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Weekly Intelligence Notes #35-01 |
WIN #35-01 dated 3 September 2001 We live in a world of accelerating changes - political, environmental, technical. How does this impact on national strategies and intelligence? Update yourself by attending the AFIO Symposium 2001 at CIA and the National Convention on 2 and 3 November 2001in McLean, Virginia. Agenda and Registration information on the Web www.afio.com, and coming shortly by 'snail mail' to all members. Take a guest or your spouse at member rates! Support the AFIO Mission - Attend the Symposium and Sponsor a New Member! SECTION I - CURRENT INTELLIGENCE US Drug-war threatens to destabilize Colombia-- Colombia is slowly sliding into a drug-related revolutionary war expanding to most of the country, while much of the world looks the other way. Whole tracts of countryside are being threatened by the polluting effect of the glyphosate herbicide chemicals spread in concentrations 100 times greater than would be legal in the USA. The chemicals kill coca, but also other food crops, reportedly increasing the levels of deprivation, illness and poverty among an already desperately poor rural populace, while the coca production shifts to new areas. The crop-dusters are guided to their jungle targets by US reconnaissance, intelligence and surveillance assets. Flown by a mix of US contract flyers and local pilots, they are protected by US-supplied helicopter gunships. President George W. Bush inherited, and has indicated his support for, a massive overt anti-drug program of $1.3 billion, including $290 million for Intelligence operations, $860 million in military aid, and $132 million for humanitarian projects, while a further $180 million is earmarked for drug-related operations in Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. The US is currently faced with a need to replace its bases in Panama (which may explain the reports of a recent "secret" trip by SecState Powell to that country), and therefore has moved quickly to establish new facilities on both Aruba and Curacao in the Caribbean. In addition, both Venezuela and El Salvador have been asked to allow the use of their air space for anti-drug operations, extending the current air surveillance and interdiction operations over Peru and Ecuador. Ecuador seems to have moved into the fore-front of integrated US military planning and operations. New facilities have been established at the port city of Manta, Special Force units from the US Southern Command operate alongside some 5,000 Ecuadorian troops of the 19th Napo and 21st Condor Jungle Infantry Brigades on the borders of Colombia, while other specialist US forces operate radar stations tracking the drug-cartel's aircraft (ref. the recent incident of shooting down a missionary's plane) and manning secret listening posts on behalf of the NSA to monitor communications of the FARC, the drug cartels, etc. The US war on drugs, including its intelligence involvement, is increasingly controversial in its foreign as well as its domestic dimensions. At home, increasing media and political attention is being paid to the creation of the largest 'gulag' of any nation on the globe during the past ten years, without reducing the shifting consumption of drugs -- affecting only its methods of distribution. Intelligence supports the wars abroad, including the incipient mini-Vietnam-like morass of Colombia, and may well be increasingly at risk of being tainted by the inevitable and unavoidable connections with corrupt or criminal "allied" or informer elements or unfortunate human incidents. In its domestic dimension the war on drugs involves such allegations as increasing brutalization of police methods, and technical surveillance intrusions into personal privacy and liberty -- that concern us all. This is one tough problem. (Jonkers) (AFI Research afi@supanet.com //Richard Bennett) (WashPost 6Sep01 pA1 ) SECTION II - CONTEXT AND PRECEDENCE Terrorism Not So Common As Before. American newspaper readers and television viewers have been bedeviled in the last year or so with scary stories of international terrorism aimed at Americans. The tragic bombing of the USS Cole in Aden certainly contributed to the impression that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists and that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism. While many crimes are committed against Americans abroad, politically inspired terrorism is not as common as most people may think While the State Department reported 423 international terrorist incidents in year 2000 (up 38 from 1999), the overall terrorist trend is down. According to the CIA, deaths from international terrorism fell to 2,527 in the decade of the 1990's, from 4,833 in the 80's. In 2000, terrorist activity was heavily concentrated in just two countries -- Columbia with 186 incidents and India with 63 -- with the cause being these countries own political conflicts. There were three attacks on American diplomatic buildings in 2000, compared with 42 in 1988. In the State Department's "Patterns of Global Terrorism 2000," released earlier this year, 153 of the 423 international terrorist incidents were judged to be "significant." Only 17 of these involved American citizens or businesses. One major reason given for the downward trend is the current reluctance of countries like Iraq, Syria and Libya to provide safe havens, funding and training. Reasons advanced for the attention lavished on terrorism, despite the general trend downward, include the need for dramatic stories by 24-hour broadcast news operations, politicians seeking publicity for creating new anti-terrorism activities, and established government agencies looking to justify budget growth. (Harvey) ( NY Times 10 July '01, p. A23 /// L. C. Johnson) CHINA IN TRANSITION -- This past July 1st, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Part, China's President Jiang Zemin made a speech in which he stated that capitalist entrepreneurs should be admitted to the communist party (comparable to President Bush opening his arms to embrace communists into the Republican party and the US Government) . Not surprisingly, this ideological bombshell upset the orthodox communist ideologues within the party, who criticized the initiative. Since then the Communist Party apparatus has begun an ideological cleanup, and at least two major publications linked to these orthodox critics - the Zhenli De Zhuiqiu (Pursuit of Truth) and the Zhongliu - have been closed down. In addition, the China Bulletin - an electronic magazine - and the Tianya Zongheng Internet Forum (based on Hainan), were closed last month. The latter had carried a series of articles on its site expressing concern about increasing income disparities in China. The articles also attacked the move to absorb private enterprise capitalists into the Communist Party as a "betrayal of the proletariat." In addition, the Communist Party's mouthpiece, the People's Daily, removed a collection of articles by the late staunch Marxist Chen Yun from its official Web site. Several of these articles expressed opposition to a free market and any weakening of the Communist Party's monopoly on power. Jiang's announcement and the subsequent media outlet closures, are an interesting peep into the fog enveloping the ongoing process of transition of China's leadership and policies. (Jonkers) (South China Morning Daily, 3 September, 2001 //Fong Tak-Ho) (courtesy T.Hart) SECTION III - CYBER INTELLIGENCE SECRET
SPACES -- A capability exists to conceal short messages
invisibly within normal text documents for private business or personal
communications. SecretSpace accomplishes this by inserting superfluous
spaces between the words in your message -- no one can see the spaces or
decipher what's in them without SecretSpace. The text contained within the
inserted spaces is determined by the patterns of the spaces.
Messages can be hidden even further by using SecretSpace with your
favorite encryption program for combined protection. (Greg O'Hara) RUSSIAN
PROGRAMMER FALLS AFOUL OF US LAWS -- Russian software designer
Dmitry Sklyarov pleaded not guilty on 30 August to five charges that he
violated a controversial, and purely American, Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (DMCA) by trafficking in and committing conspiracy to
traffic in a copyright circumvention device. The device in question is the Advanced eBook Processor which cracks the
access controls on Adobe's eBook Reader, made and marketed by Russian
software company ElcomSoft, where Sklyarov works. As a result, Russia warned its computer experts of the dangers of visiting the
United States, a warning other nations will probably also heed. (Levine Newsbits 08/31) PENTAGON
GIVES GREEN LIGHT TO GLOBAL INFORMATION GRID -- The Pentagon
has approved the Global Information Grid architecture, a worldwide
architecture for providing data to military forces around the world from
regional commanders to soldiers on the front lines, the acting Defense
Department deputy chief information officer said. That architecture will
provide the first slice of an integrated DOD enterprise information
technology architecture.(Levine 08/30) USAF
TO TEST BIOMETRIC SECURITY -- The Air Force will soon begin
testing three types of biometric identification applications for greater
security in daily operations. (Levine 08/30) SECTION IV - BOOKS AND SOURCES INSURANCE FRAUD -- One of our members submitted a summary of an insurance fraud investigation he conducted for a 'Case of the Month' competition sponsored by the John E. Reid & Associates investigative training organization of Chicago . His case was selected as the Case of the Month for September. You can read it at www.reid.com . Click on the September Case of the Month icon. (Charles Prendergast) GUARD
THE SECRETS RATHER THAN VET THE EMPLOYEES. The usual approach
to safeguarding classified information is to vet each of the 100's of
thousands of government employees and contractors with background
investigations. In this op-ed, author James Bamford argues that maybe the
government should do what retailers do -- guard the merchandise instead.
(Macartney) ISRAEL'S TARGETED ASSASSINATION POLICY,
AGAIN. In this op-ed Vince Cannistraro, former chief of CIA
counterterrorism, argues that assassination is counterproductive as well
as immoral. (Macartney) Big
Machines, Cipher Machines of World War II, Aegean Park Press,
2001, by Stephen J. Kelley. (ISBN: 0-89412-290-8) 242
pages, $38.80 -- Why do some cryptographic systems fail and others
succeed? Stephen Kelley's new book, Big Machines, explores this
fundamental question by examining the history of three of the most
renowned cipher systems of World War II - the German Enigma, the Japanese
PURPLE, and the American SIGABA/ECM. Were the allies' successes against
Enigma and PURPLE due to inherent weaknesses in the Axis' machines, to
poor communications security procedures, to physical compromise, or to all
three? Kelley investigates the histories of these three crypto systems -
how they were designed, how they were used, and how they were attacked by
hostile cryptanalysts, all critical aspects of the information war some
six decades ago. (Jonkers) (Laura Kelley). http://www.aegeanparkpress.com WINs are produced by Roy Jonkers for AFIO members and for WIN
subscribers. Associate editors John Macartney and Don Harvey contribute
articles to the WINs. Opinions expressed are those of the editor(s) or
writers cited with each article. For back issues, membership information
and symposium info, check the AFIO Website www.afio.com SUPPORT AFIO - SPONSOR A NEW MEMBER!
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