WIN 16-01
dated 23 April 2001
WINs are produced by Editor Roy Jonkers for AFIO members and WIN
subscribers, for educational purposes. Associate editors Don
Harvey and John Macartney also contribute articles to the WINs.
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SECTION
I -- CURRENT INTELLIGENCE
IMPACT OF EP-3 LOSS ON US ASIAN ALLIES.
America's allies in Asia are hastily changing computer codes and
electronic identification codes in the wake of the detention of
the US Navy's most important electronic intelligence (ELINT)-gathering
aircraft by the Chinese authorities on Hainan Island. The US
is not the only country that flies electronic surveillance
missions. The article goes on to say that Japan also
operates EP-3's and Taiwan too operates surveillance
aircraft in the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea. For the
past week, these missions have been escorted by fighters. Also, China
operates it's own electronic surveillance aircraft (9 converted
Russian An-12 transports dubbed Y-8x's by the US) along the
coasts of Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.
(Macartney)
http://www.janes.co.uk/aerospace/military/news/misc/aries010412_1_n.shtml
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15477-2001Apr13.html
INFANTRYMAN PORTABLE SURVEILLANCE UAV.
American soldiers may soon get new power to see beyond hills,
buildings and trees - thanks to a 4-1/2 pound, unmanned plane
that can be stored in a backpack and is designed to send live
images of enemy positions. The Marines Corps Warfighting Lab and
Naval Research Lab soon will award a contract to build 40
miniature planes that can be stored in a soldier's backpack,
assembled in the field of battle, and sent on one-hour missions
to beam back live pictures of enemy positions. (Macartney)
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/CuttingEdge/cuttingedge010413.html
CONVICTED SPIES LOSE SUPREME COURT APPEAL --
Squillacote, a former Pentagon lawyer, and Stand, a former labor
union representative, were convicted in 1998 of spying against
the US. Squillacote was sentenced to nearly 22 years in prison,
Stand to more than 17. The two were accused of an espionage
conspiracy dating back decades. Govt accounts of the case read
like a script for a spy movie, including an alleged love affair
between Squillacote and a former East German spy master, and
coded secrets allegedly hidden inside hollow toys. At times, the
couple wanted to provide US secrets to the former East Germany,
the former Soviet Union, Russia and South Africa, the government
claimed. The two Marxists are almost unique among post WWII
American spies in that they were motivated by ideology.
The case had some interesting legal
implications and may be read as a challenge to the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) adopted in 1978. The FISA
established a secret court to provide authorization for
electronic surveillance and clandestine physical search of U.S.
persons who are suspected of being foreign agents. The use of
this law was challenged in a petition filed last year on behalf
of Theresa M. Squillacote and Kurt A. Stand, the abovementioned
married couple who were convicted in 1998 of conspiring to
commit espionage on behalf of East Germany, the Soviet Union,
Russia, and South Africa.
In the course of their investigation of
Squillacote and Stand, the FBI requested and received 20
separate FISA authorizations for surveillance that lasted 550
consecutive days. Their conviction was based almost exclusively
on evidence collected in this counterintelligence mode.
Attorneys for Squillacote and Stand were never permitted to see
the underlying documentation that the government used to justify
the surveillance, not even on a classified basis.
The attorneys argued that improper use was
made of intercepted conversations with Squillacote's
psychotherapist, and that the government incorrectly implied
that transmission of information that was already in the public
domain could be a violation of the Espionage Act. If true, the
latter indeed would be, as the attorneys maintained, "a
troubling and unjustified expansion of the espionage law."
Government attorneys insisted that all
required procedures were followed at all times, and that access
to the FISA applications by the defendants' attorneys was
correctly denied on national security grounds. They noted
further that the investigation and prosecution of Squillacote
and Stand survived multiple layers of judicial review and that
their conviction was upheld on appeal. The Petition was denied
by the Supreme Court on April 16, 2001. (Macartney/Jonkers) (http://www.fas.org/irp/ops/ci/squill/index.html
//23 April 01)
(
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Spies.html)
SECTION
II -- CONTEXT AND PRECEDENCE
Foreign Intelligence, But Not Foreign
Languages. A few years ago, an astute Chairman of the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Boren of
Oklahoma, determined that the US national security suffered
because Americans, especially those working for the government, could not
understand foreign developments well due to lack of language
proficiency. He succeeded in establishing a substantial program
of federal grants to Americans endeavoring to learn a foreign
language at the graduate as well as undergraduate level. His
efforts did not solve the problem, according to what
intelligence and law enforcement officials now describe as the
undermining of national security by the increasingly dire lack
of foreign language expertise. Reasons for the situation are
myriad -- recent immigrants lack good English, reductions in
schools' foreign language studies (never a strong point) to
concentrate on reading and math, fragmentation of the security
threats, layoffs in government, growth of English as the world's
lingua franca, etc.
American colleges and universities graduated
only nine students who majored in Arabic last year, only a
handful majored in Korean, and only about 140 graduated with
degrees in Chinese. Only 8.2 percent of American college
students enroll in foreign language courses -- nearly all in
Spanish, French and German; the figure has remained essentially
unchanged since 1976 while the demand for language speakers has
ballooned. For example, the Soviet Union break-up led to a
puzzle of 15 official languages, from Armenian to Ukrainian to
Kazak to Belarussian, and more than 100 ethnic enclaves. The
director of the National Security Education Program which offers
grants to promote the study of foreign languages and cultures
has said that in the last decade, the linguistic shortfalls have
gone from an episodic to a chronic problem.
The provost of the Defense Language Training
Institute notes that the languages the military considers the
most critical are not those generally taught in colleges. He
said that while the largest number of enrollments in the
civilian schools is Spanish, the military number one enrollment
was in Arabic. Defense has more students learning Arabic,
Chinese, Korean and Russian than it does Spanish. His institute
graduated 109 Farsi students last year, but he could not even
find civilian college Farsi graduate figures.
Anecdotal evidence of cock-ups in the
intelligence and law enforcement communities due to lack of
timely interpretation or translation abounds. A cynical soul
would predict that the language problem, just like the
inadequate processing problem, will plague the intelligence
community for the foreseeable future. (Harvey) ( NY Times 16 Apr
'01, p. 1 /// D. J. Schemo)
BIOMETRICS MAY HELP SECURE PENTAGON COMPUTERS
AND CLASSIFIED FACILITIES. The Defense Department has set up
its first biometrics testing laboratory to scientifically
scrutinize hundreds of commercial products that scan unique
physical traits - such as eye, finger or voice - to prove a
person's identity (Macartney) http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/0319biometrics.html
SECTION
III -- CYBER INTELLIGENCE
IDENTITY THEFT THREATENS FEDERAL EMPLOYEES-
-Federal employees run the risk of having their identity stolen
when they sell, throw away or donate their old computers without
properly deleting personal files, NASA's inspector general
warned Friday. Thieves can even retrieve files that appear to be
deleted, the IG said. Unless you take the proper precautions,
getting rid of your home computer might be your personal
introduction to one of the fastest growing crimes in America
identity theft, the IG's alert said. It is possible for a
thief to open credit card accounts, make purchases, take out
loans or order false checks and ATM cards in their victim's
name, the alert said (NOTE -- See LETTERS below).(Levine 04/23)
(http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0401/042301j1.htm)
BRITISH DEFENSE MINISTRY BUGGED--
Britain's Defense Ministry on Monday refused to confirm or deny
press reports which said that some 30 electronic listening
devices had been discovered at ministry headquarters. "It
is not our policy to comment on security," a ministry
spokeswoman said. She also refused to comment on a report by the
Daily Telegraph that implicated French firms in the bugging
scandal, alleging that the bugs were planted for the purpose of
industrial espionage. The bugs were discovered during a
rearrangement of the office in the center of London, according
to information published by the Sunday Times.(Levine 04/23)
http://63.108.181.201/2001/04/23/ANA/0560-0498-Britain-security....html
SECTION
IV -- BOOKS AND SOURCES
JAMES BAMFORD, "BODY OF SECRETS: ANATOMY
OF THE ULTRASECRET NSA, Doubleday, April 2001. NMIA's
Potomac Chapter is hosting author James Bamford on Thursday,
April 26, 6:30 to 8:45pm, at the new offices of Anser, in
Shirlington, 2900 South Quincy Street, Arlington. Copies of
"Body of Secrets" will be available on its first day
of sale. $10; parking, food, refreshments. For reservations,
call (703) 921-1800, visit website
<http://www.intelweb.org/potomac>,
or email <jtm@capu.net>.
ANNE CAHN, "KILLING DETENTE: THE RIGHT
ATTACKS THE CIA," Penn State Press, 1998. This is about
the A-Team/B-Team episode of 1976 when President Ford and
DCI George Bush, under pressure from GOP conservatives, invited
a "B Team" of noted university professors and other
non-government Soviet scholars in to review the same threat data
that the CIA (the A Team) was using and develop a competing
analysis. The professors were handpicked "hardliners"
led by Harvard historian Richard Pipes, and their analysis was
(as intended) much more hawkish than that of the CIA's.
Subsequently, the CIA adopted much of the professors' hard-line
views of the "evil empire."
The thesis of this book by AU
Scholar-in-Residence, Anne Cahn, is that the B-Team's more dire
threat analysis led directly to the "Reagan arms
build" up [which began, lest we forget, during the last
year and a half of the Carter administration --jdmac] and
thus caused tens of billions of dollars in unnecessary US
defense spending. This is an interesting book about an important
episode in intelligence history. [Although, it may attribute
too much influence to intelligence threat assessments. US
defense spending proceeds, unfortunately, not from threats but
from a host of domestic political considerations, lobbying by
defense contractors (and associated labor unions), influence
from within the military services, and especially pressure from
local communities with defense plants and their representatives
in Congress. . As a result, both Carter and Reagan
campaigned in 1980 by saying they would do more to
rebuild US defenses. In short pressures for defense spending
frequently have precious little to do with external threats,
real or imagined, or to intelligence assessments of those
threats -- although as former intelligence offices we would
prefer it were otherwise.] (Macartney)
http://www.psu.edu/psupress/titles/FW_98_books/cahn_detente.html
DDCI JOHN McLAUGHLIN ON-LINE. Post
reporter Vernon Loeb, who hosts a bi-monthly on-line Q&A
session, had the DDCI as his guest on April 1st. Among other
things, Mr McLaughlin said that the CIA now has an
"ombudsman" who acts as a sort of devil's advocate
against politicization -- to ensure analysts "tell it like
it is."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/01/nation_loeb040201.htm
THREE BOOKS IN BRIEF: DARK
EAGLE: A Novel of Benedict Arnold and The American Revolution
by John Ensor Harr is coming out in paperback by Penguin,
0-14-100178-X, $14.00. Publisher blurb has "...meticulously
researched, a fictionalized story of Arnold's career, his
heroism, his military exploits, and his May-September romance
with Peggy Shippen, who became his wife and partner in
treason."
BAY OF PIGS: An Oral History of Brigade
2506 by Victor Andres Triay, 0-8130-2090-5, University
of Florida Press, $24.95. Story of the Bay of Pigs invasion,
told in the words of the idealistic participants who came
together in April 1961 to overthrow Castro. Combines oral
history and traditional narrative form, giving a human dimension
to this moment in the Cold War.
LIVING WELL IN THE AGE OF GLOBAL WARMING
by Paul and Hazel Delcourt, PhDs, CGPC, $16.95
paperback, 1-890132-87-X. With many discussions of the national
security implications of global warming and environmental havoc,
these two eco-futurists examine a slightly different aspect of
the changing weather patterns, temperature zones, storm tracks,
and other factors and suggest the "ten best
strategies" for surviving the social upheaval they predict
will occur as a result of significant climatic change.
SECTION
V -- LETTERS
FORMER RC-135 RECONNAISSANCE PILOT Robert
Hopkins provides an insider's perspective on foreign and US
fighter reactions to reconnaissance missions along national
perimeters. He writes:
... For many years I was an RC-135 aircraft
commander and flew PARPRO missions around the world. In many
cases we were escorted by a variety of interceptors from
nations ranging from the USSR to Israel. These visits
broke the monotony and were usually quite enjoyable --
indeed, some of the best formation flying I have ever
had was flying the RC-135S COBRA BALL while escorted by
a Soviet Tu-16 BADGER for well over three hours,
including a trip to a tanker with a terrified boom operator.
Conversely, some interceptor pilots were
aggressive to the point of dangerous, usually trying to
"shoo" us away or to establish their pilot bona
fides. The North Koreans and Vietnamese were automatic
"get out of town" intercepts because of their
outright hostility to the United States and the highly
unpredictable nature of their controllers. The Israelis were
indignant at having us fly along their borders, and were among
the most dangerous in encouraging us to leave.
The US Navy has a real tradition of knowing
how to shadow visitors, as a number of my colleagues in
the F-4 and F-14 community revel in their tales of how
close, how long, and how risky they could get. I mention
this as a way of saying that all of the possible causes of
collision between the EP-3 and the F-8 are common environments
in the escort world. A high-speed pass from behind and
above (or below) at near Mach is extremely routine and
is called "thumping." As the fighter passes
the heavy intruder, the fighter pulls up abruptly and
the shock wave beats the bigger airplane pretty substantially.
Another routine form of annoyance is the
fighter pulling in front of an engine (average pilots
would go for the outboards, hot dogs would go for the
inboards) and stroke their afterburner in an effort to cause
cavitation of our engine forcing us to leave the area, or they
would simply slow down to a point where we would leave
to avoid ramming them from behind. As you can well
imagine, a fighter has a tough time doing this as it
becomes increasingly unstable at high angles of attack
and slow speeds, whereas the heavy airplane is fairly
stable.
We have learned more about the recent
collision since the aircrew was returned. According to
the Navy EP-3 pilot, the Chinese F-8 had previously made
two aggressive passes below and to the left of the EP-3, and
the third was too close. Part of the interceptor's goal is to
be as close as possible, but it doesn't absolve the
interceptor pilot of the responsibility to be safe. [ RobertSHopkins@eaton.com]
STOLEN WALLETS -- Bill York writes:
We've all heard horror stories about fraud
that's committed using your name, address, SS#, credit, etc.
Unfortunately I have first-hand knowledge, because my wallet
was stolen last month and within a week the thieve(s) ordered
an expensive monthly cell phone package, applied for a VISA
credit card, had a credit line approved to buy a Gateway
computer, received a PIN number from DMV to change my driving
record information on-line, more. But here's some critical
information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or
someone you know. As everyone always advises, cancel your
credit cards immediately, but the key is having the toll free
numbers and your card numbers handy so you know whom to call.
Keep those where you can find them easily (having to hunt for
them is additional I remember losing a MC and until I got the
toll free number from information, etc., I was a wreck. File a
police report immediately in the jurisdiction where it was
stolen, this proves to credit providers you were diligent, and
is a first step toward an investigation (if there ever is
one).
But here's what is perhaps most important: I
never ever thought to do this -- Call the Three national
credit reporting Organizations immediately to place a fraud
alert on your name and SS#. I had never heard of doing that
until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application
for credit was made over the Internet in my name. The alert
means any company that checks your credit knows your
information was stolen and By the time I was advised to do
this - almost 2 weeks after The Theft - all the damage had
been done (there are records of all the credit checks
initiated by the thieves' purchases, none of which I knew
about before placing the alert). Since then, no additional
damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away
this weekend (someone turned it in). It seems to have stopped
them in their tracks. The Credit Organization numbers are:
Equifax 1-800 525-6285
Experian (formerly TRW) 1-800-301-7195
Trans Union 1-800-680-7289
Social Security Administration also has a
fraud line at 1-800-269-0271
We pass along jokes, we pass along just about
everything....do. Think about passing this information along
.... it could help someone else. (Bill York)
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