innovations in the Marine Corps intelligence field.  His presence and inspiration to so many will be sorely missed.  We are grateful for what he shared with us.
 Since the inception of MCITTA as an organization in 2003, John immediately joined our ranks as a member, having been a pioneer in the Interrogator Translator (0251) field.  An avid supporter of our Association, he attended most of our annual Gatherings only missing the past few because of health reasons.
 John Guenther enlisted in the Marine Corps in January 1948 and retired in February 1994 having served in Marine Corps intelligence billets for over 45 years and in 19 different enlisted, commissioned and civilian ranks.  When he retired in 1994, was serving as the Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence at Headquarters Marine Corps.
In September 1950, Corporal Guenther landed at Inchon with the Seventh Marines; in November and December, Sergeant Guenther was with the regimental S-2 Section in the Chosin Reservoir battle.
As a Staff Sergeant, he was an honor graduate of the Army Counterintelligence Agent course in 1952; as a Master Sergeant he took  honors in Russian Language at the Naval Intelligence School in 1960.
While assigned to a Naval Security Group activity in Morocco in 1961 performing Signals Intelligence duties, MSgt Guenther was selected as an Intelligence Limited Duty Officer (MOS:0202).
First Lieutenant Guenther was the Assistant G-2, Ground Defense Force, Guantanamo, during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and went aboard the DLG-12 as a Russian voice translator conveying messages to the Soviet ships taking missiles back to the Soviet Union.
Captain Guenther’s first Vietnam tour was as the CI/Security Officer for the Maritime Operations Branch of MACSOG; his second tour as a Major was as Staff CI Officer for III MAF with responsibilities for CI activities in the five northern provinces.
Lieutenant Colonel Guenther served in East Germany as the Naval Representative and Joint Operations Officer with the U. S. Military Liaison Mission to Group of Soviet Forces Germany from 1974 to 1977. 
 He returned to HQMC for his final year of active duty where he was the first Branch Head of the National Intelligence Activities Branch (INTX) responsible for new satellite programs and Marine Corps participation in the National Foreign Intelligence Community.  He later served as the Marine Corps representative/faculty member at the Defense Intelligence School/College, where he later attended the Defense Attaché Course in preparation for the East Germany assignment. While assigned to the Defense Intelligence College, LtCol Guenther originated the first Bibliography of Intelligence reflecting his intense interest in the history and literature of intelligence.
 Lieutenant Colonel Guenther’s military awards include the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star with Combat V, two Joint Service Commendation Medals, the Navy Presidential Unit Citation and numerous other service and campaign ribbons, including the prized Enlisted Good Conduct Medal with three stars.
His civilian awards include the rank of Meritorious Executive in the Senior Executive Service issued by President George H. W.  Bush, the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal granted by the Director of Central Intelligence and the Department of the Navy Superior Civilian Service Award issued by the Secretary of the Navy.
On 19 July 1996 at the tenth anniversary of the Navy Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center in Dam Neck, Virginia, the Marine Corps wing of the new training building was dedicated as Guenther Hall in recognition of Lieutenant Colonel Guenther’s life time contributions to Marine Corps intelligence.
 Since his retirement, Mr. Guenther maintained an active role in all the Marine Corps intelligence associations, having held an MOS in every specialty of Marine Corps intelligence.   Mr. Guenther’s main focus was on researching and writing the history of Marine Corps intelligence, which he considered to have been a neglected topic by Marine Corps historians. His tireless efforts received the strong support of the Marine Corps Directors of Intelligence and the President of the Marine Corps University.  Although he was unable to complete this monumental work, he has laid a lasting foundation and upon completion, will be a testimony to his many years of dedicated service to the Marine Corps and his fellow Marines.
Commemorative services for LtCol Guenther have not been finalized at this posting. It is intended that his remains will be interred at Arlington National Cemetary at a later date. Cards of sympathy may be sent to his wife at the following address: Gerrie Guenther, The Jefferson, 900 N Taylor St. #916, Arlington VA 22203.

Ex-Intelligence Chief Who Brokered Inter-Korean Accord Dies. Lee Hu-rak, former head of South Korea's state intelligence agency known for a secret trip to North Korea in 1972 to broker a historic inter-Korean agreement, died Saturday of age-related causes, his family said. He was 85.

Lee, the right-hand man of late former President Park Chung-hee, served as director of the Korea Central Intelligence Agency from 1970-1973. He was notorious for oppressing dissidents against Park's iron-fisted rule. Park seized power through a coup in 1961 and ruled the country until 1979 when he was assassinated by another close confidant.

Lee secretly traveled to Pyongyang in 1972, where he met then North Korean leader Kim Il-sung to pave the way for a landmark inter-Korean agreement on the principles for reunification, named the "July 4 South-North Joint Communique."

Lee was elected to parliament in 1979 but was prohibited from political activity the following year on corruption charges as a new military junta took power following Park's death. He was freed from the restriction in 1985 but stayed out of politics until his death.

Lee was admitted to a Seoul hospital in May where he received treatment for his illness that worsened recently, according to hospital officials.

He is survived by four sons and one daughter. [YonhapNews/31October2009] 

George Patrick March, Former Asst Director for Plans & Resources at NSA. Rear Admiral George Patrick March, U.S. Navy (Retired), a resident of the Olympia, WA area since 1995, passed into the "Great Beyond" on October 18, 2009 at the age of 85. He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage on the squash court.

Born in Corvallis, Oregon ("God's country"), into a pioneer family on 16 January 1924, he lived in Valsetz from 1928 to 1933 after which he moved to Portland. Following graduation from Lincoln High School in 1941, he attended Oregon State College (now University) for two years before entering the U.S. Naval Academy. He graduated from that institution and was commissioned Ensign in June 1946. On 20 December of that year he married the beautiful Betty Eileen Saum ("Saumie"). After two years of destroyer duty, he studied the Russian language at the Navy's Intelligence School in Washington, D.C. He became a specialist in the field of cryptology in 1949 and for the next 29 years pursued a career that included staff and command assignments at sea, on foreign shore and in the Washington, D.C. area. His foreign shore duty included Morocco, Germany, France, Cyprus, England and Japan. He also served one year in Hawaii. In 1973 he was promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral and assigned as an Assistant Director, Plans & Resources, at the National Security Agency. The following year he was ordered to duty as the Commander, Naval Security Group Command, with additional duty as the Director, Electronic Warfare and Cryptology Division, on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations. He retired from the Navy in 1978. Wherever he went he inspired people to do their very best.

When on duty in the Washington, D.C. area, he attended evening classes at Georgetown University, receiving his MA in 1952 and PhD in 1965 in the field of Russian History. After retirement from the Navy, he commenced post-doctoral work at the University of Hawaii in the field of East Asian Studies, which involved the study of the Mandarin and Classical Chinese languages. From 1983 to 1993 he lectured in history for the University of Hawaii. In addition to articles published in the journals Sibirica and Pacific Historical Review, he authored two published books: Cossacks of the Brotherhood: The Zaporog Kosh of the Dnieper River (1990) and Eastern Destiny: Russia in Asia and the North Pacific (1996). His vast array of interests and deep desire to keep learning kept him vitally engaged in life.

Since retirement in Olympia, he has been involved with golf at the Olympia Country and Golf Club (3 holes-in-one!), with squash racquets at the Valley Athletic Club, and with the Olympia World Affairs Council.

He loved and respected people, his friends were very dear to him and he had absolute dedication and love for his family. He lost his wife, Saumie in 2006 and is survived by three devoted daughters, Molly, Terry and Peggy and their spouses; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Ceremonies and inurnment will take place at the U.S. Naval Academy Columbarium in Annapolis, Maryland next month. On Friday, October 23, 2009 at 12:00 noon a reception will be held at the Olympia Country and Golf Club so that those who knew and appreciated Pat can gather to celebrate the life of this remarkable man. [TheOlympian/21October2009]

Books

Mind-Sets and Missiles: a First Hand Account of the Cuban Missile Crisis, by Kenneth Michael Absher. This chronology provides details and analysis of the intelligence failures and successes of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and suggests the applicability of lessons learned to the collection, analysis, and use of intelligence in strategic decisionmaking. The author describes how the crisis unfolded using the author's personal recollection, declassified documents, and many memoirs written by senior CIA officers and others who were participants. Lessons learned include the need to avoid having our political, analytical and intelligence collection mind-sets prevent us from acquiring and accurately analyzing intelligence about our adversaries true plans and intentions. When our national security is at stake, we should not hesitate to undertake risky intelligence collection operations including espionage, to penetrate our adversary's deceptions. We must also understand that our adversaries may not believe the gravity of our policy warnings or allow their own agendas to be influenced by diplomatic pressure. Free download is available at http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?PubID=935. [StrategicStudiesInstitute/August2009]

The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, by Edward N. Luttwak, reviewed by Gary Anderson. An Iranian empire trying to reassert lost glory, an Islamic jihad and tribal animosities in the Balkans; life is not easy for a superpower. This could describe American strategic challenges today, but these are the same types of threats faced by an earlier superpower in Edward N. Luttwak's new book, "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire." For a millennium after the Western Roman Empire fell, the Eastern half lived on with its capital in Constantinople. Mr. Luttwak describes how Byzantium managed to survive its Western sister so long, and our contemporary strategists should take note.

Mr. Luttwak takes up where he left off three decades ago when he wrote "The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire." That book was daring in its revisionism at the time, and people still love or hate it depending on their disposition toward the author. In those ensuing decades, Mr. Luttwak has matured as a writer and a historian. This book is good history as well as being an insightful commentary on strategy. Mr. Luttwak still has some interesting historical interpretations, but he has written good history.

The Eastern Roman Empire has received a bad rap since Edward Gibbon largely dismissed it as an effeminate and unworthy successor to the Western Roman Empire, whose demise he described while writing in the 18th century. The term "byzantine" is still used disparagingly in describing modern bureaucracies that don't work well. As Mr. Luttwak tells it, the bureaucracy usually got the job done.

The Byzantine Empire used a combination of military persuasion and what we now call soft or "smart" power to keep its enemies at bay. By soft power, we are talking about diplomacy, intelligence operations and sometimes outright bribery. American soldiers and diplomats who helped turn enemies into allies in creating the Sunni Awakening in Iraq will recognize and empathize with what the Eastern Romans did for centuries. This is a timely and relevant work.

From the fifth to the 15th century, Constantinople could be a very unpleasant place; its politicians and bureaucrats could be vicious and venal, and they would feel very much at home in 2009 Washington. Nonetheless, as Mr. Luttwak describes it, the system managed to work. The Byzantine Empire had a standing professional army, a National Guard-like reserve and written military doctrine that was refined periodically to capture lessons learned from contemporary campaigns and conflicts.

The Byzantines also updated their military technology to take advantage of what they learned from their neighbors, and they lived in a very tough neighborhood indeed. Mr. Luttwak describes the tactics and the technology in detail without falling into the trap of losing the larger thread of his narrative.

Mr. Luttwak does an excellent job of describing the intelligence system of the Eastern empire, from its tactical use of scouting and patrolling to its strategic use of spies and double agents in the courts of its enemies. The Byzantines were not just interested in what their enemies were doing; they wanted to know how opponents thought.

Armed with this knowledge, they used the other tools of soft power to attack in nonlethal ways. The tools included diplomacy designed to turn two or more potential opponents against each other and outright bribery in the form of tribute when needed to buy time. In this way, the empire practiced what one historian has called "conservation of enemies" when faced with too many hostile foes on the periphery of a realm that held few naturally defensible borders.

Mr. Luttwak's description of how the Byzantines deflected the first great wave of Islamic Arab jihad is particularly interesting. The Eastern empire's leaders could not defeat the enthusiasm of the jihadists by direct military confrontation, but they recognized the inherent instability of a caliphate that had to expand to survive. They used a combination of indirect naval action and skill in defensive field fortifications to trade space for time, and then eventually counterattacked to regain at least some lost territory.

Gibbon was an admirer of the ancient Roman virtues and despised the supposed perfidiousness on the part of the Byzantines, who were merely practicing the strategy of survival, but there is much we can learn in a world where we face far too many challenges to fight every possible battle every day. Mr. Luttwak does a great service in giving us a readable account of how the Byzantines managed national-security strategy in a way that should be useful to contemporary soldiers and civilian policymakers. It is also a very good read. 
[Anderson/WashingtonTimes/28October2009]

COMING EVENTS

EVENTS IN COMING TWO MONTHS....

5 - 6 November 2009 - London, UK - "A Centenary Conference on The British Security and Intelligence Services"
This impressive event will be a review of the formation, growth, maturity and future of the British Security and Intelligence Services on the occasion of their Centenary The precise location in central London will be supplied registrants, only. A formal Gala Dinner occurs on November 5.
The group hosting the event has offered a special rate for AFIO members who register for the "Full Conference" before October 10 for a rate of �175; after that date the event price is �245.00
AFIO member fee for dinner reception only [Nov 5] is �90. ALL PRICES EXCLUDE VAT @ 15%
For further information, view PDF of the event.
To register, click here to download Word document and follow the instructions.
Questions? Email wendy@edenintelligence.com.
The list of confirmed speakers, and the topics, make this a "do not miss" event.
Agenda: • Northern Ireland, Parliament, Politics and the ISC; • Spooks, D-Notices, Media; • The Falklands Conflict – a keynote panel; • View from the Commonwealth; • A view from the United States; • The modern era, and the future of intelligence; o JTAC; o interagency cooperation; o Personnel; o A wider community for intelligence; o The future practice of intelligence; • Keynote Speakers;
• The Foundations and The Early Years; • Operation Kronstadt, Sir Paul Dukes and Sidney Reilly; • The inter-war period; • The WWII Era; • The Cold War – keynote panel introduction; • SIS in the Cold War; • Cambridge Spies and the Molehunts; • The impact of Gordievsky; • The history of tradecraft and its development; • Personnel, recruitment and development; • A review of the historical and fictional literature on the Security Services;
Key Speakers and Chairman already confirmed:
• Professor Christopher Andrew, Official Historian of the British Security Service (MI5) “Defend the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5”
• Rear Admiral Nick Wilkinson, CB, former D-Notice Secretary and author of the recently published “Secrecy and the Media, The Official History of the D Notice System”
• Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, KCMG, Official Historian of the Falklands War
• Major General Julian Thompson, CB, OBE, Commander of 3 Commando Brigade, Falklands War
• Hugh Bicheno, author of “The Unofficial History of the Falklands War”
• Gill Bennett, former Chief Historian of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
• Nigel West, intelligence historian and author of “TRIPLEX”
• H. Keith Melton, noted historian of tradecraft and the clandestine devices, advisor to U.S. government agencies.
• Hayden Peake, Curator of the CIA’s Historical Intelligence Collection
• Victor Suvarov, GRU defector to the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), author of “The Chief Culprit!
• Tom King (Lord King of Bridgewater) former Defence Secretary, former Northern Ireland Secretary, founder Chairman of the Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee.
• Dan Mulvenna, ex-RCMP Security Service counterintelligence officer, Professor lecturing on counterintelligence and counter terrorism to the U.S. Intelligence community at the Counterintelligence Centre in Washington, D.C.
• Harry Ferguson, former MI6 and NIS officer, novelist and historian, author of “Spy”, and “Operation Kronstadt”
• Gordon Corera, Security Correspondent, BBC, Presenter of Radio 4 Series “MI6: A Century in the Shadows”

Friday, 6 November 2009, 8:00 - 9:45 a.m. - Coral Gables, FL - Security Threats and Challenges in the Hemisphere: Options for U.S. Policy. Location: Hyatt Regency Coral Gables, Registration and Continental Breakfast in Venetian Room; Presentations and Discussion at 50 Alhambra Plaza
PANELISTS - On Iran - Norman Bailey, Consulting Economist, Senior Fellow, Potomac Foundation; Professor, Institute of World Politics, Washington D.C.
On Russia - Stephen J. Blank, Research Professor of National Security Affairs, Strategic Studies Institute, United States Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania
On Cuba / Venezuela - Jaime Suchlicki, Director, Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami
Program Fee: $30; Academics and students – free admission with valid ID
Registration: By email to chp-rsvp@miami.edu or by fax at (305) 284-9871.
Payment: Please make check payable to Center for Hemispheric Policy. Mail check with registration form to: Center for Hemispheric Policy; P.O. Box 248297; Coral Gables, FL 33124-6535.
Cancellation policy: By email, fax or telephone, before 12:00 noon, Thursday, October 1, 2009
For more information, please call Patricia Salinas at (305) 284-3707, or visit website at www.miami.edu/chp .

Saturday, 7 November 2009, 1100 - 1430 - Salem, MA - The AFIO New England Chapter holds meeting on Counterterrorism Preparedness.

The chapter meeting will be held at the Salem Waterfront Hotel located in Salem MA. The hotel web site is here: http://www.salemwaterfronthotel.com/. For directions to the hotel look here:
http://www.salemwaterfronthotel.com/location.html
Information about Salem MA and local hotels can be found here: http://salem.org/
Our schedule is as follows: Registration & gathering, 11:00 - 1200, Luncheon at 1200 followed by our speaker, with adjournment at 2:30PM.
Our guest speaker will be Ilana Freedman. Ilana is Gerard Group International’s Chief Executive Officer. Ilana is also its founder and is an internationally respected expert in counter-terrorism preparedness. She is a highly regarded analyst and a prolific writer. She has framed the mission at the Gerard Group to provide leading edge programs to prepare and protect American interests and those of its friends and allies from the impact of terrorist attacks. She has put together a team of leaders in the field from around the globe to provide the blue-ribbon service that defines the Gerard Group. http://www.gerardgroup.com/
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 $25.00, $30.00 at the door - per person.
Luncheon reservations must be made by 21 October 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

10 November 2009, 11:45 a.m. - 1:15 p.m. - Yorktown, VA - AFIO's Norman Forde Hampton Roads Chapter hosts Luncheon and Lecture, "How Gaza Became What It Is" by Jack Lott - an AFIO member who specializes in cultural intelligence. He is an instructor for the Christopher Wren Association at the College of William and Mary, teaching courses in intelligence, globalization, and terrorism. He has published two articles on the American Thinker webzine, “The Struggle for Civilization,” about the causes of the 9/11 attacks, and “Armistice is Dangerous,” about the Korean and other cease-fires that the U.S. currently observes. Jack retired from the Naval Intelligence Reserve as a Commander. His last assignment was Reserve Attaché to Egypt. His assignments included: writing Cultural Area Handbooks for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), standing watch in the Naval Ocean Surveillance Information Center and conducting port studies for the Naval Intelligence Support Center.
FEE: $6 for buffet lunch at the Port of York Restaurant, U.S. Coast Guard Training Center, Yorktown. Agenda:
11:45 - Guest arrive, go to buffet and sit in private dining room
12:10 - Announcements and business
12:30 - Speaker:, Jack Lott, "How Gaza Became What It Is"
1:00 Q & A
1:15 p.m. Dismissal
Please advise if you have news of recent lectures, honors, assignments or other activities. We will add a "Members News" section to the next email announcement.
Replies to: Melissa Saunders, President, AFIO Norman Forde Hampton Roads Chapter. mwsaunders@cox.net 757-897-6268

Tuesday, 10 November 2009, 5 to 8:30 pm - Washington, DC - Minute by Minute: The Role of Intelligence in the Cuban Missile Crisis - at the International Spy Museum. Can students change the course of history? Enliven your teaching of the Cold War with a newly published case-based simulation in which students play the role of intelligence analysts at the CIA in 1962. By examining declassified intelligence documents and U-2 photographs at various stages of the crisis, students “live” the crisis rather than only read about it. In this social studies standards-based lesson, students are challenged to make decisions and recommendations based on primary documents and photos. The outcome of the crisis is in their hands: will their analysis provide President Kennedy with the information he needs to avoid nuclear catastrophe? The workshop includes: A Spy’s Eye View: Peter Earnest, Executive Director and former CIA spy discusses the role of intelligence during the Cold War period. Minute by Minute: The Role of Intelligence in the Cuban Missile Crisis: Participate in a simulation of the lesson.  The Secret History of History: A behind-the- scenes exploration of cold-war related exhibits at the Spy Museum with Museum Historian, Dr. Thomas Boghardt. Your classroom copy of Minute by Minute: The Role of Intelligence in the Cuban Missile Crisis: a 125-page lesson with accompanying CD and DVD containing exclusive CIA footage (a $30 value). A picnic-style dinner (sandwich, chips, fruit, cookie & drink). Complimentary admission to the Museum on Tuesday, November 10th (for early arrivals). Tickets: $35 per teacher To register for this workshop call 202.654.0932 (limited space available—register early)

Thursday, 12 November 2009; 12 noon to 1 pm – Washington, DC - Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 at the Spy Museum. As MI5, Britain’s legendary security service, marks its 100th anniversary, the agency has given an independent scholar unrestricted access to its records for the very first time. Join Cambridge University professor and International Spy Museum emeritus advisory board member Christopher Andrew, the author of Defend the Realm, as he reveals the precise role of MI5 in twentieth-century British history: from its foundation in 1909, through two world wars, and its present roles in counterespionage and counterterrorism. Andrew describes how MI5 has been managed, what its relationship has been with government, where it has triumphed, and where it has failed. Defend the Realm also reveals the identities of previously unknown enemies of the United Kingdom whose activities have been uncovered by MI5. It adds significantly to our knowledge of many celebrated events and notorious individuals, and definitively lays to rest a number of persistent myths. Free! No registration required! Join the author for an informal chat and book signing. Where: International Spy Museum, 800 F St NW, Washington, DC, Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail Station.

17 November 2009, 6:30 p.m. - Miami, FL - The Ted Shackley AFIO Miami Chapter at FBI Field Office - EVENT HAS SOLD OUT
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has invited AFIO Members and their selected , cleared guests to attend a special briefing and Class at the Miami Field Office at 6:30 PM on November 17, 2009 . There is no charge for this event. This very special briefing and Class will be from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. A light snack, courtesy of AFIO, will be served. We will be addressed by the top officials of the Miami Field Office on very important topics. In order to be cleared to attend, we must submit the following information to the FBI:
1. Your birth name.
2. Your address.
3. Your date of birth.
4. Your social security number.
Please provide this information to me within the next 10 days. If you intend to invite a special, trusted guest , we need the same information. Once you respond, I will provide you with the information you need, including address and the Gate clearance protocol.
Replies by current registered attendees only to: Tom Spencer at TRSMiami@aol.com. or call 305 648 0940 Event has Sold Out.

19 November 2009, 11:30 a.m. - Scottsdale, AZ - The AFIO Arizona Chapter hosts Dr. Jim Shamadan who will speak on "Resolution of the Starflash Explosives Factory Fiasco."

Dr. Jim Schamadan did his undergraduate work in chemical engineering and received his M.D., cum laude from Ohio State University. A military medical officer in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam conflict, he served as a physician in Kuwait and Iraq during Desert Storm. From September 2001 until January 2003, Dr. Schamadan served as Special Assistant to the Governor of Arizona for Homeland Security. Dr. Shamadan’s talk will cover the events in September 1997, when over a decade ago Federal officers executed a search warrant and associated arrest documents for the owner of a munitions manufacturing facility known as Starflash Ranch in New River Arizona. In addition to the main ranch house, they discovered several booby-trapped underground bunkers, training videos, and a manufacturing facility called “The Shed." Federal authorities had planned to destroy the bunkers using novel technical means but citizens of New RIver opposed this action and the matter reverted to State authorities. The speaker will discuss how the episode ended using information about this incident that has not previously been released.
Event is being held at: McCormick Ranch Golf Club (7505 McCormick Parkway, Scottsdale AZ 85258 ~ Phone 480.948.0260) Our meeting fees will be as follows: • $20.00 for AFIO members• $22.00 for guests. For reservations or questions, please email Simone sl@4smartphone.net or simone@afioaz.org or phone and leave a message on 602.570.6016. Art Kerns, President of the AZ Chapter, president@afioaz.org

1 December 2009 - Arlington, VA - The Defense Intelligence Forum meets - Location of luncheon is the Alpine Restaurant, 4770 Lee Highway, Arlington, VA 22207. This event will follow the Chatham House Rule. Dr. Max G. Manwaring will speak on the Mexican Drug Wars -- Guns, Gangs, and Ganja. Dr. Manwaring, a retired Army colonel, is Professor of Military Strategy in the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College. He is the author and coauthor of several publications dealing with Latin American security affairs, political-military affairs, insurgency, and counterinsurgency. 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 by 24 November by email to diforum@verizon.net. Give names, telephone numbers, email addresses, and choices of chicken, veal, or salmon. PAY WITH A CHECK. THE FORUM DOESN'T TAKE CASH!

8 December 2009 - Hampton Roads, VA - The December meeting of AFIO's Norman Forde Hampton Roads VA chapter will occur in the evening on this date. Further details will follow. Inquiries to Melissa Saunders, President, AFIO Norman Forde Hampton Roads Chapter, mwsaunders@cox.net 757-897-6268

8 December 2009 - San Francisco, CA - The AFIO Jim Quesada Chapter hosts Thomas C. Reed, former Secretary of the Air Force and Special Assistant to the President for National Security Policy. Reed will be discussing the political history of nuclear weapons: where they came from, the surprising ways in which the technology spread and the lessons learned from that proliferation. 
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 meat or fish): afiosf@aol.com and mail check made out to "AFIO" to the delightful: Mariko Kawaguchi, P.O. Box 117578 Burlingame, CA 94011.

9 December 2009 - Albuquerque, NM - The December meeting will feature Jim Hoffsis' presentation on the UAVs featured during the AFIO National Symposium.

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

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