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AFIO WEEKLY INTELLIGENCE NOTES - - WIN # 34-99, dtd 27 August 1999 WINs are produced by Editor Roy Jonkers for AFIO members and subscribers. Associate editor RADM (ret) Don Harvey (DonH) was a major contributor to this WIN. ANNOUNCEMENT: CONGRATULATIONS AFIO MEMBERS - YOU DID IT! You sponsored new members at such a rate that we reached our AFIO goal of 1,100 WIN readers over the weekend. Your support is key to our success! See Bulletin Board, Section IV. ANNOUNCEMENT: Last call for registering for September 13th Luncheon at Fort Myer - See Section IV below. ANNOUNCEMENT: AFIO SYMPOSIUM AND CONVENTION - - - Agenda, REGISTRATION and Lodging Information - SEE SECTION IV - Bulletin Board.

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SECTION I - CURRENT INTELLIGENCE INTELLIGENCE LEAKS - Testifying before the House Permanent Select Committee for Intelligence at a recent public hearing about the bombing of the Chinese embassy, the DCI said the flood of news leaks about sensitive matters jeopardizes national security. "The nature of the leaking that's going on in this town is unprecedented. It is compromising sources and methods. It is jeopardizing American security and there are people in our government who think they have some free pass to do this for their own pleasure," the Director said. "I would say to all of my colleagues in the executive branch that 95 percent of what leaks comes out of the executive branch of government," he said. The White House spokesman rapidly told the press that the DCI was not necessarily accusing the White House of leaking sensitive information, but was talking in a general sense about a continuing patter of leaks from other elements of the executive branch. (CNN 22 July '99, by Brad Wright, posted on the Web) (DonH) HUGE BACKLOG IN DOD BACKGROUND INVESTIGATIONS - - The occasion of replacing the director of the Defense Security Service (DSS) with a new director (acting), LGEN (USAF ret) Charles Cunningham, led recently to the publicizing the problems of the process involved in procuring and maintaining security clearances for Defense personnel and their contractors. To begin, about 2.5 million Defense Department people and contractor personnel have security clearances. The current backlog of investigations of people needing access to sensitive classified material totals about 600,000. The new acting director believes investigations should not take more than 60 days, yet some presently take as long as a year. He will undertake a "statistical analysis" of the backlog to determine quickly what types of background investigations must be given priority. While additional funding is anticipated, one big headache is a $45 million automated case-management system which has broken down periodically since installation last October. Defense officials have set a goal of solving the backlog problems within 18 months, but it is doubtful that many actually expect to have it completely cleared by that time. (USA Today 23 Jun '99, p. 4A. (DonH)

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SECTION II - CONTEXT AND PRECEDENCE INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC INFORMATION SYSTEM INAUGURATED - A secret Presidential Decision Direction (PDD98) issued on 30 April - during the Kosovo bombing - - ordered the creation of a new US International Public Information (IPI) system to coordinate all information disseminated overseas. Officials of the US defense, intelligence, diplomatic and other agencies met in late July to review the draft charter of the IPI, making only minor changes. Future meetings of an IPI "core group" developing the new information system are to be chaired by Morton Halperin, head of policy planning at the State Department. After October, IPI will be run by the newly created undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, who will take over most of the duties of the US Information Agency (USIA), which is being disbanded. According to the press story, the IPI is the brainchild of White House "intelligence chief Dick Clarke" whose aide Jamie Metzl is now serving as IPI senior coordinator. According to the IPI charter now being reviewed, the aim is "to enhance US security, bolster America's economic prosperity and to promote democracy abroad." In addition to that boilerplate, the charter also says that the IPI control over "international military information" is intended to "influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups and individuals." The charter says that IPI activities "are overt and address foreign audiences only" but at the same time calls for domestic information to be "deconflicted" and "synchronized" so as not to send a contradictory message. Activities of the IPI could go beyond broadcasts and press releases since the core group is charged by the PDD to "assist [US government] efforts in defeating adversaries. The intelligence community will play a crucial role...for identifying hostile foreign propaganda and deception that targets the US." Criticism of the IPI from non-government quarters has ranged from left to right political sectors with fears of IPI being used for partisan political purposes or for pushing a political-correctness agenda not representative of the thinking of the American people. Fears of overseas spin spilling back into domestic US news have been strongly expressed. Administration officials reject such thoughts. ( WTimes 28, 29 and 30 July '99, p.1 (DonH) (Ed. Comment: Those who watched the coverage of the Yugoslav / Kosovo affair with a critical eye will know that such propaganda spillage back is to be expected.) (RoyJ) RAF VIEWS ON KOSOVO INTELLIGENCE SUPPORT. A draft RAF analysis being submitted to a British Ministry of Defense study of the lessons learned from Kosovo was recently leaked to a London paper. Presumably the final MoD assessment will be tabled in NATO channels later in the year. The published extracts from the RAF draft ascribed NATO's disappointing Kosovo performance to serious failings in intelligence, training, weapons and other hardware. The restrictions incurred in coalition fighting will probably be addressed cautiously in the final report also. The RAF study notes intelligence reports about Serbian troop and equipment locations took up to three days to reach front-line attack squadrons, by which time the Serbs had changed position. Many pilots found themselves "bombing old tank tracks" or civilians as a result, the document says. Secure communications were sometimes inadequate, meaning vital information could not be passed to RAF attack units for fear of the Serbs hearing it. The newspaper quotes one senior RAF officer saying: "NATO did all right on the strategic level (targets such as command centers, bridges and telecommunications buildings) but exceptionally badly on the tactical level (such as tanks and groups of soldiers)."Some of the failings could be solved with purchase of newer weapons and systems, but others will be more complicated to solve. The delays that made intelligence on Serbian forces "days behind" real events are blamed on the Americans, whose spy satellites, drones and aircraft mostly supplied the raw material. "Everything had to be exhaustively processed and analyzed through this bureaucratic American intelligence machine, and it took far too long," said one RAF officer. (Source: WTimes 26 July '99. p. A1.) (DonH) DCI ON BOMBING OF CHINESE EMBASSY. Tens of thousands of words have been written on the US inadvertent bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Now that the flood has dropped to hardly a trickle, an intelligence view of the incident may be useful. The published extract of DCI George Tenet's remarks to the HPSCI seems the best available: " ...Multiple databases within the intelligence community and the Department of Defense all reflected the embassy in its pre- 1996 location in Belgrade. Despite the fact that US officials had visited the embassy on a number of occasions in recent years, the new location was never entered into intelligence or military targeting databases. If the databases had accurately located the Chinese Embassy, the misidentification of the FSSP building would have been recognized and corrected. Our ability to locate fixed targets is no better than databases, and the databases, in this case, were wrong. The databases are constructed to catalogue targets, not non-targets. In general, diplomatic facilities...are given relatively little attention in our databases because such facilities are not targets." In accepting DoD responsibility for the mistake along with CIA, DepSecDef Hamre noted that the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy marked the only case in which the error was made by people selecting the target. Out of 9,300 strike sorties directed at 900 targets and involving more than 24,000 bombs, there were only 30 instances in which NATO planes "caused damage we did not intend." (W Post 23 July '99, p. A28; Assoc. Press 22 July '99 by John Diamond). (DonH)

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SECTION III - BOOK REVIEWS ALLY TO ADVERSARY: An Eyewitness Account of Iraq's Fall From Grace, by Rick Francona, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md (www.nip.org), 1999, ISBN 1-55750-281-1. The author, a retired Air Force intelligence officer and Middle East expert, was a witness to, and part of, the Middle East drama that involved the US in support of Iraq in its war against Iran, which was viewed as a dangerous militant Islamic specter threatening domination of the oil-rich Persian Gulf region. Thus Iraq became a US partner of convenience. The author was deeply involved in the highly sensitive support the US gave to Iraq in 1987-88 during its war with Iran, gaining a unique perspective on its capabilities, including ballistic missiles and chemical weapons. Later, as General Schwartzkopf's Arabic interpreter, he was a front rank witness to a number of policy and strategy-making developments and issues during the Gulf War against Iraq. His book recounts the story of these adventures, providing a look inside the closed doors of US and international military decision-making in an area of highest interest to the US. Francona writes in a forthright and very readable fashion, weaving in anecdotes with policy perspectives and situation descriptions. His book contributes to understanding a recent past that is relevant to the present and future. Highly recommended reading - and "for sale with with autograph" at the AFIO 13 September luncheon at Fort Myer (See bulletin board below). (RoyJ) ORPHANS OF THE COLD WAR: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival, by John Kenneth Knaus, Public Affairs, 1999. The author, a 40-year CIA veteran, was part of the US effort to give political support to the Dalai Lama to puncture Chinese posturing as champions of "peaceful coexistence." A subsidiary objective was to provide paramilitary assistance to Tibetan Kampa fighters to impede and harass the communist occupiers in Tibet. The political warfare effort was successful in achieving its limited objectives, but the armed resistance did not fare so well. The CIA provided training and weapons, medical supplies etc. to the resistance elements from 1956 onward until 1961, when the Chinese finally ground them down. This book tells the story, based not only on the memories of the participants, including the venerable Sam Halpern, a member of AFIO's Board of Directors, but also interviews with surviving Tibetan resistance fighters. Recommended reading, and "for sale with autograph" at the 13 September AFIO luncheon at Fort Myer, Virginia - see bulletin Board below. (Based on review by Joseph Goulden, who is currently working on a book on the modern world of attorneys, WTimes,8 Aug 99, p. B8) (RoyJ)

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SECTION IV - BULLETIN BOARD MEMBERSHIP DRIVE MOVING INTO HIGH GEAR - Thanks to a number of dynamic members who sponsored new AFIO Members and Associate Members, our total WIN readership passed the 1,100 mark - meeting our target. Our AFIO sponsors signed up friends colleagues and acquaintances, spoke or participated in meetings where they provided membership brochures, reached out into professional and civic associations, and in some cases, gave gift memberships. To all of you, a hearty thank you - well done! It means that we are revitalizing as an activist organization - each member contributing in his or her own way towards achieving our public educational objectives. We welcome our new members and honor the members who sponsored them. Among the former, we extend a special welcome to the Honorable James Russell Wiggins, former Ambassador to the United Nations (1968-69), who also served as a major in Air Intelligence in the US Army Air Corps in WWII, and who, at the venerable age of 96, serves as a magnificent example of intellectual vitality and accomplishment to us all. Welcome, sir, to AFIO - - we hope to provide you with a balanced view of intelligence-related issues and challenges - - and thank you, Dick Guay, for sponsoring the Ambassador! As you know, every tenth AFIO Sponsor of a New Member receives a special memento and thanks from Peter Earnest, AFIO president. The recent winners of the " expand the list of WIN readers" competition were: #1040, William Billingsley, who sponsored John Roberts IV #1050, Robert Alan Siebel, who sponsored T. William Signorelli # 1060, Dan Halpin, who sponsored John C. Roberts #1070, Al Ponte, who sponsored Joseph J. Simpson. Our thanks to you all! The winners #1080, 1090, and 1100 will be announced in the next edition. Please keep up the pace - sponsor new members and associate members, and let's set a new target of 1,200 WIN readers by 1 October! Every Member Sponsor a new Member!

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AFIO FALL LUNCHEON, Monday, Sept 13, 1030 - 1400 hrs, Fort Myer, Va. - - - Two outstanding speakers: At 11 a.m., Rick Francona, retired intelligence officer, involved in US covert assistance to Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war, former Air Attache to Damascus and interpreter for General Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War, will speak on intelligence and policy issues concerning IRAQ's transition - - from ally to adversary. LUNCH 12:00 - 13:00 At 1300, Kenneth Knaus, who spent four decades as an operations officer in CIA, will speak on his participation in the planning, directing and execution of America's covert attempts to aid Tibetan resistance. This luncheon occasion again promises to be an exceptionally interesting event. Introduce AFIO to a guest -- members and their guests $26, others welcome at $29. Send check to AFIO, 6723 Whittier Ave, Ste 303A, McLean, VA 22101-4533.

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AFIO NATIONAL SYMPOSIUM "INTELLIGENCE 2000," AND the AFIO NATIONAL CONVENTION 21-23 OCTOBER 1999 - - McLean & Chantilly, Virginia. 1.The AFIO NATIONAL SYMPOSIUM " INTELLIGENCE 2000," will be held on Thursday 21 October 12:30 until 4 pm at the Marriott Hotel at Tysons Corner, Virginia, and continue on Friday 22 October, hosted by the Honorable Keith Hall, Director national Reconnaissance Office, at the NRO facility in Chantilly, Virginia from 0800 until 1700 hrs, followed by a " rush hour traffic abatement" Social Hour until 1800. The sessions will be conducted at the "UNCLASSIFIED, Background Use Only, Not For Attribution " level. As we all know and have experienced - MUCH of great interest can be said at this level. A STELLAR CAST OF SPEAKERS has been invited to participate in the "Intelligence 2000" symposium, including, (in alphabetic order): The Honorable Keith Hall, Director NRO, the Host of "Intelligence 2000." Mr Jeffrey Harris, former Director NRO and currently President, Space Imaging, Inc.; Lieutenant General Patrick Hughes, USA, former Director DIA; Mr. Richard Kerr, former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Mr. John Lauder, Director of the DCI Nonproliferation Center; General Barry Macaffrey, Director of National Drug Control Policy, Executive Office of the President; The Hon. Ted Stevens, US Senator and Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee; Colonel Richard Stotts, Commander of the USAF Information Warfare Center; The Honorable George Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence Mr. Michael A. Vates, Depy Asst Dir. FBI, National Infrastructure Protection Center

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2. The AFIO NATIONAL CONVENTION will be held in conjunction with the AFIO National Symposium, at the Tysons Marriott Hotel on Thursday 21 October at 4 pm. It will include a GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING, a RECEPTION and cocktail hour, and an AWARDS BANQUET (three course dinner, music, awards to an media representative and a book author, and to exceptional AFIO members, and with a distinguished keynote speaker). On Saturday morning follow-on meetings will be held, primarily with chapters members and the AFIO Board of Directors. Special tours may be arranged on Friday. NOTE: The AFIO Honorary Board and a number of notables will be invited to attend the Reception and Banquet as guests of AFIO.

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Programs and full information for the "Intelligence 2000" Symposium, and for the National Convention, will be mailed out shortly. RATES: AFIO NATIONAL SYMPOSIUM only - 21 Oct Marriott & 22 Oct at NRO - $165 (for members and their guests, and for selected other categories of individuals*) AFIO NATIONAL SYMPOSIUM - non-members (see note below*) - $215 AFIO NATIONAL CONVENTION only - 21 /23 October / Mariott Hotel - $105 (for AFIO members and their guests) Package price for BOTH Convention and Symposium, for members and their guests = $239. NOTE* - US /State/local Government personnel, and members of NMIA, DOCA, SASA, NIP, CIN, PCIC, SCIP and Natl Security Com of ABA, are invited to attend at AFIO member rates. The total number of attendees is limited to 250. Early sign-up is recommended. For AGENDA information, contact: Symposium Chairman RADM (ret) Don McDowell. donmcdo@aol.com,or the AFIO Executive Director, Roy Jonkers afio@afio.com. For REGISTRATION information, contact Mrs Gretchen Campbell, AFIO Dir. of Administration, tel (703) 790 0320, or email afio@afio.com. REGISTRATION: Provide Name, Social security number (for Government security check for Symposium), Title, Organization, Mailing & email and tel address, plus a check made out to "AFIO" and mail to: AFIO, 6723 Whittier Ave, Ste 303A, McLean, VA 22101-4533. LODGING - - For out-of-towners, suggest you register to get a hotel room soonest. Arrangements for lodging may be made with the Tysons Corner Marriott hotel. To qualify for the SPECIAL RATE of $84 per night (good ONLY for Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights) you MUST mention ASSOCIATION OF FORMER INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS. If you include Wednesday night, they will not extend the special rate. Early hotel reservations are recommended (soonest), as the Marriott is expected to fill rapidly and early due to other events in the area.

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REF: SPECIAL CALL for medical advice, to which more than 150 of you responded - a response which provided a real boost to our desperately sick colleague's morale - I am pleased to report that the advice rendered was used by his medical team and that he is responding to the resultant new diagnosis and treatment. He is turning the corner, and thanks one and all of you for your collegial compassion and assistance. PERSONAL COMPUTER Y2K COMPLIANCE - - AFIO member Paul Tremblett did some further research on Y2K compliance of Home PC's, following our recent WIN article. He found that the date adjustment described in our previous WIN message would NOT, by themselves, lead to Y2K compliance. Check URL: http://www.microsoft.com/YEAR2000/hoax/y2khoax.htm He refers you to the following URL's for accurate information: (1) Microsoft Year 2000 Resource Center for Home and Small Business Computers (2) Microsoft Year 2000 Resource Center for T Professionals (3) Microsoft Year 2000 Resource Center for Developer Tools The gist of the message about Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT and Y2K compliance follows: * Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT operating systems ARE compliant assuming all recommended actions specified in the respective compliance documents have been taken. The steps (mentioned in our previous WIN message ) are not required actions and do not have to be performed in order to obtain compliance. * The short date format style in Regional Settings is a display setting only. * Dates are stored and processed by Windows in a 4 digit format regardless of the short date format style selected in Regional settings * Customers can use the regional settings tab to adjust how the date is displayed (e.g. mm/dd/yy or mm/dd/yyyy) * In order to avoid ambiguous dates, Microsoft recommends using 4 digits when entering date data and expanding the date field in regional setting to 4 digits. However this is not required to attain compliance. TIGHE SCHOLARSHIP DETAILS ANNOUNCED (San Diego, California). The San Diego Chapter of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO/SDC1) has announced the topic for the year 2000 Tighe Scholarship essay contest. This will be the sixth, and last, year for this contest which is funded by the chapter and by Bally Manufacturing and the Brunswick Corporation, in memory of Lieutenant General Eugene F. Tighe, Jr., who passed away on January 29, 1994. General Tighe served the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Intelligence Community for over 50 years, including as the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 1978 to 1981. To help foster intellectual excellence, encourage college students to think about issues facing the Intelligence Community, and to make post-secondary students aware of Intelligence as a profession, the San Diego Chapter is offering a $1,000 scholarship to the student who submits the best 1,000-1,500 word essay on the specific topic: "Identify and discuss the top national security threat(s) you think the U.S. Intelligence Community should be focused on today." Complete details, including required essay format and a mandatory application that must accompany the essay, are available from AFIO/SDC1 by sending a stamped Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope (SASE -- size #10 business) to: Tighe Scholarship Administrator; 1142 Miramonte Glen; Escondido, CA 92026-1724. AFIO/SDC1 will send Tighe Packages back to students in their SASE's if they are received by the Administrator prior t o December 1, 1999. Postmark deadline for submitting essays and applications is January 10, 2000. Questions can be addressed to the Administrator via e-mail to esb4jts@aol.com.

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