AFIO Weekly Intelligence Notes #47-07 dated 17 December 2007

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CONTENTS

Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

• Intel Oversight Critical, Officials Say
• Korean-American's Spy Conviction Stands
• US Man Sentenced to 18 Months in Saddam Regime Espionage Case
• Argentina, Venezuela Criticize US Over 'Spy' Arrests
• Spy Agencies Outdo Air Force In Getting Satellite Funding
• China Link Suspected In Lab Hacking
• Canadian Report Says: Use Spies to Collect Foreign Intelligence or Rely on Unreliable Allies
• Former Boeing Subsidiary Employee Claims Company Flew Secret CIA Torture Missions
• Iran Protests to Azerbaijan Over Spy Trial
• Germany Says Large Number of Russian Spies in Germany
• Chinese Cyberwarfare
• MI6 Asks For Secrecy Order in Murder Trial of Financial Trader
• Engineer Indicted On Spying

Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

• CIA Has Recruited Iranians To Defect
• A FISA Fix

Section III - TERRORISM

• Top British Terror Suspect Escapes

Section IV - BOOKS AND COMING EVENTS

Books 

• Book Exposes Coward's Double Life as Secret Agent - The Letters of Noel Coward, by Noel Coward, edited by Barry Day

Coming Events

2007-2008 Events...

• 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?"
• 8 January 2008 - McLean, VA- 10am-4pm- TECHEXPO Top Secret Hiring Event - Active Security Clearance Required
• 10 January 2008 – San Francisco – The AFIO Jim Quesada Chapter hosts Col. Vance E. Purvis, Chief, Security and law Enforcement, US Army Corps of Engineers.
• 10 January 2008 - Linthinicum, MD - 10am-4pm - TECHEXPO Top Secret Hiring Event -Active Security Clearance Required
• Sunday, 13 January 2008 1100 – 1330 - Beachwood, OH - AFIO Northern Ohio Chapter hosts a special cinema brunch to view: “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices From the Muslim Center”
• 19 January 08 - Kennebunk, ME - The Maine Chapter of AFIO (affectionately referred to as MAFIO) will have Tyler S. Drumheller, 25 year career employee of the Central Intelligence Agency as guest.
• Tuesday, 22 January 2008, 6:30 pm – Washington, DC - LA Times reporter Bob Drogin, and Tyler Drumheller, former chief of CIA covert operations in Europe present Curveball: Inside the WMD Debacle at the Spy Museum.
• 23 January 2008- Phoenix, AZ - The Arizona AFIO Chapter luncheon features Dr. Richard Post, former CIA.
• Thursday, 24 January 2008, 12 noon – 1 pm – Washington, DC – Free author lunchtime debriefing and book signing – Ronald Kessler – author of The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack at the Spy Museum.
• Friday, 25 January 2008 - McLean, VA - AFIO National Winter Luncheon - Details to follow
• 30 January 2008 - Colorado Springs, CO - 10am-4pm -TECHEXPO Top Secret Hiring Event - Active Security Clearance Required
• Wednesday, 30 January 2008, 6:30 pm – Washington, DC – “Spies on Screen” - The Lives of Others – Burton Gerber, retired CIA case officer, at the Spy Museum.
• 2 February 2008 - Indian River, FL - Florida Satellite Chapter Luncheon
• 5 - 6 February 2008 - San Diego, CA - 9am-4pm - TechExpo WEST 2008 Top Secret Two-Day Hiring Event
• Tuesday, 5 February 2008, 6:30 pm – Washington, DC – “Mata Hari and Houdini: Entertaining Spies” – authors Pat Shipman and William Kalush at the Spy Museum.
• Sunday, 10 February 2008 1030 – 1330 - Beachwood, OH - AFIO Northern Ohio Chapter hosts Timothy R. Walton, author, CIA and Navy Veteran on "24 Years with the CIA."
• Thursday, 21 February 2008, 12 noon – 1 pm – Washington, DC – author debriefing and book signing – Pete Earley author of Comrade J, at the Spy Museum.
• 22-23 February 2008 - Baltimore, MD - 3rd International Conference on "Ethics in the Intelligence Community."
• Thursday, 20 March 2008, 6:30 pm – Washington, DC – “The Bomber Behind the Veil: Muslim Women and Violent Jihad” – Farhana Ali, Rand Corp. policy analyst, at the Spy Museum.
  

Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Intel Oversight Critical, Officials Say. Top U.S. military and intelligence officials met recently in Texas to discuss privacy rights among other topics during an intelligence oversight conference. Intelligence, North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command officials among others met to discuss Department of Defense agencies that conduct intelligence and how to give proper oversight during an evolving technological environment, U.S. Northern Command reported.

"Intelligence oversight is a keystone of U.S. Northern Command's mission; it is mission critical," NORAD/USNORTHCOM Director of Intelligence Michael Noll said in a statement. "A significant failure of intelligence oversight would be, at a minimum, an intelligence mission failure and possibly a command mission failure. "Our structure for approaching intelligence oversight is fairly straight forward: it is a tripod - the judge advocates help us understand law and policy, the intelligence directorate trains its personnel and executes the program and our inspector general inspects the program."

Officials called safeguarding the privacy rights of U.S. persons critical to the Defense Department and that the intelligence oversight program is an effort to "ensure that all military intelligence, counterintelligence, and intelligence related activities are conducted in accordance with applicable laws, presidential executive orders and Department of Defense directives and regulations," the release said. [UPI/13December2007] 

Korean-American's Spy Conviction Stands. South Korea's Supreme Court upheld a lower court's seven-year sentence against a Korean-American convicted of spying for North Korea. Jang Min-ho, a 45-year-old naturalized Korean-American whose English name is Michael Jang, and four others were convicted earlier this year of running a spy ring since 2002 at the North's behest and passing on secrets to the communist country. The four others received sentences ranging from three to four years.

While there have been recent, dramatic moves toward reconciliation between North and South Korea, the court said in a written ruling that the North "shows no clear signs that it completely abandons its policy of a communist-led unification aimed at toppling our free and democratic regime." [AP/14December2007] 

US Man Sentenced to 18 Months in Saddam Regime Espionage Case. A man convicted of spying for Saddam Hussein's former regime and sharing information with the executed Iraqi dictator's intelligence service was sentenced to 18 months in prison, federal prosecutors said. Ghazi Al-Awadi, 78, a naturalized US citizen born in Iraq, pleaded guilty in July to acting as an agent of the government of Iraq under Saddam's regime. 

The government said that between May and November 2002, the Dearborn, Michigan man obtained information about people and groups opposed to Saddam and then provided that information to the Iraqi Intelligence Service. [Jpost/13December2007] 

Argentina, Venezuela Criticize US Over 'Spy' Arrests. U.S. prosecutors have announced the arrests of four men linked to a scandal involving an alleged campaign payment from Venezuela to Argentina. The governments of the South American nations have denounced the U.S. probe as a political attack by Washington. Federal prosecutors announced the arrests of three Venezuelans and a Uruguayan man accused of acting as undeclared agents of the Caracas government. U.S. authorities say the men came to Miami to pressure another man, Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, to conceal the fact that the money for a Venezuelan political campaign donation came from Venezuela's state oil company.

Antonini, who has American and Venezuelan citizenship, has been at the center of the scandal since he was caught in Argentina in August with a briefcase containing $800,000 in cash. He arrived in Miami shortly after the incident, and Argentina has asked for his extradition as part of an investigation into the money.

U.S. prosecutors say conversations between Antonini and some of the four men revealed that the money was intended for the presidential campaign of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Ms. Kirchner took over the presidency earlier this week, succeeding her husband, Nestor Kirchner. In Buenos Aires, she denounced the accusations as an attempt to damage her new presidency. President Kirchner said the attacks against her will fail, and that she may be a woman, but she will not allow others to pressure her. She also vowed to maintain close ties with Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, a fierce critic of U.S. policy in the region.

In Caracas, Venezuela's foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro, said the U.S. probe is an attempt to damage relations between Venezuela and its Latin American partners.

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack rejected allegations the operation was anything more than a criminal investigation.

The four men arrested in Miami face a fine and up to 10 years in prison if convicted on charges of acting as undeclared foreign agents. Officials say they are looking for a fifth suspect in the case. U.S. authorities have filed no charges against Antonini, whose attorney says he was unaware of the money in his luggage. [Wagner/VOANews/13December2007] 

Spy Agencies Outdo Air Force In Getting Satellite Funding. U.S. intelligence agencies are quietly spending about $7.5 billion to build a pair of older-technology spy satellites, people familiar with the matter said, at a time when more-technically-advanced military satellite projects are faltering because of budget cuts.

The classified spy project is headed by Lockheed Martin Corp. and isn't detailed in public budget documents. The price is almost double what previous spy-satellite projects are believed to have cost. The Air Force has had difficulty moving advanced projects, and the new spending highlights how control of such projects is moving away from the Air Force and toward intelligence officials.

The project is on a fast track primarily because it is designed to plug potential gaps in space-based surveillance networks, the people familiar with the matter said. The first of two massive satellites, which will replace a failed Boeing Co. project and are based on technology from the 1980s and 1990s, is slated to be put into operation by the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO, as early as 2010, these people said. The project has been approved by congressional intelligence committees.

A Lockheed spokesman and a spokeswoman for the NRO declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for the Director of National Intelligence.

After unsuccessful attempts to fashion joint military-intelligence satellite projects, the Air Force appears to be losing clout in creating and deploying advanced spy systems. "The way forward is really being discussed" among the intelligence agencies and "largely outside" of typical Air Force acquisition channels, Gen. Robert Kehler, the new head of Air Force Space Command, said in a recent interview.

The trend gained momentum in 2006, after Pentagon and intelligence officials canceled a big chunk of work on a troubled Boeing spy-satellite contract. The project was as much as $5 billion over budget. [Pasztor/WallStreetJournal/7December2007] 

China Link Suspected In Lab Hacking. A cyber attack reported by one of the federal government's nuclear weapons laboratories may have originated in China, according to a confidential memorandum distributed to public and private security officials by the Department of Homeland Security.

Security researchers said the memorandum included a list of Web and Internet addresses that were linked to locations in China. However, they noted that such links did not prove that the Chinese government or Chinese citizens were involved in the attacks. In the past, intruders have compromised computers in China and then used them to disguise their true location.

Officials at the lab, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, said the attacks did not compromise classified information, though they acknowledged that they were still working to understand the full extent of the intrusion.

The Department of Homeland Security distributed the confidential warning to computer security officials on Wednesday after what it described as a set of "sophisticated attempts" to compromise computers used by the private sector and the government.

Government computer security officials said the warning, which was issued by the United States Computer Emergency Response Team, known as US-CERT, was related to an October attack that was also disclosed last week by officials at the Oak Ridge laboratory. According to a letter to employees written by the laboratory's director, Thom Mason, an unknown group of attackers sent targeted e-mail messages to roughly 1,100 employees as part of the ruse.

In a statement posted on the laboratory's Web site, the agency stated: "The original e-mail and first potential corruption occurred on October 29, 2007. We have reason to believe that data was stolen from a database used for visitors to the Laboratory."

The laboratory said the attackers were able to gain access to a database containing personal information about visitors to the laboratory going back to 1990.

The US-CERT advisory, which was not made public, stated: "The level of sophistication and the scope of these cyber security incidents indicate that they are coordinated and targeted at private sector systems." The US-CERT memo referred to the use of e-mail messages that fool employees into clicking on documents that then permit attackers to plant programs in their computers. These programs are then able to copy and forward specific data - like passwords - to remote locations.

Despite improvements in computer security, phishing attacks are still a big problem. In the case of the Oak Ridge intrusion, the e-mail messages were made to seem authentic. One described a scientific conference and another referred to a Federal Trade Commission complaint.

Computer security researchers cautioned that despite the US-CERT description of the attacks as sophisticated, such threats are frequently undertaken by amateur computer hackers.

Classified federal computer networks are not supposed to be physically connected to the open Internet. Even so, sensitive data like employee e-mail databases can easily be compromised once access is gained to computers inside federal agencies. [Markoff/NewYorkTimes/8December2007] 

Canadian Report Says: Use Spies to Collect Foreign Intelligence or Rely on Unreliable Allies. A new report is urging the Canadian government to start using its own spies to collect foreign intelligence instead of relying on possibly "misleading or biased" information from allies. The report, commissioned by the Canadian Defense and Foreign Affairs Institute, says allied intelligence is "collected by them for their own reasons, not Canada's." The report's author, University of Calgary Prof. Barry Cooper, says that compromises Canadian sovereignty. He says it also helps ensure that Canadian foreign policy remains reactive and renders the country a "soft target" for espionage and terrorist activity. His report calls for the creation of a Canadian foreign intelligence service - separate from CSIS - that uses agents, or spies, to collect secret foreign intelligence. 

Canada is the only G8 nation unable to use agents to gather foreign intelligence.

The Conservatives promised in the 2006 election campaign to create a foreign spy agency but there has been little talk and no apparent movement on the issue since.  [CanadianPress/15December2007] 

Former Boeing Subsidiary Employee Claims Company Flew Secret CIA Torture Missions. A former employee of a Boeing subsidiary accused of helping the CIA secretly fly terrorism suspects to overseas prisons where they were tortured says the company didn't try to hide what it was doing. That revelation comes through court papers filed in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against the company.

The government has asked a federal judge to throw out the suit against Jeppesen Dataplan on grounds that a trial could reveal government secrets. The ACLU counters that the program has already been made public by "documentary evidence and eyewitness testimony." The civil liberties group provides testimony from a former Jeppesen employee who recalls a company official telling workers about the so-called "torture flights." He quotes the official as saying the flights paid well.
[FoxNews/15December2007] 

Iran Protests to Azerbaijan Over Spy Trial. Iran angrily protested to Azerbaijan and summoned its ambassador over "baseless" accusations that Iranian secret services were plotting a coup in the former Soviet republic.

A court in Azerbaijan on December 10 convicted a group of more than a dozen people on charges that they had been cooperating with Iranian special services to mount a coup against the government of President Ilham Aliyev. "It is a baseless allegation leveled at the Islamic Republic of Iran," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters. "Unfortunately it is supported by wide propaganda." The alleged chief plotter Said Dadashbeyli was sentenced to 14 years in prison while 14 others were handed sentences of between two and 14 years. Members of the group were arrested in January and charged with high treason, plotting a coup, being in possession of illegal weapons and manufacturing false documents. No other details of the alleged plot have emerged. The verdict was announced after a two-month trial held behind closed doors on state security grounds.

The Iranian foreign ministry also summoned the Azeri ambassador to Tehran Abbasali Hassanov, calling for a formal apology from Azeri officials for the statements made against Iran, the official IRNA agency reported.

Hosseini blamed Iran's foreign enemies for plotting to damage the ties between Iran and its fellow Shiite northern neighbor. [AFP/15December2007] 

Germany Says Large Number of Russian Spies in Germany. Every third Russian diplomat who is accredited in Germany is a spy and leading secret service agent, Germany's domestic Verfassungsschutz intelligence agency (BfV) announced on 15 December. Some 120 out of a total of 360 Russian diplomats stationed in Germany are employed by Russia's foreign SWR secret service, the federal FSB counter-intelligence agency and the military GRU secret service.

The top German intelligence official stressed that Russia's secret service apparatus was still placing "highest priority on all facets of political espionage."

According to the BfV official, Russia's political espionage is focusing on German foreign, domestic and economic policies as well as the nation's security and energy, NATO and European policies.

Russian secret service agents are reportedly pinpointing German lawmakers and members of their bureaus as well as political parties and foundations for their spying activities. [IRNA/15December2007] 

Chinese Cyberwarfare. Congress passed legislation this week requiring the Pentagon to report on China's growing computer-warfare capabilities when producing assessments of Chinese military power.

The fiscal 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, passed on 14 December 2007 by the House, contains a provision requiring the annual Military Power of the People's Republic of China report to include a new section on Beijing's "efforts to acquire, develop and deploy cyberwarfare capabilities" in its assessments of China's "asymmetric" warfare capabilities.

The legislation comes as reports of aggressive Chinese military-origin computer hacking were detected in recent months at U.S. defense and military sites in the United States and Europe. The Department of Homeland Security earlier this month sent out a circular that warned about a sophisticated computer attack on Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in October that it said likely originated in China.

U.S. intelligence officials said China's military has a large-scale program to attack U.S. computer systems, both military and civilian, as part of efforts to cripple war-fighting capabilities in a conflict. The efforts include the use of viruses, prepositioned electronic network doors and denial-of-service attacks. The Chinese military also conducts intelligence-gathering through computer penetrations.

The cyberwarfare provision is part of the $696 billion bill that is expected to be passed by the Senate and then signed by the president in the next few days. The House-Senate conference report also contains language expressing concerns about the large-scale Chinese military buildup.

China could become a military competitor, and the report noted China's anti-satellite-weapon test in January and the provocative surfacing of a Chinese submarine near the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk in October 2006 "demonstrated such potential."

Congress called on the secretary of defense "to expand efforts to develop an accurate assessment and understanding of China's strategic military modernization and strategic intentions, particularly with regard to its sea- and space-based strategic capabilities," the report said, in what defense officials said is a slap at poor U.S. intelligence assessments of China's military.  [Gertz/WashingtonTimes/15December2007] 

MI6 Asks For Secrecy Order in Murder Trial of Financial Trader. The Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, is behind a virtually unprecedented attempt to hold a British murder trial in secret. The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has been asked to sign a public interest immunity certificate - a gagging order - at the request of the agency, which is responsible for spying and recruiting agents abroad. It is also involved in money laundering investigations.

Wang Lam, 45, a financial trader from Hampstead, north-west London, who was arrested in Switzerland, is accused of murdering an 86-year-old recluse, Allan Chappelow, who lived in the Hampstead area. The body was discovered after �10,000 reportedly went missing from the victim's bank account.

A secret hearing at the high court last week was adjourned until the new year. The Crown Prosecution Service will then apply for the entire trial, or large parts of it, to be held with press and public excluded. The CPS refused yesterday to confirm the reason for its rare application, and the Home Office refused to comment on reports that the defendant had acted as an informant.

The CPS said the move was "in the interests of justice" and the Home Office said it would not talk about PII certificates. Although MI6 is answerable to the foreign secretary, Smith was asked to sign the PII certificate because the Home Office is responsible for the conduct of criminal trials in the UK. Lam is defended by Kirsty Brimelow and Geoffrey Robertson QC, who came to prominence in the 1992 Matrix Churchill case, in which PII certificates were involved. In that case defendants were cleared of charges of arms dealing with Iraq, after disclosure of their links with British intelligence.

PII certificates are generally used to conceal evidence involving national security, intelligence methods, or undercover informants. It is extremely unusual to attempt to keep secret an entire trial, especially when it is not a spy case.

The trial judge can refuse to accept the reasons for a PII certificate, if the defence asks for the trial to take place in public in the normal way. It is also open to the media to challenge such a secrecy order. [Leigh&Norton-Taylor/TheGuardian/15December2007] 

Engineer Indicted On Spying. A former U.S. defense contractor spent more than two years working with China's military to design and test a radar-evading component for a new Chinese cruise missile as part of an espionage conspiracy, according to a federal indictment.

The indictment of Noshir S. Gowadia, an Indian-born engineer, was submitted to U.S. District Court in Hawaii in October and states he worked closely with a Chinese government agent and missile technicians to illegally supply the stealth-missile technology during six visits to China between 2003 and 2005.

The new indictment added two additional counts to two earlier federal charge sheets in the case and states Mr. Gowadia conspired with Wong Tong-ming, an agent working for Beijing's Foreign Experts Bureau, and others to supply defense technology secrets for cash. The men set up "covert e-mail addresses" that were used to send classified defense data as part of the cruise missile conspiracy, according to the indictment.

Mr. Gowadia worked at Northrop Grumman from 1968 to 1986 and participated in developing the still-secret propulsion system used on the B-2 stealth bomber. He later worked as a defense contractor.

The indictment provides the first details on how Mr. Gowadia purportedly helped build China's new land-attack cruise missile in exchange for $110,000.

China's stealth cruise missile is a new strategic weapon that is a key element of China's major military build-up.

According to the indictment, Mr. Gowadia designed the new missile to be capable of evading U.S. air-to-air missiles. The indictment revealed that Mr. Gowadia's work on the exhaust nozzle between April 2004 and June 2004 used U.S. data to show the exact "lock on range" of the new Chinese missile from a pursuing U.S. air-to-air missile.

The new indictment includes 21 counts of conspiracy to commit espionage, violations of arms export control laws, unlawful retention and transmission of defense information, money laundering and tax evasion.

Mr. Gowadia pleaded not guilty to the charges. His trial is set for Oct. 7. [Gertz/WashingtonTimes/12December2007] 

Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

CIA Has Recruited Iranians To Defect. The CIA launched a secret program in 2005 designed to degrade Iran's nuclear weapons program by persuading key officials to defect, an effort that has prompted a "handful" of significant departures, current and former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation say. The previously undisclosed program, which CIA officials dubbed "the Brain Drain," is part of a major intelligence push against Iran ordered by the White House two years ago. 

Intelligence gathered as part of that campaign provided much of the basis for a U.S. report released last week that concluded the Islamic Republic had halted its nuclear weapons work in 2003. Officials declined to say how much of that intelligence could be attributed to the CIA program to recruit defectors. 

Although the CIA effort on defections has been aimed in part at gaining information about Tehran's nuclear capabilities, its goal has been to undermine Iran's emerging capabilities by plucking key scientists, military officers and other personnel from its nuclear roster. Encouraging scientists and military officers to defect has been a hallmark of CIA efforts against an array of targets since the height of the Cold War. But officials said those programs did not generally seek to degrade the target's capabilities, suggesting that U.S. officials believe Iran's nuclear know-how is still thin enough that it can be depleted.

The program has had limited success. Officials said that fewer than six well-placed Iranians have defected, and that none has been in a position to provide comprehensive information on Tehran's nuclear program. 

The CIA effort reflects the urgency with which the U.S. government has sought to slow down Iran's nuclear advances, as well as the importance Washington attaches to finding human sources who can help fill intelligence gaps left by high-tech collection methods such as satellites and electronic eavesdropping equipment. The program was described by officials on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the effort. 

The White House ordered the stepped-up effort in hopes of gathering stronger evidence that Tehran was making progress toward building a nuclear bomb. The Bush administration "wanted better information" on Iran's nuclear programs, said a U.S. official briefed on the expanded collection efforts. "I can't imagine that they would have ever guessed that the information they got would show that the program was shut down," the official said. 

That was the central finding of the comprehensive intelligence report released last week. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran contradicted previous intelligence assessments and undercut assertions by the Bush administration. The new report, which represents the consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, also concluded that Tehran "at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons" and continuing to pursue civilian nuclear energy technologies that could help it make a bomb. 

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the effort to cultivate defectors, saying "the agency does not comment on these kinds of allegations as a matter of course."

White House reversal

The administration's decision to step up intelligence collection on Iran in 2005 was a reversal from a position the White House took after President Bush was first elected. Former CIA officials said that the agency had built up a large Iran Task Force, made up of nearly 100 officers and analysts at headquarters, by the end of the Clinton administration. But that office shrank to fewer than a dozen officers early in the Bush administration, when the White House ordered resources shifted to other targets. 

"When Bush came in, they were totally disinterested in Iran," said a former CIA official who held a senior position at the time. "It went from being a main focus to everything being switched to Iraq." 

Asked about decisions to reduce the size of the Iran Task Force, CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said: "Iran has been an issue of priority to the United States for a long time. You shouldn't assume that a single unit of any size reflects the complete level of effort. That would be a mistake." 

Even as the task force shrank, officials said, other CIA units, including its counter-proliferation division, continued to track Iran's procurement networks and other targets.

Some of that reduced task force capacity has been restored, former CIA officials said. Two years ago, the agency created an Iran division within its overseas spying operations, applying to a single country resources and emphasis usually reserved for multinational regions. 

The stepped-up effort went beyond the CIA, and has also involved the National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on other countries' communications, and the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates spy satellites. 

The defector program was put in place under CIA Director Porter J. Goss, who has since left. The agency compiled a list of dozens of people to target as potential defectors based on a single criterion, according to a former official involved in the operation: "Who, if removed from the program, would have the biggest impact on slowing or stopping their progress?" 

The rewards for defectors can be substantial, including relocation to another country and lifetime financial support.

In the two years since it was launched, the program has led to carefully orchestrated extractions of a small group of Iranian officials who operated in the mid- to upper tiers of the Islamic Republic's nuclear programs. 

None of those who defected was considered essential to the nuclear program, nor were they able to provide comprehensive descriptions of Iran's efforts, officials said.

"Did they have replacements for these people? Any country would have," the former official involved in the operation said. "But we did slow the program." 

The identities of the defectors have been carefully protected. However, there was speculation this year of CIA involvement in the apparent defection of a former Iranian deputy defense minister, Ali Reza Asgari, who went missing in February during a visit to Turkey. 

At the time, Iran's top police chief was quoted in the official news agency as saying that Asgari probably had been kidnapped by operatives working for Western intelligence services. Asgari was believed to have extensive knowledge of Iran's conventional weapons program as well as its ties to the militant Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

But Asgari was not thought to be involved in Iran's nuclear program, and the CIA, when pressed by congressional officials about the matter, adamantly denied involvement in the Iranian general's disappearance. 

Officials declined to discuss the whereabouts of the defectors, or details regarding the methods used to approach them. The former senior U.S. intelligence official said that potential defectors had not been approached directly by the CIA, but through other contacts the agency has cultivated inside the country. 

Often, the former official said, there are as many as "three degrees of separation" between agency personnel and those targeted for approach, and that each of those interim contacts had to be thoroughly vetted before a planned approach was approved. Those who have left Iran have been debriefed and relocated either by the CIA or with the help of allied intelligence services, the former official said. 

The CIA program was implemented after significant debate between the White House and the agency over its size and scope, officials said. National Security Council officials urged the CIA to make the program as broad as possible, and to spread word through Iranian networks that the United States was prepared to help officials leave the country and relocate. 

But CIA officials fought to keep the program narrowly targeted to avoid catching the attention of Iran's intelligence service. Even at that, CIA officials assumed that Iran's service was keeping close watch on key officials in the nuclear program, and that potential defectors could be decoys. 

The "Brain Drain" program is among the latest in a long series of efforts to shore up U.S. intelligence on Iran. It was launched at a time when a presidential commission was preparing a scathing report on the inadequacies of U.S. intelligence on Iran and other nations suspected of having nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

U.S. intelligence officials said the information that surfaced this summer prompting the reevaluation of Tehran's nuclear weapons program centered on intercepts of Iranian government officials' conversations and the seizure of a journal that contained notes documenting the country's decision to shut down its weapons research. 

During a briefing with reporters last week, a senior U.S. intelligence official said that Iran was "the hardest intelligence target there is."

"I mean, by comparison, North Korea is an open and transparent society," the official said. 

History of setbacks

U.S. intelligence on Iran has been beset by setbacks stretching back more than two decades. The CIA has had no permanent presence in the country since the United States broke diplomatic ties with the country - and removed embassy personnel, as well as CIA officials who operated under diplomatic cover - after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 

Afterward, the agency began recruiting sources in Europe and elsewhere, in cities where there are large populations of Iranian expatriates who travel to and from the country. But the effort has been marked by failures. 

In 1989, Iran's intelligence services broke up a network of agents in the country that was being directed by a CIA station in Germany known as "Tefran," for Tehran-Frankfurt. When that station was shut down, much of the collection work was shifted to Los Angeles, where there is a large population of Iranian immigrants, many of whom visit their home country. [Miller/LATimes/9December2007] 

A FISA Fix. [The following article is by Michael B. Mukasey, the Attorney General of the United States.] One of the most critical matters facing Congress is the need to enact long-term legislation updating our nation's foreign intelligence surveillance laws. Intercepting the communications of terrorists and other intelligence targets has given us crucial insights into the intentions of our adversaries and has helped us to detect and prevent terrorist attacks. 

Until recently, our surveillance efforts were hampered by the unintended consequences of an outdated law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was enacted in 1978 to establish a system of judicial approval for certain intelligence surveillance activities in the United States. 

The requirement that a judge issue an order before communications can be intercepted serves important purposes when the target of the surveillance is a person in our country, where constitutional privacy interests are most significant. The problem, however, was that FISA increasingly had come to apply to the interception of communications of terrorists and other intelligence targets located overseas. In FISA, Congress had embedded the crucial distinction between whether targets are inside or outside our country, but did so using terms based on the technology as it existed then. However, revolutionary changes in communications technology in the intervening years have resulted in FISA applying more frequently to surveillance directed at targets overseas. The increased volume of applications for judicial orders under FISA impaired our ability to collect critical intelligence, with little if any corresponding benefit to the privacy of people in the U.S.

This summer, Congress responded by passing the Protect America Act. That law, passed with significant bipartisan support, authorized intelligence agencies to conduct surveillance targeting people overseas without court approval, but it retained FISA's requirement that a court order be obtained to conduct electronic surveillance directed at people in the United States. As J. Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, stated, the new law closed dangerous gaps that had developed in our intelligence collection. Congress, however, set the act to expire on Feb. 1, 2008. 

It therefore is vital that Congress put surveillance of terrorists and other intelligence targets located overseas on surer institutional footing. The Senate Intelligence Committee has crafted a bill that would largely accomplish that objective. Recognizing the uncommon complexity of this area of the law, the committee held numerous hearings on the need to modernize FISA, received classified briefings on how various options would affect intelligence operations and discussed key provisions with intelligence professionals and with national security lawyers inside and outside government. This thorough process produced a balanced bill approved by an overwhelming, and bipartisan, 13-2 vote. 

The Senate Intelligence Committee's bill is not perfect, and it contains provisions that I hope will be improved. However, it would achieve two important objectives. First, it would keep the intelligence gaps closed by ensuring that individual court orders are not required to direct surveillance at foreign targets overseas. 

Second, it would provide protections from lawsuits for telecommunications companies that have been sued simply because they are believed to have assisted our intelligence agencies after the 9/11 attacks. The bill does not, as some have suggested, provide blanket immunity for those companies. Instead, a lawsuit would be dismissed only in cases in which the attorney general certified to the court either that a company did not provide assistance to the government or that a company had received a written request indicating that the activity was authorized by the president and determined to be lawful. 

It is unfair to force such companies to face the possibility of massive judgments and litigation costs, and allowing these lawsuits to proceed also risks disclosure of our country's intelligence capabilities to our enemies. Moreover, in the future we will need the full-hearted help of private companies in our intelligence activities; we cannot expect such cooperation to be forthcoming if we do not support companies that have helped us in the past. 

The bill that came out of the Senate Intelligence Committee was carefully crafted and is a good starting point for legislation. Unfortunately, there are two other versions of the bill being considered that do not accomplish the two key objectives. The House of Representatives recently passed a version that would significantly weaken the Protect America Act by, among other things, requiring individual court orders to target people overseas in order to acquire certain types of foreign intelligence information. Similarly, the Senate Judiciary Committee made significant amendments to the Senate Intelligence Committee's bill that would have the collective effect of weakening the government's ability to effectively surveil intelligence targets abroad. 

Moreover, neither the House bill nor the Senate Judiciary Committee's version addresses protection for companies that face massive liability. Both the Senate Judiciary Committee amendments and the House bill passed largely on party lines, and the full Senate will be debating this issue shortly. 

Congress must choose how to correct critical shortcomings in our foreign intelligence surveillance laws. It is a time for urgency: The Protect America Act expires in just two months, and we cannot afford to allow dangerous gaps in our intelligence capabilities to reopen. But this is also a time of opportunity, when we can set aside political differences to develop a long-term, bipartisan solution to widely recognized deficiencies in our national security laws. When Congress returns to this challenge, it should continue on the course charted by the Senate Intelligence Committee. [Mukasey/LATimes/12December2007] 

Section III - TERRORISM

Top British Terror Suspect Escapes. The alleged British terrorist mastermind behind a plot to simultaneously blow up at least 10 transatlantic airliners in an atrocity that had the potential to dwarf 11 September escaped from a court in Pakistan. Rashid Rauf slipped his handcuffs and fled after appearing at a court in Islamabad, Pakistan, where his lawyers were protesting against requests for his extradition. 

Rashid Rauf's escape now threatens to spark a major diplomatic row by re-igniting questions about why Pakistan's authorities had not approved his extradition, despite repeated requests from Britain dating back more than a year. Britain has been at pains to claim that Pakistan's President, Pervez Musharraf, is a key ally in targeting Islamist terrorism and someone who has played a vital role in sharing information between the countries' intelligence communities. But the fact Rauf was able to escape so easily will raise questions about the security status given to him by the Pakistani authorities.

It is also likely to inflame relations with the US. Pakistani media claims the CIA was preparing to 'render' Rauf when details of the alleged airliner plot emerged in August 2006. Alarmed at the US's attempts to grab Rauf, Britain's intelligence services, who had been monitoring the plot, swooped, arresting more than 20 suspects in the largest security operation of its kind.

Now the news that Rauf is at large threatens tensions between the UK and US authorities who believed their transatlantic counterparts should have moved to pick up the alleged plot's ringleaders far earlier.

Rauf is alleged to have played a key role in presiding over an audacious plot to detonate explosions on 10, possibly more, transatlantic jumbo jets in August 2006. But though picked up by the Pakistan intelligence service, the ISI, before the plot had been made public, Rauf was not extradited to Britain. 

Rauf, who denies any connection with the terrorist plot, was held in Pakistan on charges of being in possession of false identity papers and bomb-making materials. But he was also wanted in the UK for questioning in connection with the murder of his uncle in Birmingham in 2002. It was on these grounds that his extradition was being sought.

Recently there were suggestions that Rauf was to be traded for two terrorist suspects wanted by the Pakistan authorities. Last week the UK arrested Faiz Baluch, 25, and Hyrbyair Marri, 39. The men are alleged to be terrorists who want separation for Baluchistan, a province of Pakistan. The British government said there was no link between its demands for the extradition of Rauf and the pair's arrest.  [TheObserver/Guardian/15December2007] 

Section IV -  BOOKS AND COMING EVENTS

Books

Book Exposes Coward's Double Life as Secret Agent - The Letters of Noel Coward, by Noel Coward, edited by Barry Day.  [Random House, November 2007, 800 pages.] [Random House, November 2007, 800 pages.]