Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

U.S. Intelligence Expert Visited Seoul After Shipwreck. An officer in charge of North Korean affairs at the U.S. National Intelligence Agency made a secret visit to South Korea early this month after the Navy corvette Cheonan sank in the West Sea on March 26.

Sylvia Copeland reportedly met senior South Korean intelligence officers to exchange intelligence on what North Korea was doing around the time of the sinking and discuss a possible response.

In the meeting, Copeland focused on analyzing related intelligence reports, sources said.

"Copeland is an officer trusted by NIA Director Dennis Blair," an intelligence source said. "She was here right after the Cheonan sank due to the need for cooperation with the South. It seems the two countries re-checked their system of sharing intelligence about the North."

Before and after her visit, Copeland also went to Japan and other countries. A former U.S. military officer, she worked as case officer in charge of Far East at the CIA. In the 1980s, she was an officer in the U.S. Forces Korea. [Chosun/19April2010] 

NSA Stops Collecting Some Data to Resolve Issue with Court. A special federal court that oversees domestic surveillance has raised concerns about the National Security Agency's collection of certain types of electronic data, prompting the agency to suspend collecting it, U.S. officials said.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which grants orders to U.S. spy agencies to monitor U.S. citizens and residents in terrorism and espionage cases, recently "got a little bit more of an understanding" about the NSA's collection of the data, said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because such matters are classified.

The data under discussion are records associated with various kinds of communication, but not their content. Examples of this "metadata" include the origin, destination and path of an e-mail; the phone numbers called from a particular telephone; and the Internet address of someone making an Internet phone call. It was not clear what kind of data had provoked the court's concern.

Some House Republicans have argued that the suspension of collection creates an intelligence gap that undermines the government's ability to track and identify terrorist networks, according to officials familiar with the matter. Frustrated about waiting for a remedy, these Republicans say the gap can be closed with a technical fix to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the officials said.

"This is a basic tool we used to have, and it's now gone," said one intelligence official familiar with the impasse. "Every day, every week that goes by, there's just one more week of information that we're not collecting. You sit there and say, 'This is unbelievable that we have this gap.' "

The data could be used to help analysts learn whom a suspect was working and communicating with, and to "detect and anticipate" a plot, the official said. "It's not a concern over what was being collected," he said. "It's just a question about whether the law was written in a way that allowed the information to be collected in a way that they were collecting it."

But some Democrats on Capitol Hill are confident, the officials said, that NSA Director Keith B. Alexander and the Justice Department can address the court's concerns without resorting to legislation.

"I'm satisfied he's working as quickly as he can but at the same time making sure that he's doing it as thoroughly as possible," said House intelligence committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.).

The Justice Department and NSA declined to comment.

The NSA voluntarily stopped gathering the data in December or January rather than wait to be told to do so, the officials said. The agency had been collecting it with court permission for several years, officials said.

Alexander promptly informed the intelligence committees of the situation, as he is required to do. Reyes said there had been instances in the past where Alexander had not informed the panels as soon as a problem arose, but "he's held himself accountable and proffered a rational explanation." Since then, he has notified the committees promptly even before he has "all the facts" of a case, Reyes said.

At issue in this case is how well the NSA's gathering of data conforms to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was passed in 1978 to prevent a repeat of the domestic spying abuses of the 1960s and '70s. The law was revised in 2008 to broaden the government's surveillance authority after a 1 1/2 -year congressional debate with George W. Bush's administration, which argued that technology had outstripped the 1978 law's language.

Several House intelligence committee members discussed the challenge of calibrating collection with ensuring Americans' privacy and the nation's security. They did not confirm or deny that the NSA had stopped collecting some kinds of data.

"It was much simpler when all you needed to do was figure out whether you needed a search warrant to search a particular location," said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), also a Judiciary Committee member. "But in an age of voice over IP, when everyone has stored electronic communications on answering machines, the laws that were quite simple rapidly become outdated. The challenge at agencies like NSA is to not only stay ahead of the technological curve, but to stay ahead of the legal curve as well."

Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), who chairs the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, said that technological change meant that "you also can find yourself way out of bounds before you know it." And, he added, "in the process of getting back in bounds, you actually can lose a lot." [Nakashima/WashingtonPost/18April2010] 

Hakan Fidan Becomes Next Head of Turkish Intelligence. Who the next undersecretary of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) will be is no longer a question of speculation. Dr. Hakan Fidan has received the approval of President Abdullah G�l and was appointed as the MİT's deputy-undersecretary.

Following this, he is expected to succeed the current undersecretary, Emre Taner, who has been serving in his post for almost five years. Taner's tenure was extended for another six months on Nov. 27, 2009.

The MİT's new boss is 42 and was born in Ankara. He served in the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) as a non-commissioned officer for 15 years between 1986 and 2001. During his tenure at the military, he also worked at NATO's Germany-based Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC). He later resigned from the army and worked as a political and economic consultant at the Australian Embassy in Ankara. Having received an undergraduate degree in management and political sciences at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC), he earned a Master's and a doctoral degree at Bilkent University in Ankara.

His MA dissertation was titled "Intelligence and Foreign Policy: A Comparison of British, American, and Turkish Intelligence Systems." Fidan was awarded a doctorate with the thesis "The Role of Information Technologies in Verifying International Agreements in the Age of Information." He also undertook a set of academic studies at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) in Geneva and at London's Verification Technologies Research Center. He has also taught at Hacettepe and Bilkent Universities.

Fidan was later appointed as the head of the Turkish Development and Cooperation Agency (TİKA) where he drew much public attention with successful operations. He contributed to the efficient implementation of Turkish foreign policy with TİKA activities abroad. During his term at the agency, Turkey has become a donor state at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Fidan gained respect from the non-civilian members of the National Security Council (MGK) during a meeting in which he presented TİKA's activities.

His last post before his new MİT career was at the Prime Ministry as a deputy-undersecretary. He made many little-publicized visits to various regions with the then-chief consultant to the prime minister on foreign policy Ahmet Davutoğlu. He accompanied the head of the government on all his visits abroad and meetings with leaders of other countries. [Todayszman/19April2010] 

Former Top CIA Agent Believes Osama Bin Laden Will Die Of Old Age. One of the top men at the CIA in charge of tracking Osama Bin Laden, both before and after September 11th, believes that Osama Bin Laden may never be killed or captured, instead that he will die of old age.

Michael Scheuer claims that the radical Muslin world does not hate the U.S. because of the way we live, but instead of what we do.

In effect, says Scheuer, radical Muslims led by Bin Laden, believe the U.S. has no business sticking its nose into the affairs of the Middle East.

"They're aggravated by our presence on the Arab peninsula, our support for Arab tyrannies, whether in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Kuwait. They detest our support for the Israelis. These are very substantive issues and what motivates people to blow themselves up," said Scheuer.

Scheuer says while he was in the CIA during the Clinton administration, the United States missed numerous chances to get Bin Laden.

"Each time, Mr. Clinton and his cabinet decided for a variety of reasons they didn't want to shoot. They were worried that the Europeans would think we were gun slingers, they would worry that the Muslin world wouldn't like us anymore," said Scheuer.

When it comes Bin Laden, Scheuer doesn't have much better to say about former President George W. Bush, who he also served under.

"When we invaded Iraq we convinced the Muslim world that what Bin Laden was calling for - a defensive Jihad - was exactly right . It was a case of an infidel country occupying a Muslim country, without provocation," he said.

Scott Brown: "I think everybody always wonders how this guy can evade the most sophisticated techniques for tracking somebody in the world?"

Michael Scheuer: "It's a combination of talent and topography. He lives among tribes, whose tribal code if you will, requires them to protect their guests with their lives. Also, we put so few troops in Afghanistan to do so many jobs that there's not a lot of folks available to pay attention to Osama Bin Laden."

Scott Brown: "Do you think the U.S. will ever be able to kill or capture Bin Laden?"

Michael Scheuer: "I would never say never, in the U.S. military and CIA there are some very, very good people trying to get him, but my own bet is that he will die of old age."  [WGRZ/20April2010] 

Dutch Spies Boost Operations Abroad. Dutch spies will step up overseas activities in a switch of focus from a domestic Islamist threat to dangers abroad, the Netherlands intelligence service said on Tuesday.

The AIVD general intelligence and security service has concentrated on Islamist extremism at home since the 2004 murder of Theo van Gogh, who made a film critical of Islam, but would now focus on "forward defense", involving more overseas espionage.

Gerard Bouman, head of the AIVD, said: "We've registered a growing threat to national security from abroad and against Dutch interests abroad."

The move, announced to coincide with the AIVD's annual report, follows criticism of the Dutch intelligence community by a parliamentary inquiry this year into Dutch support for the invasion of Iraq.

The report noted that the intelligence services relied heavily on second-hand information from allies - much of which later proved deficient - and said there was no indication that either the AIVD or its military counterpart had any first-hand "human intelligence" from Iraq.

Mr. Bouman would not say where agents might be deployed but the report noted an increased threat from Yemen and Somalia.

Discussing its counter-espionage brief, it said China was "clandestinely active", targeting the Dutch high-tech sector and seeking to "negatively influence policy towards Chinese minorities", especially before a visit by the Dalai Lama last year.

But with a staff of 1,400 and an annual budget last year of �190m ($255m �166m), there are limits to its capabilities. By comparison, the UK's domestic and foreign intelligence services in 2009-10 shared a budget of �2.2bn with GCHQ, which intercepts communications. [FinancialTimes/04202010] 

Intel Chief: Small Terror Groups Are Key Challenge. Small and disparate groups of terrorists and individuals radicalized by militants over the Internet will be major challenges for the U.S. intelligence community in coming years, the nation's top intelligence adviser said Wednesday.

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said he is confident U.S. spy agencies can detect and prevent a Sept. 11-style attack. But stopping smaller, more piecemeal attacks will be harder, he said.

"We've got to raise our game," Blair told reporters at the DNI headquarters in northern Virginia.

Radicalization is becoming a bigger problem, he said, including efforts aimed at Americans attracted to extremist ideologies through the Internet.

Blair's comments come as the intelligence community and other government agencies are still contending with criticism in the wake of the Christmas Day airliner attack. The incident is seen as a strong indicator of the kind of small, quickly designed plots that could pose trouble in the future.

Intelligence agencies are also dealing with the fallout from the devastating suicide bombing inside a CIA base in Afghanistan that killed seven agency employees last December.

Counterterrorism officials say that as al-Qaida's Pakistan-based core struggles to get financing and recruits, smaller offshoots in places like Somalia and Yemen are gaining support and followers. Those franchises are more likely to plot and wage smaller, less sophisticated attacks that are harder to detect and prevent.

Asked about federal agencies' ability to monitor or target Americans suspected in national security matters, Blair said that "on the domestic side, we have a lot more responsibility" to follow the law and careful procedures when Americans are involved.

But, he added, "we've got to go across that divide just as our enemies do. National intelligence includes what goes on in this country as well as what goes on overseas that threatens the United States."

U.S. officials created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to better coordinate the nation's intelligence agencies.

Blair spoke to reporters after a short ceremony marking the office's fifth anniversary. The heads of all 16 intelligence agencies, including those from the CIA, FBI, the Pentagon and the Homeland Security Department, gathered for the event after their regularly scheduled meeting on national intelligence matters. [CBSNews/21April2010]

FBI Names Veteran Officer to Oversee Intelligence Divisions. The FBI has named a 23-year veteran of the bureau to become its lead intelligence official, Director Robert Mueller announced.

Sean Joyce will become the new executive assistant director of its National Security Branch, Mueller said in a statement. Joyce, who was most recently assistant director of the FBI's International Operations Division, will oversee divisions dealing with counterterrorism, intelligence and weapons of mass destruction.

Joyce replaces Arthur M. Cummings II, who is retiring this month, a bureau spokesman said.

Mueller said Joyce headed 600 employees in 75 U.S. and overseas offices in his most recent posting, which he took over last October. Before working with FBI's international partners, Joyce was international section chief of the FBI's counterterrorism division, assistant special-agent-in-charge of the Washington Field Office, legal attache to Prague and assigned to several hostage rescue, SWAT, and investigative units in Dallas, Fort Worth and Miami.

In 2005, Joyce received the Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Service for his terrorism work, Mueller said.

"Sean brings a wide range of operational and leadership experience to this position, which he has demonstrated during more than 20 years of service to the FBI," the director said.

Cummings's deputy, Philip Mudd, a highly regarded CIA counterterrorism official who moved to the FBI in 2005, has left the bureau in recent weeks, spokesman Paul Bresson confirmed.

In June, Mudd withdrew from consideration to become intelligence chief for the Homeland Security Department, a decision that came amid Senate pressure over his view of CIA interrogation policies. Mudd's supporters pointed to the episode as revealing how politicization of intelligence issues was undermining career intelligence professionals. The Washington Independent first reported on Mudd's departure. [Hsu/WashingtonPost/21April2010] 

US Report: Iran's First Priority is Survival. The Iranian military's prime objective is to preserve the regime and deter the US and Israel from striking, a Defense Intelligence Agency report submitted to Senate states.

"Iran's principles of military strategy include deterrence, asymmetrical retaliation, and attrition warfare," the report says. "Iran's military strategy is designed to defend against external or 'hard' threats form the United States and Israel."

Undersecretary of defense Michele Flournoy says 'Military force is an option of last resort' in respect to Islamic Republic's nuclear program

Tehran's nuclear program is similarly mostly aimed for deterrence purposes, the report argues.

The report notes that Iran aspires to become the most influential Mideastern state, but in recent years its ideological objectives have given way to pragmatic considerations of survival.

The report's declassified notion notes that while Iran's military comprises 20 million soldiers, it is mostly ineffective and unequipped to counter advanced armies such as Israel's or Turkey's.

"Iran maintains very sizeable military forces, but they would be relatively ineffective against a direct assault by well trained, sophisticated military such as that of the United States of it allies," the report notes. "At present, Iran's forces are sufficient to deter or defend against conventional threats from Iran's weaker neighbors."

The report includes a breakdown of Iranian military equipment, including its tanks, armored personnel carriers, and battleships. According to the report, the Iranian Air Force comprises 52,000 members, including 19 assault squadrons, 10 cargo squadrons, and one intelligence gathering squadron.

However, the report notes that Iran has not procured new aircraft in more than 10 years. [Benhorin/YnetNEws/21April2010] 

Two North Koreans Said to Be Arrested for Alleged Murder Plot. South Korean prosecutors arrested two North Koreans on suspicion they were sent to murder the highest-ranking member of the communist regime ever to defect, an intelligence official said.

Two men were detained after confessing they came to South Korea to kill Hwang Jang Yop, who defected in 1997, a press official at the National Intelligence Service said by phone today in Seoul. Local media including Yonhap News and Chosun Ilbo reported on the arrests earlier.

The men entered South Korea this year and confessed to being special agents of North Korea's Ministry of People's Armed Forces, the official said, declining to be named in accordance with agency policy. Prosecutors at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office couldn't be reached for comment. North Korea's official Korea Central News Agency hasn't commented.

Tensions have risen on the peninsula since a South Korean warship sank last month close to the disputed maritime border following an unexplained explosion. North Korea on April 17 denied it was responsible after South Korea's initial investigation indicated an external blast caused the incident.

Hwang, 87, served as a secretary on North Korea's ruling Workers' Party and a chairman on the Supreme People's Assembly, the country's parliament. He is a vocal critic of Kim Jong Il's regime and lives under constant police protection.

The two North Koreans, identified as Kim Myong Ho and Tong Myong Kwan, entered South Korea via Thailand, posing as defectors, Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported today, citing officials at the intelligence service and prosecutors it didn't identify. They were on a mission to "slit Hwang Jang Yop's throat," the paper said.

Kim and Tong, both 36, were trained as special agents since 2004 to infiltrate South Korea and assassinate high-ranking officials, Chosun said.

South Korea and North Korea remain technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a cease-fire that was never replaced by a peace treaty. [Lim/BusinessWeek/20April2010] 

Baradar Revealing Useful Intelligence. Washington: Interrogations of the Afghan Taliban's second-in-command have started producing useful intelligence on the group and its operations against US forces across the Pakistani border, US officials said. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was captured in Karachi in late January in a joint operation by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency.

With Baradar in Pakistani custody, direct US access to him was minimal at first. But US officials said the ISI has eased restrictions and American investigators have been participating in interrogation sessions for at least the past month. Some of the information given by Baradar, the Afghan Taliban's longtime military commander, has been verified and was useful to US commanders, intelligence officers and analysts in both Afghanistan and Washington, three US officials involved in the matter said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue and would not discuss the nature of the information extracted or describe what interrogation methods were used. They said Pakistan was taking the lead. "These things take time," one US military official said of interrogating Baradar.

"It takes time to get the information and it takes time to check out that information." Baradar's arrest was hailed by the commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, as a potential game-changing development after eight years of war, although some US officials initially played down the value of the information he gave Pakistani interrogators. Since his arrest, US military officials have pointed to signs of discord within Taliban ranks that could weaken the insurgency. Baradar, who was close to the group's chief, Mullah Omar, was the main day-today commander responsible for leading an increasingly bloody campaign against US and Nato troops.

But many questions about the capture and Pakistan's motivations remain a mystery months later, such as what intelligence led agents to Baradar's location and what prompted the ISI to act against long-time Taliban allies. A senior US military official in Kabul described the arrest as part of a power play by Pakistan to ensure it has a major role in any Afghan reconciliation process. "I think it's a matter of controlling the dialogue," the official said recently, on condition of anonymity. "It's to ensure that they have a... principal position in a negotiated settlement here, in resolving this conflict. I know for a fact that that is the position that the Pakistanis want. They want to ensure that they are not without a big voice in the outcome." 

There have been conflicting reports that Baradar might have been talking to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and that may have led to his arrest. US and Nato advisers in Afghanistan have urged Karzai not to rush into deals with insurgents as part of a national reconciliation process that they envision may take at least three years. [Tribune/21April2010] 

Congo Court Overturns Norwegians' Death Sentence. Congo's military high court has overturned the death sentence imposed on two Norwegians convicted of murder, espionage and conspiracy after their driver was found dead in the jungle last May.

Joshua French, who also holds British citizenship, and Tjostolv Moland had served in Norway's military but Oslo denied they were in active service at the time of the incident near the town of Kisangani.

"The higher military court accepts the request of the defendants, annuls the decision... and sends the case back to the military court of Province Orientale," said Colonel Bassolo Yeliambela, the lead judge. Norway has rejected the spying charges and said it would do all it could via diplomatic channels to block any execution. [Guardian/22April2010]

Colombia Spy Chief Works to Clean Up Agency. Seldom has an intelligence agency fallen so deeply into disrepute as Colombia's Department of Administrative Security, or DAS, a hybrid CIA- FBI-Homeland Security entity. Its officials have been accused of placing illegal wiretaps, conducting smear campaigns and even conspiring to commit murder.

This month, a prosecutor said he had proof that a DAS team had spied on public figures with the knowledge of officials in President Alvaro Uribe's office. (Uribe, who favors dismantling DAS, denies the charges.)

But it is only the latest blow. Two of the last four DAS directors have been sent to jail. Names of DAS operatives surfaced recently in connection with the assassinations of presidential candidates two decades ago. U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield said last week that U.S. assistance to DAS was being suspended indefinitely.

Felipe Munoz, 39, a lifelong technocrat who studied at Columbia University and the London School of Economics, was brought in to reform DAS in January 2009. He helped draft a proposal to break up and "re-brand" DAS that he said should be approved by Congress by June. He spoke with The Times on Thursday about the task.

Former DAS director Jorge Noguera is in jail on charges of helping paramilitaries kill union and opposition figures. Ten DAS officials are charged with spying on Supreme Court justices. Others are suspected of carrying out "dirty tricks" campaigns against the opposition. How much have these scandals hurt Colombia?
Without a doubt they have generated enormous damage. It has impacted, or become tied to, our negotiations for free trade agreements with the United States, with Canada, with European Union. It's a topic that has been brought up by human rights representatives of the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

What steps have you taken to clean up DAS?
I've taken decisions that have been politically costly and unpopular. Of paramount importance is the plan we have made to reinvent the agency. At the same time we have introduced stricter controls of wiretaps, we fired 120 people for being involved in certain activities, promoted a new intelligence law passed last March and prepared a white paper that next week will detail the reorganization.

Will the DAS disappear, and if so how will its current functions be distributed?
The DAS today is the same one founded 56 years ago, and its organizational structure has fallen way behind its responsibilities, which are too many. DAS does what in other countries five separate agencies do, from intelligence-gathering and counter-intelligence, to criminal investigations, immigration control and border patrol. This has generated all kinds of problems. With all the information coming in, there are too many portals through which it can leave. There were too few controls and too little oversight.
If the Congress approves the reform, many of the DAS functions will be transferred to the armed forces and the attorney general's office. What will remain is an agency that will have responsibilities in intelligence and counter-intelligence and will consist of no more than 1,500 people. Now it has 6,000. The name DAS has to change. It will operate under a new brand.

How has the reorganization gone in your 15 months as director?
It has been difficult to focus on reforms with so many scandals emerging. Don't forget that since I started, we've not only dealt with illegal wiretaps but also the resurgence of cases of alleged DAS involvement in the deaths of [presidential candidates] Luis Carlos Galan, Carlos Pizarro and Bernardo Jaramillo, even a bomb placed aboard an Avianca airliner. All of which is to remind people that these problems involving DAS and insufficient controls didn't arise yesterday.

What sort of assistance was the U.S. giving DAS, and what triggered the decision to stop all cooperation?
There have been many years' cooperation between the two countries in intelligence-sharing, training, and in things such as counterfeit currency enforcement. But no U.S. resource was used in these kinds of [illegal] activities. The trigger was not sudden: There has been more scrutiny on DAS and concern in the U.S. Congress over the scandals for many months. [Kraul/LATimes/22April2010] 

Confessions of a Pakistani Spy. Retired squadron leader Khalid Khawaja, a former Inter-Services Intelligence official and a close friend of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden during the resistance in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s, has explained in videos sent to Asia Times Online how he was on a mission to broker a deal between militants and the army when he was captured by militants, and how he played a double game by deceiving a radical cleric into being arrested.

Khawaja was dismissed from the air force in the late 1980s and subsequently earned a reputation of having close ties to some militant groups. Khawaja has played an important behind-the-scenes role in both regional and national politics. Before the US attack on Afghanistan in late 2001, he was a part of the back-room diplomacy between the US and the Taliban, which failed miserably.

The revelations appear in five video clips sent to Asia Times Online by an al-Qaeda-linked group of militants from the Pakistani North Waziristan tribal area. The clips appear to have been heavily edited, with some of Khawaja's sentences - he is speaking in Urdu - cut off. At times it appears that a frail Khawaja, in his early 60s, is under duress.

On March 25, Khawaja traveled to North Waziristan to interview commanders Sirajuddin Haqqani and Waliur Rahman Mehsud. He was accompanied by a British citizen, Asad Qureshi, a reporter with Channel 4, and Colonel Ameer Sultan Tarrar, also a former long-time ISI official and once Pakistan's consul-general in Herat in Afghanistan.

Tarrar was nicknamed "Colonel Imam" by the mujahideen as he was instrumental in helping raise the Taliban militia and he trained present Taliban leader Mullah Omar and other top Afghan leaders, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the slain Northern Alliance leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud. "Colonel Imam" is widely referred to as the "Father of the Taliban."

The three men have not been heard from since March 25.

Soon after their disappearance, Punjabi militants calling themselves the "Asian Tigers" sent a video to the media in which they demanded a ransom of US$10 million for the release of Asad Qureshi and the freedom of Taliban leaders Mullah Baradar and Mansoor Dadullah in exchange for Khawaja and Colonel Imam.

The Afghan Taliban have distanced themselves from the kidnappings and their spokesman Zabiullah Muhajahid said they were working for the release of the two.

In the video footage, Khawaja confesses to a scheme to bring down the radical movement that had become centered around Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in the capital, Islamabad. By mid-2007, the movement had become increasingly aggressive. Students from nearby educational faculties had taken to the streets to persuade video shops not to sell "vulgar" movies. The campaign took a turn for the worse when the students seized a suspected brothel owner in the Aapara area, where both the Taliban-supporting Lal Masjid and the ISI were situated.

Khawaja says he hatched a plan with Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the chief of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (the largest Islamic party in the country), the Gand Mufti of Pakistan, Mufti Rafi Usmani, and other scholars to eliminate the Lal Masjid movement from Islamabad.

Khawaja says he trapped Maulana Abdul Aziz, the prayer leader of the mosque and the brother of Ghazi Abdul Rasheed, with whom Aziz ran Lal Masjid.

Khawaja says he telephoned Aziz and lured him into being arrested. Rasheed was killed in the military raid on the mosque in which scores of militants also died.

"I am known among the media and masses as a thoroughbred gentleman, but in fact I was an ISI and CIA [US Central Intelligence Agency] mole ... I am remembering the burnt bodies of the innocent boys and girls of Lal Masjid ... I called Maulana Abdul Aziz and forced him to come out of the mosque wearing a woman's veil and gown, and that's how I got him arrested," Khawaja says in one of the video clips.

The Lal Masjid incident proved a defining moment in Pakistan's recent history: it culminated in the decline of president Pervez Musharraf, who stepped down in August 2008, and provoked a fierce reaction among militants against the Pakistani state.

Khawaja says that top jihadi commanders were the ISI's proxies and were given a free hand to collect funds. The leaders included Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil (who laid the foundations of the International Islamic Front with bin Laden in 1998), Maulana Masood Azhar (chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammad), Abdullah Shah Mazhar (a former supreme commander of the Jaish-e-Mohammad.)

"I brought here a list of 14 commanders and was aiming to malign them among militant circles ... Abdullah Shah Mazhar, Fazlur Rahman Khalil, Masood Azhar and jihadi organizations like Laskhar-e-Taiba, al-Badr, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Harkatul Mujahideen, Jamiatul Mujahideen etc operate with the financial cooperation of the Pakistani secret services and they are allowed collect their funds inside Pakistan," Khawaja says in the video.

Khawaja was arrested immediately after the Lal Masjid operation and spent several months in jail. He had been involved in talks with the government to prevent the military from moving into the mosque and he had assured the government that he would resolve the matter without force. However, the government intercepted some of his messages in which he apparently urged those inside the mosque not to surrender and he was arrested as a collaborator with the Lal Masjid.

He was a known critic of the role of the Pakistani Intelligence agencies after September 11, 2001, when Pakistan sided with the US in the "war on terror".

He was one of the few prominent people to openly provide assistance to Arab-Afghan families whose male members had been arrested or killed during the US invasion on Afghanistan in 2001.

At the time of his disappearance, Khawaja was working for the cause of missing people - mostly militants. But because of his past links to the air force and the ISI, he has always been viewed with some suspicion by al-Qaeda.

Khawaja was retired from the air force in the late 1980s after he wrote a letter to the then-president, General Zia ul-Haq, in which he called him a hypocrite for not enforcing Islam in Pakistan. He then went to Afghanistan and fought alongside bin Laden. He was a recruiter and trainer of Pakistani fighters for the resistance against the Soviets.

Khawaja's name hit the headlines again in February 2002 in connection with the kidnapping, torture and murder by militants of American reporter Daniel Pearl. It was alleged that he was involved in the abduction at the behest of the ISI.

Khawaja gave several interviews to Asia Times Online in which he revealed how he had set up a meeting in Saudi Arabia in the late 1980s between bin Laden and then leader of the opposition, Nawaz Sharif, to dislodge Benazir Bhutto's government. Her government fell in 1990 and Sharif became premier. Khawaja also revealed that in the late 1980s he passed on funds from bin Laden to a former Pakistani minister, Sheikh Rasheed, for the operation of training camps for Kashmiri separatists.

It is unclear why Khawaja took Colonel Imam with him to North Waziristan. In the video footage, Khawaja says, "I was sent by the Pakistan army in North Waziristan because the army was badly caught in the middle of a conflict and was unable come out. I was sent to get reconciliation between the army and the militants so that the militants would give safe passage to the military to leave the area." [Shahzad/AsiaTimes/24April2010]

Top Brass From CIA, FBI Reflect On Challenges. America's top spies last week reiterated the need for a pragmatic and vigilant approach to analyze and utilize information gathered from different sources.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair was joined by the leaders of 16 intelligence community organizations in highlighting the need to combine "human intelligence, geospatial intelligence, law-enforcement information, open-source intelligence, new kinds of intelligence that haven't even been invented yet."

The top intelligence officials called for maintaining and increasing "the trust of the American people - not only in what we do, but how we do it; if we can do all of that, we'll be the best." At the same time, the group warned: "But if teamwork, integration or trust falters, we'll be left behind. It's that simple. So, we can't allow that to happen. Ever."

The intelligence organization heads were present with hundreds of employees of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the ODNI.

"...We are the only intelligence organization that wakes up every morning and thinks: 'How can we make this entire intelligence enterprise better? How can we combine the magnificent, individual agency skills into the very best intelligence team?,'" Blair told the audience.

The ODNI was created to make the intelligence community more integrated, agile and effective with the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

In opening remarks, Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, director of the ODNI�s intelligence staff, said "unprecedented threats to our homeland and way of life" underscore the need for the ODNI.

"No single agency, no single intelligence element in our community can do what needs to be done across the entire enterprise," he said. "If they could, it would be done already. If we do our jobs right, every intelligence agency and element is more successful, more effective and more integrated than would otherwise be possible."

The ceremony followed a meeting of the Intelligence Community Executive Committee, a forum the DNI convenes every other week with the heads of each IC organization to flag, flesh out and resolve a host of issues.

Striving for excellence is a daily goal at the ODNI, said Andrew Towne, an analyst from the Central Intelligence Agency, now assigned to the office. "It's a place where smart people work hard to find solutions to some extremely tough problems."

Present at the meeting and later ceremony, among others were CIA director Leon Panetta, FBI director Robert Mueller and NSA director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander. [AllHeadlineNews/24April2010]

Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

Army Reorganizes Training for Intelligence Units. Every day in Afghanistan, thousands of U.S. soldiers patrol through villages. In the process, they capture loads of information that commanders might consider useful intelligence. But soldiers don't necessarily know what to make of the information, how it fits into the larger picture of the war or whether it's really valuable.

That in essence is the "biggest gap" the Army now has in its intelligence-gathering efforts in Afghanistan, says Army Maj. Eric Butler, a military intelligence officer.

"The focus now is on getting soldiers used to identifying information that could be useful" to commanders, Butler says during a recent teleconference with military bloggers.

"That may take some time," he says. Soldiers are trained to spot threats such as snipers or roadside bombs but they also need to learn how to capture information that typically soldiers wouldn't care about, such as the ambiance of a particular area, the politics and the infrastructure, Butler says. That data is more difficult to capture but it can provide important clues about enemy tactics in a counterinsurgency war.

The Army's top intelligence officer in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, has been seeking ways to bridge those gaps. Much of the blame goes to the Army's outdated and ineffective methods for gathering intelligence, Flynn wrote in a paper that was published in January by the Center for a New American Security.

"Many decision-makers rely more upon newspapers than military intelligence to obtain 'ground truth,'" said Flynn.

Credible intelligence is tough to come by in Afghanistan because the local culture - or "human terrain" in military-speak - is not well understood.

"Afghanistan is a complicated place," said Navy Rear Adm. Greg Smith, senior spokesman for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

One problem with current intelligence gathering and analysis is that these functions are concentrated in the higher echelons of command and the information does not rapidly reach the small-unit commanders who lead the day-to-day fighting.

"The demand for intelligence analysis is at echelons below brigade," said the Pentagon's top acquisition executive, Ashton Carter. "But it is still the case that most of the analytical expertise is associated with the division and brigade levels," he said at a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies conference.

"In this fight, which is so local and so information intensive, soldiers are used to having information and acting on it," Carter said.

In response to intelligence shortfalls, the Army has revamped the company-level command post. "It is not your company command post of 20 years ago. They're all at laptops, expecting information. They know how to be effective with information," Carter said. At the company level, "They need intelligence analysts who can tell them about good guys, bad guys in different towns," he said. But they often don't have enough analysts, or the ones they do have may not be producing the data that commanders need. "It's important to get people down in the echelons where the analysis can be useful and you're not just writing reports as they do in divisions and brigades," Carter said.

The Army in recent months has begun to modify the training offered to company-level officers. As part of the so-called "Battle Command Training Center" program that began in 2003, facilities have been built at home-stations where officers practice for real-world operations. There are at least 30 BCTCs currently at Army bases, said Josh Hutchison, chief of collective training at the Fort Bragg BCTC, in North Carolina.

"Company commanders are scrambling for this type of training," Hutchison said. "Because of the push for intelligence at the company level, the demand is high."

The Army, however, has not formally included company-level requirements in its long-term training strategy.

The service on March 22 unveiled a new battle command training strategy but, surprisingly, it doesn't deal with company-level training, said Hutchison. "It's a vague strategy. It's addressing what we needed for battle command five years ago. It really doesn't address the reality."

Training has to take into account that "information technologies have permeated every echelon of today's Army formations," said Hutchison. Training also has to reflect the team-based structure of a tactical operations center.

"Today's battle command atmosphere within a digital tactical operations center can be very much like baseball. A decision will be made in a split-second, and execution of the play will decide the game. Decisions in battle have the same sort of split-second timing," he said. "The individual operators of battle command systems such as Blue Force Tracking, Command Post of the Future and the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System are the shortstop, 2nd baseman and 1st baseman."

At the BCTC hub at Fort Bragg, staffs can practice those skills in a realistic "game environment" on a frequent basis, said Hutchison.

No matter how many deployments they have under their belts, officers and staffs need to continuously train between tours of duty because digital skills are perishable, Hutchison said.

The program for company-level intelligence teams has been one of the "greatest additions" to the BCTC, he noted. "It's a relatively new concept for the Army."

Company officers practice how to collect and analyze information, such as the contacts made by patrol leaders, who are the guys with the boots on the ground, Hutchison said. "All that information helps understand the human terrain."

Soldiers nowadays use digital cameras and biometrics data readers when they go out on patrols. To capture the information when they return to the operations center, rather than type up old-fashioned intelligence reports, they use a digital map based system, called TIGR, where they can input audio, video and still images. "It's a map based Wikipedia," said Hutchison.

Once they capture all the data, they begin the analysis. That is the most difficult piece, said Hutchison. "You can certainly teach soldiers and leaders how to do 'buttonology,'" he added. "They can run the heck out of those computer systems as individuals. Even when you talk about interoperability, we can teach them how to do that and they can do that all day long. But just because you have a synchronized system of systems does not mean that you have situational understanding."

Soldiers have to grasp fuzzy concepts such as "knowledge management" and "common operating picture" in order to properly analyze the intelligence, said Hutchison. "That is the challenge in the current environment - producing knowledge, know what to do with the information, and understand why it is important."

The fundamental notion of needing to know what's going on in the battlefield has not changed despite the advent of computers, he said. "We've been fighting like this for ever."

Flynn noted in the CNAS report that some intelligence officers still believe they can make up for the lack of substance in their data by producing flashy slide presentations. "Commanders who think PowerPoint storyboards and color-coded spreadsheets are adequate for describing the Afghan conflict and its complexities have some soul searching to do," Flynn wrote. "Sufficient knowledge will not come from slides with little more text than a comic strip. Commanders must demand substantive written narratives and analyses from their intel shops and make the time to read them. There are no shortcuts."

Butler, the intelligence officer, said he has seen some progress in the past several years. "The capabilities are there. We're getting there," he said. He credits the Army for slowly working to downgrade the classification of material that soldiers collect from the field. "We've always had a tendency to over-classify information," he said. "I think we've gotten better at [discriminating] intelligence we can share with everyone." [Erwin/NationalDefenseMagazine/20April2010] 

Measuring The Infospace On The Battlefield. In Afghanistan, many valuable lessons from Iraq are being recycled. One of the most useful items has been the intelligence collecting techniques borrowed from the civilian world. This came about in Iraq, largely because so many police and marketing professionals got mobilized for duty in Iraq, and just did what came naturally once they got there. That resulted in the U.S. Army reviving Vietnam era interests in such fundamental intelligence collecting techniques as opinion surveys. This sort of thing morphed into the Human Terrain System (HTS). This is actually a Vietnam era technique that fell out of use because so many academics were so stridently anti-military after the 1970s. But many polling and marketing pro's who got mobilized pointed out that you don't need academics to do what HTS needs. Modern marketing techniques cover it all, and academics have gladly (for enough money) provided commercial firms all the help they needed to build the best tools.

As the economy began to revive in Iraq and Afghanistan, the marketing experts (often Iraqi and Afghan expatriates returning to rebuild their homeland) soon appeared and began surveying popular opinion. This is a key tool for HTS. The rest is usually provided by local advertising and marketing planning companies. Meanwhile, more and more academics are ignoring their doctrinaire colleagues, and working for on HTS projects.

The police techniques caught on even more quickly. Four years ago, the U.S. Army released "Police Intelligence Operations," Field Manual 3-19.5. This was part of a trend that began back in 2003, when the army began changing its intelligence collecting methods, and behaving more like a police precinct. In the old days, troops collected useful intelligence information and passed it back to analysts, who studied it, and, if they found anything useful, passed that analyses back to the troops, who took action. Increasingly, army combat troops function more like a police operation. That is, the intelligence analysts get out in the field with the troops and act more like detectives, collecting their own evidence. Of course, detectives also depend on street police to provide information as well. Indeed, it's the street cop that usually gets to the scene of a crime before the detectives. Police are trained to carefully examine a crime scene, preserving it for the detectives, while recording key information that is perishable. Military intelligence troops have found that the "detective" model is much more effective. It's also more dangerous, putting intel people into combat situations. But the payoff has been enormous. Not only is more information collected, and analyzed, more quickly, but the troops have more confidence in the intel people, and are more willing to pass on what they see. The intel units have also been recruiting, and training, troops in the combat units to look for information, and get it back to the intel people as quickly as possible. To help this along, new intel "appliances" (software for laptops, or smart phones) are being provided to make it easier for the leaders of infantry patrols to instantly record useful information, and get it transmitted to an intelligence unit. Special intelligence units have also been set up that operate pretty much like a detective squad, living with the troops, and collecting and analyzing battlefield information in order to provide the combat guys with more useful, and immediate, information on what the enemy is up to, and where they are hanging out. Using these mobile teams, and better communications, military intelligence operations are changing more than they have for several generations.

The new FM 2-15.5 is intended to help commanders in future pacification operations, and for any "force protection" (defending your own bases) situations. There were many changes to army and marine intel operations because of the Iraq and Afghanistan experience, and this Field Manual and HTS are just two of the many results. [StrategyPage/25April2010] 

Section III - COMMENTARY

Stealthily, Leon Panetta Brings Normalcy to the CIA, by David Ignatius. CIA Director Leon Panetta has a new trophy in his seventh-floor office at Langley: It's the fuse from a Chinese-made rocket that he helped disable (with a CIA technician hovering close by) during a visit to an agency paramilitary training base.

That's a good metaphor for Panetta himself as he completes 14 months as CIA director. He has defused a number of bombs that threatened to blow up what was left of the agency's credibility, and in the process has focused the CIA on getting the job done.

Panetta was a controversial choice because his experience was in politics, rather than espionage. But that Washington savvy was just what the beleaguered agency needed most. Panetta took on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after she accused CIA officials of lying, and he quietly prevailed. Congressional Democrats have tempered their CIA-bashing, recognizing that Panetta is carrying out President Barack Obama's policies.

Panetta also defused the ticking bomb of the intelligence reorganization. When Admiral Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, tried to assert authority over CIA operations, Panetta protested to the White House. He complained that he couldn't operate on that basis - and that Blair should have no more say over CIA operations than over those at the FBI. He won that fight, too. Blair is now focusing on his main challenge of coordinating the sprawling intelligence community.

The surprise with Panetta is how aggressively this Democratic former congressman has been waging the war against Al-Qaeda. One official describes the Predator campaign to assassinate Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders as "the most aggressive operation in the history of the agency." The tempo has increased to two or three strikes a week, a roughly fourfold increase from the George W. Bush years.

To provide intelligence for the Predator strikes, the agency is running clandestine sources inside Pakistan and paying off tribal leaders on both sides of the border. The agency's assets are hardly squeaky clean: They are former terrorists who have decided to flip. And Panetta has authority to direct the Predators to hit "signature" targets, meaning vehicles or training locations that are connected to known Al-Qaeda operatives.

With the CIA squeezing Al-Qaeda in the tribal areas of Pakistan, there's a danger the terrorists will slip away to new safe havens. So Panetta is stepping up operations in Yemen, Somalia and North and sub-Saharan Africa. And the agency is maintaining a strong presence in Iraq even as the US military withdraws, feeding intelligence to the Iraqi military to target the estimated 1,000 Al-Qaeda fighters still there.

Iran may be Panetta's biggest headache. The agency is trying to recruit more assets inside Iran, and it is running some operations to disrupt Iran's nuclear capability. But the agency doesn't have (and doesn't want) authority to mount lethal sabotage operations, of the sort the Israelis seem to be conducting. CIA analysts think that open military attacks against Iran by the United States or Israel would only help the regime.

Panetta put his mark on the agency this month by choosing his own deputy, Michael Morell, 51, to replace Stephen Kappes, a respected career officer who acted as Panetta's adviser on operations. Morell is a 30-year CIA veteran, but comes from the analytical side of the house. This should give the clandestine service more running room. An autoworker's son from Akron, Morell defies the preppy, blue-blood CIA stereotype; that's another plus.

Morell's top priority will be to increase collaboration between analysts and operators, which is already paying dividends. To cite two examples: The secret Iranian enrichment facility at Qom was discovered after a tip from a human source, with analysts then focusing intelligence collectors on precisely where to look; and Syria's secret nuclear reactor was found in 2007 after analysts studied suspicious fragments of intercepted conversations and warned the operations division to look for the smoking gun.

Panetta plans to pitch employees Monday about his five-year plan for the agency: It will feature a more diverse work force better trained in languages; more officers under nonofficial cover who can penetrate the hard targets; and new technologies to cope with the deluge of data, such as "smart search" capability that can learn with analysts and prompt them where to look.

Another of the trophies in Panetta's office is a Wild West statue of a rider being bucked off his horse. Surprisingly, given the turmoil surrounding the CIA when he arrived, Panetta these days seems pretty easy in the saddle. [Ignatius/DailyStar/24April2010] 

Naming "The Establishment.", by Nirupama Subramanian. The U.N. report on Benazir Bhutto's killing wades directly into the controversial subject of civilian-military relations in Pakistan.

Anyone who has been in Pakistan even briefly knows about the "establishment". It comes up so often in routine conversations that despite being an English word, it is a part and parcel of the country's local languages. No Pakistani ever needs an explanation of what it means.

But now the United Nations has provided one; its report on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto defining it as "the de facto power structure that has as its permanent core the military high command and intelligence agencies, in particular, the powerful, military-run the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as well as Military Intelligence (MI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB)".

That the "establishment" should find mention at all in the U.N. report is extraordinary. Usually known for playing safe when it comes to the national sensitivities of its member-states, the three-member U.N. commission set up in February 2009 to investigate Benazir's assassination on a request by the Pakistan People's Party government, was expected to abide by the international organisation's low appetite for political risk.

Its mandate seemed designed to ensure a non-controversial report. As the head of the commission, Heraldo Munoz Valenzuela, declared at a press conference in Islamabad in July 2009, its terms of reference were to "look into the facts and circumstances of the assassination of former Prime Minister" and did not include a criminal investigation.

The commission, which had a former Attorney-General from Indonesia and a retired Irish police official working with Mr. Valenzuela, the Chilean permanent representative to the U.N., was not expected to fix criminal responsibility for the assassination or come out with any new revelations. The widespread belief was that it would accept the Musharraf regime's conclusion that Benazir was ordered killed by the Pakistani Taliban leader, Beithullah Mehsud.

True to these expectations, there is no earth-shattering revelation in the 70-page report. It does not contradict that Beithullah Mehsud might have been the mastermind, though it says the hasty announcement of this by the Musharraf regime pre-empted a proper investigation.

In the main it is a painstaking reconstruction of events, put together by the commission after conducting 250 interviews. One part of the reconstruction deals with the political situation in Pakistan in 2007 - General Pervez Musharraf's attempt to sack the Chief Justice; the movement by the lawyers for his restoration; the secret Benazir-Musharraf negotiations leading up to her return from Dubai; the November 3 emergency; the sacking of the judiciary; the calling of the elections; the campaign by Benazir; and, her assassination.

It details the inadequacy of her security, especially in the light of the bombing of her convoy on the day she landed in Karachi after ending her exile. The second part is a reconstruction of the government response to the assassination - also inadequate.

This is valuable in itself, even thought it covers known ground. For one, in the absence of a proper criminal investigation, it is the only authoritative, independent and cohesive reconstruction of the killing. The importance of this for a proper criminal investigation cannot be overemphasised. It provides a wealth of detail about the lapses in the security arrangements of the former Prime Minister and has helped to focus attention on some of the principal actors, their decisions and their acts of omission and commission. It names government and police officials and at least one serving and one retired military official, holding them responsible for a chain of egregious acts, concluding that many of these acts were deliberate.

In Pakistan, there is all-around satisfaction that the report has blamed the Musharraf regime for failing "profoundly" in its duty to protect Benazir, and after she was killed, to investigate her assassination. The retired General remains a pet hate of the political class and the media, and the report has triggered fresh demands that Pakistan's former military ruler, now a gentleman of leisure who divides his time between the U.S., London and Dubai, be brought back to Pakistan to face trial.

Opponents of Interior Minister Rehman Malik and Law Minister Babar Awan are also sharpening their knives on the report. The two men have been faulted for speeding away from the scene of attack in the car that was the back-up vehicle in Benazir's convoy, leaving her damaged car to fend for itself.

Detractors of President Asif Ali Zardari and the PPP have also gleefully pounced on the commission's incomprehension at the PPP's failure to get a proper criminal investigation going despite coming to power a few months after the killing.

But perhaps the most remarkable portion of the report, one that has been studiously ignored in media commentary and political reaction in Pakistan, is about the "pervasive" role of the "establishment" and how intelligence agencies blocked early attempts at investigating the assassination. It helps throw light on why the PPP never attempted to pursue Benazir's killers and may not be able to do so even now.

It is now part of the record of the world's highest international forum, of which almost all sovereign states are members, that Pakistan's intelligence agencies "severely hampered" the investigation into Benazir's assassination and thus "impeded an unfettered search for the truth".

The commission found out that the ISI conducted what it calls parallel investigations into both the attack on Benazir's welcoming rally at Karachi that October and her killing three months later, gathering evidence and detaining suspects. But it shared the findings only selectively with the police. The report questions the integrity of such investigations "given the historical and possibly continuing relationships between intelligence agencies and some radical Islamist groups that engage in extremist violence".

It also puts down some failures of the police and government officials in the Benazir assassination to the "uncertainty in the minds of many officials as to the extent of the involvement of intelligence agencies". Officials, it says, "in part fearing involvement by the intelligence agencies, were unsure of how vigorously they ought to pursue actions that they knew, as professionals, they should have taken".

This is perhaps the first time that the country's civilian-military relations have been raked up in an official, public document. Mincing no words, the U.N. wades right to the heart of the ever-relevant debate on the balance of power between the elected government and the military.

"[The] autonomy, pervasive reach and clandestine role of intelligence agencies in Pakistani life underlie many of the problems, omissions and commissions set out in this report. The actions of politicized intelligence agencies undermine democratic governance. Beyond the recent steps that have reportedly been taken to curb the involvement of intelligence agencies in political matters, the democratic rule of law in Pakistan could be greatly strengthened with a thorough review of intelligence agencies based on international best practices in this area," the report states.

Perhaps it was Mr. Munoz's personal experience of military rule, which he has chronicled in a book called The Dictator's Shadow: Life Under Augusto Pinochet (2008), that prompted this open indictment of the military's role in Pakistan in the report. But, whatever the reason or motives for the commission's extensive comments on the "establishment", to the PPP's ears, it is music.

When the PPP government asked the U.N. to set up this commission, it came in for warnings from sections of officialdom and the media that national sovereignty was at stake. The Foreign Ministry was particularly unhappy as it felt that it amounted to a government declaration of "no confidence" in its own investigating agencies and would lay open "sensitive" departments to international scrutiny. The Foreign Secretary at the time, Riaz Muhammad Khan, quit some months before he was due to retire after a spat on this issue.

For the PPP, which attempted a "reform" of the intelligence agencies back in the summer of 2008 only to be beaten back by the military, the report is a vindication, a ringing endorsement of all that the party has maintained through most of the four-decades of its existence - that the "establishment" is the real villain in Pakistan. But does the report change anything on the ground? After all those encounters through 2008 and 2009 in which he steadily lost political ground and the Pakistan Army progressively regained political stature, this report finally gives Mr. Zardari a victory over the military. But coming at a time when the PPP government has pretty much accepted the supremacy of the Pakistan Army, the victory has nothing more than notional value. [TheHindu/8April2010]

Holder, Justice and Terror, by George J. Terwilliger III.  Department of Justice counter-terrorism policy and programs will get a close examination in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. At the top of the list will be Attorney General Eric Holder's announced decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as a criminal in civilian court in lower Manhattan, nearby the site of the devastating September 11 attacks.

From the immediate aftermath of that day through to the present, controversy has surrounded Justice Department policy concerning how to deal with both the perpetrators of the attack and those who continue to assiduously dedicate themselves to the killing of more innocent Americans through acts of terror. While legitimate debate on this topic is a virtue in a democracy, politically driven criticism concerning it is a vice of our times. It ought to stop.

Both substantive and philosophic debate concerning the best means and methods to combat this scourge of terrorism is healthy. However, politically driven criticism of an Attorney General's ultimate decisions on these issues, whether directed at Eric Holder or Alberto Gonzalez, is not only unhealthy, but undermines Americans' respect for the rule of law and adversely effects the bold response needed from government in these programs.

Many of us, including people like me who have toiled in this vineyard before, have opinions about the issues and bring the both practical and philosophic concerns to discussion of them. While I disagree with Attorney General Holder's decision to move KSM to a civilian court, I respect his right to make that decision if undertaken for substantive, rather than political, reasons. It may be the wrong call because while KSM may have violated criminal statutes, the essential core of his bad deeds is something much greater than crime and should be treated as such.

As importantly, our criminal justice system is simply not equipped to protect the sources and methods by which the vital information that can be used to protect us against future attacks is gathered. On the contrary, the criminal justice system promotes defense access to any information that might tend to show an accused's innocence or mitigate punishment. Attorney General Holder himself put new vigor in this disclosure policy by undoing the conviction of Senator Ted Stevens because prosecutors withheld information from his lawyers that the trial judge and the Attorney General believed should have been disclosed. The current administration of the Justice Department is, as a result, in no position to assure Americans that a vigorous defense by capable lawyers on KSM's behalf will not lead to disclosure of information that would be better kept, for the safety of Americans, under tighter wrap.

Nonetheless, while there may be substantive bases for criticism of this decision by the Attorney General, it would be a mistake to exploit that disagreement as a basis for further politicizing the general debate about the Department of Justice's counter-terrorism role and responsibilities. Rather, the touchstone of inquiry on those subjects ought to be substantive, focused on what the responsible intelligence and law enforcement professionals tell us they need to get the job done.

Over-politicizing this debate leads to bureaucratic timidity, where instead, in order to prevail against terrorists, individual and organizational boldness is required. Front line intelligence officers, law enforcement agents and prosecutors, as well as their operational supervisors who see an Attorney General being pilloried for political purposes on counterterrorism policies and programs, can see themselves next being transformed into targets.

While they may not ever sit under the klieg lights in the ornate Judiciary Committee hearing room, they can have it worse sweating through prolonged investigations into their professional conduct, much of it egged on by second-guessing Monday morning quarterbacks examining front-line decisions with a rear echelon mentality. As a result, in a very real way, politicizing the debate about counter-terrorism policies and programs threatens our safety because it sends the wrong message to those with a frontline responsibility to secure our interests.

One sitting on the outside can always find individual decisions made by those on the inside to criticize. For example, while I generally wouldn't hire at the Justice Department former mobster lawyers to prosecute organized crime cases, nonetheless if I was convinced that someone who had had such a case was the right person for the job, I would not rule it out.

The same goes for people who may have seen fit to represent an unlawful combatant's legal interests. The question is not whether such a person ought to be deemed disqualified by philosophic orientation, but whether they are the best person to be given a particular responsibility.

Whether the debate is about personnel decisions, legal policy in counterterrorism programs or the appropriate role of civilian versus non-civilian authorities in the adjudication of responsibility for terror acts and threats, the legitimate subject of debate needs to be centered on what works and what does not. If we stay focused on that and resist the temptation to further polarize through politicization the terror debate, the country will be better served. [George J. Terwilliger III served as Deputy Attorney General from 1991 to 1993. He is currently a partner at White & Case LLP.] [Terwilliger/MainJustice/14April2010] 

The Importance of Local Intelligence, by Gulmina Bilal Ahmad. The local Pakistani population, particularly in the tribal areas, has started cooperating with the agencies to offer information regarding the whereabouts of the militants. Gone are the days, fortunately, when the local population would give protection to the militants.

The monster struck again. The city of Peshawar was struck again by violence and terror. As horrified as the whole nation was whilst viewing the media footage of the three blasts, one could not help but think, when will it all end? Soon after, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for this ghastly act - an act of violence. The act of terrorizing citizens and the despicable act of taking human life is condemned in the Quran quite clearly, "One who takes a life actually takes the life of all mankind." The clear targets of the attacks were the US Consulate and the intelligence agency offices in the area. By choosing these two goals, in my opinion, the TTP and its associates have betrayed the fact that they are desperate.

During recent months, the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban has been systematically sniffed out and targeted. Whether it be the so-called Punjabi Taliban or the militants operating from FATA or other parts of the country, the hierarchy and command and control structure of the Taliban has been affected. According to various national and international media reports, on average, just this year 10 to 15 key militants and leaders of the TTP have been hit. This includes wanted key militants like Muhammad Qari Zafar who had on him head money of $5 million. Qari Zafar was a key leader of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and had a close liaison with the TTP. He was wanted, among other cases, for the 2006 bombing of the US Consulate in Karachi where a US diplomat, David Foy, was killed along with three innocent Pakistanis. He was also suspected to have been involved in the Marriott Hotel bombing in Islamabad and thus his death was a major blow to the militant network in Pakistan. According to other media reports, Pakistani security agencies and its allies have "killed Mansur al-Shami, an al Qaeda ideologue and aide to al Qaeda's leader in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu Yazid and Haji Omar Khan, a senior Taliban leader in North Waziristan. In December 2009, the US killed Abdullah Said al-Libi, the top commander of the Lashkar al-Zil (al Qaeda's shadow army), Zuhaib al-Zahib, a senior commander in the Lashkar al-Zil and Saleh al-Somali, the leader of al Qaeda's external network."

The security forces have also, in recent months, successfully targeted mid-level militants of the TTP and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. One has already mentioned in these spaces before the effective targeting of the drones, which have successfully hit other key leaders.

It would have been na�ve of us to assume that the militants would not react to these near fatal blows to their hierarchy. Pakistan has recently been promised a gift of surveillance drones by the US, which would increase the intelligence and surveillance capability of the security forces. Chinese explosives detectors have already been installed in Islamabad as a test case. However, even more importantly than all the surveillance and security equipment, is the increased willingness, in fact eagerness, of the local population to furnish the security agencies with local intelligence. The local population, particularly in the tribal areas, has started cooperating with the agencies to offer information regarding the whereabouts of the militants, etc. Gone are the days, fortunately, when the local population would give protection to the militants. Initially, because this war for peace was portrayed as a war of the west against the east, one would meet locals who would partially advocate non-cooperation with the agencies. The militants would also receive protection on account of tribal and familial affiliations. However, as informal chats with the locals have revealed, they are now sick of the conditions prevailing in their areas. From the Pasalkot region in North Waziristan to the slums of Karachi, Pakistanis are sick of terror. Hence, the greater eagerness to furnish agencies with information.

Thus the Peshawar attacks can be seen to be a reaction of the TTP and its associated networks against both Pakistani security agencies and the US. Unfortunately, the more we win the battles in the war for peace and freedom against the TTP, the more is the risk of such attacks. Hopefully, the reaction of the security agencies against the US Consulate attack in Peshawar will prove to be a deterrent. However, we still have to brace ourselves for the risk of such attacks. The more the TTP is pushed into a corner, the more violent and desperate they will become. Thus it is important that increased investment in surveillance and intelligence gathering is done. By intelligence gathering, one is not advocating only better coordination amidst the security agencies. Rather, the focus should be on involving more locals in on-ground reporting. Just as community policing facilitates better law and order, involving the local community in intelligence gathering by encouraging them to share information will lead to targeted strikes. The security agencies have been accused of killing innocent women and children. This is indeed unfortunate as whether it be the Pakistani Taliban or the security agencies, the death of innocent citizens is always incorrect and a colossal tragedy. By forming better local networks that can serve as watchdogs and report suspicious local goings-on, and by encouraging effective cooperation with the agencies, the deaths of the innocent due to incorrect estimates or information can also be further curtailed. Closer cooperation and relationship building between the security agencies and the locals will also take the wind out of the Pakistani Taliban's propaganda of this being a war on Islam or the 'us vs them' psyche that they are eager to develop. The locals need to be taken on board in the war for peace and freedom. There can be no replacement for homegrown information and cooperation. [Gulmina Bilal Ahmad is an Islamabad-based consultant.] [Ahmad/DailyTimes/9April2010] 

Section IV - BOOKS, OBITUARIES AND COMING EVENTS

Books/Reading

Japanese Intelligence in World War II. Japanese Military Intelligence: Why Is Intelligence Not Used?, by Kotani Ken. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2007, 248 pages, endnotes and index. Review by Stephen C. Mercado. The old Italian complaint concerning the near impossibility of faithfully translating form and content from one language to another, traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor), comes to mind in reading Japanese Intelligence in World War II. Kotani Ken, an intelligence expert at the Japanese Ministry of Defense's National Institute for Defense Studies, misidentifies his new book as the "translation" of his impressive Nihongun no Interijensu, winner of the 2007 Yamamoto Shichihei Prize for Japanese nonfiction. Rather, his new work is an adaptation of the original. In his original work, Dr. Kotani draws lessons for Tokyo's contemporary intelligence community from the successes and failures of Imperial Japanese Army and Navy intelligence activities before and during the Second World War. Stripped of references to Japanese intelligence today, his "translation" is only an intelligence history.

In Japanese Intelligence in World War II, Dr. Kotani commits to paper a great many names of intelligence officers and organizations of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA). He divides his IJA chapter into signals intelligence (SIGINT) and human intelligence (HUMINT) activities against the Soviet Union, China, the United States, and Great Britain, as well as the counterintelligence (CI) operations of the IJA police (Kempeitai) and the War Ministry's Investigation Department. He also touches on the extensive collection of open sources and the valuable support given by such auxiliary organizations as the South Manchurian Railway Company and Domei News Agency. Readers will come away with a better appreciation for Japanese military intelligence, in particular for SIGINT, whose successes are almost completely unknown outside Japan.

The author also covers a great deal of territory in his chapter on the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). As in the preceding chapter, he divides his presentation into SIGINT, HUMINT, and CI activities. Readers of such books as Ladislas Farago's Broken Seal or John Toland's Rising Sun will be somewhat familiar with parts of this section, recognizing such names as Yoshikawa Hideo and Otto Kuehn. He is scathing in his criticism of the IJN for its laxity, with naval officers resistant to the notion that the enemy had broken their codes even after the defeat at Midway, the ambush of Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku by US aircraft during an unannounced visit to the front, and the temporary loss of a naval codebook in the possession of Vice Admiral Fukudome Shigeru when his aircraft plunged into the ocean near the Philippine island of Cebu.

Particularly interesting are the author's conclusions regarding Imperial Japan's successes and failures. He is impatient with British and American authors who dismiss Japanese military intelligence as ineffectual or emphasize their own side's errors rather than credit Japanese capabilities. Dr. Kotani argues that capable Japanese intelligence officers suffered from insufficient resources and an inferior position relative to operations officers, who cared little for intelligence and barred them from strategic decisions. Intelligence officers contributed to such tactical successes as the naval attack against Pearl Harbor and the army airborne assault on the Dutch oilfields in Palembang but played little or no part in strategic decisions. Drawing from the memoir of Maj. Gen. Tsuchihashi Yuichi, chief of the Army General Staff's Second Bureau (Intelligence), the author cites as an example the planning for the 1940 invasion of French Indochina. Tsuchihashi, a French expert who had served as military attach� in Paris, wrote that officers in the First Bureau (Operations) ignored his opposition to the invasion and kept him in the dark about planning for the operation. Washington's consequent cut-off of vital oil exports to Japan sent Tokyo on a course of war and defeat.

Dr. Kotani's "translation" generally follows the structure of his original book but ends as a simple history of the Second World War, depriving readers outside Japan of the lessons he offers in Japanese to enhance his nation's current intelligence efforts. In his original concluding chapter, he argues for more resources, better development of intelligence officers, and more cooperation within Tokyo's intelligence community. He notes that, never mind the resources available to Washington, Tokyo's intelligence budget is only a third of London's. He suggests better training and more time on target as part of a general enhancement of intelligence as a career. He favors a British "collegial" approach to develop horizontal linkages and eliminate intelligence stovepipes over a central intelligence organization in the American way. He worries that Tokyo still slights the strategic for the tactical. Warning that Japan lost the intelligence war in the Second World War not because of general intelligence failure but because of an operational failure to make use of intelligence, he suggests that Japan today develop a system to meet the challenges of an age in which the postwar US "intelligence umbrella" is in doubt.

Japanese Intelligence in World War II, apart from missing the last chapter and numerous references elsewhere in the original to contemporary Japanese intelligence issues, suffers as a "translation" from mistranslations of standard military intelligence terms and awkward English.iv Even so, Western readers should find value in this lesser version of the original Nihongun no Interijensu. It is the first general history in English of IJA and IJN intelligence activities during the Second World War.v The endnotes alone, many pointing to materials found in the British National Archives at Kew, warrant a close reading. [Mercado/StudiesInIntelligence/20March2010]

Adapting America's Security Paradigm and Security Agenda. The National Strategy Information Center has released their latest report, Adapting America's Security Paradigm and Security Agenda. One of the recommended capabilities focuses on intelligence. The complete text of the report can be found on the NSIC website at www.strategycenter.org, along with an accompanying video. [NSIC/April2010]

Obituaries

Captain Henry Diacono. Captain Henry Diacono, who has died aged 86, was a member of SOE and was dropped into enemy-occupied France in 1944. On February 6 that year, Diacono was dropped "blind" - that is to say, with no reception committee to meet him - into France, landing near Chartres. Accompanying him was Ren� Dumont-Guillemet, who became leader of the "Spiritualist" circuit to the east of Paris.

They landed at 3am in a ploughed field some 15 miles from the farmhouse that was their destination. They had no time properly to hide their suitcases and parachutes, and after crossing fields, ditches and fences were still in the open when it grew light. A barn where they might have hidden up for the day had a sign on it in gothic lettering and they decided to avoid it. Then, as they passed a house in a small village, they heard the sound of a programme being broadcast in heavily-jammed English.

Dumont-Guillemet knocked on the door, while Diacono stood behind him, revolver drawn. After a few moments hesitation, they were allowed in. They washed and rested and were given directions for continuing their journey.

After a night in their "safe" house, they returned to collect their belongings but found, to their consternation, that they had disappeared. It seemed that their arrival had been spotted and that their arrest might be imminent.

At that moment a peasant appeared; and, after several minutes of verbal fencing, he told them that he had watched them hurriedly bury their possessions, had recovered them and put them in his house for safe-keeping.

Using his false papers, Diacono enrolled at the University of Paris. A fellow student, Marcel Rougeaux, a cousin of Dumont-Guillemet, acted as his guide, introduced him to his friends and served as the liaison with the rest of the circuit - in short, as Diacono wrote later, he was his "guardian angel".

Diacono lived in a flat but never stayed anywhere for long. He connected his wireless set to a car battery and spent most of his time coding and decoding messages.

Rougeaux often carried the crystals for his wireless set, and Diacono the messages and codes concealed in the tubes of his v�lo. Diacono preferred to operate out of doors, where he would get some warning of approaching danger, and often transmitted to London from woods 50 miles from Paris.

On one occasion he had a very urgent message to transmit. He, Dumont-Guillemet and their driver (who was a member of the circuit and was in the uniform of the French police) piled into a car and travelled by secondary roads.

The weight of the set, which was hidden under the bonnet of the front-wheel-drive vehicle, caused a breakdown. By the time it was fixed, they were so short of time that they had to risk taking the route nationale.

When they were stopped at a German roadblock, Dumont-Guillemet grabbed his revolver and said that he was going to try to shoot his way out. Diacono was behind him with the set between his legs. But their driver commanded: "Put the gun away," stopped the car, got out and said: "Franz�sisch Polizei." They were waved through, but Diacono said later that he was never closer to death.

Henry Louis-Antoine Diacono was born in Algiers on June 20 1923. His father was British of Maltese descent and was the manager of the local Barclays bank. Henry was educated at a Jesuit school, Notre Dame de l'Afrique, before going to the Ecole Sup�rieure de Commerce d'Alger.

In June 1940 his elder brother, Jean-Baptiste, was killed when the military plane in which he was travelling to London with other volunteers to join General de Gaulle's forces exploded on take-off at Algiers airport. Sabotage by agents of the Vichy regime was suspected, and Henry, who was greatly affected by this tragedy, cut short his studies and joined the army.

Two years later he embarked on a liner to Scotland. After a spell in a training camp, some of his companions were posted to the Royal Artillery, others to tank regiments. "Because of my slightly darker complexion," he wrote afterwards, "as was the custom of the time I was deemed to be cannon fodder and sent to the infantry."

He was commissioned into the Royal Fusiliers and posted to the 17th Battalion; but his fluency in French marked him out for transfer to the SOE, and he underwent rigorous training as a radio operator at Thame Park.

At the headquarters in Baker Street, he was given a field name and rehearsed in his cover story. He was also given a set of clothes which he was told was "typically French" - but which his friends in France described as "typically English".

For eight months Diacono maintained regular radio contact with London but, as liberation got closer, he became involved in sabotage missions, using his training in explosives to destroy German lines of communications, railway lines and roads.

He once had the task of accompanying a lorry loaded with arms and explosives from a parachute drop to Paris; the cargo was concealed under a load of vegetables. On the way they were hailed by two Germans who were standing exhausted beside their bicycles on the edge of the road. The driver wanted to shoot them, but Diacono persuaded him not to and the men were installed on top of the vegetables. Their presence allowed the lorry to pass all the control points in Paris without inspection.

The end of Diacono's mission was marked by tragedy. On August 27 1944, two days after General de Gaulle paraded down the Champs Elys�es following the liberation of Paris, the retreating German army was in regular fire fights with Resistance members in the region of Meaux.

Diacono was dispatched with a group of 300 Resistance fighters to secure an area prior to a large parachute drop. They were surprised by a German detachment and, after a sharp battle, they captured 70 German soldiers, including several officers.

They arrived at Saint-Pathus, where the local population turned out cheering and waving flags in the belief that they were being liberated. This was exactly what the Resistance wanted to avoid, because the Germans learnt of it and dispatched a considerable force, including several Tiger tanks which encircled the village.

Diacono, who was carrying his equipment, ran down the high street but encountered a tank arriving from the far end of the village. He dived into a farmyard, where he hid his wireless and pistol under some floorboards and his microdot code books in a pot of boiling tripe.

Fortunately for him, he was one of the few Resistance members wearing civilian clothes. The tank went into the farmyard, and for the next hour all the buildings were searched. Several Resistance members were arrested, but Diacono insisted that he was an itinerant farm worker. The farmer supported his story and he was released after questioning.

The Germans set fire to the village and the surrounding cornfields to flush out the Resistance members who had gone to ground. They captured almost all of them, and massacred more than 100.

Diacono and a few survivors were able to make their way to Meaux, which was liberated by American tanks the next day, but the fate of their comrades made any celebration impossible.

After the war Diacono returned to Algiers, where he worked as a shipping agent. In 1952 he moved to Paris to join a firm of carpet importers, finally retiring to Sorges, in the P�rigord, in 1963. He was active in the Association Libre R�sistance, which represents SOE members in France, and was its treasurer for more than 20 years. He was appointed MBE and awarded the L�gion d'honneur and the Croix de Guerre.

Henry Diacono, who died on March 19, married, in 1963, Fran�oise Michel, who survives him with their son and daughter. [Telegraph/24April2010]

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, 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

SORRY - EVENT BELOW HAS SOLD OUT

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 will hear Joe Wippl, former senior Clandestine Services Officer at CIA . Joe Wippl is currently a Professor of Practice at Boston University, and was a senior Clandestine Services Officer at CIA,  He served as COS in Vienna and Berlin, Chief of the Europe Division, and headed the Congressional Affairs Office. 
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.
NOT too late to register. If you think you can attend, send in your reservation via email afionechapter@gmail.com and let us know you're planning on attending
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

8 May 2010 - Orange Park, FL - AFIO North Florida Chapter meets to hear Gerhardt Thamm on THE MAKING OF A SPY. Gerhardt Thamm discusses his new book THE MAKING OF A SPY. Chapter meets at Country Club at Orange Park. RSVP to Ken Meyer at kmeyer12@bellsouth.net or call him at 904-777-2050

Wednesday, 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.

Sunday, 16 May 2010, 11:30 – 1:30 - Cleveland, OH - The AFIO N Ohio Chapter features James Robenalt on "Sex, Espionage and the First World War." Mr. Robenalt is a litigation attorney with Thompson Hine LLP in Cleveland. In 1997 he began representing Avery Dennison Corporation in connection with a major theft of its intellectual property by a Taiwanese scientist. Jim assisted the Department of Justice and the FBI in helping the company to set up a “sting” operation in which the Taiwanese CEO was filmed in a hotel in Cleveland taking trade secrets from the scientist who had confessed and was cooperating. The case drew international attention as it was the first prosecution under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996. The prosecution led to the first convictions under the Act, and the company received a jury verdict of $81 million in a related civil case. Jim also represented the company in retaliation suits and proceedings brought by the Taiwanese company in Taiwan and China. The FBI made a training video using the case as its example, and Jim appears in the video.
Jim is the author of The Harding Affair, recounting the story of a future President, his love affair with a woman accused of being a German spy, and the Great War. The Harding Affair tells the previously unexamined and unknown stories of Harding's personal and political life, including his passionate and politically complicated romance. Jim explores the reasons that the United States became involved in the Great War, and explains why so many Americans at the time supported Germany, even after the U.S. entered conflict in the spring of 1917 on the side of Britain and France. The comprehensive revelations are set in a suspenseful narrative that interweaves a real-life romance/spy drama with the story of Harding's rise to the presidency.
For more information on AFIO and our mission of educating the public on the need to support a strong intelligence community in defense of the nation, please visit www.afio.com.
WHERE: Cleveland Yachting Club, 200 Yacht Club Dr., Cleveland, OH 44116-1736, (440) 333-1155
RSVP: Email or phone to Dianne Mueller to her at mueller@afioohio.org or phone at 440) 424-4071. Mail check by May 9th or call..
Cost: AFIO National & Chapter Members: $23 per person. National AFIO Non-Chapter Members: $25 per person. Non-members of AFIO: $30 per person
Mail reservation form and check by May 9, 2010 to: AFIO N Ohio Chapter, Solon Business Campus, 31300 Solon Road, Suite 6, Solon, OH 44139

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

20 May 2010 - San Francisco, CA - The AFIO Jim Quesada Chapter hosts Andr� Le Gallo, former CIA Chief of Station and Senior National Intelligence Officer for Counterterrorism. Le Gallo will be speaking about Intelligence: Past and Present, comparing the Cold War CIA with today’s. RSVP and pre-payment required. The meeting will be held at United Irish Cultural Center, 2700 45th Avenue, San Francisco (between Sloat and Wawona). 11:30 AM no host cocktails; noon - luncheon. $25 member rate with advance reservation and payment; $35 non-member. E-mail RSVP to Mariko Kawaguchi (please indicate chicken or fish): afiosf@aol.com and mail check made out to "AFIO" to: Mariko Kawaguchi, P.O. Box 117578 Burlingame, CA 94011

25 May 2010 - Arlington, VA - The Defense Intelligence Forum meets to hear Allen Keiswetter on "Political Islam." The DIF meets at the Alpine Restaurant, 4770 Lee Highway, Arlington, VA 22207. Allen L. Keiswetter will speak on political Islam. Allen Keiswetter, a retired senior Foreign Service officer, is a scholar at the Middle East Institute and an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland. He has also taught courses on Islam and the Middle East at the National Defense Intelligence College and the National War College. In the Department of State, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Director of Arabian Peninsula Affairs in the Near East Bureau, and Director of the Office of Intelligence Liaison in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. His postings abroad include Riyadh, Sanaa, Khartoum, Baghdad, Tunis, Beirut, Brussels and Vietnam.
Make reservations by 18 May by email to diforum@verizon.net. Social hour starts at 1130, lunch at 1200. Give names telephone numbers, email addresses, and choice of chicken al limone, baked salmon, veal marsala, or pasta primavera. Pay at the door with a check for $29 per person payable to DIAA, Inc. They do NOT accept CASH!

25 - 27 May 2010 - Ottawa, CAN - The IAFIE hosts 6th conference on Intelligence Education. The International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE) hosts 6th Annual Conference at the Ottawa Marriott Hotel. Theme: Intelligence Education: A Global Phenomenon. For more information or to register.

27 May 2010, 11:30 a.m. - San Diego, CA - AFIO San Diego Chapter hosts Charles Wurster, USCG (Ret). Charles D. Wurster - President/CEO, The San Diego Port Authority, Retired U.S. Coast Guard Vice Admiral Charles D. Wurster was appointed as the Port's President/CEO by the Board on January 5, 2009. Wurster is a three-star Admiral who served 37 years in the Coast Guard. Before serving as Coast Guard's Commander of the Pacific Area from 2006-2008, he served as Commander of the Fourteenth District in Honolulu. He also served as the Chief of Acquisition in Washington, DC; Chief of Staff for the Pacific Area in Alameda, CA; Commanding Officer of the Coast Guard base in Kodiak, Alaska; and Commanding Officer of the Facilities Design and Construction Center in Seattle, Washington. Wurster holds a Master's degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois and graduated with honors from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut
Location: The Trellises Garden Grill, Town and Country Resort and Convention Center, 500 Hotel Circle North, San Diego, CA 92108
$20.00 per person including gratuity. RSVP for you and your guest required by Friday, May 21, 2010.
Calling Marjon at 619-297-9959 or by sending an Email to Darryl at darryl@pexis.com

19 June 2010 - Kennebunk, ME - The AFIO Maine Chapter features lawyer Suzanne Spaulding speaking on "Solving Current National Security Issues." Ms. Spaulding, who is currently Principal, Bingham Consulting Group, Bingham McCutchen LLP, is an authority on national security . She served as director of two congressionally mandated commissions, the National Commission on Terrorism, chaired by Amb. Paul Bremer, III, and the Commission to Assess the Organization of  the Federal Government to Combat the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction chaired by former CIA Director, John Deutch.  She has been quoted regularly in media outlets around the country.  She was minority staff director for the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.  Previous legislative experience includes legislative director and senior counsel for Sen. Arlen Specter.  She also worked for Rep. Jane Harman.  She was assistant counsel at CIA and  is immediate past chair, American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security.  Ms. Spaulding is currently a member of AFIO's National Board. The meeting will be held at the Kennebunk Free Library, 112 Main St., Kennebunk at 2:00 p.m. The public is invited. For information call 967-4298.

HOLD THE DATE - 17 - 20 August 2010 - Cleveland, OH - AFIO National Symposium on the Great Lakes - "Intelligence and National Security on the Great Lakes"

Co-Hosted with the AFIO Northern Ohio Chapter at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Cleveland, OH. Includes presentations by U.S. Coast Guard on Great Lakes security; Canadian counterparts to explain double-border issues; National Air/Space Intelligence Center; Air Force Technical Applications Center; Ohio Aerospace Institute, Tours of NASA Lewis-Brookpark and Plumbrook Stations. Cruise on Lake Erie .
Presentation by famed intelligence author/writer/former MP, Nigel West on Triple-X. Spies in Black Ties™ Dinner
Online Reservations to be taken here, shortly.

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

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