AFIO Weekly Intelligence Notes #14-10 dated 13 April 2010

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CONTENTS

Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

Section III - COMMENTARY

Section IV - BOOKS, OBITUARIES, JOBS AND COMING EVENTS

Books

Obituaries

Jobs

Coming Events

Current Calendar New and/or Next Two Months ONLY

Events at the International Spy Museum in April and May with full details

  • Wednesday, 14 April 2010; 6:30 pm - Washington, DC - "Striking Remotely: Predator Drones" at the International Spy Museum
  • Thursday, 15 April 2010; noon - 1 pm - Washington, DC - "Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy" at the International Spy Museum
  • Wednesday, 5 May 2010; 6:30 pm - Washington, DC - "Abduction, Black Site Prisons, and the CIA: Extraordinary Rendition Today" at the International Spy Museum
  • Thursday, 6 May 2010; 12 noon – 1 pm - Washington, DC - "On the Front Lines of Cyber War with Richard A. Clarke" at the International Spy Museum
  • Monday, 10 May 2010; 6:30 pm - Washington, DC - "Our Man in Havana" at the International Spy Museum
  • Thursday, 13 May 2010; 10 am - 2:30 pm - Washington, DC - "Codebreaking in World War II: The Inside Story" at the International Spy Museum
  • Thursday, 20 May 2010; 6 pm - Washington, DC - "Goldfinger" at the International Spy Museum

THIS FRIDAY...in Austin, Texas
CIA Invites AFIO Members to
CIA - LBJ Library/Univ of Texas Austin half-day Conference & Reception on

STRATEGIC WARNING and The ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE.
Lessons Learned from the 1968 Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia

Features Adm Bobby Inman, former DDCIA and former DIRNSA
and Amb Robert Hutchings. former CIA, Dean, LBJ School of Foreign Affairs

Current Agenda:

12:30 - Welcome by Mark Updegrove, Director, LBJ Library
12:30-12:50 - Opening Remarks by Admiral Bobby Inman, USN,
Former Deputy Director, CIA, and Director, NSA
12:50-1:00 - Introduction of Keynote Speaker, Mark Updegrove, Director, LBJ Library
1:00-1:45 - Keynote Address on "Strategic Warning and the Role of Intelligence" -
Ambassador Robert Hutchings (Dean, LBJ School of Public Affairs)
1:45 - Break
2:00-3:15 - Panel Discussion #1 on The Soviet Invasion from an Intelligence Analyst Perspective
Panel chair: Donald Steury (CIA Historian)
Panel members (former analysts): John Bird, Doug MacEachin, Tom Troy
3:15 - Break
3:30-4:45 - Panel Discussion #2 - Strategic Warning in the Post-Soviet Environment
Panel chair: Donald Steury
Panel members: Mark Kramer (Director, Cold War Studies Project, Harvard)
Peter Clement (Deputy Director of Intelligence, CIA)
Mike Absher (Scowcroft Institute, Texas A&M)
4:45-5:00 - Historical Collections Program at CIA
Joseph Lambert, Director of Information Management Services, CIA
5:00 - Reception
[Click on image above for full details and registration from www.afio.com]

Did you miss the AFIO SPRING LUNCHEON?

Hear streaming audio of either of the speakers at these links:

Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post reporter, Writer/Commentator, Former Bush White House & Pentagon Chief Speechwriter, author of the acclaimed, newly released

Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe
and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack

Click to hear Marc Thiessen's remarks. Plays in Windows Media Player or default MP3 player. It is a 42 MB MP3 file.

and

Seymour "Sy" M. Hersh, Controversial, Pulitzer prize-winning investigative journalist/author who writes on intelligence issues, author of

Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

Click to hear Seymour Hersh's remarks. Plays in Windows Media Player or default MP3 player. It is a 49 MB MP3 file.

OTHER EVENTS later in 2010 requiring advanced reservations NOW.....

11-13 July 2010 - Dungarvan, Ireland - 2010 Analytic Best Practices Conference by Mercyhurst College Institute of Intelligence Education. Event to be at Dungarvan Town Hall Theatre. Further details.....

PLAN NOW so you do not miss SPYCRUISE� on 13 - 20 November 2010 - Ft. Lauderdale, FL - SPYCRUISE� to Grand Turks, Turks & Caicos; San Juan, PR; St. Thomas, USVI; and Half Moon Cay, Bahamas - with National Security Speakers Discussing "Current & Future Threats: Policies, Problems and Prescriptions." Full Details....

WIN CREDITS FOR THIS ISSUE: The WIN editors thank the following special contributors to this issue:  dh, pjk, cjlc, th, and fwr.  

They have contributed one or more stories used in this issue.

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

Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Researchers Trace Data Theft to Intruders in China. Turning the tables on a China-based computer espionage gang, Canadian and United States computer security researchers have monitored a spying operation for the past eight months, observing while the intruders pilfered classified and restricted documents from the highest levels of the Indian Defense Ministry.

The researchers, based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, provide a detailed account of how a spy operation it called the Shadow Network systematically hacked into personal computers in government offices on several continents.

The Toronto spy hunters not only learned what kinds of material had been stolen, but were able to see some of the documents, including classified assessments about security in several Indian states, and confidential embassy documents about India's relationships in West Africa, Russia and the Middle East. The intruders breached the systems of independent analysts, taking reports on several Indian missile systems. They also obtained a year's worth of the Dalai Lama's personal e-mail messages.

The intruders even stole documents related to the travel of NATO forces in Afghanistan, illustrating that even though the Indian government was the primary target of the attacks, one gap in computer security can leave many nations exposed.

"It's not only that you're only as secure as the weakest link in your network," said Rafal Rohozinski, a member of the Toronto team. "But in an interconnected world, you're only as secure as the weakest link in the global chain of information."

As recently as early March, the Indian communications minister, Sachin Pilot, told reporters that government networks had been attacked by China, but that "not one attempt has been successful." But on March 24, the Toronto researchers said, they contacted intelligence officials in India and told them of the spy ring they had been tracking. They requested and were given instructions on how to dispose of the classified and restricted documents.

On Monday, Sitanshu Kar, a spokesman for the Indian Defense Ministry, said officials were "looking into" the report, but had no official statement.

The attacks look like the work of a criminal gang based in Sichuan Province, but as with all cyberattacks, it is easy to mask the true origin, the researchers said. Given the sophistication of the intruders and the targets of the operation, the researchers said, it is possible that the Chinese government approved of the spying.

When asked about the new report on Monday, a propaganda official in Sichuan's capital, Chengdu, said "it's ridiculous" to suggest that the Chinese government might have played a role. "The Chinese government considers hacking a cancer to the whole society," said the official, Ye Lao. Tensions have risen between China and the United States this year after a statement by Google in January that it and dozens of other companies had been the victims of computer intrusions coming from China.

The spy operation appears to be different from the Internet intruders identified by Google and from a surveillance ring known as Ghostnet, also believed to be operating from China, which the Canadian researchers identified in March of last year. Ghostnet used computer servers based largely on the island of Hainan to steal documents from the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, and governments and corporations in more than 103 countries.

The Ghostnet investigation led the researchers to this second Internet spy operation, which is the subject of their new report, titled "Shadows in the Cloud: An investigation Into Cyberespionage 2.0." The new report shows that the India-focused spy ring made extensive use of Internet services like Twitter, Google Groups, Blogspot, blog.com, Baidu Blogs and Yahoo! Mail to automate the control of computers once they had been infected.

The Canadian researchers cooperated in their investigation with a volunteer group of security experts in the United States at the Shadowserver Foundation, which focuses on Internet criminal activity.

"This would definitely rank in the sophisticated range," said Steven Adair, a security research with the group. "While we don't know exactly who's behind it, we know they selected their targets with great care."

By gaining access to the control servers used by the second cyber gang, the researchers observed the theft of a wide range of material, including classified documents from the Indian government and reports taken from Indian military analysts and corporations, as well as documents from agencies of the United Nations and other governments.

"We snuck around behind the backs of the attackers and picked their pockets," said Ronald J. Deibert, a political scientist who is director of the Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity research group at the Munk School. "I've not seen anything remotely close to the depth and the sensitivity of the documents that we've recovered."

The researchers said the second spy ring was more sophisticated and difficult to detect than the Ghostnet operation.

By examining a series of e-mail addresses, the investigators traced the attacks to hackers who appeared to be based in Chengdu, which is home to a large population from neighboring Tibet. Researchers believe that one hacker used the code name "lost33" and that he may have been affiliated with the city's prestigious University of Electronic Science and Technology. The university publishes books on computer hacking and offers courses in "network attack and defense technology" and "information conflict technology," according to its Web site.

The People's Liberation Army also operates a technical reconnaissance bureau in the city, and helps finance the university's research on computer network defense. A university spokesman could not be reached Monday because of a national holiday.

The investigators linked the account of another hacker to a Chengdu resident whose name appeared to be Mr. Li. Reached by telephone on Monday, Mr. Li denied taking part in computer hacking. Mr. Li, who declined to give his full name, said he must have been confused with someone else. He said he knew little about hacking. "That is not me," he said. "I'm a wine seller."

The Canadian researchers stressed that while the new spy ring focused primarily on India, there were clear international ramifications. Mr. Rohozinski noted that civilians working for NATO and the reconstruction mission in Afghanistan usually traveled through India and that Indian government computers that issued visas had been compromised in both Kandahar and Kabul in Afghanistan.

"That is an operations security issue for both NATO and the International Security Assistance Force," said Mr. Rohozinski, who is also chief executive of the SecDev Group, a Canadian computer security consulting and research firm.

The report notes that documents the researchers recovered were found with "Secret," "Restricted" and "Confidential" notices. "These documents," the report says, "contain sensitive information taken from a member of the National Security Council Secretariat concerning secret assessments of India's security situation in the states of Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura, as well as concerning the Naxalites and Maoists," two opposition groups.

Other documents included personal information about a member of the Indian Directorate General of Military Intelligence.

The researchers also found evidence that Indian Embassy computers in Kabul, Moscow and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and at the High Commission of India in Abuja, Nigeria had been compromised.

Also compromised were computers used by the Indian Military Engineer Services in Bengdubi, Calcutta, Bangalore and Jalandhar; the 21 Mountain Artillery Brigade in Assam and three air force bases. Computers at two Indian military colleges were also taken over by the spy ring.

Even after eight months of watching the spy ring, the Toronto researchers said they could not determine exactly who was using the Chengdu computers to infiltrate the Indian government.

"But an important question to be entertained is whether the P.R.C. will take action to shut the Shadow Network down," the report says, referring to the People's Republic of China. "Doing so will help to address longstanding concerns that malware ecosystems are actively cultivated, or at the very least tolerated, by governments like the P.R.C. who stand to benefit from their exploits though the black and gray markets for information and data."  [Markoff&Barboza/NYTimes/6April2010] 

Report Says Defense Contractors Battle "Relentless" Online Assaults. Foreign nations are increasingly exploiting the Internet, including social network sites, to conduct industrial espionage against Defense Department contractors, according to a recently released government report.

"United States defense-related technologies and information are under attack each day, every hour and from multiple sources," the Defense Security Service, which oversees security at 13,000 contractor facilities, said in the report. "The attack is pervasive, relentless and unfortunately, at times, successful."

Contractors are required to detail suspicious contacts with foreign nations or commercial organizations to the Defense Security Service, according to the report, which is the second document on industrial espionage that top Pentagon officials called for in July 2008. The report covers 2008, was written in 2009. It was released on March 30.

Direct requests for information sent via e-mail were the most prevalent type of attempt to obtain information on U.S. defense systems, followed closely by what the Defense Security Service called "suspicious Internet activity," which included intrusions into unclassified contractor networks.

The attacks came from nations considered unfriendly and friendly. Countries in East Asia and the Pacific - including China, the two Koreas and Vietnam - dominated Internet attempts to collect U.S. defense information, the report noted. E-mail messages requesting price quotes and system information were the preferred method to attempt to steal information on U.S. technologies. Users also sent multiple e-mail requests for the same information to different individuals working for the same contractor.

The report warned that the abundance of personnel information on contractor Web sites and the growing use of social network sites "give a likely targeting advantage to East Asia and Pacific cyberactors exploiting the Internet."

Hackers from East Asia and the Pacific region focused their attention on information systems, accounting for 29 percent of suspicious contact reports turned in to the Defense Security Service, according to the report. More than a third of the attacks (36 percent) coming from European countries, including Russia and NATO allies such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom, tried to obtain information on aeronautical systems and 12 percent targeted data on information technology.

Attempts to obtain information on unmanned aerial vehicles, which the military has used successfully in Iraq and Afghanistan, have increased to an extent that the report devoted a special section on foreign probes to gain information on these programs.

The U.S. industrial sector is at risk of intensive foreign-originated efforts to acquire UAV-related technologies or information at contractor facilities, the report concluded.

NATO allies as well as current or potential allies have tried a variety of Internet probes to obtain information on UAV technology, including inquiries to buy entire systems or suspicious requests asking to team with a contractor or to create a joint venture.

Gene Robinson, president of RP Flight Systems in Austin, Texas, which builds UAVs for civilian public safety agencies, said his company experiences Internet probes on a daily basis from everywhere in the world. During the weekend of April 4-5, the company logged attacks from Syria, Turkey and Iran, and on Monday flagged probes from Australia, Brazil, Belgium, France, Greece and the Netherlands, he said.

Countries seeking UAV information monitor social network sites such as YouTube, which Robinson said has numerous UAV videos. They also log on to the professional social networking site LinkedIn, which large U.S. defense corporations use to glean personal information on top Defense contractor personnel to create e-mail phishing attacks aimed at those executives, Robinson noted.

A.R. "Trey" Hodgkins III, vice president for the national security and procurement policy for the industry group TechAmerica, said LinkedIn poses a potential security problem because it provides detailed personal information that can make the recipient of a phishing e-mail think it is from a legitimate company. He said the amount of information available on a social network site comes down to individual responsibility.

"As our means of communications evolve, I think we should expect such efforts at espionage to evolve," Hodgkins said. "One of the persistent weak links in network security is the people that use those networks, so there will always be those trying to take advantage of that weak link."

Charles "Jack" Holt, senior strategist for emerging media in the Pentagon, said Defense, which issued a policy on the use of social media in March, wants to use social media, but that requires the department to train troops, employees and contractors to understand the threats it poses.

Holt added reports such as the one from the Defense Security Service "help us to understand the environment in which we now work and live and it is our responsibility to help our people understand their roles and their responsibilities."

A spokesman said Facebook provides privacy settings to block access to personal information and emphasized users should follow their employers' social networking guidelines. "As we advise all Facebook users, Department of Defense personnel should be aware of the information they post and how to control who sees that information," he said. "Like any nonsecure communications channel, sensitive or classified information should never be posted on Facebook and information that is made available should be in compliance with employer guidelines." [Brewin/NextGov/5April2010]

Italian Prosecutor is Tracking Convicted CIA Agents. The Italian prosecutor who won convictions against nearly two dozen CIA operatives for kidnapping last year is tracking their movements via cell phone and credit card records.

Armando Spataro, the chief prosecutor in Milan, said he regularly signs subpoenas, which do not require a judge's approval, for information on the whereabouts of the 23 Americans, all but one CIA operatives, who were convicted of kidnapping after the discovery of their 2003 "rendition" of an al-Qaeda suspect known as Abu Omar.

It is the only case of an "extraordinary rendition" resulting in a conviction of a U.S. official abroad.

"The mobile phone companies give us the data without any problems," Spataro said via e-mail on Sunday. "But we don't have permanent access to the database of the companies."

"For the credit cards," he added, "very often the [foreign] companies write us that they don't have the data So, if we need them, we have to send a request for cooperation to other states."

Spataro did not respond to a request for further details on the companies who provide the data.

Last year, in a discussion of legal ramifications of the conviction, Scott Horton, a lawyer who has followed the case closely for Harper's Magazine, wrote that Italian authorities were using "sophisticated law enforcement techniques, many pioneered by the United States... to track their movements."

The FBI and CIA gave the Italians the equipment to track terrorists, Horton said.

Spataro confirmed Horton's reporting, which was buried in a larger discussion of the case and has drawn no notice until now.

Also escaping notice here was Spataro's March 18 motion to strip three of the defendants of diplomatic immunity and his request for bench warrants for their arrest.

The three, listed as U.S. State Department officers at the U.S. Embassy in Rome in 2003, were put beyond the reach of Spataro by a judge who said their diplomatic status protected them from arrest, even if they were convicted in the kidnapping.

But Spataro argued that since they were actually CIA officers using State Department cover to carry out a "hateful" crime, they should be subject to arrest.

The targets of Spataro's motion are Jeffrey Castelli, Betnie Medero and Ralph Russomando, all who were listed as diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in February 2003, when a CIA team snatched an al-Qaeda suspect known as Abu Omar off a street in Milan and "rendered" him to Egypt for interrogation. Castelli was the CIA's Rome station chief.

Because of the operatives' sloppy security, Italian police investigating the crime were able to captures boxes of classified documents from the local CIA base chief and identify the rendition team's true names and movements.

They risk arrest if they try to enter any European Union state.

"Castelli, Medero and Russomando do not deserve being covered by diplomatic immunity as at the time of Abu Omar's abduction," Spataro argues. "Even if they were diplomatic agents according to the Vienna Convention, they were not really acting as diplomatic agents, but as members of the US intelligence, a qualification for which they were never �accredited' in Rome."

Italy's Ministry of Justice has refused to ask Washington to extradite the defendants. [Stein/WashingtonPost/5April2010] 

Obama White House Just As Reluctant as Bush White House to Share Intelligence With Congress, Says Former CIA Director Who Served Under Both. General Michael Hayden, who was director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President George W. Bush and for a brief time under President Barack Obama, said that when it comes to sharing intelligence with members of Congress, the Obama administration acted much like the Bush administration. Both showed reluctance to pass sensitive information on to Congress.

Speaking at a forum on intelligence reform in Washington, Hayden said he had similar experiences when the issue of briefing Congress on an intelligence matter came up in the Bush White House and the Obama White House.

"I was President Obama's DCIA (Director of the Central Intelligence Agency) for three weeks," Hayden said. "And I will tell you, in that 21-day period, I had the same kind of conversation I had with his [Obama's] predecessor about a sensitive matter, and whether or not I should brief it to the Hill, and I was pushing one way and his NSC [National Security Council] and staff were pushing the other."

Hayden mentioned that Obama has threatened to veto the Intelligence Authorization Bill of 2010, which would fund the activities of the CIA and the 15 other U.S. intelligence agencies, because it contains provisions mandating that the administration brief the entire membership of both the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Currently, federal law mandates that only the so-called Gang of Eight - the Republican and Democratic leadership in both chambers of Congress and the chairman and ranking members of both intelligence committees - be briefed on covert programs.

"And I will add that President Obama has threatened to veto the current intelligence authorization bill, if it still contains language that takes out of his control who on the Hill is briefed," said Hayden.

In fact, Obama has threatened to veto the bill twice: once in July of 2009 after it passed the House and again on March 15, 2010 after it passed the Senate.

Each time, the administration said that forcing it to brief the full House and Senate intelligence committees would restrict Obama's ability to protect sensitive national security secrets - secrets that might leak out of Congress.

"The Administration strongly objects to section 321, which would replace the current 'Gang of 8' notification procedures on covert activities," reads a July "Statement of Administration Policy." The statement was released by the House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas.)

"Section 321 would run afoul of tradition by restricting an important established means by which the President protects the most sensitive intelligence activities that are carried out in the Nation's vital national security interests," says the statement.

That document also explains that the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, thought that intelligence disclosures were a matter of constitutionally protected executive privilege, forcing the executive branch to reveal legal advice given by administration lawyers regarding the legality of secret programs.

"In addition, the section raises serious constitutional concerns by amending sections 501-503 of the National Security Act of 1947 in ways that would raise significant executive privilege concerns by purporting to require the disclosure of internal Executive branch legal advice and deliberations," reads the statement. "Administrations of both political parties have long recognized the importance of protecting the confidentiality of the Executive Branch's legal advice and deliberations."

"If the final bill presented to the President contains this provision, the President's senior advisors would recommend a veto," reads the statement.

In a March 15, 2010 letter, Director of Management and Budget Peter Orszag wrote Rep. Reyes, along with Sens. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) saying that the administration still "strongly opposes" taking away the president's discretion on matters of intelligence-sharing.

"The Administration strongly objects to these provisions, which would replace the current 'Gang of 8' notification procedures on covert activities," Orszag wrote. "This new requirement would undermine the President's authority and responsibility to protect sensitive national security information."

The requirement contained in both versions of the bill would force the administration to brief all members of both House and Senate intelligence committees any time a Gang of Eight briefing takes place. Currently, a Gang of Eight briefing is only conducted on covert programs, which are considered to be of the utmost secrecy, as the Bush administration did with its terrorist interrogation program.

The provision also includes a requirement to brief members of the intelligence committees on the legal justifications for such covert actions. In his letter to Congress' top intelligence committee members, Orszag said that the Obama administration would only summarize its legal reasoning for Congress, and not provide them with the full legal briefs.

"Finally, with respect to the requirement to provide 'the legal authority under which [an] intelligence activity is being or was conducted,' we wish to make clear that we would construe the provision only to require that the Executive Branch provide the committee with an explanation of the legal basis for the activity; it would not require disclosure of any privileged information," said Orszag in his letter. [Cover/CNSNEWS/7April2010] 

Former NASA Scientist Faces New Charge. A former NASA scientist is facing a new charge of attempted espionage. The U.S. Attorney's Office in the District has filed a superseding indictment against Dr. Stewart Nozette, claiming the Maryland man tried to pass classified information about the Navy to a man he thought was an Israeli Intelligence officer.

The indictment claims Dr. Nozette had control of secret information on a U.S. Navy system which directly involved satellite operations. If disclosed, the indictment says, the information could negate or diminish the ability to support military and intelligence operations.

The new indictment comes as Dr. Nozette's attorneys wait for top secret security clearances so they can at least look at the government's evidence.

Dr. Nozette is already facing two other counts of attempted espionage for passing secret and top secret information to an undercover FBI agent. Dr. Nozette thought he was being recruited by the Mossad, the Israeli spy agency.

In a newly filed search warrant affidavit the FBI says:

"When the (undercover FBI agent) asked Nozette if he was willing to give classified information to the Mossad, Nozette replied, "I just don't want to end up like Pollard (meaning convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard). I'll show you mine, you show me yours."

The FBI recorded several conversations with Nozette which have been revealed in court papers. In a conversation with the undercover last fall, Nozette said:

"I'm just wondering what was behind, whether (an Israeli aerospace company) was a vehicle for others to get to me. I never knew what was going on, you know, up the chain and you know I was a little frustrated that they didn't act on a lot of the things I gave them."

The FBI says Dr. Nozette had classified information hidden in a California safe deposit box. According to a court affidavit:

"In the box, agents discovered three computer drives, eight videotapes, 55 gold "Krugerrand" coins worth roughly $50,000, and $30,000 in savings bonds."

The U.S. Attorney's Office says at trial they will attempt to offer evidence of prior bad acts, including an incident at the Naval Research Lab. Prosecutors say Dr. Nozette used a supervisor's e-mail address to send a fraudulent note claiming he was entitled to classified information. According to a court document:

"When confronted, Nozette did not deny sending the e-mail to try to obtain the disc before it had been reviewed for classified information. The program information Nozette sought on the disc could have been used to assist in the complete reconstruction of a classified program."

Dr. Nozette remains behind bars. No trial date has been set.

The former NASA scientist was duped into believing he was working for the Mossad, even accepting $9,000 dollars in cash in what he thought was his first payment. Prosecutors claim Dr. Nozette ultimately wanted $2 million for the information he had. [Wagner/MyFoxDC/6April2010]

Nuclear Strategy Centers on Counter-Terrorism, Non-Proliferation. The Obama administration released a revised Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), shifting the focus of the US nuclear weapons program to preventing nuclear terrorism and proliferation and away from deterrence of the use of nuclear weapons through nuclear superiority.

"The Nuclear Posture Review, led by the Department of Defense, recognizes that the greatest threat to US and global security is no longer a nuclear exchange between nations, but nuclear terrorism by violent extremists and nuclear proliferation to an increasing number of states," President Barack Obama said in a statement accompanying the document's release. "Moreover, it recognizes that our national security and that of our allies and partners can be increasingly defended by America's unsurpassed conventional military capabilities and strong missile defenses."

The centerpiece of the counter-terrorism and non-proliferation strategy involves a renewed commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty with a declaration that the United States would not use nuclear weapons against nations that do not possess them, that are parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that remain in compliance with the terms of the treaty.

The White House is hosting a nuclear security summit in Washington April 12-13 to gather 47 nations to discuss steps for securing loose and vulnerable nuclear stockpiles and weapons globally within four years.

The NPR report places its emphasis on five objectives, which include preventing nuclear proliferation and terrorism, reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US national security strategy, maintaining a nuclear force for strategic deterrence, focusing on regional deterrence, and maintaining a safe and secure nuclear arsenal.

"Al Qaeda and their extremist allies are seeking nuclear weapons," the NPR stated. "We must assume they would use such weapons if they managed to obtain them. The vulnerability to theft or seizure of vast stocks of such nuclear materials around the world, and the availability of sensitive equipment and technologies in the nuclear black market, create a serious risk that terrorists may acquire what they need to build a nuclear weapon."

The review added, "The massive nuclear arsenal we inherited from the Cold War era of bipolar military confrontation is poorly suited to address the challenges posed by suicidal terrorists and unfriendly regimes seeking nuclear weapons. Therefore, it is essential that we better align our nuclear policies and posture to our most urgent priorities - preventing nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation."

As part of this strategy, the United States will seek to reduce nuclear stockpiles in renewed efforts with Russia, China, and other nations. New arms controls initiatives would include the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and negotiation of a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty.

With these treaties, the United States would strengthen its ability to muster international support against nations that violate their non-proliferation obligations.

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has reduced its nuclear weapon stockpile by about 75 percent, the review noted, recognizing that it has plenty of weapons to fulfill its strategic goals and that a large nuclear stockpile is not efficient and effective in a world no longer dominated by two individual superpowers.

Obama insisted, however, the United States would retain plenty of nuclear weapons to fulfill the role of deterring an attack by nuclear powers through nuclear retaliation if necessary. US conventional forces have the necessary capabilities to defend US interests and allies, the President said.

The NPR report further recognizes that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has key roles to play in the prevention of nuclear terrorism and proliferation. DHS efforts to detect and interdict smuggled nuclear materials with programs such as the Container Security Initiative are an important element in support of the review's overall goals. The review indicated that the Container Security Initiative is set to expand while programs like Megaports would place more radiation detectors at overseas ports.

Democrats and Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee largely had a positive reaction to the NPR report, which was required by the Fiscal 2008 National Defense Authorization Act (Public Law 110-181).

Both parties embraced the recognition in the NPR report that the Unites States must retain three sets of nuclear missiles in the form of intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers, although Republicans expressed concern that the new strategy could limit US options to defend itself.

Reps. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and Jim Langevin (D-RI), top Democrats on the committee, released a joint statement applauding that "the NPR responsibly reduces the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy and opens the door to stronger action against rogue states and those who would fail to protect nuclear technology and materials.

"This new approach recognizes that we live in a complicated world that demands immediate action to protect us from the threat of nuclear terrorism, such as locking down loose nuclear materials in concert with other nations," they added.

Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon (R-Calif.), ranking member on the committee, cautioned that the administration should explain "some of the language and perceived signals imbedded in the review."

Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), ranking member of the Strategic Forces subcommittee, was less enthusiastic, disapproving of any decision to "unilaterally take a nuclear response off the table," which "decreases our options without getting anything in return."

The House Armed Services Committee has scheduled a hearing April 14 on US nuclear weapons policy and force structure and another April 15 on the Ballistic Missile Defense Review along with the fiscal 2011 budget request for missile defense programs.

The NPR report also is in line with recommendations in the January report card from the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Proliferation and Terrorism, which recommended that Obama do more to work with Russia to reduce the dangers of nuclear weapons, to strengthen non-proliferation efforts, and to review cooperative nuclear security programs.

Russia has been "a difficult and often reluctant partner" in securing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) but the WMD Commission encouraged steps reflected in the NPR report, such as renewed efforts with the START treaty and the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism.

The WMD report card called on the White House to improve its record on non-proliferation (which received a grade of "C") through specific actions.

"The administration can improve its grade on this front by taking concrete steps, including supporting congressional initiatives where appropriate, to strengthen the safeguards system, to expand near-real time and wide-area surveillance, to require foreign visitors to IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] safeguarded sites to be registered and accounted for, and most importantly, to make progress in reversing trends in North Korea and Iran. The administration can also improve its grade by taking concrete steps to constrain the spread of enrichment and reprocessing technologies," the report card stated. [HistoryToday/7April2010] 

Muslim Cleric Aulaqi is 1st US Citizen on List of Those CIA is Allowed to Kill. A Muslim cleric tied to the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner has become the first U.S. citizen added to a list of suspected terrorists the CIA is authorized to kill, according to a U.S. official.

Anwar al-Aulaqi, who resides in Yemen, was previously placed on a target list maintained by the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations Command and has survived at least one strike carried out by Yemeni forces with U.S. assistance against a gathering of suspected al-Qaeda operatives.

Because he is a U.S. citizen, adding Aulaqi to the CIA list required special approval from the White House, officials said. The move means that Aulaqi would be considered a legitimate target not only for a military strike carried out by U.S. and Yemeni forces, but also for lethal CIA operations.

"He's in everybody's sights," said the U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the topic's sensitivity.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said: "This agency conducts its counterterrorism operations in strict accord with the law."

The decision to add Aulaqi to the CIA target list reflects the view among agency analysts that a man previously regarded mainly as a militant preacher has taken on an expanded role in al-Qaeda's Yemen-based offshoot.

"He's recently become an operational figure for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," said a second U.S. official. "He's working actively to kill Americans, so it's both lawful and sensible to try to stop him." The official stressed that there are "careful procedures our government follows in these kinds of cases, but U.S. citizenship hardly gives you blanket protection overseas to plot the murder of your fellow citizens."

Aulaqi corresponded by e-mail with Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 12 soldiers and one civilian at Fort Hood, Tex., last year. Aulaqi is not believed to have helped plan the attack, although he praised Hasan in an online posting for carrying it out.

Concern grew about the cleric's role after he was linked to the Nigerian accused of attempting to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day by detonating an explosive device he had smuggled in his underwear. Aulaqi acknowledged teaching and corresponding with the Nigerian but denied ordering the attack.

The CIA is known to have carried out at least one Predator strike in Yemen. A U.S. citizen, Kamal Derwish, was among six alleged al-Qaeda operatives killed in that 2002 operation but was not the target. [Miller/WashingtonPost/6April2010] 

Israel Lifts Gag order on Ex-Soldier Spy Case. Israel lifted months of censorship on a military espionage case, confirming the house arrest of a former female soldier charged with leaking more than 2,000 military documents to a newspaper.

Anat Kamm, 23, has been under house arrest since December, but the case was kept under wraps by a court-imposed gag order. The restrictions were eased Thursday after details of the case were reported by foreign media.

The indictment was released with some parts still censored and it revealed new details on the case, including allegations that Kamm copied more than 2,000 classified military documents and relayed them to the Haaretz newspaper. Some 700 were classified as "top secret."

The indictment charges Kamm with passing information with the intent of harming national security. Her lawyer, Eitan Lehman, denied this.

The Justice Ministry said the gag order was necessary for security reasons and to allow officials to try to recover the classified documents. Only some of the documents were recovered, it said, in part because the Haaretz journalist who allegedly got them has left the country.

The gag order drew harsh criticism from local media because the foreign reports were easily accessible over the Internet. In some cases, local newspapers published Web sites with the reports, or even copies of foreign reports, with all relevant names and details blacked out.

Prosecutors allege Kamm was the source for a Haaretz story accusing the military of killing Palestinian militants in violation of a Supreme Court ruling.

Israel's targeted killing policy was one of its most contentious in its years of bloody battle against a Palestinian uprising that began in 2000. Critics charged it to be illegal extrajudicial killing, while supporters credit it with quashing the Palestinian campaign of suicide bombings and shooting attacks.

In late 2006, Israel's Supreme Court set strict restrictions on assassinations in the West Bank, limiting them to extraordinary cases. Officially, the military stopped the practice following the ruling.

The Haaretz report cited a document from March 2007 that included an order from Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh, then the top Israeli commander in the West Bank, permitting firing upon three top Palestinian militants even if they did not pose clear and present dangers.

That summer, one of the men, Ziad Malaisha of Islamic Jihad, was killed in Jenin. Experts interviewed by Haaretz said the order was illegal. Naveh told Haaretz at the time that the killing was justified and did not violate the court ruling. Naveh is now retired and refused comment.

At the time of the memos, Kamm served in Naveh's office.

"All the newspaper stories were published with the consent of the (military) censor. If she posed a threat to national security, she would not have been allowed to stay home and continue working," Kamm's lawyer Lehman said.

Israel requires reporters to submit stories to a military censor that can block publication of information deemed damaging to national security. The gag order in the case was issued by a court, not the military censor.

The Haaretz reporter who wrote the story, Uri Blau, recently was assigned to London and believed to be in possession of some of the sensitive documents. Neither Blau nor Haaretz officials were immediately available for comment.

Kamm became a media columnist for the Walla Web site after completing her mandatory military service. The charges against her do not relate to her journalistic activities. [Heller/AP/8April2010] 

A Case of Retaliation at CIA. Even spies get caught up in the struggle for promotions, demotions, pay raises and dismissals, just like their brethren in other federal agencies. The difference in the CIA is that personnel decisions are wrapped in secrecy, making it as difficult for employees as for outsiders to find out what's really going on.

So it's been with the long-running case of "Peter B.," a onetime deep cover counterterrorism agent for the CIA, who alleges he was unfairly fired back in 2002. He also alleges that the CIA intervened with agency contractors to get them to rescind job offers.

Why?

Peter B. asserts that the answer can be found in the coils of a spy case involving a State Department officer and a Taiwanese intelligence agent four years ago.

The State Department officer, Donald Keyser, pleaded guilty to charges less severe than espionage in 2006, which prosecutors sought to rescind when they discovered Keyser had lied to them about the extent of his relationship and the hoard of secret documents he kept at home.

But as Time magazine's Adam Zagorin reported back then, the case "got even weirder" when investigators discovered that Keyser's wife, a CIA officer by the name of Margaret Peggy Lyons, knew all about the classified documents her husband kept at home - and even had some of her own.

And Lyons, as it turns out, was Peter B.'s supervisor.

In his own sworn declaration to the court in February, Peter B. elaborated on his suspicions, which sounds like material for the next Matt Damon thriller.

"I believe that the work I was doing, and about to do, potentially risked exposure of the illegal activities of her husband, " he declared, "and that defendant Lyons sought to eliminate me as a threat to her husband, and perhaps, her own actions. Thus, she took certain steps to disparage me, and to destroy not only my CIA career but my ability to pursue my chosen profession."

He is demanding that the CIA restore his officer status and benefits and to have his case reviewed through due process.

Lyons "either acted illegally or outside of her scope of employment to retaliate against Peter B.," his Washington, D.C., lawyer, Mark S. Zaid, alleges in court documents.

Moreover, Zaid maintains, Lyons's part in the CIA's dismissal of him was "of a personal nature, unlawful and/or retaliatory."

An airing of CIA and FBI files, Peter B. argued in his own declaration to U.S. District Court Judge Richard W. Roberts, would produce "relevant records about this theory."

The CIA is seeking a summary dismissal of the case .

Lyons, who admitted to prosecutors in 2006 that she and Keyser had failed "to properly secure" her husband's secret material, subsequently went to work for the Directorate of National Intelligence. She could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, Peter B., who, unknown to him, was commended by CIA Director George Tenet for "services rendered for our country" at the same time in 2002 that Lyons was allegedly plotting to destroy him, is no longer alone in his fight with the CIA.

Rosemarie Hesterberg, a 40-year CIA veteran who managed agency counterterrorism operations against high priority targets from Oct. 2001 to Oct. 2005, stepped out of the shadows in late February to say she has information that could help him.

"I believe many individual(s) in this summary process have made decision based on false data/information...." Hesterberg told the court in a four-page statement on Feb. 26, "and therefore have tarnished the good name of the Central Intelligence Agency (whether deliberately or not) for reasons I still do not understand."

"In that process," Hesterberg continued, "the Agency lost a competent operational officer at a time crucial in the fight on terrorism, one that was totally unnecessary hence abusing CIA's good name and good conduct towards its employees." [Stein/WashingtonPost/6April2010] 

Iran Says UC Berkeley Grads Had Spy Links. Iran's intelligence minister appeared to harden the country's position on three recent UC Berkeley graduates who have been held there since last summer, accusing them of having links to U.S. intelligence services.

The charge was made during an interview on state television, portions of which were described on Iran's English-language satellite channel Press TV. It comes a month after Sarah Shourd, 31, and Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 27, were allowed to call home.

The three were arrested on July 31 after hiking across the border from Iraq. Friends said the three had been backpacking to see a waterfall during a break from teaching jobs in Damascus, Syria. Their families maintain the hikers strayed across the unmarked border accidentally.

Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi said in the television interview that Iran has "credible evidence" that the three were linked to U.S. intelligence but did not elaborate, other than to say that the information would be released soon.

U.S. State Department spokesman Darby Holladay said today that there is "absolutely no credence to any allegation or assertions that the three American detained hikers in Iran are affiliated with any U.S. intelligence agency."

The hikers' families also responded to the report, releasing a joint statement: "News reports, such as the one today, are totally unfounded and bear no relation to who Shane, Sarah and Josh are or what they were doing," the families said. "Allegations that they are spies are ridiculous. Our loved ones' continued detention and the psychological stress they are made to endure are unjustified and we again appeal to Iran to allow them to return home."

Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal once lived in the same Oakland co-op and, while enrolled at UC Berkeley, taught a class called, "Liberation and reality: moving toward a collective autonomy," through the student-run DeCal program.

Recently, Bauer was living in Damascus, where he was working as a photojournalist. Fattal has worked and lived at a sustainable living research center in Oregon. Sarah Shourd has been a tutor with Americorps, and has worked with a tutoring service in Berkeley and a charter elementary school in Oakland.

The Americans' mothers said they applied for visas in January to visit their children in prison, but have not been told whether they will be allowed to enter Iran.

Diplomats from the Swiss Embassy visited the Americans twice, most recently in October, and reported they were healthy.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last month that he would like to see the hikers released, but that the decision ultimately rested with the judiciary. He also suggested that the United States release several Iranians imprisoned in this country. [Lee/SFChronicle/8April2010] 

NASA Completes First Flight with Unmanned Spy Plane. NASA has transformed a robotic plane that's typically used by the U.S. military to uncover nests of insurgents into a scientific tool capable of collecting atmospheric information over the Pacific and Arctic oceans.

On April 7, NASA used the unmanned spy plane, called the Global Hawk, on the first of five flights it has scheduled this month to study air quality.

Instead of the high-resolution cameras and heat-seeking sensors the plane typically carries when used in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Global Hawk was outfitted with a series of instruments capable of measuring and sampling greenhouse gases, ozone-depleting substances, and aerosols.

NASA's mission, a joint project with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has been dubbed Global Hawk Pacific, or GloPac.

The Global Hawk took off and landed at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in the Mojave Desert without the need of a pilot's hand. Instead, NASA pilots simply designed a flight path for the plane to follow and sent it on its way.

According to NASA, it flew more than 14 hours along a flight path that took it 4,500 nautical miles - just south of Alaska's Kodiak Island.

Built by Northrop Grumman Corp. in its manufacturing facilities in Palmdale, the Global Hawk flies high above the clouds at 60,000 feet - almost twice as high as a commercial airliner. The plane has a flight range of 11,000 nautical miles, or half the circumference of Earth.

The captured data were relayed from the Global Hawk's onboard computers to a ground control station located at Dryden via satellite link.

Because of its range and endurance, the Global Hawk was ideal to capture the much-needed information, said Paul Newman, co-mission scientist for GloPac and an atmospheric scientist, in a statement.

"No other science platform provides the range and time to sample rapidly evolving atmospheric phenomena," Newman said. "This mission is our first opportunity to demonstrate the unique capabilities of this plane, while gathering atmospheric data in a region that is poorly sampled." [Thomas/LATimes/8April2010] 

Cuban Defector in United States. A young Cuban diplomat who defected in Mexico last month is in the United States, an uncle in Canada said.

Yusimil Casanas, 25, and her husband Michael Rojas, 32, who was in construction work, disappeared March 17, The Miami Herald reported. She was assigned to the passport section of the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City.

The Herald said Casanas earlier had worked in the office of former Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, who was ousted last year in a purge.

Esteban Casanas Lostal, the uncle who lives in Canada, told El Nuevo Herald Casanas called her mother in Cuba on Thursday, saying she and Rojas were "safe in the United States'' but could not say where.

El Nuevo Herald said a Rojas cousin in Miami, Jose Carrasco, told it the husband also called his family in Cuba to say they were safe in the United States.

The CIA and FBI regularly debrief major Cuban defectors, the Herald said, to determine they are not Cuban intelligence infiltrators and get whatever information they might have.

Spokesmen for the CIA and Cuba's diplomatic mission in Washington declined to comment on the case, the Herald said. [UPI/9April2010]

Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

An Elite Team of Sleuths, Saving Lives in Obscurity. Millions of people know what C.D.C. and F.D.A. stand for. Far fewer recognize E.I.S., though they may owe their lives to it.

The E.I.S. is the Epidemic Intelligence Service, an arm of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its cadre of 160 elite medical detectives - many of them young doctors at the start of their careers - serve two-year hitches that are part adventure, part drudgery.

Suitcases packed, they are poised to fly anywhere on short notice to investigate outbreaks of pneumonia, diarrhea, high fevers, mysterious rashes and many other health threats. Borrowing a term from news reporting, E.I.S. detectives like to call themselves "shoe-leather epidemiologists;" they also like to wear ties and lapel pins displaying their logo - a hole in the well-worn sole of a shoe over a map of the world.

Since its creation in 1951, the service has become a bulwark in the nation's defense system against disease, often acting as the public's emergency room. Its doctors have helped identify Legionnaires' disease, Lyme disease, and toxic shock syndrome from superabsorbent tampons; stop outbreaks of diphtheria and other diseases before they could spread uncontrollably; discover the deadly Ebola and Lassa viruses; and trace paralyzing cases of polio to defective batches of the Salk vaccine. Other E.I.S. investigations have led the Food and Drug Administration to remove potentially lethal products from the market.

Indeed, the E.I.S. "may have saved your life, though you were probably unaware of it," Mark Pendergrast writes in his new book, "Inside the Outbreaks," the first history of the program, being published next week by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

I was among the 500 graduates of the service whom Mr. Pendergrast interviewed for the book. (He has no connection to the program.) The book describes a number of triumphs - and occasional roadblocks - told chronologically as vignettes, with bits of history interspersed.

Among them are examples of government officials' suppressing critical health information - and a few surprises about the E.I.S.'s contributions to public health, including some that may come as news to the program's more than 3,000 graduates.

For example, few colleagues I asked knew that an E.I.S. investigation of a 1953 outbreak of nervous-system damage in children led Chicago to create the nation's first poison control center. Pediatricians had assumed the cause was viral encephalitis; a medical sleuth, visiting the children's homes and neighborhood, discovered that many were eating paint chips containing lead and correctly linked the outbreak to lead poisoning.

The service had been founded two years earlier by Dr. Alexander D. Langmuir, a supremely self-confident epidemiologist who had gotten his start in the New York State Health Department and later taught at Johns Hopkins.

Seizing on a frightening outbreak of hemorrhagic fever that had killed 3,000 United Nations troops in Korea, Dr. Langmuir convinced federal officials that the nation needed a quick-response squadron of epidemiologists to investigate outbreaks. At the outset, E.I.S. recruits earned military credit; even today they sometimes wear uniforms and have military ranks. Many found the service a career-changing experience, because they realized they could help far more people through public health than they could in clinical practice.

Then and now, many graduates of the program stay for careers at the C.D.C., while others form the backbone of state and local health departments and become leaders in academic medical centers.

Tall, deep-voiced and domineering, Dr. Langmuir was a showman who delighted in hearing E.I.S. officers relate their adventures riding camels and exhuming bodies. But Mr. Pendergrast leaves no doubt that he was a genius and a visionary.

To colleagues who said that vaccines and antibiotics were making infectious diseases obsolete, he replied that the field still provided "a happy hunting ground for major discoveries and contributions." The new service quickly took on his personality.

In the early 1950s, for example, an E.I.S. investigating team provided surprising evidence that malaria had virtually disappeared from the United States, overturning the conventional wisdom that it was still a leading cause of fever throughout the South.

At the same time, Dr. Langmuir made some decisions that would probably be condemned today. In 1955, the future of the new Salk polio vaccine was suddenly thrown into doubt when some recipients became paralyzed, apparently by a virus the vaccine maker had failed to kill.

Dr. Langmuir swiftly set up an investigative team that found that the defective vaccine came from Cutter Laboratories, one of six drug companies licensed to make and distribute vaccine. The five other manufacturers were allowed to resume production and sales.

But cases also occurred among recipients of the polio vaccine made by Wyeth Laboratories. In a little-known attempt to salvage the overall program, Dr. Langmuir suppressed reports of these cases.

In 1962, Dr. Langmuir publicly supported the Sabin oral polio vaccine despite evidence that it had led to eight cases of paralysis. He buried the data in a paper published two years later.

Dr. Langmuir retired from the service in 1970, but its propensity for secrecy lived on. In 1985, after a baffling outbreak of salmonellosis linked to salad bars in Oregon, E.I.S. investigators found a vial of salmonella with the same bacterial fingerprints in the laboratory of a nurse who had worked for the cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. the service refused to report its investigation for years, on the ground that it would provoke copycat attacks.

The service's reputation was bolstered after the 9/11 attacks, when it played a leading role in the investigation of the deliberate release of anthrax spores through the postal system. But its accomplishments are generally based on strengthening the nation's system to report common and unusual diseases, and then discerning patterns of infection and spread. Gradually, the E.I.S. expanded to include veterinarians, nurses, dentists, statisticians, social workers, even lawyers. Depending on the nature of the outbreak, its detectives may conduct door-to-door interviews and surveys, mapping cases and venturing abroad.

When I was a member of the service, in 1963-65, for instance, two of my colleagues went to Bolivia to investigate a plague outbreak and bring back a sample of the causative bacterium. To get it, they had to exhume a body to remove a finger and isolate the bacterium from the marrow. The specimen eventually became part of the collection of potential agents at the government's biological warfare center at in Maryland.

Despite his penchant for secrecy, Dr. Langmuir knew the value of publicity, and his subordinates learned from his example. During an outbreak of hepatitis from raw shellfish taken from Raritan Bay in New Jersey in 1961, Dr. D. A. Henderson, an E.I.S. graduate then working at the C.D.C., likened the risk to "playing Russian roulette on the half shell." His pithy comment, widely reported in the news media, earned a mild reprimand from his superiors. (Dr. Henderson later led the W.H.O. team that eradicated smallpox, and after 9/11 he advised the United States government on bioterrorism.)

The E.I.S. was Alexander Langmuir's family. He demanded full loyalty and was upset when one of his "boys" left.

When Dr. E. Russell Alexander announced that he was leaving to join the faculty at the University of Washington, Dr. Langmuir told him he would "never make it in academia." (The prediction proved wrong.) And when Dr. Henderson began organizing the team that eventually eradicated smallpox, Dr. Langmuir opposed involving the E.I.S. and told his subordinate to take what he wanted and get out. The two later reconciled.

I, too, was a victim. When I joined the E.I.S. in 1963, Dr. Langmuir appointed me editor of The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, over which he had won control in a bureaucratic battle with another agency. He wanted to change its emphasis on vital statistics, which he said made for dull reading, and he preached the importance of promptly feeding information to the public on a "need-to-know basis." So I included many reports of current outbreaks, in effect making the report a weekly newspaper.

In those days, doctors were not required to report cases of rubella, even though it can lead to severe birth defects in the babies of pregnant women who contract it. So I played journalist, calling epidemiologists in many states to track the disease's spread and obstetricians to learn that some were performing first-trimester abortions.

My accounts unnerved and angered Dr. Langmuir, and he contradicted his early statements by insisting that the weekly report stick to its archive function. He sent me packing to help run a measles immunization program in Africa. I accepted the punishment enthusiastically, never expecting that my African adventures would eventually make me part of the Henderson team that eradicated smallpox.

By the time of his death, in 1993, Dr. Langmuir had soured on the service he created, saying it had outlived its usefulness and should be abolished. Yet as other countries have adopted smaller versions of the E.I.S., his contributions to global health have outlived him, and so has his formidable legacy as a giant of public health. [Altman/NYTimes/6April2010] 

Spies Like Us. The United States Embassy in Tel Aviv, in a prime beachfront location at 71 HaYarkon Street, is four stories tall, not including the mysteries on its roof. Israeli intelligence operatives and journalists have for many years suspected that atop the embassy and perhaps in its basement are sophisticated surveillance systems that keep a close electronic eye on the Jewish state. Certainly, as is standard in most any U.S. Embassy, there is a suite of offices comprising the CIA station, its staffers given diplomatic titles such as "second secretary." No attempt is made to hide their identity from Israeli authorities because this host government is considered friendly.

Friendship between nations, especially in the volatile Middle East, is not na�ve. The Mossad and other Israeli security agencies, as well as top politicians, assume that the United States routinely listens to their phone conversations, copies fax messages, and intercepts email messages - data known in the spy business as comint (communications intelligence) - and also gathers sigint (signals intelligence), which involves analyzing data transmitted on various wavelengths by Israeli military units, aviation manufacturers, space launch sites, labs suspected of doing nuclear work: any defense-related facility that puts out signals. This assumption is strengthened by the fact that more than 20 years ago, embassy officials approached Israeli authorities with a request to rent office space in the Mandarin Hotel, on the beach north of Tel Aviv. Permission was denied, because that location is on a precise east-west line barely a mile from Mossad headquarters (inland at the Gelilot highway intersection) and a bit farther from the equally secretive military intelligence codebreaking and high-tech surveillance Unit 8200.

If Israeli counterintelligence - the spy-catchers at Shin Bet (the domestic security service known to Israelis as Shabak) - really wanted to check the roof or the basement on HaYarkon Street, perhaps they could break in to the building. In 1954, U.S. security officials at the embassy found microphones concealed in the ambassador's office. In 1956, bugs were found attached to two telephones in the home of an American military attach�. Shin Bet also made crude attempts to use women and money to seduce the U.S. Marines who guarded the embassy. However, in the view of top Israeli intelligence insiders, the mystery of the roof - even though they have noticed that some antennae and equipment are covered - is closer to an urban espionage myth. The United States can easily park signals-intercepting ships in the Mediterranean near the Israeli coast; the U.S. National Security Agency controls plenty of spy-in-the-sky satellites and can watch and listen to most anything on the NSA's agenda.

Indeed, there is no doubt the Americans regularly listen in to the private communications of the Israeli government and military. Hebrew linguists are trained and sought after by the NSA. The clearest case of such U.S. spying on Israel came to light in 1967, when the U.S. Navy's ship Liberty was attacked by Israel's air force during the Six Day War. Thirty-four American sailors were killed, and many of the survivors say their mission was to gather comint and sigint about Israeli and Egyptian military moves and plans. Most of them think the attack was intentional, to blind and deafen that particular NSA intelligence operation, but Israel firmly denies it.

Being in the business of collecting information, intelligence agencies know very well that everyone does it, friend or foe. Certainly the CIA station, based in the embassy, busies itself with clipping newspapers, harvesting web articles, recording radio and TV broadcasts, talking with Israelis, analyzing the results, and reading between the lines. Yet our image of espionage usually means running agents: recruiting people to betray their country for money or other motives. "In my 21 years in the agency, I never saw any official request for us to go recruit Israeli citizens," says Robert Baer, a longtime case officer in the Near East Division of the CIA's Directorate of Operations. "They don't have to," said a former head of the Mossad who asked not to be identified by name. "They can get - and probably do get - whatever they want, because we Israelis don't know how to keep secrets. We are talkative, and the CIA has great access to all levels of the Israeli government."

While the CIA and Israel's intelligence community have enjoyed close liaison in recent decades, cooperation has not always been the norm. From its founding in 1948 as a socialist country led by immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe, the State of Israel was perceived by the CIA as part of the hostile Soviet sphere of influence. In 1951, David Ben Gurion toured the United States, met with General Walter Bedell Smith, Truman's director of central intelligence, and convinced U.S. intelligence to give Israel a try. A highly personal relationship between the intelligence communities was forged, and James Jesus Angleton, who would become legendary for his obsessively suspicious counter-spy campaigns, was put in charge of the U.S. side. Israeli intelligence assigned Amos Manor and Teddy Kollek, who later would enjoy decades as mayor of Jerusalem, as his counterparts.

"It wasn't easy to persuade the anti-communist Angleton that we could be friends," Manor told us before his death two and a half years ago. "Even I was suspected by him, that I was a Soviet spy." Manor, an Auschwitz survivor, had emigrated to Israel from Romania, which became a communist country after World War II. Over sleepless nights at Manor's apartment on Pinsker Street in Tel Aviv, the Israeli did his best to keep up with Angleton at whiskey-sipping and chatting about the world. The two men became close friends, laying the foundation for CIA-Mossad intelligence cooperation as Manor proved to Angleton that what had been considered an Israeli disadvantage could be turned into a great advantage: Israel's population of immigrants from the Soviet Union and its East European satellites made the country an indispensable source about everything that interested the CIA at the height of the Cold War, from the cost of potatoes behind the Iron Curtain to plans for new aircraft and ships there. The great turning point was the secret speech in Moscow in 1956 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denouncing Stalin's crimes. A Jewish journalist in Poland procured the much-sought-after text and gave it to Israeli intelligence in Warsaw. It was quickly delivered to the CIA.

Still, while cooperating in anti-Soviet operations, the two countries had some conflicting interests. Desperate to have a qualitative military edge over its Arab neighbors, Israel ordered agents to steal U.S. technology. From the 1960s until the late 1980s, American law enforcement busted several conspiracies run by Israelis to procure defense and high-tech secrets and even components for Israel's suspected nuclear arsenal. This clandestine work was not done by the Mossad but by military officers and by a small Defense Ministry unit known as Lakam (Lishka le-Kishrei Mada, the "science liaison bureau"), which also ran Jonathan Pollard, who is now serving a life sentence for espionage.

In the late 1950s, the prime target of American suspicion in Israel was the Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona, which was constructed by the French as part of a secret deal linked with the Israeli-French-British invasion of Suez, Egypt, in 1956 that took President Dwight Eisenhower by surprise and greatly angered him. The CIA was assigned to find out what the Israelis were up to in the Negev Desert. The station chief in Tel Aviv in the 1960s, John Hadden, told us he would make a point of driving as close as he could to the nuclear reactor and occasionally stopped his car to collect soil samples for radioactive analysis. Shin Bet was obviously tailing him, and an Israeli helicopter once landed near his automobile to stop it. Security personnel demanded to see identification, and after flashing his U.S. diplomatic passport Hadden drove off, with little doubt there were big doings at Dimona.

When Americans were permitted to enter the Dimona facility as part of a deal with President John F. Kennedy, "it cost us a hell of a lot of money to arrange it so their inspectors wouldn't find out what was going on," the late Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban told us, as quoted in our book Friends In Deed. False walls were erected, doorways and elevators were hidden, and dummy installations were built to show to the visitors, who found no evidence of the weapons program secreted underground. [Sentence deleted by the Israeli Military Censor.]

Nuclear gamesmanship did not spoil the progress of friendly connections between the two intelligence communities. John Hadden set the pattern for all future CIA station chiefs in Tel Aviv by spending most of his time in open liaison activities, cultivating ties with Israeli officials in all fields. Hadden remembers attending a diplomatic dinner in 1963, when he was well aware that Israel, then an austere nation, saw Americans as hard-drinking and garrulous. Usually keeping his CIA-taught language skills to himself, he heard the hostess say hopefully to an Israeli colonel that if Hadden kept imbibing perhaps he would talk too much. The puckish spy smiled and surprised his hosts with his decent Hebrew: "Nichnas yayin, yotzeh sod!" which means "Wine goes in, a secret comes out!"

The next two decades would see gradual growth in mutual confidence, as U.S. interests in the Middle East increasingly matched Israel's concern with Arab radicalism and Palestinian terrorism. Yet in 1985, when Jonathan Pollard was arrested at the gates of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, by coincidence the CIA was assessing a "walk in": an Israeli officer, Major Yossi Amit, who had served in a secretive military intelligence unit. As far as we know, Major Amit was the closest the CIA got to recruiting an Israeli as an agent. In his hometown of Haifa, Amit met a U.S. Navy officer who introduced him to the CIA. Amit offered his services as an experienced case officer who had run Syrian and Lebanese networks. He flew to Germany and spent time with CIA operatives and a psychologist, who used a polygraph and other tests to judge his credibility. This evaluation was handled well away from the CIA's Tel Aviv station, though a counter-terrorism officer stationed in Tel Aviv was part of the team in Germany.

Amit claims that he did not intend to betray or spy on Israel, but he might have been willing to help the CIA in various Arab countries. He was arrested by Israeli authorities, tried in secret, and served seven years in prison.

In the 1990s, with an Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations brokered by the United States, the CIA's involvement in the region leapt forward. The Tel Aviv station was enlarged and given duties far beyond liaison with counterparts in the Mossad. The CIA's new assignment was to turn Yasser Arafat's secret police and commando units into a professional entity that would be pro-peace, pro-American, and in effect agents of influence for the CIA.

George Tenet, as deputy CIA director before getting the agency's top job, was given the task in 1996. As Tenet wrote in his memoirs, At the Center of the Storm, he was reluctant, but it was an order from President Bill Clinton and he understood: "Security was the key. You can talk about sovereignty, borders, elections, territory, and the rest all day long; but unless the two sides feel safe, nothing else matters."

The agency launched into this mission by staying, at first, within the confines of its longtime expertise: meeting with security chiefs, arranging trips for Arafat's secret police to be re-trained in the United States, providing surveillance equipment aimed at countering the rise of Hamas radicalism, and coordinating all this with Israel's Shin Bet and military.

The CIA station chief in Tel Aviv from 1995 to 1999 was Stan Moskowitz, a 40-year agency veteran who kept trying to mediate the inevitable disputes. Mossad officials did not like him, not because of his role in the peace process, but because they felt that - perhaps because he was a Bronx-born Jew trying to overcompensate - he kept himself at a frosty distance from the Israelis. This view is reflected in the memoirs of a Canadian-born Mossad operative using the pseudonym Michael Ross. In his book The Volunteer, Ross describes Moskowitz as "a self-important Beltway climber who drove around Tel Aviv in the back seat of a white Mercedes sedan."

A former Mossad station chief in Washington who knew Moskowitz as a CIA research director before he moved to Israel had already noticed that Moskowitz had problems with the Jewish state. "Unlike other CIA officials who readily agreed to meet me, he was always very reluctant to do so," says the Israeli, who asked not to be named.

After some years, Mossad men say, they came to nickname Moskowitz "the anti-Semite." Though the title was exaggerated, annoyance with Moskowitz helps explain why an Israeli newspaper broke the unwritten rule of not naming the CIA station chief, when it wrote of Moskowitz in an article about the negotiating sessions with the Palestinians. Moskowitz died in 2006, a year after retiring.

A Palestinian uprising, the second Intifada in early 2001, found the CIA sucked into a new and more urgent role in mediating the volatile negotiating process that had blown up at Camp David in the summer of 2000. Meeting with presidents, kings, and prime ministers is nothing strange to CIA station chiefs around the world, but negotiating with them in a prolonged process was entirely different - especially when the stakes included an escalating wave of suicide bombings and Israeli retaliations. President George W. Bush, new to his job, assigned George Tenet to stay at the CIA and focus on that mission.

"Tenet was even more reluctant this time," says a former Mossad chief who prefers to remain anonymous. "But he obeyed the orders."

A different perspective comes from Reuel Marc Gerecht, a clandestine CIA officer in the Middle East in the 1990s: "Some in the agency relished the limelight," he says. "Others thought it was a mistake. Tenet relished it, obviously."

Tenet's point man in Tel Aviv was Jeff O'Connell, the station chief who replaced Moskowitz. The Mossad had more respect for O'Connell, first because he did not have what they perceived as the conflicts of being Jewish. Second, before moving to Tel Aviv, O'Connell had been stationed in Amman, Jordan. The Mossad was highly familiar with how the CIA had cultivated intimate relations with King Hussein's intelligence services, to the point that the Mossad was envious - thinking the CIA was even friendlier with the Jordanians than with Israel. It was a thinly veiled secret that Hussein himself had been on the CIA's payroll in the 1960s.

One tool for O'Connell was his fluency in Arabic. He would gather Jibril Rajoub and Mohammed Dahlan, the two security chiefs of Arafat's forces, with Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter and his deputy, Ofer Dekel. O'Connell's Arabic seemed to be even better than Dekel's, and the five men would exchange pleasantries and even jokes, yet overall the American seemed amicable and cooperative with both sides. Dahlan has nothing but praise for the CIA and then-director Tenet.

Acting friendly is a routine and shallow part of espionage tradecraft. Their business in this case was deadly serious: finding some mechanisms to help save the Oslo peace process. They were carrying out their political masters' orders, and O'Connell seemed almost desperate, though businesslike, in the quest to stop the fabric of negotiations from entirely unraveling. Occasionally the head of the Mossad, Efraim Halevy, would take part, so as to protect the foreign espionage agency's traditional turf as liaison with the CIA. And in 2002, O'Connell helped to end the Palestinian siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, by mediating with Israel's army and Shin Bet.

Around the same time, a former CIA operative claims, the agency had a smaller station working within the United States Consulate in Jerusalem, which is responsible for official American activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Melissa Boyle Mahle, topping off a 14-year undercover career that included recruiting agents throughout the Middle East, deployed her experience and her Arabic in a new post-Oslo liaison relationship with the Palestinians. It is believed that she cultivated agents and informants, who were paid for giving the United States information and analysis. From the point of view of Israeli security personnel, Mahle was a minor player, and they doubted that she was making any reliable headway in the volatile West Bank and Gaza. Mahle was forced to leave the CIA in 2002 for what she calls "an operational mistake" that she cannot talk about; one published account says she did not tell her superiors some personal details of contacts with agents. (She declined to comment for this article.)

The uprising continued. Peace efforts collapsed. O'Connell's successor was Deborah Morris. Aside from the obvious breakthrough of being the first woman to be station chief in Tel Aviv, Morris failed to make much of an impression on her Mossad contacts. Thomas Powers, writing about the CIA in The New York Review of Books, said some in the agency groused about her promotion at one point to deputy Near East chief in the Directorate of Operations, complaining that Morris had never run an agent and "she doesn't know what the Khyber Pass looks like but she's supposed to be directing operations."

The CIA station in Tel Aviv was heavily involved in attempts, after Yasser Arafat's death in 2004, to keep his Fatah faction in charge in the Gaza Strip. The Bush Administration and the Palestinian Authority, now led by Mahmoud Abbas, seemed to fail to see that Hamas would win the Gaza elections of 2006. Though official motivations remain unclear, many Gazans believe that the CIA was ordered to help Abbas stage a coup d'etat in that narrow and destitute seaside strip. Whatever those efforts were, they backfired. Hamas gunmen were the winners, and Gaza continues to be an infectious splinter spoiling peace efforts.

With the fade-out of negotiations, the CIA returned to its traditional role, far from the limelight, while the CIA's cooperation with the Mossad intensified as the Bush Administration launched its War on Terror after Sept. 11. The Tel Aviv station was enlarged yet again, with more than 10 staffers representing the major departments at the headquarters in Langley, Virginia: operations (meaning covert action), research, counter-terrorism, and counter-proliferation, with its focus on Iran's nuclear work.

It is a mark of the respect that Mossad officials have for the incumbent station chief that they refuse to give his name or describe him, beyond this: He is "very professional" and "businesslike." More significant for what will happen in the Middle East in the near future is this observation: that the American is very close to Mossad director Meir Dagan (who has had his post for an unusually long period, nearly eight years) and together they have brought U.S.-Israel intelligence cooperation into new areas - and, frankly, to new heights.

Israeli methods that had been condemned worldwide are now embraced by the CIA. Infiltrating extremist organizations, recruiting agents by applying pressure in every conceivable way, tough interrogation and imprisonment, and targeted assassinations had been hallmarks of Israel's battle against Palestinian and other Arab terrorists; now the United States wanted to score similar successes against al-Qaeda and its associated jihadist groups. U.S. and Israeli officials, while refusing to confirm details of any joint operations, suggest they have been involved in clandestine missions aimed at a shared target: Iran's nuclear program. [Two sentences deleted by the Israeli Military Censor.]

These efforts build on some scattered but significant successes even before Sept. 11. Information from Israeli intelligence had been instrumental in joint Mossad, CIA, and FBI missions that thwarted Hezbollah and al-Qaeda plots as far afield as the Midwest and Azerbaijan. A Lebanese immigrant in Dearborn, Michigan, automotive engineer Fawzi Mustapha Assi, was arrested in 1998 for allegedly trying to provide Hezbollah with $120,000 of electronics gear. Well-informed Israelis say a Mossad case officer was sent to CIA headquarters in Langley, to coordinate the flow of information that the FBI could use for the bust. To the chagrin of the Mossad, Assi fled to Lebanon after an American court released him on $100,000 bond. That same year, covert CIA officers teamed up with Mossad field personnel in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. Israel, focusing on Iran's support for terrorist organizations, had eavesdropped on plans for a meeting between an Iranian intelligence man and three Egyptian jihadists who were linked to the planning of the al-Qaeda bombings that devastated the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Mossad shared the information with the CIA, and both agencies sent operatives to work with the Azeri security services, who arrested the men.

"Israel runs circles around the CIA when it comes to Gaza and the West Bank," ex-operative Robert Baer says about collecting and analyzing raw intelligence. "There's virtually nothing we can offer Israel about the Palestinians." On the other hand, the CIA does not depend on the Mossad for its global war against al-Qaeda. The Americans have better sources for that in the Middle East, including the Egyptian and Jordanian security services. Gerecht, a former CIA officer, says the agency appreciates its relationship with the Mossad, "but the Israelis value it more than the Americans do."

Baer feels that "the Israelis think we're dummies." Not true. The fact is that Israeli intelligence people speak with high respect of their American colleagues' brainpower, professionalism, and devotion to their work. The Israelis also give the CIA credit for "not stealing agents - unlike the British MI6." If the CIA works on recruiting an Arab, for instance, as a paid informant but finds out the Israelis are already running him, they will either back off or come to the Mossad to ask for permission to share the agent.

In all of this history - including decades of converting suspicion to cooperation - has the CIA merely been executing each president's policies or pursuing the agency's own view of the Middle East? This is a sensitive subject. Critics contend that the CIA is always pushing an agenda based on convoluted distortions, disrespecting human rights and cynically pursuing American strength at all costs. However, though perhaps with some minor exceptions, the CIA seems to be a loyal organization that adheres to lines set by its political masters in Washington. It wasn't the CIA's fault or intention that its mediation efforts exploded into a new Palestinian intifada. And when Israel started its secret nuclear program, the CIA pursued all the clues because the White House ordered it to.

"The agency is not a remote calculating machine," says Gerecht. "It has its passions, and depending on the issue those passions can be deployed. Senior officials in that bureaucracy often have strong views and like those views to be considered." But, he adds, "The agency is not much different from any other major foreign policy national security institution, such as the State Department or the Pentagon. Depending on the issue and the place, the CIA can have input in creation of policy, and it is staffed with human beings who want to have input."

According to Gerecht, CIA staffers tend to see the Middle East through an Arabist prism - "about where State was, around 20 years ago." He says that if you were to visit the office of a typical station chief in the Near East Division, you would likely find autographed pictures of the late King Hussein or some senior official in an Arab intelligence service, but hardly anything indicating a sentimental attachment to anything or anyone Israeli. This is only natural, considering that there are many Arab nations, leaders, and CIA stations, and only one Israel.

Gerecht contends that "the common theme is that they'd want the U.S. to coerce Israel more in the peace process," a view that he feels comes from contacts with "elites in places like Beirut, Cairo, and Damascus."

The truth, however, is that almost everyone in the United States government would like to see a stable Middle East. And if that means concessions by Israel, though not at the expense of its security, it is not exclusively the CIA that would work enthusiastically for that outcome.

[Yossi Melman, who covers intelligence and military affairs for Haaretz, and Dan Raviv, a CBS News correspondent, are co-authors of books including Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel's Intelligence Community, The Imperfect Spies, and Friends In Deed: Inside the U.S.-Israel Alliance.] [Melman&Raviv/Tablet/8April2010] 

Cold Warrior Reflects. Former Central Intelligence Agency officer James Olson remembers being scared as he waited near the entrance to a Moscow subway station late one night during the Cold War.

Hours earlier, the veteran CIA officer had evaded Soviet agents who watched his every move. As he eyed a man emerging from the subway station, he believed he was going to get an intelligence coup or a beating at the hands of KGB thugs.

Before the night was over, he got both.

That meeting with a KGB code expert who wanted to betray his Communist masters was just one adventure the Iowa native had during 31 years as a clandestine officer for the CIA.

''I believe that the greatest and most powerful country in the world must have the very best intelligence in the world,'' Olson said.

''I'm proud to say that my wife Meredith and I were spies for the CIA and for our country for 31 years,'' he added.

Now retired from the shadowy realm of spies, Olson teaches intelligence and national security at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A & M University in College Station, Texas.

Even though he's out of the spy business, some danger remains. He said the FBI recently informed him that a Texas A & M student with al-Qaida ties was found to have pictures of him and directions to his home. FBI agents later came to him and told him that they ''took care of it.'' Olson said he doesn't know what that means.

Olson was born in Le Mars and grew up in West Des Moines. He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and business from the University of Iowa. Then he served for four years as an officer in the Navy.

Upon being discharged from the Navy, he enrolled in the University of Iowa Law School. He said he planned to become a lawyer in a small Iowa county seat town. That plan, he said, was derailed by a mysterious phone call he received on a Friday afternoon during his last year of law school.

Olson said the caller, who wouldn't identify himself, explained that he had a career opportunity for him.

''Let's just say it would involve serving our country in a different way,'' the mystery caller told Olson.

Olson said he figured the navy was trying to get him back, so he agreed to meet the man the next day at the Hotel Savery in Des Moines. There, he was greeted by two men who said they were from the CIA.

''I almost fell on the floor,'' Olson said.

He had a two-hour meeting with those men. Later he traveled to Washington, D.C., to complete the CIA application process. He told friends and relatives that he was going to the capital to apply for a job with the Department of Commerce.

In fact, he did get a federal job. His new post was in the clandestine service of the CIA.

''Service to our country and the art of espionage quickly got into my blood,'' Olson said.

He spent two years at a CIA training facility in Virginia nicknamed The Farm. There were 25 people in his training class. Olson said eight of them were later killed in the line of duty.

In the CIA, Olson met his wife, Meredith. They spend their careers together, spying in Austria, Mexico and the Soviet Union. Along the way, they raised two sons and a daughter.

They lived undercover, masquerading as various professionals while spying. Their families never knew what they did until they retired.

''Living undercover isn't easy,'' Olson said. ''You never really get used to lying about who you are and what you're doing.''

Olson was posing as the second secretary of the economic section of the American Embassy in Moscow when he ventured out to meet a contact who claimed to be a KGB officer. He was wearing a disguise and recording equipment when he grasped the approaching stranger's hand and said in Russian ''I'm very happy to meet you. My name is Misha.''

During the nine minutes they were together, the Russian handed Olson a box full of 200 rolls of film. Each roll contained images of Soviet codebooks. It was the intelligence coup Olson hoped for.

He stashed the film and his disguise in a designated hiding place and headed for home.

On the way home, the KGB agents he evaded before caught him. He said he was strip searched and beaten on the street.

''I got the beating of my life,'' he said. ''I took the best they had for an hour and a half.''

The KGB agents found no incriminating evidence and Olson was released.

He met his KGB informant several more times. Eventually, the man and his family were smuggled out of the Soviet Union and now live in the United States. [Shea/MessengerNews/7April2010]

Section III - COMMENTARY

Has U.S. Intelligence Suffered from the Ban on Enhanced Interrogation?, by Mark Thiessen. Over at the Washington Post (where I am a weekly columnist), Jeff Stein reports that the head of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, Michael Sulick, recently told a group of students at Fordham University, "I don't think we've suffered at all from an intelligence standpoint" because of the ban on waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques.

I have enormous respect for Sulick, but he might want to explain how his statement squares with the CIA's experience in the interrogation of Mohammed Rahim al-Afghani. Rahim was a top terrorist leader held and questioned by the CIA after the Bush administration removed waterboarding and other more controversial techniques from the formal interrogation program. An al Qaeda planner and facilitator who had served as a translator for Osama bin Laden, he was reportedly held by the agency for about six months. He was believed to have reliably current information on the whereabouts of bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. But at the time of Rahim's capture, the CIA program had been reduced to just six mild interrogation techniques: the facial hold, attention grasp, tummy slap, insult (or facial) slap, dietary manipulation (a diet of liquid Ensure), and a maximum of four days' sleep deprivation. Waterboarding was no longer part of the formal program.

This scaled-down program had worked in the interrogation of another senior al Qaeda terrorist, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, but only because he did not know the limits. When Hadi was informed that he was in CIA custody, he told his captors: "I've heard of you guys. I'll tell you anything you need to know." A senior CIA official told me Hadi "started talking immediately. There was no question in our interrogator's mind that he would tell anything." Just the existence of the CIA program, and the uncertainty of what techniques might be applied, was enough to get this al Qaeda terrorist talking. But according to intelligence officials I interviewed in 2009, Rahim's interrogation was less effective than Hadi's had been. Waterboarding might have broken him. But waterboarding was no longer a part of the approved program.

Today, thanks to President Obama, even these six mild techniques have been banned. The president has announced that all U.S. interrogations must be limited to the techniques in the Army Field Manual, which is designed for the questioning of privileged prisoners of war and is available on the Internet - even in a cave in Waziristan. Which means that under today's rules even a terrorist like Hadi would have no incentive to cooperate. If Hadi had known all he would face was a tummy slap and four days without sleep, does anyone really think he would have told the CIA: �I'll tell you anything you need to know�?

But, of course, none of this matters because, according to the Washington Post, there have been "no reports of high-value detentions" since President Obama took office. It doesn't really make a difference what interrogation techniques are permitted if you are not interrogating anyone. The fact is, since President Obama took office the United States has stopped capturing, detaining, and interrogating high-value al Qaeda terrorists. And when a high-value terrorist, such as the Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, falls unexpectedly into their laps, they question him for 50 minutes and then give him a lawyer and tell him he has the right to remain silent.

There can be no doubt that the United States has "suffered from an intelligence standpoint" as a result. [Thiessen/BlogAmerican/5April2010]

Call for a New "Department of Intelligence" is Not an Intelligent Idea, by Bob Barr. In April 2005, just five months after former CIA Director George Tenet was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom notwithstanding the Agency's failure to put the pieces of the 9-11 intelligence together before the attack, a new "super-intelligence" agency of the US government was formed - the Directorate of National Intelligence. The purpose of creating this new umbrella intelligence agency, with a budget now in excess of $50 billion (in addition, of course, to the billions of dollars each of the individual agencies under it enjoys), was to resolve the myriad problems that had plagued our foreign intelligence system for decades - too many agencies with their own parochial interests and blinders, vague goals and missions, lack of a single and comprehensive budgetary authority, lack of coordinated technology and dissemination procedures, etc.

Now, just five years into the DNI's existence, one of its former directors - Mike McConnell - is calling for yet another "top" intelligence agency to be created to oversee all the others, including the DNI. In fact, McConnell is advocating an entirely new department of the federal government be formed - the Department of Intelligence. This "mega intelligence agency" would be charged with - you guessed it - resolving the myriad problems that have plagued our foreign intelligence system for decades... Hopefully, neither the current administration nor the Congress will heed McConnell's call.

The fact of the matter is, there is already too much bureaucracy infecting our foreign intelligence community; there was too much bureaucracy infecting the system in 2004 when Congress passed the intelligence reorganization bill that gave birth to the DNI. Bureaucracy stifles creativity, swift action and, perhaps most important, decisiveness; all tools essential for successful intelligence tradecraft. We need less not more bureaucracy. That was the whole point to creating the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947 - as the central federal government agency to gather, analyze, coordinate and disseminate foreign intelligence to key decision makers. Now, thanks to the creation of the DNI, the CIA no longer performs the key function that was the primary purpose for establishing the agency in the first place. 

The many military intelligence agencies and offices, such as the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), which were supposed to fall under the CIA's overall coordination umbrella, never really have done so, and no president since all these agencies were created in the aftermath of WW II, has made them do so. And therein lies the crux of the problem.

The bottom line is, no matter how many times Congress or the White House "reforms" or "reorganizes" our intelligence system, it will not have a meaningful or lasting positive impact until at least three things happen. First, we need a president who will definitively, clearly and consistently decree that one intelligence agency is the central authority for prioritizing, gathering, coordinating, and disseminating foreign intelligence for the president, the cabinet and other key decision makers. No ifs, ands, or buts. Second, we need a president who has the backbone to fire intelligence officials who fail to perform. Neither the current president, Barack Obama, nor his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, have done this. Finally, we need a president who has sufficient faith and trust in that intelligence system he has staffed and is leading, to actually listen to the work product it provides.

Morale at the CIA remains low and its mission remains blurred. Meanwhile, across town, what should have been a simple task of tagging a Nigerian terrorist wannabee possessed of questionable IQ, as someone to watch and prevent from boarding a US airliner on Christmas Eve, couldn't be accomplished because the right hand wasn't talking to the left hand. Problems big and small will continue to plague our intelligence system until this president, or some future president, employs his "commander in chief" hat for a purpose clearly consistent with being the commander in chief - cut the bureaucracy, lay down the law to our intelligence agencies to get in line, do their job, stop fighting, and remember who they work for. [Barr/AJC/9April2010]

Section IV - BOOKS, OBITUARIES, JOBS AND COMING EVENTS

Books

New Bio of Executed WWII Pastor/Spy Reveals U.S. Influence. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theological genius of the 20th century, is now emerging as a, martyr and spy - a war hero who conspired to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

On April 9, 1945, just a few weeks before an allied offensive brought Germany to its knees and ended World War II in Europe, a young, mild-mannered Lutheran theologian was hanged by the Nazis in Flossenburg Concentration Camp.

His crime... conspiring to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theological genius of the 20th century, is now emerging as a war hero, martyr and spy.

"What is so amazing about the story of Bonhoeffer is that he puts a completely different spin for us as Americans on World War II," says Eric Metaxas, author of "Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy" (Thomas Nelson, 2010), the first biography in 40 years of this influential Christian. The book is being released on Friday, the anniversary of Bonhoeffer's execution.

"Christians all over the world have read his books," Metaxas says, "but very few people know the full story of his involvement in a plot to kill the head of the German state."

Bonhoeffer is revealed in the book as one of the few German Christians who refused to appease Hitler and his perverted interpretation of Christianity. Bonhoeffer's staunch resistance to the Third Reich and his push for civil disobedience cost him his life.

His enriched faith, however, was born in America in 1930, when he spent a year at Union Theological Seminary. But the most profound American influence was at New York's Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. There he heard the powerful preaching of civil rights pioneer Dr. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., and the deeply emotional music of what he called "negro sprituals."

Bonhoeffer became a passionate parishioner and Sunday school teacher at the Harlem church.

"The experience he had in Harlem deepened his faith in such a way that when he came back to Germany, he felt called by God," Metaxas says. "It wasn't just theology in his head. He felt called by God to obey God. For him that meant very clearly to stand up for the Jews."

Perhaps one other experience in America cemented his "stand for the Jews."

On Bonhoeffer's first and only Easter in the United States, he tried to attend services at one of New York's famous churches. But he couldn't get in; they were so packed, you needed tickets to attend. Wanting to be in a house of worship on Easter Sunday, Bonhoeffer went instead to a synagogue, where he heard the charismatic Rabbi Stephen Wise. Bonhoeffer wrote to his grandmother:

"He delivered an enormously effective sermon on corruption in New York and challenged the Jews, who make up a third of the city, to build from this city the City of God, to which the Messiah would then truly be able to come."

In 1914, Wise co-founded the NAACP, and he was instrumental in the creation of the World Jewish Congress. A synagogue in New York City bears his name.

Wise's grandson, also named Stephen, now in his 80s, has been spearheading an effort to get Bonhoeffer's name listed with Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, in Israel, as one of the "Righteous Gentiles" of the Holocaust.

What Bonhoeffer came away with from his New York experience was a willingness to stand by the true faith. He wrote to Rabbi Wise, telling him what the Nazis were doing to the Jews, and how the "religious" people were complacent.

"There were many German churchgoers, whether they were Christians or not I don't know, but they went to church and somehow they made peace with the Nazis," Metaxas says. "They thought there was nothing wrong. Bonhoeffer had such a devoted faith he knew without any question that the Nazis were anti-Christian and they were evil, and if he didn't stand against them he would have to answer to God."

Bonhoeffer believed he was called by God to help those who wanted to assassinate Hitler.

"Bonhoeffer was not a pacifist," Metaxas says. "And that will be news to a lot of people who think of Bonhoeffer as their hero, as some kind of pacifist."

He was willing to be involved in a plot to kill Hitler. "He wasn't helpful as a gunman; he was helpful with contacts all around Europe," Metaxas says. "He had the ability because he had ecumenical church contacts to work as a double agent, and that is what he was, he was a double agent."

The plot was discovered, and Bonhoeffer was arrested in 1943.

Two years later, as the Battle of Berlin raged, it was clear that the Third Reich would be defeated. But Hitler wanted his enemies dead, including Bonhoeffer.

On April 9, 1945, Bonhoeffer was hanged. Three weeks later, Hitler committed suicide.

On May 1, German forces in Italy surrendered. The next day, German forces in Berlin surrendered. On May 7, 1945, the unconditional surrender of all German forces was signed. The war in Europe was over.

What was left in its wake was the murder of 6 million Jews and a legacy that has tarnished the Christian faith in Europe.

But the legacy that Bonhoeffer leaves future generations is of the untold dangers of idolizing politicians as messianic figures. Not just in the 1930s and '40s, but today as well.

"It's a deep temptation within us," says Metaxas. "We need to guard against it and we need to know that it can lead to our ruin. Germany was led over the cliff, and there were many good people who were totally deluded."

Bonhoeffer, says Metaxas, was a prophet. He was a voice crying in the wilderness. He was God's voice at a time when almost no one was speaking out against the evil of the Nazis. [Green/FoxNews/9April2010]

A Time to Betray: The Memoir of an Iranian Double Agent, by Reza Kahlili, Reviewed by David Ignatius. How true does a "true story" have to be? This question immediately confronts a reader of "A Time to Betray," by the pseudonymous Reza Kahlili.

The book opens with this encompassing disclaimer: "This is the true story of my life as a CIA agent in the Revolutionary Guards of Iran; however, every effort has been made to protect my identity (Reza Kahlili is not my real name), my family, and my associates. To do so, it was necessary to change all the names (except for officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran) and alter certain events, chronology, circumstances, and places."

If we cannot depend precisely on the who, what, where or when in a nonfiction memoir, then what do we have? You don't need to be a professional skeptic to wonder if the basic claim of the book - that the author was a CIA mole inside Iran's fearsome Guard - is accurate.

So I did some checking. And I am happy to report that the author did indeed have a secret relationship with the CIA. That's a relief, because the story he tells - of the Iranian revolution and how he came to despise it - is genuinely powerful. It offers a vivid first-person narrative of how the zealots of the Islamic republic created what has become a nightmare for the Iranian people. By the author's account, the cruelty and intolerance didn't begin with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They have been unfolding for three decades.

Since the bona fides of "Kahlili" are crucial to the credibility of this story, let me share some detective work: Three former CIA officers who ran Iranian operations in the '80s and should have been knowledgeable said they had never heard of such a significant penetration of the Guard during this period. Maybe the case was super-restricted; maybe it was seen as relatively low-level. I can't say.

A current U.S. government official, however, did vouch for Kahlili's role as a spy. "I can't confirm every jot and title in the book, but he did have a relationship with U.S. intelligence," the official said.

I spoke with Kahlili's lawyer, too, who told me that the book was "submitted for prepublication review" at a certain unnamed U.S. government agency and that this agency confirmed that Kahlili did have an operational relationship. Eventually, I found one of Kahlili's former case officers, who described him as "legit" and "a very brave guy."

And finally I talked with Kahlili himself. He was using a Darth Vader-style voice modulator, which seemed a little silly since he was calling from California. But I guess ex-spies are entitled to their paranoia, not to mention their publicity stunts. He offered more details that reinforced the integrity of the book.

What truly makes this story believable is the character of the narrator. Kahlili is a kind of upper-middle-class Iranian Everyman. He begins the story as a beer-drinking, girl-chasing Iranian student in America during the late 1970s. He is drawn into the radical cause via the student movement, embraces his Muslim faith and returns home just after the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah and installed Ayatollah Khomeini. He describes a "brief, shining moment" under Khomeini's banner that felt to him like "the beginning of a Persian Renaissance."

Kahlili's companions on this revolutionary journey are two childhood friends, whom he calls "Naser" and "Kazem." They are all swept up by the ayatollah's fervor, but Naser and Kazem are opposing poles on which the story turns. Naser is a secular, idealistic fellow, and he moves toward the leftist organization known as the Mujaheddin, which becomes a bitter antagonist of the regime. Kazem is a deeply religious man who joins the Revolutionary Guard and rises steadily in its intelligence operations, pulling the author with him.

The crisis comes when Naser and his younger sister are arrested, brutally tortured and finally killed. Kahlili is honest enough to see that this is a perversion of the revolutionary ideals he has been fighting for - and he swears revenge. He takes it in a way that only a very brave person would dare, by contacting the CIA during a trip to America and offering to spy for the United States.

One of the strengths of this book is that it makes the author's decision to betray his country - or, more properly, the people who are running it - seem like a morally correct and laudable action. Indeed, people in the Iranian operations division at the CIA should welcome "A Time to Betray" as a virtual recruitment poster. Kahlili meets a series of smart and sensitive case officers; he's given a code name (in the book it's "Wally," which has a ludicrous ring, but maybe it was real); he's taught secret writing and other tradecraft to disguise his communications as ordinary letters; and then he's sent back into Iran as a CIA spy.

I won't spoil the book by telling how the story evolves, but it's a good espionage yarn. I have no idea what Kahlili left out in the telling, but his putative intelligence reports, which he prints in italics, seem incredibly squishy. If that's all the poop he provided, no wonder others in the agency didn't hear about him.

One detail that is entirely credible is how little the CIA seems to know about what's going on inside Iran. Talking with his first case officer, "Steve," the Iranian observes: "I didn't realize until Steve started debriefing me how uninformed the U.S. was about the ayatollah's activities in the Middle East." The agency doesn't seem to have known about the scope of the Guard's activities or the extent of its contacts with the Soviets, for example.

At one point in the mid-1980s, Kahlili worries that Iranian intelligence operatives are wise to his encoded postal messages. The book should have mentioned that by the late 1980s, the Iranians had noticed similar letters going to postal addresses in Europe, and a whole network of spies was rolled up, with disastrous consequences. The Iranians certainly know that history, as do some readers of American newspapers, which have reported the mail screw-up in detail; so, I'm sure, does Kahlili. Leaving it out of this book weakens its authority.

As the tale progresses, we realize we are reading not so much a spy story as a national tragedy. The passionate idealism and yearning for democracy that gave birth to the Iranian revolution are perverted, year by year. Kahlili's disgust and remorse compelled him to take action, but America mostly sat on its hands. "The West needs to do something," he tells one of his case officers in the mid-'80s. "If we allow the Guards to go unchecked, the consequences could be devastating for the region - and the world."

Kahlili had that right, and a lot of other things as well. After finishing this book, this reader recalled a line from Arthur Miller's play, "After the Fall," which asked: "Why is betrayal the only truth that sticks?" I wish we could be more certain about the details in this story, but even so, the basic message sticks hard and true. [David Ignatius is a columnist and associate editor for The Washington Post. His new novel about Iran, "The Increment," is out in paperback this month.] [Ignatius/WashingtonPost/9April2010]

Obituaries

Anatoly Dobrynin, Key Soviet Diplomat, Dead at 90. Anatoly Dobrynin, a Soviet diplomat who represented Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis and later in key superpower negotiations to curb the growth of nuclear arsenals, has died at age 90, Russia's Itar-Tass news agency reported Thursday.

His death came the same week that U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met in Prague to sign a landmark treaty to shrink the Cold War superpowers' arsenals to the lowest point since the frightening arms race of the 1960s.

Dobrynin died Tuesday in Moscow, Itar-Tass said, adding that Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, expressed deep condolences on learning of his death.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley also expressed condolences to Russia over the death of its "renowned" ambassador.

During his last years, Dobrynin had been an honorary professor at the Russian Diplomatic Academy, training a new generation of post-Soviet Russian diplomats and officials, Itar-Tass said.

Dobrynin never intended to become a diplomat, but ended up as one of the Cold War's most prominent and respected, playing a key role in resolving the Cuban missile crisis and representing the Soviet Union in Washington for a quarter-century.

In public, Dobrynin always followed the Kremlin line assiduously, but senior U.S. officials respected him for his ability to get their points of view across to the leadership in Moscow.

He was both sides' preferred channel of contact between the Kremlin and U.S. presidents for 24 years as both countries swung through enormous changes.

Dobrynin's ambassadorship began in 1962, the Nikita Khrushchev era when most Americans saw Soviets as crude and bellicose men in ill-fitting suits. Dobrynin, however, was warm and suave, with fluent English; his style meshed with the sophisticated image cultivated by U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

Dobrynin quickly established a back-channel relationship with Kennedy's brother, Robert, the U.S. Attorney General. The relationship was put to a stomach-clenching test within a few months, when U.S. spy planes took pictures of Soviet nuclear missiles being installed in Cuba.

President Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba as Soviet ships steamed toward the island while Soviet Foreign Minister Alexei Gromyko denied that such missiles were in Cuba. The world watched in dread, fearing that a clash over Cuba would touch off fighting in divided Berlin that would engulf Europe and lead to global nuclear war.

Although Dobrynin stood with Gromyko when he denied the missiles' presence, in private he was meeting with Robert Kennedy. Through those meetings, Khrushchev proposed that the United States withdraw missiles from Turkey in exchange for Moscow taking the missiles out of Cuba and Khrushchev announced the withdrawal two weeks after the crisis began.

The U.N. Security Council paid tribute to Dobrynin's "contribution to promoting international cooperation" and his "major role in saving the world from nuclear disaster" during the Cuban missile crisis.

Japan's U.N. Ambassador Yukio Takasu, the current council president, said members were "deeply moved" and noted that in the course of Dobrynin's "illustrious career" he had served as an undersecretary-general of the United Nations.

The tension and public attention were in stunning contrast to the quiet and obscure life that Dobrynin had aspired to as a young man. Trained as an engineer, he was working as a designer in an aircraft factory in 1944 when his life took a sharp turn.

According to his memoir "In Confidence," he was ordered to report to the Communist Party Central Committee. There, an unsmiling man told him "There is an opinion to send you to study at the Higher Diplomatic School."

That phrasing, he wrote, was a common way of phrasing an order. "You did not know to whom to appeal, and the only way out was to consent," Dobrynin wrote.

He never knew who came up with the opinion or what had attracted him to the authorities' attention. But Dobrynin had not only the blue-collar background valued by the Soviets, he also was notably cultivated.

His mother labored as an usher at Moscow's Maly Theater and through her he wrangled free passes to many of the capital's renowned drama performances. He clearly knew how to adapt to roles and he rose rapidly.

He was sent to Washington as an embassy counselor in 1952 and became head of the Foreign Ministry's U.S. and Latin American Department in 1960. He returned to Washington as ambassador in 1962 at the notably young age of 43.

After the Cuban missile crisis, Dobrynin continued to cultivate relations with presidents as different as Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, while representing Kremlin policies ranging from the grim freeze of Leonid Brezhnev to the epochal liberalization of Mikhail Gorbachev.

How much effect he had on policy decisions is unclear, but the secretive Kremlin apparently valued him as an astute analyst of U.S.-Soviet relations and he pleased the American public with gestures such as taking his daughter to fast-food joints during free time.

Dobrynin stepped down as ambassador in 1986 to become secretary for foreign affairs of the powerful Communist Party Central Committee. But he still had one more appearance to make in the background of superpower nuclear drama.

In his party position, he was a key adviser to Gorbachev at the 1986 Reykjavik summit with Reagan, where the two leaders came to the brink of unexpectedly extensive nuclear weapons cuts, then faltered over the U.S. insistence on developing the space-based Strategic Defense Initiative.

Upon Dobrynin's retirement in 1988, former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Malcolm Toon praised him as "one of the ablest diplomats of the 20th century." [Heintz/AP/9April2010]

Jobs

Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy Counterintelligence Instructors.  PeopleSource LLC is seeking candidates for the following position. POC is POC Kat Bartley at 410-777-5136, kat@peoplesourcellc.net.

Counterintelligence Instructors
Location: Elkridge, MD
Salary: 120-130K
Top Secret clearance required
To provide instruction at the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA) in support of the Counterintelligence Operations Course. Instructors will train DOD special agents in the fundamentals of planning and conducting Offensive Counterintelligence Operations (OFCO) and instruct in the structure and targeting of Foreign Intelligence and Security Services (FISS). These positions entail a highly visible role including, but not limited to, course development, curriculum development, student evaluations and course critiques.

Qualifications:
- Must be certified Offensive CI Operations (OFCO) case officers with field experience.
- Graduates of JCITA Advanced Foreign Counterintelligence Training Course (AFCITC), the Field Tradecraft Course (FTC), Advanced Foreign Counterintelligence Operations Course (AFCIOC), Military Source Operations MSO) or Air Force AFOSI Counterespionage Operations Course with AFOSI OFCO designator 9Q will be considered for this position.
- Knowledge of fundamentals of CI, Force Protection, and military CI operations
- Knowledge in technical, polygraph, and psychology subjects to support CI operations, report writing, and PORTICO operations

Coming Events

EVENTS IN COMING TWO MONTHS....

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

Wednesday, 14 April 2010, 11:30 a.m. - Scottsdale, AZ - AFIO Arizona Luncheon on "Current Perspective on Pakistan-Afghanistan-India Issues." Where: McCORMICK RANCH GOLF COURSE,7505 McCormick Parkway, Scottsdale AZ 85258 ~ Phone 480.948.0260
Speaker: Prof Phil Jones, Director, Global Security/Intelligence Studies, Embrey-Riddle Aeronautical, Prescott, Arizona Campus, on “Current Perspective on Pakistan-Afghanistan, Pakistan-India Issues.” Phil Jones is a former national intelligence analyst and an international security expert with extensive field experience in political and security risk studies. He has also served as security manager for an international corporation and management services for corporate clients. He has done extensive field work for World Bank clients in international development projects and is an expert on South Asia. Professor Jones will focus on timely Pakistan-Afghanistan, Pakistan-India issues.
RESERVATIONS: WE WILL NEED FOR EVERY MEETING an RSVP no later than 72 hours ahead of time; in the past, not reserving or cancelling without prior notice (72 hours prior to the meeting) created much grief for those of us organizing the meeting and dealing with the personnel! WE ARE charged for the no-shows and please remember, we are a small organization with a humble coffer! We would therefore APPRECIATE that you all respond to this email to confirm your presence (or not). Our meeting fees will be as follows: $20.00 for members, $22 for non-member guests.
Email Simone simone@4smartphone.net or simone@afioaz.org or call and leave a message on 602.570.6016

Wednesday, 14 April 2010, 11 a.m. - Albuquerque, NM - The Tom Smith AFIO NM Chapter meets. Calico Café (Vernon’s Steakhouse), 4th Street, ¼ mi north of Osuna
11:00 AM ---- Socialize and Place Lunch Orders. 11:30 AM: Call To Order to conduct business. Questions: Email: foreigndevil@yahoo.com

15 April 2010, 12:30 p.m. - Los Angeles, CA - The AFIO L.A. luncheon hosts Marthe Cohn - "Behind Enemy Lines: A French Spy Inside Nazi Germany."
Marthe Cohn was a member of the French First Army intelligence service during World War II and made many covert trips inside Nazi Germany. During her presentation, she will recount her missions as a French Jewish spy and how she disguised herself as a young nurse to find information about German troop movements and alert Allied commanders. Her book, Behind Enemy Lines, an outstanding memoir, is the story of an ordinary human being who, under extraordinary circumstances, became the hero her country needed her to be. Nine years ago she was awarded the Medaille Militaire, a relatively rare medal awarded for outstanding military service and given, in the past, to the likes of Winston Churchill.
She has appeared at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. and on CSPAN2.
Lunch will be served at 12:30 PM at the LMU campus for a cost of $20. Please RSVP via email AFIO_LA@Yahoo.com by no later than April 9, 2010 if you would like to attend the meeting. If directions are needed please forward an email request.

Friday, 16 April 2010 - Austin, TX - CIA Invites AFIO Members to the CIA - LBJ Library Conference on STRATEGIC WARNING and The ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE - Lessons Learned from the 1968 Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia. Full details at top right column of this issue of the Weekly Notes.

20 April 2010 - Arlington, VA - The Defense Intelligence Forum meets at the Alpine Restaurant, 4770 Lee Highway, Arlington, VA 22207. The speaker will be Colonel Mark S. Wilkins, US Army, who will speak on Latin American security issues.

Col Mark Wilkins, a Foreign Area Officer, is Chief of the America Division, J5 JCS.  He has been Defense and Army Attach� in Columbia, and Ecuador.  He has served as Chief of the Office of the Defense Representative in Costa Rica and commanded US Military Groups in Nicaragua and Guatemala. He has been Operations Officer for the Advanced Foreign Counterintelligence Training Center, senior military analyst in DIA's Latin American Division, and Director of Intelligence for Special Operations Command South. In Honduras, he supported U.S. military operations in Central America.  He is a graduate of the Venezuelan Battalion Command and Staff School and has a Masters Degree in Latin American studies from the University of Florida.
This forum will follow a modified Chatham House rule.  You may use the information, but with the exception of speaker's name and subject, you may make no attribution.
Pay at the door with a check for $29 per person payable to DIAA, Inc.  Check-in starts at 1130, lunch at 1200.  Make reservations by 14 April by email to diforum@verizon.net.  Give names, telephone numbers, email addresses, and choices of chicken al limone, veal marsala, salmon, or pasta primavera.  Pay with a check.  THE FORUM DOESN'T TAKE CASH!

23 - 25 April 2010 - S. Portland, ME - The New England Chapter of the Naval Cryptologic Veterans Association (NCVA-NE) holds a spring Mini-Reunion at the Marriott at Sable Oaks.  For additional event information, call (518) 664-8032 or visit website. 

26 April 2010 - Washington, DC - Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Roundtable Hosted by LexisNexis. LexisNexis will host its first Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Roundtable at the National Press Club
The program will include introductory remarks by Doug Naquin, Director of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's Open Source Center, followed by a "perspectives panel" discussion with leading OSINT and analytical experts from academia and the private sector. In addition to Director Naquin, the panel will include former Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production, Dr. Mark Lowenthal, and Ron Marks who is a Senior Vice President with Oxford Analytica. The "perspectives" discussion will be based on the future of OSINT as a recognized discipline in strategic and tactical national security decision-making.
The LexisNexis OSINT Roundtable was created to make a public space for discussion about the government's needs for Open Source Intelligence and to facilitate relationships between government officials and private sector leaders; in order to foster an increasingly responsive open source intelligence infrastructure that meets the needs of national security decision makers.
Further information will be posted at www.lexisnexis.com/osint

Tuesday, 27 April 2010, 6 - 8 p.m. - Coral Gables, FL - The AFIO Miami Chapter hosts dinner with CIA Clandestine Services Officer. A special dinner meeting with a member of the Clandestine Service, CIA. We will be discussing the mission and how we can help. This will be an opportunity to invite trusted members of the business community. PLEASE JOIN US FOR A LIGHT DINNER AND CHAT WITH AN OFFICER OF CIA. • What are the challenges? What is the strategy?• What will be our resources? • How can we help? Please recruit and bring with you as your guest an experienced and trusted member of the business community to join us for this discussion. Cost: $25 for AFIO Members/ $35 for Guests
RSVP: by note below with checks received no later than April 20, 2010 trsmiami@aol.com

28 April 2010, 6:00 p.m. - Washington, DC - The Goethe Institute will host a presentation and discussion of the film "The Lives of Others" about the surveillance society of East Germany during the Cold War.

If interested in attending this free cinema presentation and discussion, send your RSVP to: rsvp@washington.goethe.org  or by phone to: 202/289-1200 extension 170.  Please note that the film discussion is scheduled to begin AFTER the film. The entire film will be shown, followed by discussion. To accept: rsvp@washington.goethe.org

28 April 2010, 1:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m - Washington, DC - The Early Years of the U-2 Spy Plane and its Role in Cold War History. 
 The U-2 spy plane and the intelligence that it collected played an important role in Cold War history. Convened in connection with the 50th anniversary of the downing of Francis Gary Powers' U-2 over the Soviet Union on 1 May 1960, Mayday 1960: Reassessing the U-2 Shoot Down will examine the role of the U-2 in the missile-gap debate and will explore the political, diplomatic and intelligence history surrounding the events of 1 May 1960. Panel I: The U-2 and the Missile Gap, 2:00 - 3:30 p.m. Alarmed by the launch of Sputnik in October 1957 as well as by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's claim that the Soviet Union was producing ICBMs "like sausages," the United States became embroiled in an increasingly contentious debate on "the missile gap" in the run-up to the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon Presidential election. Drawing upon imagery from the last few U-2 flights over the Soviet Union which has never before been seen in public, Panel I will focus on the role of signals intelligence, newly developed photo-reconnaissance satellites and the U-2 in resolving the missile-gap debate.• Christian Ostermann – chair; • Chris Pocock - author, 50 Years of the U-2; • Martin Sherwin - Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow; • Dino Brugioni - all-source analyst, (ret.) National Photographic Interpretation Center
Panel II: The U-2 Shoot Down, 3:45 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. - U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union on 1 May 1960 provoking a major Cold War incident which led to the cancellation of a planned superpower summit. Drawing upon newly declassified documents on the Board of Inquiry which examined Powers' conduct during the shootdown and his subsequent captivity, Panel II will examine the repercussions of the U-2 shoot down in international politics and intelligence history.• Chris Pocock - chair;• Svetlana Savranskaya - director of Russian programs, the National Security Archive;• Giles Whittell - Washington correspondent, The Times of London and author, Bridge of Spies: A True Story of the Cold War;• Matthew Aid - visiting fellow, the National Security Archive and author, The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency.
LOCATION of event: 6th floor Moynihan Board Room, Woodrow Wilson Center
Visit www.cwihp.org for more information and to RSVP.

30 April 2010, 9 a.m. - 6 p.m. - Washington, DC - "The Stasi and its Foreign Intelligence Service" - Free Workshop by CWIHP and GHI.  
The German Historical Institute and The Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars hosts one day workshop on the STASI. This CWIHP-GHI workshop will be held at the Woodrow Wilson Center, One Wilson Plaza/1300 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. in Washington. There will be four panels with leading American, German, British and Canadian historians working on the Stasi and HVA: Panel 1: The Stasi and East German Society; Panel 2: The Stasi and the East German State and the SED (communist party); Panel 3: The HVA and KGB; and Panel 4: The HVA and the West, which will deal mainly with East German espionage in West Germany.
PROGRAM: Friday, April 30 (Woodrow Wilson Center) The Stasi and East German Society, with Uwe Spiekermann, GHI; Jens Gieseke, Zentrum f�r Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam, and Gary Bruce, Waterloo University, Canada. David Bathrick gives commentary.
The Stasi, the SED, and the GDR State - a panel with Christian Ostermann, Woodrow Wilson Ctr, Walter S��, Birthler Agency, Berlin, and Jefferson Adams, Sarah Lawrence College.
Keynote Address: “The Stasi Legacy in Germany’s History” by Professor Konrad Jarausch, University of North Carolina
The HVA and KGB panel with Mircea Munteanu, Woodrow Wilson Ctr, Benjamin Fischer, formerly CIA History Staff, Washington, DC and Paul Maddrell, Aberystwyth University. Comment by Oleg Kalugin, KGB (ret)
The HVA and the West panel with R. Gerald Livingston, GHI, Georg Herbstritt, Birthler Agency, Berlin and Kristie Macrakis, Georgia Institute of Technology
Dirk Doerrenberg, formerly Bundesamt f�r Verfassungsschutz.
A luncheon keynote address on the Legacy of the Stasi in German History will be delivered by Professor Konrad Jarausch of the University of North Carolina's History Department.
AFIO members are invited to participate in the discussion following panelists' presentation. but asked to register with the Wilson Center in advance, identifying themselves as AFIO members. No fee for participation is required. REGISTER by e-mail at the following address: coldwar@wilsoncenter.org.
Contact persons at the Wilson Center: Mircea. Munteanu, CWIHP Deputy Director (Mircea.Munteanu@wilsoncenter.org) or Tel: 202/69-4267, or Timothy McDonnell (Timothy.McDonnell@wilsoncenter.org). A full program outline can be provided by the Wilson Center contact persons.

Saturday, 1 May 2010, 1000 - 1430 - Salem, MA - The AFIO New England Chapter hear Ed Barr on "The State of HUMINT in CENTROM Area of Operations." Edward J. Barr, Esq. is a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and has served as an advisor to the United Nations and as a liaison to foreign governments. As a senior intelligence officer, Ed has worked with all major intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Security Agency (NSA). He helped create an executive-level masters degree program at the Department of Defense's Joint Military Intelligence College (JMIC) and served as the program's first Marine Corps faculty member. He has served in countries throughout Southeast Asia and the Middle East to include Afghanistan, Iraq, and Djibouti. Ed has just ended an active duty period where he served as US Central Command’s senior counterintelligence and HUMINT officer, responsible for intelligence operations in 27 countries.
The May 1st 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, 1000 - 1130, membership meeting 1130 – 1200. Luncheon at 1200 followed by our speaker, with adjournment at 2:30PM.
Note, as this meeting is a one-day event we have not made any hotel arrangements. For additional information contact us at afionechapter@gmail.com
Advance reservations are $25.00, $30.00 at the door - per person. Luncheon reservations must be made by 23 April 2010.
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

12 May 2010, 11:30 a.m. - Scottsdale, AZ - Arizona Chapter of AFIO on "State of Arizona's Finances." TOPIC: The State of Arizona's Finances: What’s Really Going On With The Budget.
Hon. Dean Martin was elected in 2006 as State Treasurer, Arizona’s Chief Financial Officer and is responsible for the prudent custody and management of state and local monies. The Treasurer also serves as the Chairman of the State Board of Investment, and State Loan Commission, as the State Surveyor General, and on the State Land Selection Board. Treasurer Martin is currently second in line of succession to the Governor. He previously served six years as a State Senator and Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
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.

20 May 2010, 11:30 am - Colorado Springs, CO - AFIO Rocky Mountain Chapter at the Air Force Academy, Falcon Club features Mark Pfoff of the El Paso Sheriff Office, "Computer Forensics and all things Digital." RSVP to Tom Van Wormer at robsmom@pcisys.net

JULY EVENT in IRELAND, REQUIRING PLANNING NOW....

11-13 July 2010 - Dungarvan, Ireland - 2010 Analytic Best Practices Conference by Mercyhurst College Institute of Intelligence Education. Event to be at Dungarvan Town Hall Theatre. Mercyhurst College's Institute for Intelligence Education hosts this special event which focuses on intelligence issues from a global perspective.
The conference will converse and discuss analytic best practices using panels of leading practitioners in the fields of medicine, law, finance, technology, journalism and the sub-disciplines of national security, law enforcement, and business.
This year the event will explore the nature of analysis and its application in various disciplines, building bridges between analytic practitioners and scholars within those disciplines, and exploring best practices in teaching analytic methodologies.
Intended takeaways for attendees include a deeper and broader appreciation of the value of different analytic methods borrowed as “best practices” from other disciplines, as well as instruction.
Speakers will include The Hon. Tom Ridge, Dennis Dirkmaat, Liam Fahey, Catherine Lotrionte, William McGill, Justine Marut Schober, Mark Williams, Anthony Campbell, Justyna Krajewski, Don McDowell, Chris Pallaris, Randy Pherson, Jim Poole, Barry Zulauf.
For additional information or questions, please contact:
Mr. Robert Heibel, Executive Director, Institute of Intelligence Education at Mercyhurst College at 1 (814) 824-2117 or rheibel@mercyhurst.edu
Mrs. Michelle Henderson, Mercyhurst College, 1 (814) 824-2131 at mhenderson@mercyhurst.edu
Mrs. Heather Tate, Instructional Systems Designer, Mercyhurst College, 1 (814) 824-3121 or at htate@mercyhurst.edu
REGISTRATION: Opens March 1, 2010. FEE: $195 attendee; $75 spouse/guest.
FULL DETAILS and REGISTRATION:
https://www.regonline.com/dungarvan_conference_2010

PLAN NOW FOR THIS UPCOMING SPYCRUISE�....

13 - 20 November 2010 - Ft. Lauderdale, FL - SPYCRUISE to Grand Turks, Turks & Caicos; San Juan, PR; St. Thomas, USVI; and Half Moon Cay, Bahamas - with National Security Speakers Discussing "Current & Future Threats: Policies, Problems and Prescriptions."

This National Security Educational Lecture/Seminar co-sponsored by the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (CICENTRE) and Henley-Putnam University, being held aboard Holland America's M.S. Eurodam features some top intelligence experts, as follows:
Porter Goss, Former Director, CIA
Gen. Michael Hayden, Former Director of CIA and NSA
Peter Brookes, Heritage Foundation Fellow, Former CIA Operations Officer
Michael Braun, DEA Operations Chief, Retired, Managing Partner, Spectre Group Intl
Dr. Michael Corcoran, President, Henley-Putnam University
Major General Paul E. Vallely, U.S. Army Retired
Clare Lopez, Retired CIA Operations Officer, Ci Centre Professor; VP, Intelligence Summit
SPACE IS LIMITED - Reserve your stateroom now for this EIGHT DAY cruise/conference.
RESERVATIONS: www.DFunTravel.com or call 1-888-670-0008.
Fees are remarkably reasonable for an eight day cruise: $1,199 inside cabin; $1269 Ocean View Cabin; $1449 Verandahs; $1979 Suites. Price includes program, taxes, port charges and gratuities.
Colorful brochure here.

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

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