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John Macartney (jdmac@erols.com) prepared this WIN. WINs are normally produced by Roy Jonkers, AFIO Executive Director, who will be out of the office until next week.afio@afio.com SECTION I CURRENT INTELLIGENCE PENTAGON SECURITY INVESTIGATION BACKLOG. DOD officials say
the backlog of cases is enormous. They estimate that 600,000
investigations need to be done on Pentagon and contractor employees.
National security experts say such inquiries, made each year on tens
of thousands of people who need access to sensitive classified
material, are essential to keepingthe nation's secrets out of the
wrong hands. For the past 27 years, that job has fallen to an obscure
Pentagon agency known as the Defense Security Service (DSS). But that
agency is far from a well-oiled machine. In truth, it is barely
creaking along, unable to keep up with its workload and beset by
years of internal strife over the management practices of Steven
Schanzer, its director, and his predecessor, Margaret Munson. Senior
Pentagon officials say they've had enough. On Tuesday, they informed
Schanzer that he was being removed from his job. They acted as USA
TODAY was completing an inquiry into the security agency's practices.
Schanzer will be replaced by Charles Cunningham, a retired Air Force
general and deputy assistant secretary of Defense for intelligence.
Schanzer is being reassigned to the Department of Energy.
[Although I don't know much about this mess, I do know that the
DSS was "downsized" about 40 percent in recent years. That may have
something to do with the backlog. --jdmac] INTELLIGENCE UAV's OVER KOSOVO. Light unmanned aerial
vehicles known as UAV's, or drones, have been crisscrossing the skies
over Kosovo, acting as electronic scouts, finding and filming elusive
targets, especially Serbian troops hidden bunkers or woods, and
sending those images immediately to fighter jets overhead. At least
21 drones, the only aircraft that the allies let fly at such low
altitudes, have been lost to gunfire or mechanical problems, said
NATO and Pentagon officials. France, Germany and the United States
have based unmanned surveillance planes here despite the Macedonian
Government's insistence that NATO is has a headquarters here just to
carry out a peace accord, and not to fight an air war. The US Army
Hunter surveillance plane flies from the Skopje airfield. The more
sophisticated unmanned Air Force Predator is based in Bosnia, at
Tuzla, according to NATO and Pentagon officials who are equally wary
of acknowledging the role of the Bosnian Government. NSA, HPSCI BUTT HEADS OVER ECHELON."Echelon" is, allegedly,
NSA's global spying system, which consists of a network of
clandestine listening posts capable of intercepting electronic
communications such as e-mail, telephone conversations, faxes,
satellite transmissions, microwave links and fiber-optic
communications traffic. The EU last year raised concerns that the
system may be regularly violating the privacy of law-abiding
citizens, and the European concern has attracted the attention of
Congress. In that regard, NSA, for the first time in the history of
the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has refused to
hand over to Congress documents on the Echelon program, claiming
attorney/client privilege. Calling NSA's argument of attorney/client
privilege "unpersuasive and dubious," committee chairman [and
AFIO member] Rep Porter Goss (R-Fla.) said that if the
intelligence community can deny access to documents on intelligence
programs could "seriously hobble the legislative oversight process"
provided for by the Constitution and would "result in the envelopment
of the executive branch in a cloak of secrecy." GLOBAL HAWK UAV RESUMES FLIGHT TESTING. The Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has resumed flight testing, following the crash of one aircraft on March 29, according to the U.S. Air Force and the UAV's maker, Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical. While the Air Force continues its investigation into the cause of the crash, the U-2-sized UAV is testing the reliability of its satellite communications links to the ground control station. At press time, Global Hawk had gone 25 hours into its longest flight test yet, with no failures or glitches in any subsystems, said Mark Day, Teledyne Ryan's spokesman. (Defense News This Week, June 14) LIBYA: ORDERS FROM THE COLONEL. The British Treasury solicitor, Roland Philips, has banned the "Sunday Times" from publishing details of a tightly coordinated and classified three year joint US/UK investigation involving MI6, MI5, the CIA and the FBI, and the SIGINT/ELINT organizations GCHQ and NSA, which concluded that the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, personally ordered his brother-in-law, Abdullah Senoussi, head of the foreign intelligence service (ESO) to destroy a US airline in retaliation for the USAF bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1986 in which 60 people, including Col. Gadaffi's 18-month-old daughter, died. The unilateral raids, ordered by Ronald Reagan and carried out by British-based F-111s, also damaged the French, Austrian and Finnish embassies in the Libyan capital, as well as several civilian residential districts. (Intelligence, N99, 31 May 1999, p. 23) HOUSE VOTES FOR WEAPONS LAB REFORMS. On Wednesday, the
House added an amendment to the FY2000 defense appropriation bill
that codifies into law 26 of the 38 recommendations issued by the Cox
Committee as safeguards against future espionage at the Energy Dept's
nuclear weapons labs. These include a 2-month moratorium on foreign
visitors while better security procedures are implemented, provisions
for DOD counterintelligence officials to be present at all foreign
launches of US satellites, and the establishment of a polygraph
program within the DOE. Voted down were more restrictive provisions
that would have barred Chinese visitors for two years and transferred
the labs from DOE to DOD. LIMITS ON "RACIAL PROFILING" COULD HAVE IMPLICATIONS FOR
COUNTERINTELLIGENCE. President Clinton has responded to
entreaties from minority groups to call for an end to the police
practice of "racial profiling" of suspects. That is, the unsavory
practice in some police depts of stopping and frisking "suspicious"
looking individuals, often on the basis of race. Well, that certainly
makes sense from the human rights standpoint -- who could argue
against it? But pressures against racial profiling are almost
certainly going to make it more difficult for counterintelligence
officers to in any wayquestion the loyalty of ethnic Americans within
the US government. This at a time when ethnicity has become one of
the principal motivations for espionage. In fact, according to recent
testimony, criticism about "racial profiling" was being felt by DOE
counterintelligence officers in the Los Alamos case a decade ago and
may well have played a part in Attorney General Janet Reno's decision
not to authorize electronic surveillance of suspected Los Alamos
scientist Wen Ho Lee -- despite repeated FBI requests. (There have,
of course, been many examples: Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish American
spied for Israel, while Larry Wu-Tai Chin, a Chinese American and CIA
analyst, spied for the PRC; and there was Steven Lalas, a State Dept
communications officer and a Greek American, who was convicted in
1993 of espionage on behalf of the Greece.) The list goes ,on, but
the whole subject of ethnically inspired espionage has become so very
sensitive that government officials do not mention it in public It is
"politically incorrect" in the extreme (and not career enhancing) to
breathe a word about this. Which makes dealing with it from a
counterintelligence perspective very difficult. SECTION II CONTEXT AND PRECEDENT WALTER PFORZHEIMER AFIO BOOK AWARD. AFIO has formed a panel
to select the best intelligence book of 1998 (copyright 1998). The
Pforzheimer award will be presented at the AFIO Convention, October
21. EDITOR WANTED! AFIO is seeking a volunteer editor, or contributing editors, for its hard copy newsletter, "Periscope." The"Periscope" and the "Intelligencer," AFIO's two newsletters, alternate publication, and each comes out three or four times a year. If you are interested, contact Roy Jonkers at the AFIO office, afio@afio.com / (703) 790-0320. SECTION III - BOOKS & OTHER SOURCES. John Earl Haynes Harvey Klehr, VENONA: DECODING SOVIET ESPIONAGE IN AMERICA, Yale U Press, June 1999.This book is just out and will soon be followed by another: Eric Breindel, Herbert Rom & Herbert Romerstein, THE VENONA SECRETS, Basic Books, Sept 1999. NOT INTELLIGENCE, BUT A VERY USEFUL WEB SITE. SECTION IV -- BULLETIN BOARD AFIO CORPORATE MEMBERSHIP -- AFIO invites corporations and professional offices to become corporate members. For more information contact the AFIO Vice President for Corporate Membership Programs, James ("Jim") Boginis, jim.boginis@lmco.com or Roy Jonkers at afio@afio.com. "HEADS UP" SCHEDULE. Lists events of interest to AFIO
members and intelligence scholars. June 18, Washington. DIA's Joint Military Intelligence College sponsored conference on teaching intelligence in colleges and universities. (202) 231-4173 June 21, Washington. Special screening of the film, "Shadow Circus: The CIA in Tibet" to be followed by discussion with former CIA officer (and AFIO member) Kenneth Knaus, author of the new book "Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Freedom". 7pm at the Jewish Community Center, 16th & Q Streets NW, $10. 202-785-1515 / tenzinict@peacenet.org June 24 - 28, Great Lakes Naval Base, IL. AFIO Midwest Chapter 10th annual Intelligence Seminar at Great Lakes June 24, 25 and 26, followed by at tour of the Joint Reserve Center at Fort Sheridan on the 27th, and sessions as well as dinners on 27 and 28 June at the Eagles Nest at the Great Lakes Base. Contact President Angelo Diliberti diaboliq@home.com. July 16-17, Peru, VT. Summer meeting of AFIO New England Chapter at the Bromely Sun Lodge, P A Adler, (860)669-7706. September 13, AFIO Luncheon, Ft Myer, Virginia. Speakers to be announced. October 21-23, AFIO National Convention and Symposium. Symposium will be conducted 22 October in the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Auditorium, Chantilly, Virginia. Further announcements will be forthcoming. Oct 29-30, Kennebunkport, ME. Fall meeting of AFIO New England Chapter, Nonantum Resort. P A Adler, (860) 669-7706. AFIO MEMBERSHIP or Associate Membership is open to US citizens who subscribe to AFIO's principles and objectives - see AFIO's Homepage at https://www.afio.com The Weekly Intelligence Notes (WINs) are commentaries and notes relevant to US and world intelligence activities, based solely on open source material.- -- WINs are protected by copyright laws and re-transmission is not permitted without specific AFIO concurrence (afio@afio.com), with the following EXCEPTIONS:
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