AFIO Weekly Intelligence Notes #45-07 dated 3 December 2007
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CONTENTS
Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS
Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE
Section III - CAREERS, REQUESTS FOR ASSISTANCE, BOOK REVIEWS, OBITUARIES AND COMING EVENTS
Current Calendar Next Two Months ONLY:2007 Events...
Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS
Britain Wants More Non-White Spies. Britain's secret services want to recruit more non-white and Muslim agents, a top official said Monday, dismissing the "myth" of British spies resembling 007 agent James Bond. In unprecedented BBC interviews with the MI5 and MI6 domestic and foreign intelligence agencies, two British Asian staff also denied that Muslims were specific targets.
The head of recruitment at the MI6, interviewed in the security service's London headquarters, stressed the need for its foreign staff to come from a wider range of ethnic backgrounds. He downplayed the James Bond image, saying: "This is the biggest myth at the service - we do not have a
license to kill - we do not carry Berettas. That's simply not true."
Meanwhile two Asian MI5 officers denied that Britain's Muslim community was a particular target, saying that they only investigated individuals when there was a reason to do so.
Britain's security services have faced criticism in their response to the growing threat since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, highlighted by the July 2005 London suicide bombings which killed 52. Some Muslim groups have accused police of heavy-handed treatment of their community, saying they are targeted as potential terrorists simply because of their appearance. [AFP/26November2007]
Romanian President Names Ex-Foreign Minister to Head Foreign Intelligence. Romanian President Traian Basescu on Monday named a former foreign minister as his choice to head the country's foreign intelligence service.
Mihai Razvan Ungureanu served as foreign minister from 2004 until April when he was forced to resign after he failed to inform Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu Popescu that two Romanians had been arrested in Iraq by U.S. troops. Ungureanu, 39, is a historian by training and known for a pro-American stance. In 2005 he signed a 10-year agreement with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to set up U.S. bases on Romanian soil. Ungureanu's nomination must be approved by Parliament.
The post heading the Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service has been vacant since its former chief, journalist Claudiu Saftoiu, resigned in March after he alleged that the service had illegally tapped the telephones of Romanian and foreign suspects with permission from prosecutors, instead of a judge's warrant as required by law. He later retracted his statement.
[AP/26November2007]
DIA At Work on New Data-Sharing System. The Defense Intelligence Agency is moving to an online Force Protection Assessment system to provide knowledge management and real-time updates on operational security analyses. DIA hired McDonald Bradley to develop the system under a one-year contract worth about $3 million with four one-year options that, if exercised, could be worth about the same each year, said Kenneth Bartee, president and chief executive officer of McDonald Bradley.
"This is part of a new effort at DIA, but it closely aligns with other things we have done for them," Bartee said. "The expectation is that different capabilities will be delivered along the continuum. This is just the beginning. We will deliver capabilities during the first year, but I can't say much more because it is classified."
The company said it will develop the Force Protection Assessment system using a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to let users search and analyze data in the Defense Department's Intelligence Information Systems All Source Intelligence Environment (Alien). The system will let users visualize data instead of receiving it as text. Bartee couldn't offer more details on what visualizing data means because it is classified.
Under the Force Protection contract, McDonald Bradley also will use new analytical technologies to provide a one-stop shop for finding information in DOD and federal intelligence community databases.
DIA officials hope the system will improve cross-agency collaboration, enhance analytical products and accelerate subject matter expertise when sharing data, the company's release states.
[Miller/FederalComputerWeek/26November2007]
Military Planners Mull Possibility Of Cyber War. While U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan engage enemies with guns, tanks, airplanes and missiles, the Pentagon is quietly fighting a different war on a new front - cyberspace. Military officials say that a cyber attack by foreign enemies or terrorist groups would result in "an electronic Pearl Harbor" that would shut down electricity, banking systems, cell phones and other tools of day-to-day life. Hundreds, and possibly thousands, of more-limited cyber assaults are bombarding the firewalls of government computer systems daily, prompting U.S. officials and military leaders to declare that the United States is already at war on the cyber front.
"America is under widespread attack in cyberspace," Gen. James E. Cartwright, then-commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees the military's computer grid, told Congress in March. "Our freedom to use cyberspace is threatened by the actions of criminals, terrorists and nations alike."
As a result, the U.S. military is aggressively incorporating cyber technology into its war-fighting arsenal in the same sort of evolutionary pattern that saw air power emerge from the early biplanes of the past century. All branches of the military have cyber operations, and the Air Force is moving to set up a full-fledged cyber command that will have the same stature as its other commands.
U.S. officials acknowledge that the computer-dependent military and federal government are threatened by virtually every malevolent concept of the cyber age, from worms and viruses that aim to cripple or shut down networks to intrusions that attempt to steal classified information.
The DHS received 37,000 reports of attempted breaches on government and private systems in fiscal 2007, which ended Sept. 30, compared with 24,000 the previous year. Assaults on federal agencies increased 152 percent during that period, from 5,143 to 12,986.
A worst-case attack could shut down computer command-and-control systems that run banking, water and sewerage systems, traffic lights, oil and gas networks and nearly every other element of the public infrastructure. Those control systems, the Government Accountability Office said in September, "are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks than in the past."
The roster of cyber adversaries includes foreign militaries and intelligence services, hackers who could be working in league with foreign governments, and "hacktivists" - hackers with political agendas. Terrorists thus far are considered only a limited threat, said the GAO report, citing the CIA.
The United States, with its multilayered systems and advanced firewalls, has avoided the type of extensive attack that caused widespread disruptions throughout government agencies and institutions in Estonia this spring. But numerous assaults, most of them harmless, pound U.S. military and government computers every several seconds, say experts.
The blueprint for the military is the "2006 National Military Strategy for Cyberspace Operations," a classified document that includes both defensive and offensive measures, according to officials and analysts. Likely offensive tactics include disabling an enemy's command-and-control networks, destroying data or dispatching false information to weapons networks, often as part of a larger attack with air power and other weaponry.
As an outgrowth of the strategy, Air Force leaders established a provisional cyber command at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and plan to develop a permanent command.
As many as 40,000 Air Force personnel are assigned to cyber tasks, and Air Force officials envision a breed of warrior who fights with a computer and keyboard. But he's expected to be as formidable as the soldier with a gun. Lani Kass, special assistant to Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, told a recent seminar that Air Force cyber warriors would be "trained killers" and "not a bunch of geeks."
[Montgomery/KansasCityStar/26November2007]
Iran 'Nuclear Spy' Cleared. An Iranian ex-nuclear negotiator has been cleared of espionage, the judiciary announced on Tuesday, contradicting charges from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the official was a spy. The investigating magistrate found that accusations against Hossein Moussavian of espionage and holding classified documents were not valid, judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi said. However the judge found there was a case over less serious allegations of making "propaganda against the system", he added. "He was facing accusations of espionage, keeping classified documents and propaganda against the system. He was cleared of the first two and guilty of the third."
Moussavian was the spokesman of the moderate nuclear negotiating team that served under president Mohammad Khatami and was replaced when hardliner Ahmadinejad became president in 2005. The former negotiator - who was detained briefly in May but released on bail - is a close ally of Ahmadinejad's great political rival, the pragmatic former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Ahmadinejad and other cabinet members publicly accused Moussavian of being a criminal, amid growing tensions between political factions ahead of March 14 parliamentary elections. The announcement sets up a conflict between the government and the judiciary, which had reacted with barely disguised fury when the president made the accusations against Moussavian. Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie had even said the allegations were "proven" and that Moussavian had passed classified information to the British embassy in Tehran.
Jamshidi said the judge's verdict had been passed on to prosecutors. The case would still go to trial if prosecutors protested the decision, where the final verdict would be made by a trial judge, he added. Earlier a source in the judiciary told AFP: "In the investigation, it was concluded that he committed no crime and a decision was taken not to continue the investigation." But government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham again made no secret of the government's desire to see Moussavian in the dock.
After his release on bail, Moussavian's case disappeared from view for several months until Ahmadinejad on November 12 accused critics of "pressuring the judge to acquit a spy" in a security case.
Moussavian, also a former ambassador to Germany, is now the deputy head of a research institute led by Hassan Rowhani, who was Iran's top nuclear negotiator at the time and has since been bitterly critical of Ahmadinejad.
The judiciary is led by Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, a cleric renowned for his knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence who has sought to bring greater transparency to the judiciary in his time in office. Shahroudi has also strongly
criticized Ahmadinejed's style of governance and wholesale sacking of officials who do not share his hardline views.
[AFP/27November2007]
Life Sentence for American in Espionage Case Upheld. A DOHA appeals court yesterday upheld the verdict of a lower court sentencing a senior American engineer with Qatar Petroleum (QP) to life imprisonment and subsequent deportation, following his conviction of espionage. The lower court, giving its verdict in February, had said that John Wesley Downs, 52, had endangered Qatar's national economic security by attempting to sell information about the North Field energy project to officials of a foreign embassy. The project is jointly administered by Qatar and Iran.
The lawyer of the American said that he had already filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, Qatar's highest legal authority. Commenting on the decision, the lawyer told Gulf Times that his client had not been given all his rights and that some vital technical details were not discussed in the trial. The defendant's lawyer reiterated that the information which his client allegedly tried to sell was not classified.
A senior Qatar government minister had testified in the lower court that the QP employee had access to "very sensitive information". The lower court heard that if the information had been handed over, the cost to the national economy of Qatar could have been several billion riyals.
The American was arrested on August 26, 2005 after he arranged to pick up an envelope containing $1,000 near a lamppost in the West Bay area. The public prosecution said that the accused thought that the money was from the foreign embassy and was a "good intention gesture". It was alleged that he had collected the sensitive material over a period of time and stood to make a huge amount of money. It was also revealed that he was about to move to Saudi Arabia after being with Qatar Petroleum since 1997.
Sources said that the motivation behind his action was dissatisfaction with his end of service benefit. According to sources, state security police had got wind of his plan and had put the accused under surveillance. Following the arrest, police discovered a compact disc containing highly sensitive classified data at the defendant's home. Colleagues at Qatar Petroleum told the court that Downs gained access to their passwords in order to collect secret information about the project.
Downs, who left the courtroom in shock and refused to comment following the sentencing, only narrowly avoided the death penalty when one of the three judges vetoed it, the source said. A court source said it was irrelevant that the employee was apprehended before the information had been handed over. "The criminal intention is what really matters in such a case," the source said.
[Abuzant/GulfTimes/27November2007]
Albania Debates Former Spy Files. Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha has exchanged accusations with the opposition over a proposed bill that would disclose the identities of members of the communist-era secret police. Berisha argued that the Socialist opposition - the successor to the communist era's ruling Albanian Workers' Party - was eager to see the bill go through only because of an ongoing power struggle inside the party. Berisha's claim was an apparent reference to the difficulties the Socialist leader, Edi Rama, has been facing from his party's old guard, whose roots go back to communist times. The centre-right prime minister was angered by the Socialists' tactics of delaying a debate on the 2008 budget by initiating the discussion on the former secret police files. The Socialists reacted to the prime minister's statements by saying they were designed to set the parliamentary agenda.
Albania is one of only a handful of formerly communist-ruled countries where such files have not yet been opened to the public.
During the 40-year rule of the dictator, Enver Hoxha, which ended with his death in 1985, the Albanian secret police, or Sigurimi, is believed to have been responsible for the imprisonment, torture and execution of thousands of real and imaginary opponents of the communist regime.
[BalkanInvestigativeReportingNetwork/26November2007]
Iraqi 'Sleeper' Spy Given 4 Years Prison. Although admitting he wasn't "very effective" as a spy, a federal judge sentenced a Des Plaines man to four years in prison for his role as an Iraqi "sleeper" secretly placed in Chicago for Saddam Hussein's spy service.
Sami Khoshaba Latchin, 61, was convicted by a federal jury in April. Latchin, who worked for American Airlines at O'Hare Airport, had lied about his intelligence links with the former government in Iraq and made false statements to U.S. immigration officials when he applied for naturalization in 1998.
Now Latchin faces deportation - which the federal government wants - and Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer said she will decide soon on what role she has in revoking his citizenship.
[Fleming/SunTimes/27November2007]
Intelligence Bill May Hinge On Immunity For Telecoms. An intelligence bill the Senate is scheduled to take up after it returns Dec. 3 would block Americans from learning details of any warrantless surveillance program the federal government conducted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the American Civil Liberties Union says. The bill would grant immunity from lawsuits to communications companies for any "intelligence activity involving communications" that was "designed to detect or prevent a terrorist attack" or attack preparations. Telecoms would need to show they received a "written request or directive" from the administration vouching that the programs were "lawful" to stop lawsuits.
Liz Rose, spokeswoman for the Washington office of the ACLU, says the language is a "blank check" that would cover not only a warrantless wiretapping program the Bush administration has acknowledged but any unconfirmed or previously unknown program. Last year, USA TODAY and other media reported that some U.S. telecoms also shared customer calling information with the National Security Agency as part of an anti-terrorism program that the administration has not confirmed.
The Bush administration has acknowledged that intelligence agencies conducted warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. callers in touch with foreign terrorists from Sept. 11, 2001, until last January, when the program was placed under the supervision of the nation's secret foreign intelligence court. The administration says the intercepts were authorized by a post-9/11 congressional resolution that allows the president to defend the nation against terrorists.
Last year's USA TODAY report indicated the sharing of calling records was to analyze them to determine patterns to detect possible terrorism networks.
The bill is carefully written to avoid confirming the existence of the domestic caller program, says Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department lawyer now in private practice in Washington.
Neither the Bush administration nor telecom companies have confirmed the existence of the domestic caller program and have not commented on statements that link the program to requests for retroactive immunity.
The news accounts prompted at least 40 lawsuits against telecommunications companies by privacy groups representing telecom customers. At the insistence of Bush and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, language granting the telecoms immunity retroactive to Sept. 11, 2001, has been inserted into a larger bill regulating how intelligence is gathered against Americans who communicate with foreign targets or who are traveling abroad.
Such immunity is necessary, McConnell has said, to prevent the telecoms from being bankrupted and to encourage them to continue to cooperate with intelligence agencies. Bush has said he will veto any intelligence bill that does not include retroactive immunity. A House bill approved Nov. 15 included future immunity for telecoms that support authorized programs but not retroactive immunity. In the Senate, committees have split on how to handle immunity. In October, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved a bill that included retroactive immunity. This month, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send a bill to the floor that lacked such a provision. The Senate is scheduled to take up both bills, with the bill containing the immunity provision going first. Both bills would also place more intelligence surveillance under the oversight of the nation's secret intelligence court.
Missouri Sen. Kit Bond, the Senate Intelligence Committee's top Republican, said pulling retroactive immunity "will likely unravel" the entire surveillance bill. "The stakes are too high to let that happen."
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., promised to lead a filibuster to block approval of retroactive immunity. "Retroactive immunity set the terrible precedent that breaking the law is permissible and companies need not worry about the privacy of their customers," Feingold said.
[Willing/USAToday/27November2007]
Russia Okays Blackberry Use. Russia's secret services have authorized the use of Blackberry phones by civilians, provided users inform the services that they are using a Blackberry. The Blackberry, produced by Canada-based company Research in Motion, can be used in Russia but the service has been restricted because the Federal Security Service (FSB) cannot gain access to the system.
Yekaterina Osadchaya, a spokeswoman for VimpelCom, said that the company would have to inform the FSB on Blackberry users and that the service could not be used by any executives or officials with access to state secrets.
Under a decree from President Vladimir Putin, the FSB has wide powers to tap into telephone, mobile phone, fax and Internet communications in Russia without prior authorization from a judge.
[MNWeekly/29November2007]
Former Russian FSB officer Trepashkin Released Nov. 30. Former security service officer Mikhail Trepashkin, who had been convicted of divulging state secrets, was released on 30 November when his four-year prison term expired, a spokesman for the local FSB department said Thursday.
A military court in Moscow sentenced Trepashkin to four years in jail on May 19, 2004. The court said that while serving with the KGB and later as an officer with its successor organization, the Federal Security Service (FSB), from 1984 to 1997, Trepashkin made copies of internal documents and stored them at home. On July 17, the European Court of Human Rights partially upheld Trepashkin's appeal ordering Russia to pay 3,000 euros compensation, but made no ruling on a second claim related to illegal possession of weapons as Trepashkin had been cleared of this charge and received 70,000 rubles ($2,750) compensation from the Russian state.
[EnRian/29November2007]
CIA Foresees Reduced Declassification, New Loopholes. The Central Intelligence Agency anticipates declining productivity in its declassification program, according to a newly disclosed declassification plan.
Between 1995 and 2006, CIA reviewed nearly 97 million pages of 25 year old documents and released 30 million pages, the Agency reported. But that level of activity is unlikely to be sustained. "Resource constraints limit our ability to implement the detailed - and expensive - review intrinsic to a redaction strategy [in which individual words or passages are deleted from a particular page] and drive us in the direction of a document-level pass-fail system [in which an entire document is either fully released or fully withheld], which significantly reduces the number of documents that can be released."
Nor is CIA willing to permit other government agencies to review its records for possible release, which would be one way to optimize the declassification process. "CIA has no plans to delegate broad declassification authority to other government agencies. In fact, CIA has rescinded past arrangements under which it delegated limited declassification authority to NARA," the CIA declassification plan noted.
In a previously unreported step that further limits disclosure, the CIA has devised a new loophole in the automatic declassification requirements of the executive order on classification policy. In CIA's reading, a 25 year old document is not considered "historically valuable," and therefore subject to automatic declassification, unless and until it is no longer in use. But if the document is still in active use, the CIA says, it does not qualify as historically valuable for purposes of declassification no matter how historically significant it may be.
"Surveys of records in the D/CIA and the Directorate of Intelligence areas indicate that certain of these records, while containing pre-1982 materials, are still in use and therefore remain unretired." Such records, CIA says, will only be subject to automatic declassification requirements "when and if [they] are retired permanently."
"Many of CIA's methods, techniques, and operations over 25 years old are still active," the plan notes. "In some cases, currently inactive sources and methods may be reactivated."
The CIA Declassification Plan was submitted to the Information Security Oversight Office in April 2006. It was approved for release in October 2007 with limited redactions in response to a request from researcher Michael Ravnitzky. A copy of the document is here.
[SecrecyNews/30November2007]
Japan Cuts Chinese Navy Tour Due to US Spy Concerns. Japan cancelled a tour for visiting Chinese sailors of an advanced Aegis-equipped warship due to US concern that Beijing could gather confidential information. Japanese and US officials both denied the report in the Yomiuri Shimbun, which said the Chinese naval crew had been slated to visit Japan's Aegis-equipped Kirishima warship on Friday.
The Shenzhen destroyer with more than 300 sailors is this week paying the first port call by communist China's navy to Japan in the latest effort by the Asian powers to repair relations.
The Aegis system - seen as Japan's top line of defense against a potential North Korean attack - has a cutting-edge radar and can launch missiles at more than 10 targets at one time.
The US military, which protects Japan under a security alliance, and the US embassy intervened to cancel the tour of the Kirishima, which is based in Yokosuka south of Tokyo, the Yomiuri said, quoting unnamed sources. Kyodo News, in a similar report, said that the defense ministry decided to show the Chinese visitors a supply ship instead.
US embassy spokesman David Marks denied the reports, saying it was up to Japan to decide to offer tours of its navy, which the officially pacifist nation calls the Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force (JMSDF). Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba also denied the story, telling reporters: "I haven't heard that we were planning to show an Aegis warship." A defence ministry spokeswoman said the choice of ship was determined based on vessels' training schedules.
The United States has voiced concern this year after a Japanese petty officer allegedly obtained confidential data of the Aegis system. The officer's wife is Chinese, raising worries about possible espionage.
[AFP/30November2007]
Ex-Taiwan Spy Held for "Exposing." Taiwan authorities have arrested a former intelligence official and confiscated the first run of his book on national security, citing illegal release of state secrets, but the writer denied releasing anything confidential. Police took 500 copies of Thirty Years in Intelligence from a distributor and 17 more from the publisher, Taiwan Elite Press, after warning the writer to drop the book.
Book seizures are rare in Taiwan, where laws protect freedom of expression. But the government also tries to keep details of its foreign relations confidential.
Author Shiau Tai-fu said the 458-page Chinese-language book was not an "expose", but drew on his three decades working as state security deputy director. But some passages criticize the use of confidential funds by President Chen Shui-bian, who was elected in 2000 and whose wife is now on trial for alleged improper use of state funds.
A state security spokesman said his agency warned Shiau in October not to publish the book. He would not say what aspect of the book risked leaking secrets or whether politics was a consideration. The case rests now with prosecutors, he said.
[GulfDailyNews/30November2007]
Former Head of South African Spy Agency Acquitted. Former spy boss Billy Masetlha was found not to have contravened the Intelligence Oversight Act by the Hatfield Community Court in Pretoria. His acquittal on charges of withholding information - on a botched attempt by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) to spy on businessman Saki Macozoma - from Inspector General of Intelligence (IGI) Zolile Ngcakani was greeted by loud applause from the public gallery.
Masetlha throughout denied guilt and was adamant that the inspector general was furnished with all the information needed.
Magistrate Dreyer van der Merwe ruled that the former director general of the NIA should receive the benefit of the doubt and be acquitted. Van der Merwe ruled that it was probable that Masetlha did send a report to Ngcakani, although the IGI might not have seen it.
Masetlha, along with IT specialist Muziwendoda Kunene and former NIA manager for electronic surveillance Funokwakhe Madlala, is still facing charges of fraud in the Pretoria Commercial Crimes Court.
The charges relate to alleged hoax emails implicating senior African National Congress members in a conspiracy against former deputy president Jacob Zuma.
[Mail&Guardian/28November2007]
Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE
How to Meet Our Nation's Challenges, By Robert Gates (from the Landon Lecture Series, 27 November 2007). Looking around the world today, optimism and idealism would not seem to have much of a place at the table. There is no shortage of anxiety about where our nation is headed and what its role will be in the 21st century. But I can remember clearly other times in my life when such dark sentiments were prevalent. In 1957, when I was at Wichita High School East, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, and Americans feared being left behind in the space race and, even more worrisome, the missile race.
In1968, the first full year I lived in Washington, was the same year as the Tet offensive in Vietnam, where American troop levels and casualties were at their height. Across the nation, protests and violence over Vietnam engulfed America's cities and campuses. On my second day of work as a CIA analyst, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. And then came the 1970s - when it seemed that everything that could go wrong for America did.
Yet, through it all, there was another storyline, one not then apparent. During those same years, the elements were in place and forces were at work that would eventually lead to victory in the Cold War - a victory achieved not by any one party or any single president, but by a series of decisions, choices, and institutions that bridged decades, generations, and administrations. From the first brave stand taken by Harry Truman with the doctrine of containment to the Helsinki Accords under Gerald Ford; to the elevation of human rights under Jimmy Carter; to the muscular words and deeds of Ronald Reagan; and to the masterful endgame diplomacy of George H. W. Bush. All contributed to bring an Evil Empire crashing down not with a bang but with a whimper. And virtually without a shot being fired.
In this great effort, institutions, as much as people and policies, played a key role. Many of those key organizations were created 60 years ago this year with the National Security Act of 1947 - a single act of legislation which established the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, the United States Air Force, and what is now known as the Department of Defense. I mention all this because that legislation and those instruments of national power were designed at the dawn of a new era in international relations for the United States - an era dominated by the Cold War.
The end of the Cold War, and the attacks of September 11, marked the dawn of another new era in international relations - an era whose challenges may be unprecedented in complexity and scope. In important respects, the great struggles of the 20th century - World War I and World War II and the Cold War - covered over conflicts that had boiled and seethed and provoked war and instability for centuries before 1914: ethnic strife, religious wars, independence movements, and, especially in the last quarter of the 19th century, terrorism. The First World War was, itself, sparked by a terrorist assassination motivated by an ethnic group seeking independence.
These old hatreds and conflicts were buried alive during and after the Great War. But, like monsters in science fiction, they have returned from the grave to threaten peace and stability around the world. Think of the slaughter in the Balkans as Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s. Even now, we worry about the implications of Kosovo's independence in the next few weeks for Europe, Serbia, and Russia. That cast of characters sounds disturbingly familiar even at a century's remove. The long years of religious warfare in Europe between Protestant and Catholic Christians find eerie contemporary echoes in the growing Sunni versus Shia contest for Islamic hearts and minds in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, and Southwest Asia.
We also have forgotten that between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, two American presidents and one presidential candidate were assassinated or attacked by terrorists - as were various tsars, empresses, princes, and, on a fateful day in June 1914, an archduke. Other acts of terrorism were commonplace in Europe and Russia in the latter part of the 19th century.
So, history was not dead at the end of the Cold War. Instead, it was reawakening with a vengeance. And, the revived monsters of the past have returned far stronger and more dangerous than before because of modern technology - both for communication and for destruction - and to a world that is far more closely connected and interdependent than the world of 1914.
Unfortunately, the dangers and challenges of old have been joined by new forces of instability and conflict, among them a new and more malignant form of global terrorism rooted in extremist and violent jihadism; new manifestations of ethnic, tribal, and sectarian conflict all over the world; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; failed and failing states; states enriched with oil profits and discontented with the current international order; and centrifugal forces in other countries that threaten national unity, stability, and internal peace - but also with implications for regional and global security.
Worldwide, there are authoritarian regimes facing increasingly restive populations seeking political freedom as well as a better standard of living. And finally, we see both emergent and resurgent great powers whose future path is still unclear.
One of my favorite lines is that experience is the ability to recognize a mistake when you make it again. Four times in the last century the United States has come to the end of a war, concluded that the nature of man and the world had changed for the better, and turned inward, unilaterally disarming and dismantling institutions important to our national security - in the process, giving ourselves a so-called "peace" dividend. Four times we chose to forget history.
After September 11th, the United States re-armed and again strengthened our intelligence capabilities. It will be critically important to sustain those capabilities in the future - it will be important not to make the same mistake a fifth time.
But, my message today is not about the defense budget or military power. My message is that if we are to meet the myriad challenges around the world in the coming decades, this country must strengthen other important elements of national power both institutionally and financially, and create the capability to integrate and apply all of the elements of national power to problems and challenges abroad. In short, based on my experience serving seven presidents, as a former Director of CIA and now as Secretary of Defense, I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use "soft" power and for better integrating it with "hard" power.
One of the most important lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that military success is not sufficient to win: economic development, institution-building and the rule of law, promoting internal reconciliation, good governance, providing basic services to the people, training and equipping indigenous military and police forces, strategic communications, and more - these, along with security, are essential ingredients for long-term success. Accomplishing all of these tasks will be necessary to meet the diverse challenges I have described. So, we must urgently devote time, energy, and thought to how we better organize ourselves to meet the international challenges of the present and the future - the world you students will inherit and lead.
I spoke a few moments ago about the landmark National Security Act of 1947 and the institutions created to fight the Cold War. In light of the challenges I have just discussed, I would like to pose a question: if there were to be a "National Security Act of 2007," looking beyond the crush of day-to-day headlines, what problems must it address, what capabilities ought it create or improve, where should it lead our government as we look to the future? What new institutions do we need for this post Cold War world?
What we consider today to be the key elements and instruments of national power trace their beginnings to the mid-1940s, to a time when the government was digesting lessons learned during World War II. Looking back, people often forget that the war effort - though victorious - was hampered and hamstrung by divisions and dysfunction. Franklin Roosevelt quipped that trying to get the Navy, which was its own cabinet department at the time, to change was akin to hitting a featherbed: "You punch it with your right and you punch it with your left until you are finally exhausted," he said, "and then you find the damn bed just as it was before." And Harry Truman noted that if the Navy and Army had fought as hard against the Germans as they had fought against each other, the war would have been over much sooner.
This record drove the thinking behind the 1947 National Security Act, which attempted to fix the systemic failures that had plagued the government and military during World War II - while reviving capabilities and setting the stage for a struggle against the Soviet Union that seemed more inevitable each passing day. The 1947 Act acknowledged that we had been over-zealous in our desire to shut down capabilities that had been so valuable during the war - most of America's intelligence and information assets disappeared as soon as the guns fell silent. The Office of Strategic Services - the war intelligence agency - was axed, as was the Office of War Information. In 1947, OSS returned as CIA, but it would be years before we restored our communications capabilities by creating the United States Information Agency.
There is in many quarters the tendency to see that period as the pinnacle of wise governance and savvy statecraft. As I wrote a number of years ago, "Looking back, it all seem[ed] so easy, so painless, so inevitable." It was anything but.
Consider that the creation of the National Military Establishment in 1947 - the Department of Defense - was meant to improve unity among the military services. It didn't. A mere two years later the Congress had to pass another law because the Joint Chiefs of Staff were anything but joint. And there was no chairman to referee the constant disputes.
At the beginning, the Secretary of Defense had little real power - despite an exalted title. The law forbad him from having a military staff and limited him to three civilian assistants. These days, it takes that many to sort my mail. Throughout the long, twilight struggle of the Cold War, the various parts of the government did not communicate or coordinate very well with each other. There were military, intelligence, and diplomatic failures in Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Grenada, and many other places. Getting the military services to work together was a recurring battle that had to be addressed time and again, and was only really resolved by legislation in 1986.
But despite the problems, we realized, as we had during World War II, that the nature of the conflict required us to develop key capabilities and institutions - many of them non-military. The Marshall Plan and later the United States Agency for International Development acknowledged the role of economics in the world; the CIA the role of intelligence; and the United States Information Agency the fact that the conflict would play out as much in hearts and minds as it would on any battlefield.
The key, over time, was to devote the necessary resources - people and money - and get enough things right while maintaining the ability to recover from mistakes along the way. Ultimately, our endurance paid off and the Soviet Union crumbled, and the decades-long Cold War ended.
However, during the 1990s, with the complicity of both the Congress and the White House, key instruments of America's national power once again were allowed to wither or were abandoned. Most people are familiar with cutbacks in the military and intelligence - including sweeping reductions in manpower, nearly 40 percent in the active army, 30 percent in CIA's clandestine service and spies.
What is not as well-known, and arguably even more shortsighted, was the gutting of America's ability to engage, assist, and communicate with other parts of the world - the "soft power," which had been so important throughout the Cold War. The State Department froze the hiring of new Foreign Service officers for a period of time. The United States Agency for International Development saw deep staff cuts - its permanent staff dropping from a high of 15,000 during Vietnam to about 3,000 in the 1990s. And the U.S. Information Agency was abolished as an independent entity, split into pieces, and many of its capabilities folded into a small corner of the State Department.
Even as we throttled back, the world became more unstable, turbulent, and unpredictable than during the Cold War years. And then came the attacks of September 11, 2001, one of those rare life-changing dates, a shock so great that it appears to have shifted the tectonic plates of history. That day abruptly ended the false peace of the 1990s as well as our "holiday from history." As is often the case after such momentous events, it has taken some years for the contour lines of the international arena to become clear. What we do know is that the threats and challenges we will face abroad in the first decades of the 21st century will extend well beyond the traditional domain of any single government agency.
The real challenges we have seen emerge since the end of the Cold War - from Somalia to the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere - make clear we in defense need to change our priorities to be better able to deal with the prevalence of what is called "asymmetric warfare." As I told an Army gathering last month, it is hard to conceive of any country challenging the United States directly in conventional military terms - at least for some years to come. Indeed, history shows us that smaller, irregular forces - insurgents, guerrillas, terrorists - have for centuries found ways to harass and frustrate larger, regular armies and sow chaos.
We can expect that asymmetric warfare will be the mainstay of the contemporary battlefield for some time. These conflicts will be fundamentally political in nature, and require the application of all elements of national power. Success will be less a matter of imposing one's will and more a function of shaping behavior - of friends, adversaries, and most importantly, the people in between.
Arguably the most important military component in the War on Terror is not the fighting we do ourselves, but how well we enable and empower our partners to defend and govern themselves. The standing up and mentoring of indigenous army and police - once the province of Special Forces - is now a key mission for the military as a whole. But these new threats also require our government to operate as a whole differently - to act with unity, agility, and creativity. And they will require considerably more resources devoted to America's non-military instruments of power.
So, what are the capabilities, institutions, and priorities our nation must collectively address - through both the executive and legislative branches, as well as the people they serve?
I would like to start with an observation. Governments of all stripes seem to have great difficulty summoning the will - and the resources - to deal even with threats that are obvious and likely inevitable, much less threats that are more complex or over the horizon. There is, however, no inherent flaw in human nature or democratic government that keeps us from preparing for potential challenges and dangers by taking far-sighted actions with long-term benefits. As individuals, we do it all the time. The Congress did it in 1947. As a nation, today, as in 1947, the key is wise and focused bipartisan leadership - and political will.
I mentioned a moment ago that one of the most important lessons from our experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere has been the decisive role reconstruction, development, and governance plays in any meaningful, long-term success.
The Department of Defense has taken on many of these burdens that might have been assumed by civilian agencies in the past, although new resources have permitted the State Department to begin taking on a larger role in recent months. Still, forced by circumstances, our brave men and women in uniform have stepped up to the task, with field artillerymen and tankers building schools and mentoring city councils - usually in a language they don't speak. They have done an admirable job. And as I've said before, the Armed Forces will need to institutionalize and retain these non-traditional capabilities - something the ROTC cadets in this audience can anticipate.
But it is no replacement for the real thing - civilian involvement and expertise. A few examples are useful here, as microcosms of what our overall government effort should look like - one historical and a few contemporary ones.
However uncomfortable it may be to raise Vietnam all these years later, the history of that conflict is instructive. After first pursuing a strategy based on conventional military firepower, the United States shifted course and began a comprehensive, integrated program of pacification, civic action, and economic development. The CORDS program, as it was known, involved more than a thousand civilian employees from USAID and other organizations, and brought the multiple agencies into a joint effort. It had the effect of, in the words of General Creighton Abrams, putting "all of us on one side and the enemy on the other." By the time U.S. troops were pulled out, the CORDS program had helped pacify most of the hamlets in South Vietnam.
The importance of deploying civilian expertise has been relearned - the hard way - through the effort to staff Provincial Reconstruction Teams, first in Afghanistan and more recently in Iraq. The PRTs were designed to bring in civilians experienced in agriculture, governance, and other aspects of development - to work with and alongside the military to improve the lives of the local population, a key tenet of any counterinsurgency effort. Where they are on the ground - even in small numbers - we have seen tangible and often dramatic changes. An Army brigade commander in Baghdad recently said that an embedded PRT was "pivotal" in getting Iraqis in his sector to better manage their affairs.
We also have increased our effectiveness by joining with organizations and people outside the government - untapped resources with tremendous potential. For example, in Afghanistan the military has recently brought in professional anthropologists as advisors. The New York Times reported on the work of one of them, who said, "I'm frequently accused of militarizing anthropology. But we're really anthropologizing the military." And it is having a very real impact. The same story told of a village that had just been cleared of the Taliban. The anthropologist pointed out to the military officers that there were more widows than usual, and that the sons would feel compelled to take care of them - possibly by joining the insurgency, where many of the fighters are paid. So American officers began a job training program for the widows.
Similarly, our land-grant universities have provided valuable expertise on agricultural and other issues. Texas A&M has had faculty on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2003. And Kansas State is lending its expertise to help revitalize universities in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif, and working to improve the agricultural sector and veterinary care across Afghanistan. These efforts do not go unnoticed by either Afghan citizens or our men and women in uniform.
I have been heartened by the works of individuals and groups like these. But I am concerned that we need even more civilians involved in the effort and that our efforts must be better integrated. And I remain concerned that we have yet to create any permanent capability or institutions to rapidly create and deploy these kinds of skills in the future. The examples I mentioned have, by and large, been created ad hoc - on the fly in a climate of crisis. As a nation, we need to figure out how to institutionalize programs and relationships such as these. And we need to find more untapped resources - places where it's not necessarily how much you spend, but how you spend it.
The way to institutionalize these capabilities is probably not to recreate or repopulate institutions of the past such as AID or USIA. On the other hand, just adding more people to existing government departments such as Agriculture, Treasury, Commerce, Justice and so on is not a sufficient answer either - even if they were to be more deployable overseas. New institutions are needed for the 21st century, new organizations with a 21st century mind-set.
For example, public relations was invented in the United States, yet we are miserable at communicating to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and a culture, about freedom and democracy, about our policies and our goals. It is just plain embarrassing that al-Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the internet than America. As one foreign diplomat asked a couple of years ago, "How has one man in a cave managed to out-communicate the world's greatest communication society?" Speed, agility, and cultural relevance are not terms that come readily to mind when discussing U.S. strategic communications.
Similarly, we need to develop a permanent, sizeable cadre of immediately deployable experts with disparate skills, a need which President Bush called for in his 2007 state of the union address, and which the State Department is now working on with its initiative to build a civilian response corps. Both the President and Secretary of State have asked for full funding for this initiative. But we also need new thinking about how to integrate our government's capabilities in these areas, and then how to integrate government capabilities with those in the private sector, in universities, in other non-governmental organizations, with the capabilities of our allies and friends - and with the nascent capabilities of those we are trying to help.
Which brings me to a fundamental point. Despite the improvements of recent years, despite the potential innovative ideas hold for the future, sometimes there is no substitute for resources - for money. Funding for non-military foreign-affairs programs has increased since 2001, but it remains disproportionately small relative to what we spend on the military and to the importance of such capabilities. Consider that this year's budget for the Department of Defense - not counting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan - is nearly half a trillion dollars. The total foreign affairs budget request for the State Department is $36 billion - less than what the Pentagon spends on health care alone. Secretary Rice has asked for a budget increase for the State Department and an expansion of the Foreign Service. The need is real.
Despite new hires, there are only about 6,600 professional Foreign Service officers - less than the manning for one aircraft carrier strike group. And personnel challenges loom on the horizon. By one estimate, 30 percent of USAID's Foreign Service officers are eligible for retirement this year - valuable experience that cannot be contracted out.
Overall, our current military spending amounts to about 4 percent of GDP, below the historic norm and well below previous wartime periods. Nonetheless, we use this benchmark as a rough floor of how much we should spend on defense. We lack a similar benchmark for other departments and institutions.
What is clear to me is that there is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security - diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development. Secretary Rice addressed this need in a speech at Georgetown University nearly two years ago. We must focus our energies beyond the guns and steel of the military, beyond just our brave soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen. We must also focus our energies on the other elements of national power that will be so crucial in the coming years.
Now, I am well aware that having a sitting Secretary of Defense travel halfway across the country to make a pitch to increase the budget of other agencies might fit into the category of "man bites dog" - or for some back in the Pentagon, "blasphemy." It is certainly not an easy sell politically. And don't get me wrong, I'll be asking for yet more money for Defense next year.
Still, I hear all the time from the senior leadership of our Armed Forces about how important these civilian capabilities are. In fact, when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen was Chief of Naval Operations, he once said he'd hand a part of his budget to the State Department "in a heartbeat," assuming it was spent in the right place.
After all, civilian participation is both necessary to making military operations successful and to relieving stress on the men and women of our armed services who have endured so much these last few years, and done so with such unflagging bravery and devotion. Indeed, having robust civilian capabilities available could make it less likely that military force will have to be used in the first place, as local problems might be dealt with before they become crises.
A last point. Repeatedly over the last century Americans averted their eyes in the belief that remote events elsewhere in the world need not engage this country. How could an assassination of an Austrian archduke in unknown Bosnia-Herzegovina effect us? Or the annexation of a little patch of ground called Sudetenland? Or a French defeat at a place called Dien Bien Phu? Or the return of an obscure cleric to Tehran? Or the radicalization of an Arab construction tycoon's son? What seems to work best in world affairs, historian Donald Kagan wrote in his book On the Origins of War, "Is the possession by those states who wish to preserve the peace of the preponderant power and of the will to accept the burdens and responsibilities required to achieve that purpose."
In an address at Harvard in 1943, Winston Churchill said, "The price of greatness is responsibility . . . The people of the United States cannot escape world responsibility." And, in a speech at Princeton in 1947, Secretary of State and retired Army general George Marshall told the students: "The development of a sense of responsibility for world order and security, the development of a sense of overwhelming importance of this country's acts, and failures to act, in relation to world order and security - these, in my opinion, are great musts for your generation."
Our country has now for many decades taken upon itself great burdens and great responsibilities - all in an effort to defeat despotism in its many forms or to preserve the peace so that other nations, and other peoples, could pursue their dreams. For many decades, the tender shoots of freedom all around the world have been nourished with American blood. Today, across the globe, there are more people than ever seeking economic and political freedom - seeking hope even as oppressive regimes and mass murderers sow chaos in their midst - seeking always to shake free from the bonds of tyranny.
For all of those brave men and women struggling for a better life, there is - and must be - no stronger ally or advocate than the United States of America. Let us never forget that our nation remains a beacon of light for those in dark places. And that our responsibilities to the world - to freedom, to liberty, to the oppressed everywhere - are not a burden on the people or the soul of this nation. They are, rather, a blessing.
I will close with a message for students in the audience. The message is from Theodore Roosevelt, whose words ring as true today as when he delivered them in 1901. He said, "...as, keen-eyed, we gaze into the coming years, duties, new and old, rise thick and fast to confront us from within and from without...[The United States] should face these duties with a sober appreciation alike of their importance and of their difficulty. But there is also every reason for facing them with high-hearted resolution and eager and confident faith in our capacity to do them aright." He continued, "A great work lies ready to the hand of this generation; it should count itself happy indeed that to it is given the privilege of doing such a work."
To the young future leaders of America here today, I say, "Come do the great work that lies ready to the hand of your generation."
[RealClearPolitics/26November2007]
Section III - CAREERS, REQUESTS FOR ASSISTANCE, BOOK REVIEWS, OBITUARIES AND COMING EVENTS
Looking for Civil
Engineering Position: Question: Do any of our members know of a job opening or possibility for a courageous Iraqi
interpreter, civil engineer, and co-organizer of the resurrected Iraqi Boy Scout and Girl Guide program that now has 250,000 boys and girls registered in the
18 Iraqi provinces?
The individual was my Deputy Community Affairs Director in Baghad and served with me and my successors from early 2004 through August 2007. He and his wife and five children arrived here in Virginia (Fredericksburg) on 9-11-07.
He has a Civil Engineering degree from the UK and is fluent in English and Arabic. Computer literate, highly reliable and honest. Was a community leader who assisted Shi'ia, Sunni, Christians, Kurds, men, women, children and was targeted for assassination as a result of his work on behalf of others. He greatly assisted me, and protected me during my otherwise unescorted travels around Baghdad for more than a year, so if there is anything we here can do for him and his family, he is deserving of our aid.
Please send replies to Chip Beck at beckchip@aol.com.
Need Help on serving papers to Cuba. I am currently a member of the Maine AFIO and am seeking assistance on how to serve papers to Cuba. We have tried sending return receipt twice, but nothing happens. We have been trying for five months now. If any member can help I would appreciate it.
Sherry Sullivan,
PO Box 513,
Stockton Springs, Maine 04981 call
(207) 567-4098 or email her at sassully@roadrunner.com
Looking for Publications on CIA Activities in Haiti. Can anyone recommend a publication that offers a balanced account of the Agency's activities in Haiti during Aristide's regime? Thanks, Jim Patten, Member # 447. jamespatten@webtv.net
Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power in American National Security, by Richard K. Betts.
The tragic events of September 11, 2001, and the false assessment of Saddam Hussein's weapons arsenal were terrible reminders that good information is essential to national security. These failures convinced the American public that their intelligence system was broken and prompted a radical reorganization of agencies and personnel, but as Richard K. Betts argues in this book, critics and politicians have severely underestimated the obstacles to true reform.
One of the nation's foremost political scientists, Betts draws on three decades of work within the U.S. intelligence community to illuminate the paradoxes and problems that frustrate the intelligence process. Unlike America's efforts to improve its defenses against natural disasters, strengthening its strategic assessment capabilities means outwitting crafty enemies who operate beyond U.S. borders. It also requires looking within to the organizational and political dynamics of collecting information and determining its implications for policy.
Combining academic research with personal experience, Betts outlines strategies for better intelligence gathering and assessment. He describes how fixing one malfunction can create another; in what ways expertise can be both a vital tool and a source of error and misjudgment; the pitfalls of always striving for accuracy in intelligence, which in some cases can render it worthless; the danger, though unavoidable, of "politicizing" intelligence; and the issue of secrecy - when it is excessive, when it is insufficient, and how limiting privacy can in fact protect civil liberties.
Betts argues that when it comes to intelligence, citizens and politicians should focus less on consistent solutions and more on achieving a delicate balance between conflicting requirements. He also emphasizes the substantial success of the intelligence community, despite its well-publicized blunders, and highlights elements of the intelligence process that need preservation and protection. Many reformers are quick to respond to scandals and failures without detailed, historical knowledge of how the system works. Grounding his arguments in extensive theory and policy analysis, Betts takes a comprehensive and realistic look at how knowledge and power can work together to face the intelligence challenges of the twenty-first century.
[ColumbiaUniversityPress/published
September2007]
Former KGB Chief Kryuchkov, Aged 83. Vladimir Kryuchkov, the former head of the Soviet KGB and a ringleader in an attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, has died. He was 83.
Kryuchkov "died Friday evening in Moscow, 23 November," ITAR-TASS quoted the Foreign Intelligence Service as saying. Interfax reported that Kryuchkov had suffered from an unidentified long-term illness.
As KGB chairman, Kryuchkov led a coup by the self-described "Emergency Committee" against Gorbachev in August 1991. The failed attempt to take over the failing Soviet regime ended after three days and the Soviet Union collapsed in December of the same year. Kryuchkov was sacked and arrested after the coup, then later pardoned.
Kryuchkov began his rise as a diplomat. He served in Hungary under then ambassador Yury Andropov, a future Soviet leader, during the brutal suppression by Soviet forces of a 1956 uprising. In 1967 Kryuchkov joined the KGB and in 1988 he became KGB chairman.
[AFP/27November2007]
The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals announces the following upcoming chapter events:
EVENTS IN COMING TWO MONTHS OF 2007....
4
December 2007 - Columbia, MD - The fascinating tradecraft techniques of
the infamous Walker-Whitworth Espionage Case, is the theme of the
National Cryptologic Museum Foundation's Seventh Annual Pearl Harbor
Commemorative Lecture. Do Not Miss This One.
The
Walker-Whitworth perfidy is the subject of the National Cryptologic
Museum Foundation's Seventh Annual Pearl Harbor Commemorative Lecture.
Most Americans are familiar with the details of the December 7, 1941
attack on Pearl Harbor and its impact on the nation, but few realize
the perilous position the country was in for a period of twenty years
where -- had the Soviet Union chosen to attack the us -- their
knowledge of our codes would have resulted in the immediate destruction
of one leg of the nuclear Triad - the US nuclear submarine force. Made
possible because of the traitorous activities of four Americans - John
Walker, his brother, Arthur, John's son, Michael, and John's friend,
Jerry Whitworth - who stole and sold over one million classified
documents to the KGB between 1968 and 1985.
The presentation at this NCMF lecture will feature tradecraft,
operations, motivations, and the ultimate downfall of the
Walker-Whitworth Spies as observed by FBI Special Agent Gerald B.
Richards. Richards -- now retired -- had been assigned to the FBI
laboratory where he specialized in document and photograph examinations
and espionage tradecraft. During the Walker-Whitworth investigation he
examined hundreds of items including documents, film, cameras,
photographs and espionage "concealment" items.
Plan to attend on 04 December for what promises to be an informative
and alarming presentation about this little known "potential 'Pearl
Harbor'." The program will be held at the L3 Communications Maryland
Conference Center in the National Business Park, 9891 Brokenland,
Columbia, MD 21046, from 1030-1330 hours.
Send $15.00 by 29 November to by check to NCMF, POB 1682, Ft. Meade, MD 20755. Questions? Call 301-688-5436.
4
- 5 December 2007, 7:30 am - 5 pm - Washington, DC - Blackwater
Worldwide hosts "Public/Private Partnership in Peacekeeping" Conference. This
theme will look at those areas where the military and government can
use private sector expertise to successfully accomplish security and
reconstruction operations. To most effectively and efficiently
accomplish stability and reconstruction missions requires using the
most appropriate skill sets. Frequently those skill sets reside in the
private sector. To best use the taxpayer’s resources may require
leveraging the private sector. Event being held at Ronald Reagan Bldg
& International Trade Center, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington,
DC 20004, Business Attire. Fees: Military or Government $295.00;
Industry $395.00.
Registration or more info: http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Agenda.aspx?i=9ac7f55c-1cdd-4b29-8e59-d47f4e34bf45 or write to events@blackwaterusa.com
11 December, 2007 - Tampa, FL - Suncoast AFIO meeting. For more information contact Don White, DonWhite@tampabay.rr.com.
Friday,
4 January 2008, 5:30 - 9 pm - New York, NY - AFIO NY Metro Chapter
hosts Prof. Arthur Hulnick, former CIA, on "Intelligence Reform: Fix,
Fizzle or Flop?" Congress passed and the President signed the "Intelligence Reform & Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004" in late 2004 largely as a result of the 9/11 Commission Report, a report that was completed in July 2004. This "Act" was activated in April 2005, creating the Director of National Intelligence and an agency that now has about 1500. employees and is headed currently by John McConnell. Now almost 2 1/2 years later, how effective has this effort been? Professor Hulnick is uniquely qualified to discuss this issue. His talk will be a fascinating insight into whatever progress has been accomplished to date as well as providing suggestions for future actions.
Professor Hulnick's published his first book "Fixing the Spy Machine" in 1999. In 2004, he published his second book about the CIA "Keeping US Safe: Secret Intelligence and Homeland Security." This latter book examines what is really necessary to make intelligence and homeland security more efficient and competent, both within the United States and abroad.
Location: Club Quarters, 40 W 45 St. Cost: $40.00 per person. Payable in advance by check to Jerry Goodwin, 530 Park Avenue New York, NY 10021. Cash payment accepted at the door. No credit cards. Reservations Not Required: Refreshments After the Meeting. Jerry Goodwin, President, AFIO - New York Metropolitan Chapter, 212-308-1450 More information available from afiometro@yahoo.com
Friday, 25 January 2008 - McLean, VA - AFIO National Winter Luncheon - Details to follow
2 February 2008 -
Indian River, FL - Florida Satellite Chapter Luncheon. The next luncheon for the Florida Satellite Chapter, AFIO will be on 2 February 2008 (Saturday), at the Indian River Country Colony Club (IRCC). There will be a cash bar beginning at 11:30 a.m. and a 12:30 p.m. lunch. The luncheon speaker will be COL Harry Pawlak, USAF Retired. COL Pawlak (a Chapter member) will speak about his involvement in a Recon Mission in Asia. He was forced to land in a hostile area without radio communications and walked almost three weeks before being picked up. The luncheon cost is $17.00. There will be a beef entr�e or fish entr�e option. Contact George Stephenson (Vice President) at
gstephenson@cfl.rr.com for reservation information. Please put AFIO in the subject block to insure the e-mail will be opened. Col Pawlak is currently President of Matrix Management LTD.
For Additional Events two+ months or greater....view our online Calendar of Events
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