Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Lithuanian Resignation Tied to CIA Inquiry. The chief of Lithuania's secret service resigned Monday, the apparent casualty of an official investigation into whether the Baltic country allowed the CIA to operate a secret prison for terrorism suspects.

Povilas Malakauskas, director of the State Security Department, did not give a reason for quitting. But Arvydas Anusauskas, the head of a parliamentary committee that is investigating reports of a CIA prison in Lithuania, said the resignation was "partially connected" to the probe.

Anusauskas said that the spy chief had been "ambiguous" when the parliamentary committee began investigating the CIA prison allegations last summer. "If the responses we had requested had been presented to us on time and more thoroughly, there probably would have been no need to hold an investigation," Anusauskas told reporters Monday.

The departure came three days after former Lithuanian president Rolandas Paksas testified that the spy agency had approached him in 2003 for permission to bring foreign terrorism suspects into the country. Paksas said he denied the request but accused the spy agency of unaccountable behavior and blamed it for his political downfall.

"It is difficult for me to say if the prison existed," Paksas told the Baltic News Service. He added, however: "I know that the desire existed to get people suspected of terrorism brought to Lithuania." [Whitlock/WashingtonPost/14December2009] 

Pensioner Indicated Over China Spy Scandal. A 61-year-old pensioner has been indicted in Stockholm on charges of spying on behalf of the Chinese government.

Charges filed by prosecutor Tomas Lindstrand accuse the Mandarin-speaking Swedish citizen of illegally gathering intelligence on people of Uighur origin living in Sweden.

Intelligence agency S�po arrested the suspect on June 4th after a lengthy investigation and surveillance period for allegedly gathering information on Sweden's 100-strong Uighur community.

The suspect came to Sweden as a political refugee in the 1990s. If convicted, he faces up to four years in prison.

According to the indictment, the 61-year-old passed on information to two handlers about members of Uighur clubs and associations in Sweden, Norway, Germany and the United States.

His handlers consisted of a diplomat attached to the Chinese embassy in Stockholm and a Chinese journalist, both of whom were tasked by Chinese intelligence services with securing details in Sweden about the interpersonal relationships of Uighurs.

The Swedish government expelled a Chinese diplomat earlier this year following revelations that the Chinese embassy was allegedly involved in spying on political refugees residing in Sweden.

According to the indictment, the suspect reported extensively on activity within the World Uyghur Congress (an umbrella organization for exiled Uighur groups), relayed notes taken during meetings with members of the Uighur community, and provided details of the local Uighur leaders' levels of political access.

By befriending his targets and pretending to sympathize with them, he was also able to supply his handlers with details on the political asylum status of people of particular interest to the Chinese authorities, as well as information about their health, current whereabouts, travel patterns and telephone numbers.

The suspect's intelligence gathering operation earned him rewards in the form of money and services, and spanned the period from January 2008 to June 2009.

Prosecutors said the crimes of which he was accused were of an aggravated nature as they were systematic, had been undertaken in a professional manner for a long period of time and could potentially cause serious damage to a large number of people.

Most ethnic Uighurs live in China's Xinjiang autonomous region. China regularly condemns militant Uighur nationalists as "terrorists" and accuses the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) of carrying out attacks.

A recent US State Department human rights report accuses China of having stepped up repression of the Uighur community. [O�Mahony/TheLocal/15December2009] 

Israeli Spymaster Sees Israel as World Cyberwar Leader. Israel is parlaying civilian technological advances into a cyberwarfare capability against its enemies, a senior Israeli general said on Tuesday in a rare public disclosure about the secret program.

Using computer networks for espionage - by hacking into databanks - or to carry out sabotage by planting so-called "malicious software" in sensitive control systems has been quietly weighed in Israel against regional enemies like Iran.

In a policy address, Major-General Amos Yadlin, chief of military intelligence, listed vulnerability to hacking among national threats that also included the Iranian nuclear project, Syria and Islamist guerrillas along the Jewish state's borders.

Yadlin said Israeli armed forces had the means to provide network security and launch cyber attacks of their own.

"I would like to point out in this esteemed forum that the cyberwarfare field fits well with the state of Israel's defense doctrine," he told the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv University think tank.

"This is an enterprise that is entirely blue and white (Israeli) and does not rely on foreign assistance or technology. It is a field that is very well known to young Israelis, in a country that was recently crowned a 'start-up nation'," he said, referring to Israel's civilian high-tech industry.

Cyberwarfare teams nestle deep within Israel's spy agencies, which have experience in traditional sabotage techniques and are cloaked in official secrecy and censorship.

Noting that the United States and Britain are setting up cyberwarfare commands, Yadlin said Israel also has personnel in this field. He did not cite any specific targets for potential Israeli cyber-attacks.

"Preserving the lead in this field is especially important given the dizzying pace of change," Yadlin said.

Israel, which is assumed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, has hinted it could attack Iranian facilities if international diplomacy fails to curb Iran's nuclear designs.

But many experts believe such strikes would be too difficult for Israel's air force to carry out alone, not least as the United States has voiced misgivings at the idea of open force. [Williams/Reuters/15December2009] 

Ex-Taiwanese Intelligence Head Urges Release of Spies. Former Military Intelligence Bureau official Maj. Gen. Chen Hu-men publicly urged the government to use the improving cross-strait relations to work for the release of Taiwan spies detained in mainland China over the decades.

Chen, a former director at an MIB department, suggested working toward some form of cross-strait spy exchange agreement as a possible avenue for obtaining the release of the Taiwan nationals.

During the decades-long standoff between Taiwan and mainland China, intelligence gathering by spies from both sides was frequent. With increasing cross-strait exchanges in recent years, Taiwan authorities have broken many mainland spy cases. A majority of the cases involved Taiwan citizens recruited by Beijing, and one involving a double agent working for the MIB, according to prosecutorial data.

The capture of Taiwan intelligence officers on the mainland oftentimes was not announced until after they had been sentenced, while some cases were never made public. Taiwan authorities have never formally announced the imprisonment of any mainland Chinese spies, Chen noted.

Although Taiwan may not have many bargaining chips on this issue, Chen said, the two sides are still engaging in exchanges, and regardless of whether through official or unofficial channels, they should hold talks on the release of the prisoners as a demonstration of goodwill. [TaiwanToday/16December2009]

MPs Sue CIA to Shatter Secrecy on Britain's Role in Rendition. A group of MPs is suing the CIA in the American courts in an attempt to force the agency to hand over information about Britain's secret involvement in its extraordinary rendition program.

In a case thought to set a legal precedent, the group, led by Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, is to file a complaint in a district court in Washington seeking a judicial review of the agency's failure to disclose the information.

The MPs from the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition have made requests to the CIA, FBI and the department of homeland security over the last 12 months, under US freedom of information legislation, seeking more information about Britain's role in rendition.

Hundreds of pages of documents have been disclosed but Tyrie said the specific information he requested had not been revealed.

The MPs want to learn more about the use of British airports and airspace, about agreements between the US and the UK on rendition, the use of Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean, and about the transfer of detainees from British to American hands. They have also demanded information about specific detainees, including two rendered through Diego Garcia, and others whom British special forces in Iraq handed over to US forces, and who were then flown to Afghanistan.

The MPs have submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to UK government departments. Most are now with the Information Commissioner's office, pending appeals against the government's refusal to disclose the information.

Similar requests are to be made of Australian government departments in an attempt to discover more about prisoner-exchange agreements known to have been made by the UK, US and Australian governments.

Tyrie has made a series of allegations about Britain's involvement in the program since he established the all-party group four years ago: he claims that the UK has facilitated rendition; that Diego Garcia was used for rendition; and that British troops have been involved in the process. "Each allegation was categorically denied," he said. "Each has subsequently been admitted."

In September 2005 the Guardian reported that aircraft involved in the CIA's rendition programme had flown into the UK at least 210 times since the al-Qaida attacks in the US four years earlier.

Three months after that report, the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, told the Commons foreign affairs committee: "Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the US and also let me say, we believe that secretary [Condoleezza] Rice is lying, there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition, full stop - because we have not been, and so what on earth a judicial inquiry would start to do I have no idea."

Straw and Tony Blair also denied that any rendition flights landed on Diego Garcia. In February last year David Miliband, the foreign secretary, said they had.

After the government repeatedly denied that British forces in Iraq had been involved in rendition, John Hutton, who was defense secretary, admitted this year that they had; he also disclosed that two cases were detailed in documents sent to Straw and Charles Clarke.

While the government has now admitted to involvement in a small number of rendition cases, there is evidence that British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have been involved in many more.

Last year Ben Griffin, a former SAS member who served in Iraq, said a joint US/UK task force detained "hundreds if not thousands" of people who were then kept at Guant�namo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib. Griffin said a senior officer expressed concern that the SAS squadron "were becoming the secret police of Baghdad". He said that the task force had broken international law, contravened Geneva conventions and disregarded the UN convention against torture. The defense ministry responded by obtaining an injunction to silence Griffin.  [Guardian/15December2009] 

Contractor Arrest May Ruffle Obama's Cuba Overture. Cuba's arrest of a U.S. government contractor employed to help Cuban dissidents may rattle U.S. President Barack Obama's initiative to improve ties with Havana but should not derail it, analysts said.

The U.S. State Department has confirmed the Dec 5. arrest of the unidentified American, who reportedly was handing out telecommunications equipment such as cell phones and laptops on the communist-ruled island.

Havana has not commented publicly on the detention but may choose to turn it into the latest in a long list of diplomatic and espionage disputes that have roiled U.S.-Cuban relations for almost half a century.

But some analysts believe its impact will not seriously hamper Obama's efforts to create an improved, more communicative relationship with Cuba.

Cuba has not yet granted American diplomats in Havana access to the detained man, who is not a U.S. government employee, a State Department spokesman said in Washington.

Maryland-based Development Alternatives Inc, which says it has a federal contract to support "just and democratic governance in Cuba," described the American held as a sub-contractor employed "to assist Cuban civil society organizations".

These Cuban dissident groups are termed "mercenaries" and "traitors" by the Cuban government, which has often accused the United States of supporting them openly and also covertly in a bid to undermine communist rule on the Caribbean island.

Obama promised this year to "recast" Washington's relationship with Cuba and took initial steps such as lifting restrictions on family visits and slightly softening the 47-year-old trade embargo on the island. This included freeing up opportunities for U.S. telecommunications companies in Cuba as part of an increased "people to people" contact strategy.

A friendlier atmosphere led the Cold War-era enemies to resume migration talks in July and the Cuban government initially acknowledged a new attitude from the White House.

But Cuba has since then accused the Obama administration of continuing to meddle in its affairs by supporting and funding dissident groups in the same way as previous U.S. governments.

To back this argument, Cuban state television recently broadcast images of two U.S. diplomats attending a march last week by dissidents to mark Human Rights Day.

Cuban President Raul Castro, 78, who took over from his ailing elder brother Fidel Castro in February 2008, has ended previous curbs on ordinary Cubans using cell phones and computers, but satellite phones and walkie-talkies are banned.

The Internet, access to which is heavily controlled on the island, has become the latest frontline for Cuban dissidents, such as well-known blogger Yoani Sanchez, who are seeking to challenge government clamps on the media and political activity outside the one-party communist system.

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Washington regarded its support for human rights in Cuba as important. This included "providing and helping groups provide a capability to network and to communicate." Countries like Cuba and China that feared the "flow of information" were going against the trend of this century, Crowley added.

Dan Erikson, a Cuba analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, said the arrest could be a warning to Obama's administration not to pursue USAID-funded programs in support of human rights and "civil society."

"It is clearly intended to send a shot across the bow to future U.S. grantees who seek to circumvent the Cuban government to work with the island's civil society," he said.

The U.S. contractor's detention may also fuel criticism of Washington's foreign policy in Latin America, where a new generation of leftist leaders such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has already expressed disappointment with Obama.

"It shows Washington's policy on Cuba hasn't changed at all under the Obama administration. They keep using the same espionage, infiltration and subversion tactics of previous years," Eva Golinger, a left-wing Venezuelan-American attorney and commentator, wrote on a leftist political website.

Fidel Castro warned that Obama's "kindly smile" could not be trusted, saying Washington was plotting against leftist Latin American governments, including Venezuela's. [Reuters/15December2009] 

Saudi Spies Hunt Al-Qaeda in Yemen. Saudi Arabia's intelligence service has established a station in Yemen's capital ostensibly to help coordinate a joint campaign against northern Shiite rebels along the kingdom's border.

But its main task is understood to be hunting down the Yemen-based operatives of a resurgent al-Qaida that threatens the Saudi monarchy, and eliminating them with extreme prejudice.

The Saudis, longtime adversaries of the republicans who triumphed over the royalists in Yemen's civil war of the 1960s, have long distrusted their southern neighbors - and still do.

But such is the mortal danger the House of Saud sees in a resurgent al-Qaida in Yemen, ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, it has set aside old feuds to go after the jihadists.

The Saudi General Intelligence Presidency, the kingdom's principal intelligence agency, set up its Sanaa operation in June following talks between King Abdallah and Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power for 40 years.

The service has been headed since October 2005 by Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz, younger half-brother of King Abdallah.

The GIP was followed several weeks later by a unit from the General Security Services, which is attached to the Interior Ministry.

The GSS answers to Prince Mohammed Nayef bin Abdulaziz, the deputy minister who heads the kingdom's counter-terrorism apparatus.

The prince, responsible for crushing al-Qaida's campaign in Saudi Arabia in 2007, narrowly escaped assassination by a Yemeni member of al-Qaida on the Arabian peninsula in his palace in Jeddah Aug. 27.

Both these powerful Saudi agencies, pillars of the monarchy, have been working with the Yemeni military's special forces. These are commanded by the son of the Yemeni president, Col. Ahmed Abdullah Ali Saleh, who is expected to succeed him.

Yemen's intelligence apparatus is widely believed to have been heavily infiltrated by Muslim radicals who support al-Qaida. So the extent of the Saudis' cooperation with their Yemeni counterparts is not clear.

But the unprecedented Saudi intelligence presence in Yemen underlines the deep concern in Riyadh about the renewed al-Qaida threat and the extent to which Saleh's beleaguered government has been unable - or unwilling - to crush either al-Qaida's growing strength or the stubborn Shiite rebellion.

Still, knowledgeable intelligence sources say the Saudis succeeded in capturing one of the jihadists' leading financiers, a Saudi named Hassan Hussein bin Alwan, with the aid of Yemen's Political Security Organization.

Alwan operated for a long time in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt of Waziristan along the border with Afghanistan. He arrived in Yemen via Oman in April 2009 fleeing from Pakistani forces sweeping into the jihadist stronghold.

Saudi intelligence, tipped off by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, grabbed him three months later.

The PSO, Yemen's lead counter-terrorism agency, is headed by Ghaleb al-Qimch. Its upper echelon is composed entirely of former army officers and it answers directly to President Saleh.

U.S. officials say it has been seriously compromised by jihadist infiltration.

The Americans suspect that the spectacular escape of 23 high-value jihadist prisoners from a supposedly maximum security PSO prison in Sanaa on Feb. 3, 2006, through a 140-foot tunnel was aided by PSO officers.

The escapees included several senior al-Qaida operatives convicted of involvement in the seaborne suicide attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbor on Oct. 12, 2000, that killed 17 sailors.

Sometime during the summer, King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia handed over several hundred million dollars to Saleh to help finance his security services efforts to seal the border with Saudi Arabia, according to Intelligence Online, a French Web site that covers intelligence affairs.

As the northern rebellion grew, with Saleh's forces unable to decisively defeat the tribal fighters, Riyadh began providing military aid, including tanks repainted in Yemen military colors, according to Intelligence Online.

The Saudi military finally moved against the rebels on Nov. 4, after they allegedly crossed the border and killed a Saudi border guard officer. That offensive continues, with the rebels claiming large-scale Saudi airstrikes against them.

According to diplomatic sources, the Saudi intelligence input has allowed Yemen's special forces, led by the president's son, to make some headway. But the rebels continue to hold out.

Riyadh and Sanaa claim that's because the rebels are backed by Iran, which Tehran denies. Still, the fighting is increasingly seen as a proxy war between the two titans of the Gulf, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

This may be preoccupying Riyadh for the moment, but for them the more serious threat is still al-Qaida. [UPI/15December2009] 

FBI Linguist Guilty of Leaking Classified Documents. An Israeli-American lawyer who worked as an FBI linguist pleaded guilty to providing an unidentified blogger with classified documents derived from U.S. communications intelligence.

Shamai Kedem Leibowitz, 39, of Silver Spring, Maryland, pleaded to one felony count of disclosing to an unauthorized party five documents that were classified "secret" that he obtained through his work with the FBI.

Leibowitz leaked the documents to the unnamed blogger in April 2009. The blogger - identified as "Recipient A" in court filings - then wrote a post based on the classified documents.

The government does not allege that Leibowitz was paid for the documents. He pleaded guilty to violating a law prohibiting the unauthorized disclosure of classified information about "communication intelligence activities" - i.e., electronic spying.

Leibowitz, who holds dual citizenship, was employed as a contract Hebrew linguist for the FBI for only about three months before he leaked the documents. He worked in an FBI office in Calverton, Maryland, beginning in January 2009, and held a top-secret security clearance. As such, he had access to classified documents and information relating to the communication intelligence activities of the United States, according to the Justice Department press release.

According to the Associated Press, Leibowitz is the grandson of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a famous and well-respected philosopher, scientist and Torah scholar in Israel who died in 1994. The elder Leibowitz was recognized by some as the conscience of Israel for his controversial opposition to Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.

His grandson continued along that path of controversy by working as a peace activist and helping to defend Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian who was charged with murder and terrorism.

Laura Rozen, writing for Politico, speculates that the documents Leibowitz leaked might have been related to the NSA's surveillance of U.S. citizens, and points to this New York Times story from April 2009.

Threat Level thinks it's more likely Leibowitz was behind the leaked news that Representative Jane Harman had allegedly been caught on an NSA wiretap engaging in a quid-pro-quo conversation with an Israeli agent. That information was published in April by Jeff Stein, a writer for Congressional Quarterly, on his SpyTalk blog, which was mirrored at CQ Homeland Security. Stein told Threat Level he never comments on sources.

Leibowitz's attorney, Cary Feldman, was unavailable for comment. A representative for the U.S. attorney's office in Maryland said there's no public information on the identity of the blogger who received the information.

The translator's plea agreement with prosecutors stipulates a sentence of 20 months in prison, and allows him to withdraw his guilty plea if his sentencing judge hands him a longer term. [Wired/18December2009] 

Fixes On the Way for Nonsecure UAV Links. The Air Force has known for more than a decade that the live video feeds from its unmanned aerial vehicles can be intercepted by the enemy but opted not to do anything about it until this year. An official document puts a completion date to secure the feeds at 2014.

Defense officials confirmed that Iraqi insurgents have been capturing the nonsecure, line-of-sight signals used by troops on the ground to view video feeds from MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers since mid-2008.

The drones also have two secure datalinks; one for the pilot controls and one to feed video to commanders.

The service has identified how to protect the feeds, according to an Air Force officer who asked not to be identified. The officer said the service is starting to encrypt the feeds with a software modification but refused to discuss when the fix will be completed. The Air Force's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan puts the completion date at 2014.

The Air Force isn't relying solely on encryption to protect the video.

An immediate solution is to narrow the area from which the video feeds can be received, making it more likely that an insurgent would be spotted trying to intercept them, a defense official said. Typically, militants would need to be within 100 yards of the airman or soldier receiving the signal.

A report published in The Wall Street Journal detailed how defense officials earlier this year discovered laptops in Iraq loaded with a $26 Russian-made software program called SkyGrabber that hacked into video broadcast by Predator cameras, which show the location of insurgents being targeted by the drones.

Besides the SkyGrabber software, insurgents have used high-tech methods to capture the video feeds.

U.S. troops found advanced electronic warfare equipment in a 2008 raid on Shiite militia, according to an Air Force intelligence officer briefed on the raid.

Air Force officials refused to officially comment on the hacking; the Pentagon issued a general statement on the security of its intelligence gathering.

One service official contends the insurgents' ability to watch drone feeds have adversely affected U.S. operations in the Middle East.

"We noticed a trend when going after these guys; that sometimes they seemed to have better early warning" of U.S. actions, said the officer briefed on the raid. "We went and did a raid on one of their safe houses and found all of this equipment that was highly technical, highly sophisticated. It was more sophisticated than any other equipment we'd seen Iraqi insurgents use."

The militia, known as Kata'ib Hezbollah and based out of Sadr City, Baghdad, has long been suspected of being a surrogate for Iran's Quds Force, the wing of the Iranian army responsible for conducting clandestine warfare outside of Iran via various insurgent groups.

The group had a "very long and well-documented history" of getting their training and equipment from Iran, the officer said.

Soon after the raid, top commanders in Iraq convened a task force to identify the extent of the threat and how best to deal with it, according to the officer. Initial findings showed the threat was isolated to Kata'ib Hezbollah.

"They knew that we were flying Predators over their heads 24/7, so it's easy to say 'yeah, I know that I'm going to do a signals analysis search for [the drone]' and take advantage of it," the officer said.

Like the Air Force, the Army is aware of the vulnerabilities that its UAV datalinks have and are working to fix them. The laptops loaded with the SkyGrabber software had footage filmed by smaller Army UAVs as well as the Predators.

The military has not implemented encryption for drones for "various reasons," according to Sova.

"It's not just monetary, but technology readiness," he said. "We've taken certain risks and mitigated those risks with our tactics, techniques and procedures."

Still, Sova said, the ability to hack a drone's video feed is a "very low risk" since the insurgents haven't figured how to hack into the command and control systems of the drones.

"It's not like they're going to control the payload or move it off," Sova said. "They're able to see a specific interval, like a camera system in the mall."

Sova considers it unlikely that an insurgent could tap into a specific drone overhead.

"It's happenstance, if they were able to tap into that feed," Sova said. "Only in the best scenario, and only for a short period of time."

Within the last year, the Defense Department's Office of Acquisition, Technology and Logistics directed the services to beef up encryption, Sova said.

The Army plans to field or retrofit its drones with encryption technology over the next several years, according to Col. Gregory Gonzalez, the Army's project manager for unmanned aerial vehicles. By Jan. 1, the Army will field encrypted Ravens, micro-UAVs.

Air Force officers and defense analysts caution that video broadcasts from manned aircraft to U.S. ground troops are vulnerable to hacking as well because their technology is similar to that of UAVs.

Ground units get the Predator feeds through a Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receiver, or ROVER - a mobile device that looks like a laptop that can either be carried by hand or mounted in a ground vehicle.

An encryption package can be added to the ROVER; however, not all troops have the encryption package. The latest ROVER model being tested by the Pentagon comes equipped with two advanced encryption packages.

Wynne said he thinks the security gap is in part the result of the UAVs being fielded before they were fully developed.

"I would say that the enemy can find a flaw in a 70 percent solution and they are going to exploit it," Wynne said. "On the other hand, before they did exploit it, you did get utility from it - in the case of the Predator, we've extracted tremendous utility out of them."

Moseley said he and Wynne pushed hard to ensure the services protected the datalinks and that he proposed the Air Force oversee UAV development but was rebuffed by the Pentagon.

"In failing to come to grips with standardizing all of this, if this is as big a problem as identified, than we have a serious problem," he said.

Wynne contends the Pentagon needed the jolt of being hacked to act on improving UAV encryption.

"It's like we were talking about this class of war, like somehow the bad guys will never get sophisticated," the former Air Force secretary said. "Now, the sophistication of the enemy might lead you to ask, just like we are with IEDs, 'OK, here's [the enemy's] capability now, where do we have to go?' " [Hoffman&Reed&Gould/AirforceTimes/18December2009] 

Over 100 Spies Uncovered in Russia's Novosibirsk Region in 2009. Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) identified more than 100 foreign agents operating in the Novosibirsk Region in 2009, the regional department said.

The southwestern Siberian region's research institutions and technical enterprises are the focus of foreign special services' interest.

"This year, more than 100 foreigners were revealed who were employed by or belonged to the intelligence apparatus of foreign secret services," the regional branch of the FSB said in a statement on the year's work.

An official said that in some cases, members of foreign special services are expelled from the country, but many are simply kept "under control" by counterintelligence officers.

In summing up the year, the FSB also said it had filed 68 criminal cases for corruption, with nine high-ranking officials being convicted, broke up 11 international smuggling operations and 10 drug-trafficking rings. [Novosti/18December2009] 

Suspected North Koreans Hack War Plan for South Korea. Computer hackers who may be from North Korea have gained access to a secret US-South Korean plan to defend the peninsula in case of war, the defense ministry said Friday.

The hackers used an Internet Protocol address in China to access some military data related to Operation Plan 5027.

OPLAN 5027 was drawn up jointly by South Korea and the US which stations 28,500 of its troops in the South. It allows for the dispatch of nearly 700,000 US troops to the peninsula should a full-scale war break out.

The plan also sets wartime operational guidelines for the troops of the two countries. South Korea has remained technically at war with the North since the 1950-53 war ended in a truce and not a peace treaty.

"A probe is under way to figure out how much the leakage will affect our military plan," the spokesman said. "The officer concerned will be disciplined."

Chosun Ilbo newspaper said the officer with the Combined Forces Command had used an unsecured USB memory stick to download the plan.

South Korea believes the North has military personnel who specialize in overseas hacking and will set up its own military cyber command on January 1.

South Korea's spy chief has blamed North Korea's telecommunications ministry for cyber attacks that briefly crippled unclassified US and South Korean government and commercial websites in July. [AP/18December2009] 

Obama Plan Could Limit Records Hidden From Public. President Barack Obama plans to deal with a Dec. 31 deadline that automatically would declassify secrets in more than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents by ordering government-wide changes that could sharply curb the number of new and old government records hidden from the public.

In an executive order the president is likely to sign before year's end, Obama will create a National Declassification Center to clear up the backlog of Cold War documents. But the order also will give everyone more time to process the 400 million pages rather than flinging them open at year's end without a second glance.

The order aimed at eliminating unnecessary secrecy also is expected to direct all agencies to revise their classification guides - the more than 2,000 separate and unique manuals used by federal agencies to determine what information should be classified and what no longer needs that protection. The manuals form the foundation of the government's classification system.

Two of every three such guides haven't been updated in the past five years, according to the 2008 annual report of the Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees the government's security classification.

The anticipated timing of Obama's order was disclosed by a government official familiar with the planning who requested anonymity in order to discuss the order before its release. A draft of the order leaked last summer.

The still-classified Cold War records would provide a wealth of data on U.S.-Soviet relations, including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall, diplomacy and espionage. A Soviet spy ring in the Navy led by John Walker headlined 1985, which became known as "The Year of the Spy."

It took 19 years and a lawsuit for the National Security Archive, a private group that obtains and analyzes once-secret government records, to get documents on the 1959 crisis when the United States and the Soviet Union faced off over control of West Berlin. For nearly two decades, the contested documents were shuttled back and forth among various offices in the Defense Department, then on to the State Department and an unnamed intelligence agency, each conducting a separate declassification review, before the government finally gave some of them up.

Obama's executive order will follow on the president's inauguration day initiatives on open government. On his first day in office, Obama instructed federal agencies to be more responsive to requests for records under the Freedom of Information Act and he overturned an order by President George W. Bush that would have enabled former presidents and vice presidents to block release of sensitive records of their time in the White House.

William J. Bosanko, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, says the classification policies in place under executive orders signed by Bush and President Bill Clinton have protected national security and enabled increased declassification.

But Obama's review is necessary to enhance security and increase declassification "to a level that our open society expects and deserves," Bosanko said.

Obama's executive order "is an experiment, but it just might work," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. "By changing the rules about what gets classified, this could lead to a dramatic reduction in secrecy throughout the government." Aftergood obtained a leaked copy of an early draft of the executive order last summer.

The government spent more than $8.21 billion last year to create and safeguard classified information, and $43 million to declassify it, according to the oversight office, part of the National Archives and Records Administration. The figures don't include data from the principal intelligence agencies, which is classified.

"What we're seeking to do is come up with a system that refocuses the finite resources available," says Bosanko.

"Serial reviews" are among the requirements causing declassification delays that can take years to resolve. When a classified document contains secrets from multiple agencies, each agency must review its part, a process that can add years to the declassification process.

In 2000, Clinton gave agencies a three-year extension to complete a review of multiple-agency classified records. When it became clear that the deadline wouldn't be met, Bush in 2003 gave federal agencies a six-year extension.

Declassification spending was cut from an average of $224 million annually in the last four years of the Clinton administration to only $47 million a year during the last four years of the Bush administration.

Today, the problem is not much closer to being solved than it was in the 1990s. Under the terms of Bush's extension, sensitive information in hundreds of millions of pages of historical documents will be declassified automatically on Dec. 31 unless Obama acts.

"If the agencies haven't found the sensitive old documents after nine years, that's some indication those records don't deserve being secret anymore," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive.

Obama's order probably will centralize the review process for old records, having all agencies look at the same classified documents at the same time through the new National Declassification Center. Michael Kurtz, who has been with the National Archives for the past 35 years, has been chosen as the center's acting director.

Much of the work of a National Declassification Center probably would be conducted at the National Archives facility in College Park, Md., where many of the documents are housed and many of the agency declassifiers already spend a great deal of time.

Critics say Obama should do more than the upcoming executive order is likely to. They note that Clinton ordered a "bulk declassification" of millions of records from World War II and before; they want Obama to do the same with Cold War-era records.

The premise of bulk declassification is that "we're not going to spend taxpayer dollars to go through these records one by one," said William Leonard, Bosanko's predecessor as Information Security Oversight Office director.

And the planned National Declassification Center, said Leonard, should have authority to decide the status of millions of classified records on its own.

"We shouldn't need multiple opinions from multiple agencies," said Leonard.

But intelligence agencies have resisted surrendering their authority over secrets to an interagency group. [Yost/AP/20December2009]

Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

Charlie Gibson's Heroes: Rebuilding Lives and Caring for Others. During Charles Gibson's career at ABC News, he has met an array of unforgettable characters. He's interviewed countless world leaders and major newsmakers - and each week he brings viewers his "Person of the Week." Gibson singled out two people he met during his career as extraordinary heroes.

The first is Bob Barron. Gibson profiled him for "Primetime" in 2002. Barron spent two decades working at the art of deception as the senior disguise specialist for the CIA.

When Barron retired from the spy agency, he could have made a lot of money in Hollywood. But instead, he turned his extraordinary skills to helping people who were injured in accidents or by illness.

"In simple terms, you build them new faces?" Gibson asked.

"I build them new faces," Barron replied. "Ears ... hands, I can rebuild hands."

Barron created a lab where he built prosthetic devices layer by layer out of silicone, building in pores, painting veins and sewing on eyelashes.

Margaret Boden lost her eye to cancer, and Barron created a prosthesis specially tailored for her. Looking at her, one could not tell which was the real eye and which was Barron's creation.

"Do people give you a second glance when you have your prosthesis in?" Barron asked her.

"They don't even know," she responded.

Gibson's second hero was Kate ter Horst.

Ter Horst turned her home into a makeshift hospital for British soldiers during the battle of the Arnhem Bridge in World War II. Thousands of British and Polish paratroopers were wounded or killed there.

"Every room was the same, absolutely filled with the wounded ... [down to] the last square centimeter," ter Horst told Gibson. "You couldn't walk."

"Eventually did you have to put some outside as well?" Gibson asked.

"You mean wounded? Outside? Outside were the dead, laid around the house," she replied.

Her husband was forced to bury the dead in the family garden in mass graves. 

She later wrote of that time.

"All around they are dying," she read from her note. "Must they breathe their last breath in such a hurricane? Oh God, give it a moment's silence. Give us quiet."

Ter Horst couldn't finish the paragraph that she had written 45 years earlier. The memories were too real.

But what she had written and couldn't read was stirring: "Give us quiet if only for a short moment so that they at least can die. Grant them a moment's holy silence while they pass on to eternity. It is a great prayer which breathes from us all. Give us silence in this place of death. And again comes the night and again follows the day. We scarcely look up at the dawn."

Bob Barron is still working, still creating prosthetic devices for those in need.

Ter Horst, known by the British soldiers she treated as the "Angel of Arnhem," was killed in an auto accident in 1992.

"It was a privilege to have told their stories - and so many others over so many years," Gibson said. [ABCNews/17December2009] 

Section III - COMMENTARY

The Truth About Prospects For U.S. Jihad, by Robert S. Leiken. "Home-based terrorism is here," declared our Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano last week, apropos of the five men from Virginia arrested in Pakistan attempting to join jihadi groups to kill U.S. soldiers. But she probably also was thinking of Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood assassin as well as the convert who killed another soldier in an Arkansas recruiting center, or the Afghani planning to blow up targets in Manhattan, the Albanian American from Brooklyn who was arrested in Kosovo, the convert from Long Island captured in Pakistan a year ago, the Chicago businessman who scouted the Mumbai bombing, the plotters the FBI arrested recently targeting synagogues, government buildings and military facilities in Dallas, Detroit and Raleigh and the fifteen or so youths from Minneapolis off to holy war in their native Somalia.

America is having a European moment; the harrowing recognition that terrorists are among us. As in France in 1995 - when a second generation French Algerian tried to bomb its trains, or in Britain in 2004 - when a group of British Pakistanis were stopped before bombing a London mall, or in Spain that same year - when legal Moroccan residents detonated bombs blew up Madrid trains -, or in Germany in 2007 -- when converts and second generation Turkish Germans targeted a U.S. military base.

But does this mean we should abandon the conventional wisdom that the U.S. is safer from homegrown terror than Europe? Not so fast - there are some important and comforting differences.

None of these American plotters knew each other. These were isolated small groups, even solitary individuals. The Brits who blew up the London subway had conspired with the mall plotters, and those planning to explode transatlantic airliners in 2006 were friendly with the men who a year earlier tried to copy the London bombings. In England, to take by far the most glaring European case, jihad is a social movement that has thrived in the "Londonistan" milieu of itinerant hate preachers, radical newspapers, bookstores, transplanted jihadi groups, and extremist public venues. British intelligence has estimated there are 200 terrorist cells in Britain with as many as 4,000 plotters.

Though the numbers are far lower in the rest of Europe, they still dwarf ours. In England and in Germany (and in France back in the day) there are organic ties between jihadi operations abroad and would-be Western holy warriors. Americans are rarely seen in jihadi camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan where hundreds of Europeans have trained. The jihadis turned down Virginia's motley crew because they had no idea who they were.

If many of our recent plotters, like Europe's, are second-generation immigrants, America's Muslim post-migrant typically hails from a professional or business family (American Muslims earn more than the average American). European Muslims are usually the offspring of labor migrants from rural villages, suffering a "decline of the second generation" - their fathers' industrial jobs no longer available. They often experience a clash of civilizations between the old ways of the parents and the demands and temptations of the new society, in a region that is, unlike America, unaccustomed to immigration.

Some of these post-migrants find a fierce new identity in a fundamentalist Islam very different from the Islam of their parents. In addition Europe's Muslims tend to congregate in enclaves and to originate from a single sender region (Pakistani Mirpur in the U.K., Turkish Anatolia in Germany, the Algerian Kabylia in France, the Moroccan Rif in the Netherlands and Belgium).

But we should probably not draw too much comfort from these differences. While two-thirds of European jihadis come from lower strata, some of the more ferocious were wealthy and integrated, like the British Pakistan convicted for murdering the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Young men with bright prospects, like Mohammed Sidique Khan, the chief London bomber, or Omar Khayyam, who planned to bomb the nightclubs back in 2004, identified with "suffering brothers."

They, like the recent American malefactors, share a "single narrative" of Muslims being oppressed all over the planet, usually by the United States. If you share that picture of the world, as an increasing number of second generation American Muslims apparently do, you might copy Hasan and buy a gun (a lot easier here than in Europe). Lengthening American wars in Muslim lands will do nothing to change that. 

[Robert S. Leiken is the director of the Immigration and National Security Programs at the Nixon Center and the author of the forthcoming Europe's Angry Muslims: the Revolt of the Second Generation (Oxford University Press).]  [Leiken/CBS/17December2009] 

Foreign Affairs? Yes Please, by Christopher Meyer. Back in the Seventies, one of the great West End hits was a long-running farce inspired by the idea that the British were innocents abroad when it came to the skilled sexual habits of Europeans.

As Hungarian writer George Mikes said: 'Continental people have sex lives; the English have hot water bottles.'

The farce was called No Sex Please, We're British! How times have changed. If recent stories are anything to go by, my old profession, diplomacy, has thrown British prudishness to the winds and is even teaching those Hungarians a thing or two - and it's not how to fill hot water bottles without scalding yourself.

It was reported this week that Steven Fisher, who is about to become Her Britannic Majesty's Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, had been caught three times in flagrante in three countries, most recently Hungary, and his wife had walked out on him. This has been no bar to his promotion as a head of mission.

This case follows on the heels of that of Tim Torlot, Her Britannic Majesty's Ambassador to the Yemen, who dumped his wife of 23 years for the 'flame-haired' Jennifer Steil, by whom he's had a child.

What can this outbreak of diplomatic priapism mean? Is Viagra part of David Miliband's modernization program for the Foreign Office, along with blogging and tweeting?

Is there something in the Budapest water supply? Is it the sultry hot weather in the Yemen, which discourages the wearing of too many clothes?

My parents were briefly posted there when it was the British colony of Aden. I remember a steamy atmosphere that must have been a little like the scandal-ridden Happy Valley of Kenya, when sexual shenanigans were rife.

Up to now, our diplomats struggled to shake off the caricature of the pin-striped twit played by Terry Thomas in the Fifties film, Carlton-Browne Of The F.O.

Commentators seem incapable of writing about the Foreign Office without using the adjective 'stuffy'.

So the idea of hanky-panky stalking the elegant residences of British diplomacy comes as something of a shock.

But sex and diplomacy have long been bedfellows. It's a venerable tradition that has changed the course of history.

When I was researching my new book, Getting Our Way, which tells stories from British diplomacy over the past 500 years, I was stunned by what occurred at the Congress of Vienna in 1814.

This was the grand conference that redrew the map of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars. Diplomats from all over Europe descended on Vienna. So did kings, princes and dukes, accompanied by wives, mistresses and general hangers-on.

Prostitutes swarmed to the Austrian capital like bees around a honeypot. The city's population went up by a third.

As the diplomacy moved into top gear, so did the sex trade. A Russian officer remarked on the 'unbelievable depravity of the female sex' in Vienna.

The Grand Duke of Baden hosted orgies with the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, picking up girls in the street. Tsar Alexander of Russia, one of the four Great Powers at the Congress, was a sexual predator. When his advances were rebuffed by Countess Szechenyi, she asked him: 'Who do you take me for - a province to be invaded?'

The Tsar had arrived with a mistress in tow, the Princess Bagration. She was known in Vienna as the White Pussycat and the Naked Angel, because of her see-through dresses.

She ran off with Count Metternich, the host of the conference, and had a child by him.

The Tsar took his revenge by sleeping with Metternich's mistress.

To enrich the erotic pot, the French foreign minister, Talleyrand, had taken up with the younger sister of Metterscarletnich's mistress, who, would you believe, was married to Talleyrand's nephew.

These sexual manoeuvres had diplomatic consequences. Tsar Alexander wanted to take over Poland as part of the spoils of war. Britain and Austria resisted his overweening ambition.

Metternich's resistance was the greater, so it was said, for having been cuckolded by the Russian ruler.

I have to confess that sex entered my diplomatic career at an early stage.

My first posting was to Moscow in 1968 in the depths of the Cold War. I was an innocent, unmarried 24-year-old. I had been warned in London to beware of KGB honey traps.

I traveled to Moscow on an aircraft carrying the new British Ambassador, Sir Duncan Wilson. His predecessor had to leave in a hurry, having fallen for the charms of his Russian maid - trained and targeted, of course, by the KGB.

Soon after arriving, I was taken into the 'secure speech room' to be briefed by the embassy's security officer. This was the only place where the KGB could not eavesdrop (I heard of one ambassador, many years later, who had sex with his secretary there so their cries of ecstasy would not be heard).

I was told very firmly that, for security reasons, I was not to have sexual relations with Russian girls. I was told to: 'Keep it female, keep it white, keep it single and keep it in Nato.' How many of those criteria would pass today's anti-discrimination rules?

The KGB made several attempts to entrap me. Early on, they thought I was gay.

Through hidden microphones in my flat, they heard me rehearsing a sketch for the embassy's Christmas panto, which had men in tights doing a camp ballet routine.

A couple of days later, my Russian teacher turned up with a photo album of male ballet dancers. She asked me which I preferred and whether I'd like to meet any of them. She blushed when she realized she was on a fool's errand.

I broke the security rules only once, when I invited a beautiful blonde Russian girl called Svetlana to accompany me to the famous Bolshoi ballet. It was an entirely innocent outing that never went further.

But, 14 years later, when I was at an official dinner in Baku, the capital of the then Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, I found myself seated next to a Russian woman, who claimed to be a friend of Svetlana's and offered to arrange a tryst in Moscow.

Of course, I declined. But talk about the KGB's long memory and the need for diplomats to be careful. Even when my wife Catherine and I were in Washington when I was ambassador, long after the Cold War, we thought it wise to turn down a curious invitation from the Russian embassy to have 'special massages' from, so we were told, a renowned team of masseurs and masseuses who were visiting from Moscow.

But you didn't need to have been in Moscow during the Cold War to have temptation put in your path. Ambassadors and senior diplomats tend to be at the top of the social pile wherever they are posted. This can draw admiration, respect, envy - and sexual attraction.

As Henry Kissinger said: 'Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.'

When I was an ambassador, I always thought my staff's private life should stay private, until and unless it affected the way in which they did their job of representing Britain abroad.

Though he's hardly a moral role model, we can be guided by Talleyrand, whose career over the 18th and 19th centuries spanned four kings, one emperor and a revolution.

He used to tell his subordinates: 'Above all, don't be too keen.' In other words, be discreet and show self-restraint.

He was talking about diplomacy. But it's not a bad rule of thumb for private behavior. [Meyer/DailyMail/21December2009] 

Section IV - ANNOUNCEMENTS, BOOKS  AND COMING EVENTS

Announcements

Price is Right to Support America's Troops. The following concerns a program benefiting members of the US military, offering an opportunity to donate any amount one wishes to make their holidays a little better and say "Thank you for your service." It's a good thing to do at any time of the year, but it's especially good during a Christmas when we are at war.

While only authorized military shoppers can redeem AAFES gift and Military Exchange Global Prepaid phone cards, any American can send either form of support by simply calling 800-527-2345 or logging on to www.aafes.org and clicking the "Gift Cards/Certificates for Our Troops" or "Help Our Troops Call Home" icon.

From there, AAFES gift and phone cards can be addressed to a specific Soldier, Airman, Sailor or Marine or even sent to "any service member" through the American Red Cross, Fisher House Foundation, USO, Soldier and Family Assistance Center, Air Force Aid Society or Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society.

The Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) is a joint command of the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force, and is directed by a Board of Directors who is responsible to the Secretaries of the Army and the Air Force through the Service Chiefs of Staff. AAFES has the dual mission of providing authorized patrons with articles of merchandise and services and of generating non-appropriated fund earnings as a supplemental source of funding for military Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) programs. To find out more about AAFES' history and mission or to view recent press releases please visit our Web site at http://www.aafes.com/pa/default.asp.

Books

Honorable Survivor, by Lynne Joiner; Reviewed by Jonathan Mirsky. For many years no expert on China stood higher in the opinion of American students of China, including myself, than John S. "Jack" Service. A fluent Mandarin speaker born in China, he entered the U.S. Foreign Service in his mid-20s, only to become a casualty of the McCarthy period and a subject of State Department loyalty probes.

Service, who died in 1999, was eventually judged innocent of disloyalty to the U.S. and abetting Chinese communism. But for years he was accused of being one of the State Department China hands who had "lost China" to the Communists in the 1940s. "Honorable Survivor," by journalist Lynne Joiner, who was also his close friend, makes it clear - and this is Ms. Joiner's chief contribution - that at a minimum Service was "recklessly indiscreet" in his contacts with Communist sympathizers in the U.S. to whom he gave documents or disclosed details of U.S. policy.

Service was in many ways the ultimate China hand. Born in Chengdu in 1909 to a missionary family, he loved China and believed that he not only knew what was best for the country but could help bring it about. In the State Department he acquired a reputation as a China expert and linguist and in 1944, when the first official American government mission flew to Mao's guerrilla stronghold in Yan'an in north-central China, Service was a member of the group.

The Americans were received with fanfare by the Communists, who greeted Service and his colleagues with the same spirit of contrived comradeliness that had overwhelmed Edgar Snow in 1936 (and resulted in his influential, hagiographic book "Red Star Over China"). Like many visitors, Service contrasted Yan'an and the idealistic fervor in the air there with Nationalist China's capital, Chongqing, and its corruption, conspiracies and the "claptrap of . . . officialdom" in Chiang Kai-shek's government.

On their return to Chongqing and later Washington, Service and the other Americans reported that they had seen China's future. The U.S. emissaries maintained that the Communists should be treated with at least the same respect as Chiang's regime. Mao - amusing, dramatic, confiding, eager and mendacious - declared that he would cooperate with the Nationalists and not fight a civil war. According to Ms. Joiner, Service said: "I was almost taken off my feet by the warmth and fervor and earnestness" of Mao's entreaties for American support.

Service's dispatches impressed his State Department superiors. But it was those dispatches and others that convinced his enemies in government that he was a Communist dupe. Becoming increasingly disillusioned with President Roosevelt's pro-Nationalist China policy, Service began leaking information and airing his opinions to anyone who would listen - including Communist agents and sympathizers. Ms. Joiner's biography shows how certain Service was that the U.S. could "fix" China if only Washington knew what it was doing. She argues that this self-confidence, combined with recklessness, led Service to begin giving documents to leftist and probably Communist contacts who played him.

What he didn't know was that the FBI was tapping the phones of the offices of Amerasia, a leftist journal edited by Phillip Jaffe, a devoted Stalinist who, although not a party member, later admitted that he was "giving information to . . . the Soviet intelligence agents." It was at the Amerasia offices one day that Service gave Jaffe information that he warned was "top-secret." In June 1945, Service was arrested and charged with spying based on the Amerasia wiretaps. Testifying under oath repeatedly over several years, Service said that he had revealed no real secrets to Jaffe and others.

Eventually all charges were dropped, but Service was nevertheless dismissed from the State Department in 1951 because of doubts about his loyalty. He was rehired in 1957 at the instruction of a federal judge because the official case against him had collapsed. But Service was never again given a policy-making or China-related post, and he was not promoted. Although he was supported by some senior State Department officers and public figures, including the diplomat and presidential adviser George Kennan, he also had a number of implacable foes, including FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Sen. Joseph McCarthy. In 1973, Service received a standing ovation at a State Department luncheon for retired China experts.

Worn out by the years of suspicion and questioning, Service had retired from the State Department in 1963 and spent the last years of his professional life at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was admired by students and colleagues and regarded as a witch-hunt victim.

But Jack Service was more than that. In two phone interviews with me shortly before he died a decade ago, Service admitted that in the 1940s he had given Jaffe a top-secret document revealing the Nationalist Order of Battle, which showed the exact disposition of the forces facing Mao's troops. When I observed that some might regard this as treason (I made no accusation), Service said he knew it. "I want to get this off my chest," he said, explaining: "I was gullible, and trusting, and foolish." He also told me that he had purposely ignored Mao's persecution, including executions, of his perceived enemies at Yan'an. Why cover for the supposedly moderate Communist leader? "I wanted them to win. I thought they were better than the Nationalists and that if we always opposed them we would have no access to the next Chinese government."

Service pressed me to publish our conversation, but friends of his said that it would be very painful. I agreed and after some time forgot the whole episode, until Ms. Joiner's book came my way. His stunning admission that he did supply classified intelligence to Jaffe, whom he must have assumed would pass it on, puts his later career - and Ms. Joiner's book - in a different light. If what Service told me near the end of his life is true, he can no longer be viewed as an innocent victim. [Mr. Mirsky is a former East Asia editor for the Times of London.]   [Mirsky/WallStreetJournal/20December2009] 

Coming Events

EVENTS IN COMING TWO MONTHS....

13 January 2010, 11:30 a.m. - Scottsdale, AZ – The AFIO Arizona Chapter hosts Victor Oppleman who will speak on "National Security Vulnerabilities to Cyber Attacks."

Victor Oppleman is an accomplished author, speaker, and patent-holder in the field of network security and a specialized consultant to some of the world’s best known companies. His open source software is used by thousands of engineers worldwide. He is coauthor of Extreme Exploits: Advanced Defenses Against Hardcore Hacks (McGraw Hill 2005) and author of The Secrets to Carrier Class Network Security (Auerbach, 2009). This 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 call and leave a message on 602.570.6016. Contact Arthur Kerns, President of the AFIO AZ Chapter, president@afioaz.org

14 January 2010 - San Francisco, CA - The AFIO Jim Quesada Chapter hosts Farhad Mansourian, former anti-terrorist officer in the Iranian Imperial Army at the time when Islamic Fundamentalists were attempting to overthrow the 2,500 years old Monarchy in Iran. Mr. Mansourian will be discussing Iranian government intelligence and terror network. RSVP required. The meeting will be held at United Irish Cultural Center, 2700 45th Avenue, San Francisco (between Sloat and Wawona). 11:30 AM no host cocktails; noon - luncheon. $25 member rate with advance reservation and payment; $35 non-member. E-mail RSVP to Mariko Kawaguchi (please indicate chicken or fish): afiosf@aol.com and mail check made out to "AFIO" to: Mariko Kawaguchi, P.O. Box 117578 Burlingame, CA 94011

MANY Spy Museum Events in January and February with full details are listed on the AFIO Website at www.afio.com. The titles for some of these are as follows:

• Wednesday, 20 January 2010; 6:30 pm - Washington, DC - Defector: Igor Gouzenko and the Start of the Cold War at the International Spy Museum
• Thursday, 21 January 2010; 12 noon – 1 pm - Bioterror in the 21st Century: Emerging Threats in a New Global Environment at the International Spy Museum
• True Lies/True Lives: Famous Spies of the 20th Century - Wednesdays in February and the first Wednesday in March; 10:15 am
  Location: International Spy Museum, Washington, DC
• Wednesday, 3 February 2010; 10:15 am - Washington, DC - Aldrich Ames: High Pay for High Crimes - at the International Spy Museum
• Thursday, 4 February 2010; 6:30 pm - Washington, DC - The Counterfeiters at the International Spy Museum
• Wednesday, 10 February 2010; 10:15 am - Washington, DC - John Walker: The Ring Leader at the International Spy Museum
• Wednesday, 17 February 2010; 10:15 am - Washington, DC - Oleg Penkovsky: The Heroic Spy
• Thursday, 18 February 2010; 12 noon – 1 pm - Washington, DC - The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State at the International Spy Museum
• Wednesday, 24 February 2010; 10:15 am- Washington, DC - Robert Hanssen: The Anonymous Spy
• Wednesday, 3 March 2010; 10:15 am - Washington, DC - Ana Montes: Cuba’s American Mole at the International Spy Museum
  

Thursday, 21 January 2010, 1130 hours - Denver, CO - The Rocky Mountain Chapter of AFIO holds a meeting on "Have Helicopter, Will Travel.";  Dr. (COL USA, MC, Retd) Ed Kerkorian, a senior medical officer in Viet Nam era speaks on "Have Helicopter, Will Travel." Event occurs at the USAFA Falcon Club. Cost: $10 RSVP to Tom Van Wormer, RMC, AFIO Treasurer, robsmom@pcisys.net
or 719 481 8273

21 January 2010, 12 - 2 pm - The Los Angeles AFIO Chapter hosts business meeting.
Place: the LMU campus in room 302. The January business meeting will not host a speaker nor will lunch be provided, the focus of the meeting will be to tabulate the results of the chapter elections for the officers and focus on establishing chapter goals for the upcoming year 2010. The January meeting is open to chapter members only, no guests. Replies to Vincent Autiero afio_la@yahoo.com

13 February 2010 - Gainesville, FL - The North Florida Chapter will meet for luncheon event. Speaker TBA. For further information about the upcoming chapter meeting, contact Vince Carnes at qbegonia@comcast.net For further information contact Ken Meyer at kmeyer12@bellsouth.net or 904-777-2050

24 February 2010, 9 am - 5 pm - Ft Lauderdale, FL - The FBI/INFRAGARD has invited AFIO Members to the FEBRUARY 24, 2010 Conference on Counterterrorism measures at Nova Southeastern University.

If you plan to attend, please RSVP to AFIO Miami Chapter President, Tom Spencer, at TRSMIAMI@aol.com. Provide your AFIO National member number, address, phone number. Your information will be provided to the FBI for assessment. Their decision of which members can attend is final. AFIO bears no responsibility for costs or arrangements made in anticipation of attending this Infragard/FBI event based on the decisions of their security personnel. If available, bring your government issued ID. Infragard is the public/private partnership of the FBI. You can get more information on Infragard at www.infragard.net.
Please respond to Tom Spencer no later than February 10, 2010 via email.
Location: NOVA Southeastern University , Knight Lecture Hall, Room # 1124
3301 College Ave, Ft. Lauderdale, Fl 33314
Abbreviated AGENDA
09:00 - 09:30 AM - Registration and coffee
09:30 - 10:00 AM Welcoming Remarks - Carlos "Freddy" Kasprzykowski, InfraGard South Florida Chapter President; Eric S. Ackerman, Ph.D., NSU Assistant Dean and Director of Graduate Programs; SA Nelson J. Barbosa, InfraGard Coordinator/FBI Miami
10:00 - 11:00 AM - Stephanie M. Viegas, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Coordinator, Miami FBI Field Division Will give an overview on how the FBI responds and coordinates WMD threats and related cases.
11:00 - 11:15 AM - Break
11:15 -11:30 AM - FBI employment needs - SA Kathleen J. Cymbaluk, Miami FBI Recruiter. This presentation will discuss current hiring needs of the FBI and
requirements on how to qualify and apply.
11:30 - 12:30 PM - Christopher L. Eddy, Supervisory Intelligence Analyst. The use of Intelligence Information in the FBI. This presentation will discuss how intelligence is collected, analyzed, and pushed to the right people at the right time and place and how vitally important it is to the security of our nation and its interests.
12:30 - 01:45 PM - LUNCH (Food court available on campus)
01:45 - 02:45 PM - Gun Running from Broward and Palm Beaches Counties
SSA Mark A. Hastbacka; This presentation will touch on IRA gun running operation in the above counties from a Counter terrorism investigation point-of-view.
02:15 - 03:15 PM - FBI Extraterritorial Responsibilities: Focus Iraq ASAC Scott A. Gilbert, FBI Miami. This presentation will focus on FBI activities in the International
Terrorism Organizations (ITO) and in the Middle East in general, with specific focus on IT and kidnapping investigations.
03:15 - 03:30 PM - BREAK
03:30 - 04:30 PM - Overview of Current Terrorism Trends: South Florida
SIA Vincent J. Rowe. This presentation will focus on terrorism trends in the South Florida
territory.
04:30 - 05:00 PM - Conclusion

26 January 2010 - Arlington, VA - The Defense Intelligence Forum meets at the Alpine Restaurant, 4770 Lee Highway, Arlington, VA 22207. This event is open to members of all IC associations. The speaker will be John Moore, who will speak on the Middle East after One Year with President Obama. He will cover the peace process, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and the on-going battle with Islamic terrorists. Mr. Moore was the Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia, and Terrorism, DIA's senior expert for the region. He was twice awarded the Director of Central Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal. He has been a witness at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. To encourage candor at this forum, there may be no media, notes, recordings, or attribution. 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 15 January 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.

15 - 17 February 2010 - Heidelberg, Germany - The United States European Command Director for Intelligence is using this convention outfit to arrange an Intelligence Summit.
The website for this event managers is https://www.ncsi.com/eucom09/index.shtml

13 March 2010, 10 am to 1 pm - Coral Gables, FL - AFIO Miami Chapter hosts talk on FUTURE WARS by Dr. John Alexander.
Please save the date. Dr. John Alexander, author of Future Wars, will be leading a presentation and discussion.
Event to be held at the Hyatt Coral Gables. For further information contact chapter president Tom Spencer at trsmiami@aol.com

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

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