AFIO - Association of Former Intelligence Officers

About AFIO | Chapters & Chapter Activities | Membership | Corporate
Weekly Intelligence Notes
| Event Schedule | Bulletin Board | Book Reviews
Search
| AFIO Store | | Other Intel Sites | Home Page

Weekly Intelligence Notes
28 April 2000

WINs contain intelligence news items and commentaries produced and edited by Roy Jonkers for AFIO members and subscribers. Associate editors Don Harvey and John Macartney contributed to this WIN.

EVERY MEMBER SPONSOR A MEMBER. Check the AFIO Website www.afio.com  for membership details and applications.

BUSINESS ESPIONAGE AND COUNTER ESPIONAGE symposium -- Check website www.afio.com  for information on the AFIO Symposium on in Washington DC on 19 May.

WINs are protected by copyright laws and may not be reproduced except with the permission of the producer/editor  afio@afio.com 

Warning Notice: Perishability of Links:  WINs, sent weekly to members, often contain numerous webpage links to fast-breaking news, documents or other items of interest; unfortunately, after four weeks many of these websites [especially newspaper and other media sites] remove items or shift them into fee-only archives.  This underscores the benefit of receiving the WINs as they are released.
__________________________________________________________________
SECTION I:  CURRENT INTELLIGENCE

RADIATION BOMB MATERIAL SEIZED IN UZBEKISTAN --
Ten lead-lined containers of radioactive material were seized by Uzbekistan's Customs officials at a remote border crossing with Turkmenistan in early April. The ten containers were on their way to Pakistan in a truck loaded with scrap metal driven by an Iranian. The materials were suitable for making a radiation bomb. A radiation bomb is made of conventional explosives and highly radioactive materials [either Cobalt 60, Cesium 137 or Strontium 90] . Although not a nuclear weapon, a radiation bomb exploded above ground to disperse radioactive material would cause huge casualties if located in an urban or crowded environment.
Chechen terrorists first demonstrated the existence of such a weapon in 1995 when they buried a radiation bomb in a Moscow park. To lend credibility to their threat to explode the weapon, a Chechen commander, Shamil Basayev, publicly announced where the bomb was buried. It was subsequently dug up by a specially trained Russian team. Pakistan does not need this kind of material for its nuclear weapons program but could be independently working on radiation-type weapons. One possible use could be in an airburst type warhead on a missile or more simply, implaced by a terrorist in a suitcase. An Islamic terrorist determined to be a martyr would not be greatly concerned with possible radiation leakage from a suitcase.
The border authorities were able to interdict the shipment because the US had provided a few portable radiation detectors to the Uzbeks as part of a program called the Defense Department-Customs Counterproliferation Program. The poorly funded border security program has provided equipment to some 18 countries in the former Soviet Union, Baltic States, Eastern and Central Europe. While the seizure is highly gratifying, it also serves to reinforce concerns about smuggling of such materials. The press accounts did not indicate whether intelligence had alerted the Uzbeks to focus on that particular truck at that crossing. ( Wash. Times 6 Apr '20, p. A15; Wash. Times 10 Apr '20, by Stephen Bryen [former head of the Defense Technology Security Administration]) (Harvey)

US INTERNET INTELLIGENCE --
A new reserve unit that monitors the Defense Department's presence on the World Wide Web has found an astonishing amount of classified or sensitive material on public sites, including material relating to war plans. The Web Risk Assessment Team, established by the Joint Task Force for Computer Network Defense, is made up of reservists who spend one weekend each month scanning DOD Web sites.
To bolster security, the Defense Department is committed to developing a technical architecture that will allow it to disconnect from the Internet, despite criticism it received last year when it first proposed to do so. Links that connect DOD's Non-classified Internet Protocol Routing Network (NIPRNET) with the Internet pose the greatest security challenge, according to Air Force Lt. Gen. John Campbell, commander of the Joint Task Force for Computer Network Defense. The NIPRNET is used mainly for administrative communications.
It has always seemed plain as day (not needing expensive studies) that the only real network security is found in stand-alone databases and networks, with manual connectivity to such general unclassified networks as the internet, giving due consideration to tempest aspects. http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0424/web-dod-04-26-00.asp 
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0424/web-jtfcnd-04-26-00.asp  (Newsbits Levine 04/25)) (Jonkers)

BRITISH INTERNET INTELLIGENCE - Last week's WIN reported that the UK had prevailed upon two US websites (but not a third) to delete compromising material from their sites. MI5 renegade Shayler, now living in France, apparently provided what is said to be a top-secret document that could endanger the lives of covert field operatives. The document, entitled "Libyan Intelligence Service Activity in the UK," which purports to contain details of recent surveillance of Libyan intelligence officers in the United Kingdom, was published April 16 on three U.S. Web sites. The document is said to reveal the identities of a number of covert MI6 and MI5 officers working in Libya. It is classified "Top Secret Delicate Source - UK Eyes Alpha." The classification "UK Eyes Alpha" means the document is restricted even from cooperating intelligence services, such as the CIA.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2555003,00.html 
(Newsbits 04/26 Levine) (Jonkers)

SECTION II:  CONTEXT AND PRECEDENCE

ARMY INTELLIGENCE GENERAL'S CORPORATE ACTIVITIES -- ON THE WAY TO THE PLA? --
Lt. General Claudia Kennedy, US Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, who recently accused a fellow general of 'inappropriate touching' on one occasion some years ago -- (now being investigated by the Army) received further publicity. General Kennedy was reported to have served on the boards of three "for profit" corporations -- two holding companies and one insurance company, all three started by prominent Democratic Party fundraiser Terence McAuliffe, said to be a "close" friend of President Clinton.
General Kennedy's political proximity to the White House should only raise eyebrows among the politically naive -- senior general's promotions and positions are frequently affected by political considerations. Proximity to political fundraising is, however, less understandable. What is truly remarkable in this newspaper report, however, are the alleged judgments by legal counsels, reputed "experts on military ethics."
A former Air Force general counsel, Sheila Cheston, was quoted as saying "I think it's fine," when asked if generals should be directors of FOR-PROFIT corporations. Retired Rear Admiral John Jenkins, former Judge Advocate General of the Navy, also reportedly said he saw no legal or ethical problem with admirals or generals serving on corporate boards of FOR PROFIT corporations. We must assume these counsels were quoted correctly and additionally, that General Kennedy's would not have proceeded unless she had received clearance from the Army Judge Advocate General.
This editor is astounded. In terms of commonly accepted ethics, the code of military honor and law, and a cultural sense of what is done and not done, I have assumed for the past fifty-odd years of service that officers (and generals, admirals or high-ranking civil service professionals in particular) do not mix active Government service with ancillary positions and considerations of what is good for corporation X as distinct from corporation Y -- in the always competitive marketplace.
The Chinese PLA provides a model of where this can lead. PLA generals are deeply involved in arms industries and trading activities. As a result, corruption is endemic, and indeed so pervasive that the communist Chinese Government is now doing its best to get the PLA generals out of business and back to minding military preparedness. It is a trail we do not want to follow, no matter how much our cultural values have changed and are changing. Not good for intelligence, the national defense, the country. (WashPost28 April2000, p. A29) (Jonkers)

VIETNAM OPEN-SOURCE INTELLIGENCE - Senator John McCain finally articulated what many of us see as needed to clear the partisan cobwebs of the Vietnam War. Visiting Saigon, now called Ho-Chi-Minh city (named after the late North Vietnamese communist dictator), McCain said the "wrong guys" won the war. There is much to say on this topic. It won't be said here. But slowly some open-source intelligence articles and books are shedding more light on communist atrocities before and after the start of their invasion, on communist concentration camps, on resistance by north vietnamese youth to becoming cannon fodder in the ruthless attempt to subjugate the South, on the dead hand of communist bureaucracy on society, etc. -- aspects that were seldom if ever featured in the warped US mass media anti-war propaganda during the war and beyond.
The final escape from the hurt of our Vietnam experience may lie in this liberation from the ideological information stranglehold in which we have been held for too long, a stranglehold by the mass media reveling in excoriating our troops and policymakers while hero-worshipping our opponents, and by a segment of the academic elite who have a continuing vested interest in validating their ideological opposition to the anti-communist war. Slowly we may have truth -- and overcome the shame of the dishonorable Saigon "evacuation" we must carry with us, and the memory of the pilgrimage of a "with-it" movie starlet and others throwing dirt on our POWs (including McCain), or a former SecDef on his personal path to Canossa to kiss the nether regions of General Giap's anatomy. The truth -- reasonable, balanced, informed, may finally have its day. (WashPost 29April2000, p. 1 and A18) (Jonkers)

CIA REPORT ON SLAVE TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN AND CHILDREN --
The NY Times recently reported on an unclassified 79-page CIA report, "International Trafficking in Women to the United States: A Contemporary Manifestation of Slavery." The report is carefully annotated and exhaustively researched and based on more than 150 interviews with government officials, law-enforcement officers, victims and experts in the US and abroad, as well as investigative documents and a review of international literature on the subject.
As many as 50,000 women and children from Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia are brought to the US under false pretenses each year and forced to work as prostitutes, abused laborers or servants. Primary sources for traffickers are Thailand, Vietnam, China, Mexico, Russia and the Czech Republic. Other countries increasingly providing victims include the Philippines, Korea, Malaysia, Latvia, Hungary, Poland, Brazil and Honduras. The scope of the smuggling has apparently increased markedly in recent years according to the estimate. The biggest reason is that, since the mid-1990's, traffickers from Russia and the former republics of the Soviet Union have aggressively entered the business. The victims believe they are to work as au pairs, sales clerks, secretaries or waitresses but are taken prisoner once arrived in the US and forced into prostitution or peonage.
Efforts to reduce or halt the trafficking have been largely ineffectual. Over the last two years, while up to 100,000 victims were coming into the US, the government prosecuted cases involving no more than 250 victims. A second government report last fall estimated that 250 brothels in 26 cities appeared to be holding women and children as sex slaves. The problem is not a simple one: most of the victims do not speak English; many fear immigration authorities; slave trafficking is not a primary concern for any one agency; penalties for the smugglers are insubstantial; and investigation and prosecution are difficult.
Bills are pending in the House and Senate to begin to address the situation by increasing jail time for the traffickers and to increase law enforcement resources. One government official probably summed it up well: "No one really knows what to do with it. I'm not sure people are really focusing on this." Obviously a golden opportunity to attract appropriate attention was missed when the slave trading victims were not somehow linked in the media coverage to the Elian Gonzalez case.( NY Times 2 Apr '00, p. 20; USA Today 3 Apr '00, p. 25A; Philadelphia Inquirer 9 Apr '00, p. D6) (Harvey)

SECTION III:   BOOKS AND OTHER SOURCES

YOUR GOVERNMENT: HOW IT WORKS -- THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY,
by Tara Baukus Mello, with Arthur M. Schlesinger, jr., senior consulting editor, Chelsea House Publishers, Philadelphia, 2000,  www.chelseahouse.com, ISBN 0-7910-5531-0 (hc), index. This is a short, 59 page overview of CIA in the context of a series of how our government works - a laudable educational effort tailored for highschool-age students. Chapter titles indicate the scope: keeping secrets; I spy, you spy; how the agency works; the people behind the agency; gadgets and gizmos; and, famous people, followed by a chronology, glossary, further reading and index. The booklet will be available shortly. Other booklets in this series will deal with the FBI, the political parties, Congress, the President and the Supreme Court. I draw your attention to this commendable effort -- it may be useful for highschools in your area. (Jonkers)

"ALONE AND UNARMED:
An Intelligence Insider Looks Back on the Work that Set Recce Pilots Apart," by Dino A. Brugioni, Air & Space / Smithsonian magazine, Feb/ March 2000, Vol 14, No.6, page 78. The author, an AFIO member and famed imagery expert, wrote the article as a tribute to the men and women who fly the recce missions. Said Brugioni, "We have lost 170 men since the 1950's and still others have simply disappeared. This is my tribute to them."
"There's an old axiom that reconnaissance pilots fly alone, unarmed, and unafraid. For security reasons, reconnaissance, or recce, pilots have seldom gotten the respect due them. You've probably never heard of Carmine Vito. At 5:26 a.m. on July 5, 1956, Vito climbed into the cockpit of his silver Lockheed U-2A in Wiesbaden, Germany, popped a wad of tutti-frutti gum in his mouth to quell his anxiety, and took off for Moscow. His single-engine U-2 was tricky to fly, a skittish and fragile bird intolerant of stress and prone to engine flame-out. The A-model had no ejection seat and a primitive autopilot. At the edge of space, alone, over denied territory, if anything went wrong, Vito would be in deadly trouble. Enroute to Moscow Vito flew over two concentric rings of surface to air missile sites and watched Soviet aircraft scramble to intercept him. When he returned to Wiesbaden that afternoon after the eight-hour flight -- the first and only US spy flight over Moscow -- the US had its first aerial photographs of the Moscow defenses and other targets."
As you can see, Dino's style is direct and highly readable, and his information fascinating. Recommended! (Jonkers)

PHOTO FAKERY: The History and Techniques of Photographic Deception and Manipulation, by Dino Brugioni, Brassey's, Dulles, Virginia 1999, ISBN 1-57488-166-3, index and notes. Brugioni, one of the founders of CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC, covers some of the tricks of the trade, ways of enhancing, faking, altering, or manipulating photographic images that leave you both impressed and filled with a healthy degree of scepticism about the veracity of any image. This is particularly important as policy is often influenced by photography provided and interpreted by mass media. A picture is worth a thousand words - but the picture may be a fake or especially staged. The Soviets elevated this manipulation to a high art -- individuals who fell out of favor quickly disappeared from official photographs. In the computer age, this manipulation has become a universal capability - people can be quickly altered, "aged" or "morphed" into computer-generated illusions.
For the military, creating image illusions - camouflage - is a matter of necessity. It involves techniques to blend, disguise, cover, screen, hide, confuse, trick, deceive, mislead or falsify. Decoys must be so real they even expert imagery analysts cannot tell them from the real thing. But not always. For example, when British analysts discovered a German decoy airfield in North Africa during WWII, they sent out a lone bomber, which dropped a wooden bomb.
Dino's book abounds in anecdotes and stories, well written, readable and useful. We hope to have him as a speaker at an AFIO event soon. (Jonkers)

MICRO ROBOT SPY PLANES
. The April issue of the Smithsonian Air & Space magazine has a fascinating feature about tiny experimental "spy planes." It is on line and has multiple links. This is "Buck Rogers" type stuff and where future reconnaissance is set to go. http://www.airspacemag.com/asm/mag/supp/am00/uSPY.html  (Macartney)

THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER: The Challenge of Unlawful Conduct Involving the Use of the Internet: A Report of the President's Working Group on Unlawful Conduct on the Internet. In August of 1999, President Clinton issued Executive Order 13133, which called for the creation of a Working Group to analyze unlawful conduct on the Internet. The Working Group has released its report in March.
The report discusses the legal framework in which on-line crimes exist, the challenges facing law enforcement agencies in the on-line environment, and the role of public education and empowerment in combating on-line crime. Separate appendices focus on particular types of crime on the Internet, including fraud, child pornography, intellectual property theft, and the sale of controlled substances.
The report is available on the CCIPS homepage (see below). Launched by the DOJ on March 13, 2000, this site details their efforts to stop on-line crime. Here users will find materials such as speeches, reports, press releases, and testimony, covering topics including "prosecuting computer hacking, intellectual property piracy and counterfeiting, legal issues related to electronic commerce, freedom of speech, searching and seizing computers, encryption, privacy, and international aspects of cybercrime."
 From The Scout Report, Volume 6, N 43; March 17, 2000, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2000. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/ ; http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/unlawful.htm; Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) can be found at http://www.cybercrime.gov/  (E. Bancroft)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++end++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Back to Top


Back to Top


About AFIO | Chapters & Chapter Activities | Membership | Corporate | Weekly Intelligence Notes | Event Schedule | Bulletin Board | Book Reviews | Search | AFIO Store | | Other Intel Sites | Home Page

AFIO Central Office
6723 Whittier Avenue, Suite 303A
McLean, Virginia 22101-4533
Telephone: 703 790 0320 | Facsimile: 703 991 1278
Email: afio@afio.com