AFIO Weekly Intelligence Notes #08-09 dated 3 March 2009

Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Colombian Prosecutor Orders Search of Spy Agency. Colombia's chief prosecutor ordered a search of the headquarters of the country's domestic intelligence agency over allegations some of its agents eavesdropped on prominent journalists, Supreme Court judges and opposition politicians.

Prosecutor Mario Iguaran ordered two prosecutors to probe the DAS agency, which answers directly to President Alvaro Uribe, after Colombia's leading newsmagazine reported the interception of e-mails and phone calls through at least the end of last year.

One of his top deputies, Omar Zarabanda, told The Associated Press that the two prosecutors were inside the headquarters of the DAS, or Department of Administrative Security, on Sunday evening seeking evidence.

Earlier, the DAS's new director said he had accepted the resignation of the agency's deputy director of intelligence, Capt. Jorge Alberto Lagos. Felipe Munoz, who took office last month, called the resignation "an administrative measure."

Wiretapping scandals are nothing unusual or new in Colombia.

All the country's illegal armed groups - drug traffickers, paramilitaries and rebels - regularly engage in it as well as foreign intelligence services.

In May 2007, Colombia's police chief and the head of police intelligence were forced to retire over the illegal interception of calls of opposition political figures, journalists and members of the government.

And last year, a judge sentenced four cashiered members of an anti-kidnapping unit to 11 years in prison each for the unauthorized wiretapping from 1997-2001 of at least 1,600 phone lines in Medellin. Among their targets were human rights activists, several of whom disappeared and were never found. [Bajak/AP/23February2009] 

Naval Intelligence Ramps up Activities. The U.S. Navy is revamping its intelligence structure with a new set of priorities designed to rebuild naval intelligence as well as command upgrades, including a new maritime intelligence office.

In a departure from its recent efforts, U.S. naval intelligence has returned to the front burner of naval operations, in part due to the Global War on Terrorism and the uncertainties exhibited by several nations' navies.

The Navy is upgrading the position of director of naval intelligence to vice admiral. Vice Adm. David J. Dorsett, USN, the new director, describes naval intelligence as a community undergoing significant changes down to the nature of its mission.

Some changes have been long underway, including a growth in the civilian work force. But other major shifts are relatively new, and some operational architectures are still in the development stage.

The head of the Office of Naval Intelligence has been elevated from captain to rear admiral (upper half), and that office receives four new subordinate commands: the Nimitz Operational Intelligence Center, the Farragut Technical Analysis Center, the John F. Kennedy Irregular Warfare Center, and the Grace Hopper Information Services Center. These four centers will stand up around the end of this month.

Naval intelligence also is working to structure interaction with other government organizations that can use or provide valuable intelligence related to seagoing issues. To that end, the Navy is helping create a new entity dedicated to maritime intelligence.

Out of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and the U.S. Coast Guard Intelligence Coordination Center (ICC) in Suitland, Maryland, is coming a National Maritime Intelligence Center, or NMIC. The NMIC director will be responsible to the director of national intelligence as well as to the director of naval intelligence. Adm. Dorsett offers that the NMIC will be on par with the National Counterterrorism Center and the National Counterproliferation Center, but it will focus on maritime domain issues.

The NMIC will concentrate on the interagency intelligence needs of other government agencies. The NMIC's director also will serve as the ONI commander, and a Coast Guard rear admiral may be placed as the NMIC's deputy director.

The Navy's role in the NMIC is commensurate with its quest for intelligence prominence and dominance. The importance of maritime intelligence is being elevated, and its requirements that currently are not being fulfilled will be addressed by the creation of the NMIC, Adm. Dorsett explains.

A major shortcoming exposed by the onset of the Global War on Terrorism was a lack of human intelligence (HUMINT) capability within the Navy, the admiral relates. The Navy has since built up its HUMINT capabilities, and the service is consolidating counterintelligence and HUMINT. Adm. Dorsett explains that because these two functions are similar, they can be combined to break down barriers and improve synergy.

Over the past few years, the Navy made only a limited investment in special warfare, which forced it to realign its forces for ashore counterinsurgency operations or for the war on terrorism. Other disciplines also suffered. Adm. Dorsett relates that his office has invested more than 500 personnel in higher priority efforts, including HUMINT and the Naval Expeditionary Intelligence Command.

His office also is investing in maritime domain awareness and tools that can be migrated into networks. Naval intelligence is evaluating applications and tools that could fit into the Navy's Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services, or CANES.

Another ongoing initiative is the fleet intelligence alignment. The admiral shares that the afloat intelligence presence largely has not changed since the Vietnam War era. His office is looking at reducing the afloat footprint to a core capability, to which increased capability would be added in a time of need. Reach-back capabilities would be established in some areas, which would allow the Navy to train large groups of people on land.

Relying on a reach-back capability brings up the issue of bandwidth. Navy ships are extremely limited in bandwidth capacity; and while the Navy is expanding bandwidth, it is not approaching the extent necessary to reach intelligence requirements.

This bandwidth limitation places greater emphasis on ashore analysis, the admiral notes, so that intelligence products instead of raw data flow over the afloat networks. Intelligence officials are considering these factors as they determine the types of intelligence data that flow across the network.

With the Navy moving toward an open architecture, Adm. Dorsett decries the problem of industry providing it with proprietary units. Businesses should partner to deliver open-architecture systems. With these teams working with the Navy, businesses are empowered to develop "the art of the possible" in a way that would meet Navy requirements, he says.

Adm. Dorsett believes industry can help drive acquisition reform. Only by partnering with the Defense Department can industry help bring necessary changes to information technology acquisition. "Frankly, industry can help in one regard: by being vocal about the need for acquisition reform," he emphasizes. "That's an area where we can partner." [Ackerman/Signal/February2009] 

Bolivian President Accuses CIA of Corrupting State Oil Firm. The investigation into corruption at Bolivia's state-run oil company has taken a bizarre turn, with the Bolivian president and other government officials now claiming involvement by the US Central Intelligence Agency.

"Unfortunately there has been a CIA presence in Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos [YPFB], and some of our colleagues have been caught by this foreign infiltration," said Morales, referring to the arrest of his friend and former YPFB president, Santos Ramirez.

Local media said President Morales gave no evidence of the involvement of the CIA, but quoted him as saying he could give details and names.

In his speech, Morales also said he would speak out against "how from overseas, from the United States" legal protection is being provided to the "corrupt people who were inside YPFB" with lawyers who are experts "in defending criminals."

Separately, Bolivian Interior Minister Alfredo Rada accused Rodrigo Carrasco Jhansen, a former national marketing manager for YPFB, of being a member of Bolivia's Comando de Operaciones Especiales (Copes) and an informer for the CIA.

Carrasco was arrested last week on charges of concealing and "making off with information" together with Julio Anagua, the former director of administration for YPFB.

Last week, Villegas said YPFB would file a complaint against Ramirez and 16 of his associates on corruption charges in connection with the signing of an agreement between YPFB and Catler Uniservice for the construction of an $86.4 million gas liquids separation plant in Rio Grande.

The scandal over corruption at YPFP emerged in early February with the murder of Jorge O'Connor D'Arlach, head of Catler Uniservice, the firm that last year won the $86 million contract from YPFP for the construction of the natural gas liquid separation plant in Rio Grande.

O'Connor was killed when entering the house of some of Ramirez's in-laws with $450,000 in cash, alleged to be kickbacks to the now former president of YPFB.

The case has been a major political embarrassment for Morales, as Ramirez, once described as one of the president's closest collaborators, was founder of the party that currently rules Bolivia - the Movement Toward Socialism. [Watkins/OGI/26February2009]? 

Obama Receiving Daily Economic Intel Document. CIA Director Leon Panetta said President Barack Obama wants to aggressively pursue Islamic militants, stressing there has been no let-up in the war despite change in the White House.

In a wide-ranging interview with a group of reporters, Panetta also said that as a result of the global recession, the intelligence community is now preparing a daily report on how the foreign policy of countries suffering economic instability might change.

He mentioned specifically China and Russia as well as countries in Europe and Latin America, for example Argentina, Ecuador and Venezuela.

The change in administrations from Republican President George W. Bush, who aggressively went after Islamic militants, to that of Democrat Obama has raised questions in Washington as to how persistent the new president would be in the struggle to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Panetta gave his clearest sign yet that nothing has changed in that effort.

Panetta did not specifically mention the use of unmanned Predator drones to fire missiles at al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which has drawn the ire of Pakistanis.

But he stressed that operations against militants would continue unabated, saying top officials from Obama on down believe they are probably "the most effective weapon we have to try to disrupt al Qaeda."

The United States, frustrated by an intensifying Afghan insurgency and what it sees as Pakistan's reluctance to tackle the spillover, stepped up the missile attacks last year.

Amid a debate in Washington over whether Obama will scrap the Bush slogan "war on terror" to describe the U.S.-led effort to crush al Qaeda, Panetta did not use the phrase, but said:

Panetta said the daily economic intelligence report is being produced at the request of the Obama administration and is being distributed to key decision-makers. The first one was distributed on Wednesday, he said.

The world economic crisis has become the biggest near-term U.S. security concern, displacing terrorism, U.S. intelligence agencies told Congress this month.

The annual threat assessment produced by the Office of the Director of National intelligence said a quarter of countries around the globe had already experienced at least "low-level" political instability, such as government changes, linked to the economy.

Panetta, who was White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, left a fairly tranquil lifestyle in California to return to Washington for the arduous task of managing the CIA. [Holland/Reuters/25February2009]? 

Argentina Summons US Ambassador to Talk About CIA. Argentina's foreign minister says President Cristina Fernandez has summoned the U.S. Ambassador to discuss the CIA director's comments about how the world economic crisis could destabilize some Latin American governments.

Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana said Thursday that the president wants to talk to Ambassador Earl Anthony "and we will demand explanations."

On Wednesday, CIA Director Leon Panetta listed Argentina, Venezuela and Ecuador as countries in dire economic straits that could be destabilized by the worldwide economic crisis.

Taiana called Panetta's comments "regrettable." [AP/26February2009]? 

Ex-DEA Spy Wins Ruling in Agency Suit. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration failed to adequately protect a glamorous female spy when she was captured in Colombia in 1995, a Miami judge says.

The former DEA informant, identified in court documents only as The Princess, is suing the agency for $33 million, alleging its lax supervision of her assignment to infiltrate the highest levels of Colombia's drug cartels left her vulnerable to be kidnapped and held hostage by rebels.

U.S. District Judge Mary Ellen Coster Williams ruled this month that the DEA did indeed fail to protect The Princess on her Colombian assignment, allowing the suit to proceed to a determination of whether she was damaged and, if so, how much she is owed, unsealed court document revealed.

The Princess testified she led a high-flying, jet-set life, posing as a glamorous art dealer and money launderer, helping the DEA identify dozens of drug traffickers. But she blames the agency for allowing her to be kidnapped by rebels who thought she was merely a rich woman, court documents say.

During her captivity she was forced to eat her book of contacts and was held for months in a windowless room. [UPI/26February2009]? 

Beijing's Top Internet Spy Arrested. The head of the internet monitoring department of Beijing's Municipal Public Security Bureau was arrested on suspicion of taking more than RMB 40 million ($5.8 million) in bribes to help an anti-virus company defeat its competitor.

Yu Bing, whose bureau monitors e-mail and web usage in the country as part of China's Great Firewall surveillance system, is accused of taking money from Rising, an anti-virus firm, to frame an executive at its competitor, Micropoint Technology. A vice president of Rising has been arrested as well under suspicion of bribing Yu.

Yu and fellow police officers allegedly manufactured evidence against Micropoint Vice President Tian Yakui proving that he spread computer viruses and broke into a computer system to steal trade secrets. Tian reportedly spent 11 months in prison on the charges, and Micropoint encountered three years of obstacles to launch its anti-virus software. Tian was targeted apparently because he was a former vice president at Rising who left the company with Rising's former managing director to build Micropoint.

Micropoint is planning to sue Rising for an estimated RMB 30 million ($4.3 million) in losses.

Rising has fired back at the allegations accusing Micropoint of manufacturing the claims to ruin Rising. [Wired/26February2009]? 

Estonian Official Convicted of Treason in Spy Case. An Estonian court convicted a former top security official of treason for passing domestic and NATO secrets to Russia, the Baltic country's biggest espionage scandal since the Cold War.

Herman Simm, the former head of security at the Estonian Defense Ministry, was sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison in a trial that was kept secret until the verdict was announced Wednesday.

The Harju County Court didn't specify which country the 61-year-old handed the secrets to, but investigators later said he passed on nearly 3,000 documents to Russia.

"Starting from 1995 until his arrest in 2008, Herman Simm collected and forwarded classified Estonian and NATO information - hundreds of pages - to the Russian foreign intelligence service," said Norman Aas, Estonia's chief prosecutor. "Also, he passed on personal information on some Estonian individuals, something that may damage Estonia's interests."

Most of the documents concerned Estonia's defense policy, defense systems and foreign relations, but they also included information on NATO communication systems, investigators said, adding they have been working with the alliance on the case. Estonia joined NATO in 2004.

In a brief statement, the court said Simm was also sentenced to pay 20.2 million kroons ($1.7 million) in damages to the Estonian Defense Ministry.

Prosecutors said Simm pleaded guilty and cooperated during the investigation. In return, they didn't seek the maximum 15-year sentence. It wasn't immediately clear whether Simm would appeal the sentence.

Security Police chief Raivo Aeg and prosecutor Lavly Lepp said Simm, who climbed the ranks of newly independent Estonia's police force in the early 1990s, started working for the Russian intelligence service known as SVR when he joined the Defense Ministry in 1995. However, he was believed to have had contacts with the KGB in the 1980s when Estonia was still part of the Soviet Union.

They said Simm met three or four times a year in various European countries with his SVR handlers, identified as Valery Zentsov and Sergey Jakovlev. An international arrest warrant has been issued for the latter, who is also known under a fake Portuguese identity as Jesus Amorett Graf, Aeg said.

The Kremlin has denied any involvement with Simm.

Jaanus Rahumagi, head of Parliament's security affairs committee, said earlier this month that Simm had confessed to working with Russian intelligence for many years, even before Estonia regained independence in 1991.

Simm was arrested in September along with his wife Heete, though she was later released and recently allowed to resume work as a lawyer for a state institution.

A civil servant with a background typical of a Soviet technocrat, Simm was trained at the Interior Ministry Academy, which in the Cold War era had links with the KGB.

A year later he switched to the Defense Ministry, where he eventually became head of a security unit in 2000. That new position entrusted Simm with the sensitive task of handling top-secret data involving NATO and Estonia's communications and surveillance systems. Simm was removed from his position in 2006.

Investigators said Simm received about 1.3 million kroons in exchange for the classified documents.

Rahumagi said that money wasn't believed to be the only factor.

"Money is only one thing. Spies want to be involved with history, to become sort of anti-heroes," Rahumagi said. "I believe Simm was happy to be involved with such a big game. He liked to be undercover and secretive." [AP/25February2009]? 

Appeals Court Allows Classified Evidence in Spy Case. Spy A federal appeals court dealt a blow to the Obama administration when it refused to block a judge from admitting top secret evidence in a lawsuit weighing whether a U.S. president may bypass Congress, as President George W. Bush did, and establish a program of eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.

The legal brouhaha concerns U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's decision in January to admit as evidence a classified document allegedly showing that two American lawyers for a now-defunct Saudi charity were electronically eavesdropped on without warrants by the Bush administration in 2004. The lawyers - Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor - sued the Bush administration after the U.S. Treasury Department accidentally released the top secret memo to them.

The courts had ordered the document, which has never been made public, returned and removed from the case after the Bush administration declared it a state secret. The document's admission to the case is central for the two former lawyers of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation charity to acquire legal standing so they may challenge the constitutionality of the warrantless-eavesdropping program Bush publicly acknowledged in 2005.

Absent intervention from the U.S. Supreme Court, the one-line decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means the lawyers' case is the only lawsuit likely to litigate the merits of a challenge to Bush's secret eavesdropping program adopted in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The lawyers' suit looked all but dead in July when they were initially blocked from using the document to prove they were spied on. They were forced to return it to the government after it was declared a state secret.

But last month, Walker said the document could be used in the case because there was sufficient, anecdotal evidence unrelated to the document that suggests the lawyers for the Al-Haramain charity were spied upon. Without the document, the lawyers didn't have a case.

The Bush and the Obama administrations said the document's use in the trial was a threat to national security. The document at issue isn't likely to ever become public.

Walker's Jan. 5 order only allows lawyers in the case to view it, and they are forbidden to publicly discuss its contents.

Bush acknowledged the existence of the so-called Terror Surveillance Program in 2005. It authorized the NSA to intercept, without warrants, international communications to or from the United States that the government reasonably believed involved a member or agent of al-Qaeda, or affiliated terrorist organization. Congress authorized such spying activity in July.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation claims the TSP went further, and accuses the nations' telecommunication companies of funneling all electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants. However, as part of the spy bill approved in July, the government immunized the telcos from lawsuits accusing them of being complicit with the Bush administration.

The Obama administration on Thursday urged Judge Walker, the same judge in the Al-Haramain case, to dismiss the EFF's challenge to the immunity legislation. Walker's decision is pending. The U.S. government had designated Al-Haramain a terror organization. The Justice Department declined comment. [Kravetz/Wired/27February2009] 

Pressure Up on Al Qaeda, Says CIA Chief. CIA Director Leon Panetta said Wednesday that President Obama has endorsed the agency's stepped-up offensive against Al Qaeda.

The most visible part of that campaign has been 37 missile strikes since June in Pakistan's tribal areas on its border with Afghanistan, where the Daily News has reported at least eight Al Qaeda leaders have been killed by unmanned drones.

While not discussing specifics of the agency's classified program that targets Osama Bin Laden's lieutenants, Panetta said "operational efforts that have been put in place have been successful at disrupting them."

The U.S. launched two missile strikes within three days of Obama taking office on Jan. 20. After Panetta was sworn in Feb. 13, drones attacked targets in the tribal areas on Feb. 14 and 16.

Panetta said he has informed visiting Pakistani army and intelligence leaders that the CIA will not let up on its "very aggressive effort" to clobber Al Qaeda's central leadership. [Meek/NYDailyNews/26February2009] 

ACLU Praises Senate Panel For 'Unprecedented Review' Of CIA Interrogation Program. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) welcomed reports that the Senate Intelligence Committee will begin a review of CIA detention and interrogation policies.

The Senate panel plans to examine classified documents and testimony to find out how terror suspects were interrogated and if such interrogation methods produced useful intelligence. The review will also determine if the CIA's actions against detainees were authorized.

The reports come five weeks after President Barack Obama signed three executive orders closing Guantanamo, requiring that prisoner interrogations follow the Army Field Manual and the third ordering a review of options for handling future detainees.

The Army Field Manual bans waterboarding, a method of interrogation that simulates drowning and that critics consider torture.

Despite his swift reversals and departures from his predecessor's policies, Obama has not voiced enthusiastic support for any probes of the previous administration. But during his speech before a joint session of Congress early this week, he declared, "I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture."

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had said in a statement last September to the Senate Armed Services Committee that she led meetings as National Security Advisor in 2002 about the legality of letting the CIA use harsh interrogation techniques on al-Qaeda detainees. It was the first admission from a senior Bush administration official that such meetings were held.

The interrogation methods discussed in the meetings, held over a two-year period at the White House, were based on a Pentagon program called Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) to train American military personnel how survive aggressive interrogations. They included methods such as forced nudity, sleep deprivation and waterboarding. [Alingod/AHN/27February2009] 

Former KGB Agent Ordered Deported from Canada. A former Soviet secret service officer who has been living in Canada for 11 years has been told he and his family are facing deportation to Russia.

The Canadian government told Miguel Lennikov this week they have turned down his refugee claim.

Lennikov, his wife, and 17-year-old son can be ordered deported from the country in as early as a few weeks.

The Burnaby, B.C., man said he has been up-front with the Canadian government about the five years he spent with the KGB intelligence agency.

The public safety minister has rejected his claim, and has refused to specifically discuss the case.

Lennikov says his son, Dmitri, faces being drafted into the Russian army if the family returns, and he faces possible jail time for making public that he was part of the covert agency.

The family is hoping that their last appeal to stay in the country will be granted on humanitarian grounds. [Canwest/27February2009] 

Intel Chief Appoints Controversial Figure as NIC Chairman. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair announced he had selected Chas Freeman to head his council of advisers, deflecting the concerns of Israel supporters who question whether Freeman will undermine U.S. policy in the Mideast.

"Ambassador Freeman is a distinguished public servant who brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise in defense, diplomacy and intelligence that are absolutely critical to understanding today's threats and how to address them," Blair said in a written statement.

Freeman has a formidable resume of foreign policy positions that include U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia under President George H.W. Bush and assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs - a position that earned him public service awards for his role in creating a NATO-centered post-Cold War European security system. Freeman also served as Richard Nixon's chief translator in China in 1972.

As chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Freeman will lead the effort to create mid-term and long-term strategic thinking within the U.S. intelligence community and will assist in producing the National Intelligence Estimate - a classified document that analyzes potential threats to U.S. national security. 

The influential post does not require Senate confirmation.

But statements that the former ambassador made over the last three decades on U.S. peace efforts in the Middle East and Iran's threat to the international community have prompted some to question his objectivity in a role that requires it.

For example, in a speech to the Pacific Council on International Policy in October 2007, Freeman said the U.S. has "abandoned the role of Middle East peacemaker to back Israel's efforts to pacify its captive and increasingly ghettoized Arab populations."

Critics say strong views like those might present a conflict of interest for Freeman as NIC chairman. [FoxNews/26February2009] 

Retired CIA Agent Involved in Liberia Diamonds-For-Arms Scandal. Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has heard allegations that a retired agent of the CIA was instrumental in facilitating a vast diamonds-for-arms smuggling operation on behalf of Liberian warlord Charles Taylor. Taylor, who headed the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), became the country's President in 1997. He is currently held by the United Nations in The Hague, pending trial for crimes against humanity.

The allegations were made at the recent Economic Crimes Hearing of Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Monrovia by Imants Liepins, an investigator with the Public Investigation Bureau, a business intelligence firm based in Riga, Latvia. Mr. Liepins, who is a recent nominee for UNESCO's 2009 World Press Freedom Prize, presented his findings during an official hearing titled "Economic Crimes, Corruption and the Conflict in Liberia: Policy Options for an Emerging Democracy and Sustainable Peace".

Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which aims to unearth human rights violations and the exploitation of the country's natural or public resources to perpetuate war, heard last Thursday that Roger D'Onofrio Ruggiero, an Italian-American 40-year veteran of the CIA, worked with Charles Taylor and others to channel diamonds into Europe through a number of front-companies. According to the allegations, D'Onofrio, who at the time lived outside Naples, Italy, helped organize the smuggling operation with Ibrahim Bah. Bah is a Senegalese with Libyan connections, who at that time was a member of Liberia's Revolutionary United Front, a guerilla group that fought unsuccessfully against the government throughout the 1990s. According to Douglas Farah's book Blood from Stones (Broadway Books, 2004), Bah was connected with D'Onofrio in the 1970s, when the former was funded by the CIA to join the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the war against the Soviet Red Army. In the early 1990s, Bah, who by then had established al-Qaeda connections, became Charles Taylor's "Minister for Mineral Resources, a post that enabled him to handle the majority of NPFL's diamonds-for-arms deals.

Bah is alleged to have also drawn on his Libyan connections to involve in the smuggling operation representatives of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. The smuggling was conducted through a front-company, International Business Consultant Ltd, and Kintex, a Bulgarian import-export company with offices in Switzerland. Kintex "supplied weapons and bullets to [International Business Consultant Ltd] and sold diamonds in return, camouflaged as oranges and olives". This was allegedly done with the help of a Swiss lawyer, Rudolf Meroni.

During last Thursday's presentation in Monrovia, Imants Liepins recounted D'Onofrio's 1995 testimony before Italian prosecutors, in which the former CIA agent admitted he owned shares in International Business Consultant Ltd, as did Charles Taylor, Ibrahim Bah, and others. Interestingly, Liepins revealed that among the shareholders was Nill Taylor (no relation to Charles Taylor), an American who claimed to be "a representative of the US Government" (though not apparently connected with the US Embassy in Monrovia, which in the 1990s was headed by a series of interim charg�s d'affaires). Nill Taylor, who met with D'Onofrio in Liberia on at least one occasion, was an associate of Nicolas Oman, a notorious Slovenian weapons smuggler who was rewarded for his services to Charles Taylor by being named Liberia's honorary consul in Slovenia. Oman's son, who lives in Australia, was appointed Liberia's honorary consul in the county until 2006, when his family's weapons smuggling ventures became the subject of a diplomatic row between Slovenia and Australia.

Mr. Liepin's allegations have made headlines throughout Liberia, but have yet to appear in any mainstream Western media outlet. This is extremely disappointing in light of the fact that these allegations about D'Onofrio are not new. In 1995, the former CIA agent was arrested by Italian police officers investigating a money laundering and arms smuggling operation into the former Yugoslavia. Italian authorities charged D'Onofrio, whom the local press dubbed "'Specter,' after James Bond's arch-enemy", with using CIA "contacts [he] made during the 40 years he worked for the US intelligence agency to organize illegal financial deals and arms shipments". These reportedly included a foiled attempt to supply Slovenian arms smugglers with osmium, a chemical element used to manufacture nuclear detonators.

There is no doubt that Roger D'Onofrio Ruggiero is what the CIA often terms "a renegade agent". After his retirement from the Agency, he set up an intricate money laundering and smuggling network that helped sustain brutal wars from Bosnia and Kosovo to Sierra Leone and Liberia. Yet D'Onofrio's case is also a stark reminder of the extremely thin line that separates CIA covert activities - especially those involving front-companies and illicit transportation of people and goods - from the actions of transnational criminal networks. Both actors employ essentially identical methods and behavior to achieve different objectives. It is therefore not surprising - though certainly disappointing - that a CIA operative, trained in the craft of running covert activities, would be so destructively efficient in international smuggling activities that cost numerous lives in West Africa and beyond. [Fitsanakis/IntelNews/23February2009] 

Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

Iranian Terrorist Group Enjoys US, EU Protection. The Mujahedeen-E Kalq, also known as the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, is one of several armed groups deemed terrorist by Washington and the European Union (EU). On January 26, however, the EU decided to remove MEK from its official list of terrorist organizations, a move that some observers believe was secretly supported by the US. This is because, despite MEK's terrorist designation, Washington has routinely collaborated with it since 2003, prompted by the group's fierce opposition to the regime in Tehran.

MEK, which operates under a peculiar breed of Marxist, feminist and Islamic ideology, began its political activities in 1963, when it emerged in opposition to the US puppet regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In 1979, it was among several political groups that participated in Pahlavi's ouster, which subsequently earned it its terrorist designation from Washington. Soon afterwards, however, the group fell out with the conservative elements in Iran's Islamic Revolution and began an armed war against Tehran. Many in MEK's armed wing resettled on the Iraqi side of the Iraq-Iran border, where they received funding and diplomatic support from the government of Saddam Hussein.

In 2003, when the US invaded Iraq, American forces entered Camp Ashraf, MEK's main military base in Iraq, to find "armored personnel carriers, artillery, anti-aircraft guns and vehicles [...] along with more than 2,000 well-maintained tanks." However, even though the group if officially classified by the US as terrorist, US troops were ordered by the Pentagon to give military protection to MEK armed groups in Iraq. Since then, Western correspondents in Iraq have frequently reported that US military personnel "regularly escort MEK supply runs between Baghdad and [...] Camp Ashraf".

The main reason for Washington's clandestine backing of an armed group it officially describes as terrorist is well publicized. It relates to America's consideration of MEK as "a source of valuable intelligence on Iran", particularly its assistance in "helping expose Iran's secret nuclear program through spying on Tehran for decades". Additionally, the group "has been secretly helping the CIA run operations against the Islamic regime" from Camp Ashraf.

While enjoying covert US protection, MEK has been tied to several attacks on civilian targets inside Iran, a recent one being the bombing of a girls' school in the town of Zahedan. These attacks have infuriated the Iranian government, which has demanded that Iraq stops hosting MEK bases on its territory. Late last year, the Iraqi government, which is ideologically aligned to Tehran, pressured Washington to terminate MEK's presence on Iraqi soil. The Bush Administration eventually succumbed to the pressures in the context of the broader US-Iraq security agreement. Accordingly, Camp Ashraf is scheduled to close down in 2009.

Interestingly, the EU's surprise decision to remove MEK from its list of terrorist organizations came right at the point where the group's leadership is considering where to relocate its thousands of supporters (many armed) currently in Iraq. Its removal from the EU's official terrorist list has opened up the possibility that MEK members will resettle in Europe, thus "temporarily solving the problem of what to do with them once [Camp] Ashraf is closed". Moreover, the EU move is expected to unlock MEK's "untold millions of dollars" frozen in Europe and permit the group to increase its political campaigns, which could well catapult it to "a leading role in the Iranian opposition abroad", according to one former US intelligence official, who also discerns "a hidden American hand in the EU decision".

Meanwhile, US covert collaboration with MEK operatives is expected to intensify under a major CIA operation authorized in 2008 by former US President George W. Bush and now supervised by the Barack Obama Administration. Iran appears to have apprehended at least four operatives working on this project. Earlier this month, Tehran announced the arrest and secret trial of four individuals "seeking to topple [the government] with the backing of the US State Department and the CIA". The four were apparently convicted after a secret trial, in which they were found guilty of trying to secretly instigate a "velvet revolution" in the Islamic state. [Fitsanakis/WorldPress/25February2009] 

Slaves Worked as Spies for The Union. William Jackson was a slave in the home of Confederate president Jefferson Davis during the Civil War. It turns out he was also a spy for the Union Army, providing key secrets to the North about the Confederacy.

Jackson was Davis' house servant and personal coachman. He learned high-level details about Confederate battle plans and movements because Davis saw him as a "piece of furniture" - not a human, according to Ken Dagler, author of "Black Dispatches," which explores espionage by America's slaves.

"Because of his role as a menial servant, he simply was ignored," Dagler said. "So Jefferson Davis would hold conversations with military and Confederate civilian officials in his presence."

Dagler has written extensively on the issue for the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence

In late 1861, Jackson fled across enemy lines and was immediately debriefed by Union soldiers. Dagler said Jackson provided information about supply routes and military strategy.

"In Jackson's case, what he did was ... present some of the current issues that were affecting the Confederacy that you could not read about in the local press that was being passed back and forth across local lines. He actually had some feel for the issues of supply problems," Dagler said.

Jackson and other slaves' heroic efforts have been a forgotten legacy of the war - lost amid the nation's racially charged past and the heaps of information about the war's historic battles. But historians over the last few decades have been taking an interest in the sacrifice of African-Americans during those war years.

Jackson's espionage is mentioned in a letter from a general to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell refers to "Jeff Davis' coachman" as the source of information about Confederate deployments.

Dagler said slaves who served as spies were able to collect incredibly detailed information, in large part because of their tradition of oral history. Because Southern laws prevented blacks from learning how to read and write, he said, the slave spies listened intently to minute details and memorized them.

"What the Union officers found very quickly with those who crossed the line ... was that if you talked to them, they remembered a great more in the way of details and specifics than the average person ... because again they relied totally on their memory as opposed to any written records," he said.

Jackson wasn't the only spy. There were hundreds of them. In some cases, the slaves made it to the North, only to return to the South to risk being hanged. One Union general wrote that he counted on black spies in Tennessee because "no white man had the pluck to do it." [CNN/20February2009] 

Section III - COMMENTARY

U.S. Needs to Take Cyber Espionage Threat More Seriously, by Jay Carafano and Eric Sayers. Cyber espionage constitutes a significant threat to U.S. national security. Not only are such tactics being used to advance the interests of private corporations as they work to compete in the global market, but states also have employed this tool to both monitor the capabilities of adversaries and steal valuable, top-secret and proprietary information.

Everything from the Pentagon's most sensitive plans to invaluable intellectual property is at risk. Many U.S. officials have identified China as the main culprit in this effort, citing numerous major attacks against the Department of Defense and defense contractors that originated from the Chinese mainland. 

Finally, international legal mechanisms that govern cyber activity remain wanting. This is due, in part, to the decentralized nature of cyber attacks. During the Estonia attacks, for instance, although the perpetrator was believed to be the Russian government, and many computers that assisted in the attack were located in Russia, computers all over the world were used to launch the attack. Any direct evidence linking the attacks to Russia was thus highly circumstantial. During the crisis, questions lingered regarding what magnitude of cyber attack or evidence of perpetrators was necessary to invoke an Article V response under the auspices of the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Additionally, questions were asked regarding what constituted an appropriate response from Estonia and other NATO members. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer largely summarized the prevailing answers to these questions when he stated that "no member state is protected from cyber attacks.

Efforts to construct a framework to help guide the activities of varying actors in cyberspace remain essential. It is vital for U.S. policymakers to think strategically. There are many "first order" questions that deserve serious thought as the U.S. government considers the next steps in keeping the "cyber commons" open to the free flow of services and ideas while thwarting the activities of malicious actors. [James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., is assistant director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies and senior research fellow for national security and homeland security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Davis Institute, at the Heritage Foundation. Eric Sayers is a research assistant in the Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation.] [Carafano/UPI/26February2009] 

CIA Must Return To Its Roots To Become Effective Once Again, by Charles Faddis. In 1942, as the United States went to war with brutal and fanatical foes, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the creation of the first civilian intelligence collection organization in U.S. history.

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), under the brilliant direction of its first and only leader, Gen. William "Wild Bill" Donovan, performed legendary service throughout World War II from the jungles of Burma to the mountains of Norway and into the heart of the Third Reich, itself.

At the advent of the Cold War, the OSS became the Central Intelligence Agency - and the CIA morphed into a large, lumbering bureaucracy.

Almost seven decades after the birth of this civilian intelligence agency, we need to go back to the beginning - to a lean, flexible, imaginative organization trained and equipped to confront our nation's enemies. We need a new OSS.

The office in 1942 was an organization built in the image of Donovan, himself, and staffed by what he called his "glorious amateurs." Occasional failure was accepted as the cost of doing business. Inactivity was not. Donovan told his agents that if they fell, "they should fall forward."

Within the OSS were Army paratroopers and regular military officers. There were also former communists, actors, professional athletes, bankers, lawyers and socialites. Probably the single most effective OSS operative was a one-legged woman named Virginia Hall, who operated inside occupied France disguised as a peasant despite continuous, ruthless efforts by the Gestapo to hunt her down.

The OSS adopted a simple operational methodology: it did whatever it took to acquire the intelligence the nation desperately needed. Across the world it penetrated embassies, recruited foreign diplomats and stole secrets to intercept the official communications of hostile nations. The intelligence acquired was important, but it was not enough, and so the OSS also sent operatives deep into occupied territory under a variety of non-official covers to steal secrets, conduct sabotage and make contact with resistance groups. The dividends paid were enormous, but so were the costs. OSS agents caught by the Germans were lucky if they were killed quickly.

Donovan knew what price his people would pay for acquiring the intelligence the nation needed. The men and women of the OSS understood exactly what sacrifices they would have to make.

After a hiatus following the end of the war, the OSS was reborn in 1947 as the Central Intelligence Agency. We were now in a global confrontation with the Soviet Union. We needed intelligence officers overseas, and we needed them in large numbers. The Red Army's plans for an invasion of Western Europe were of intense concern, so were Soviet efforts to undermine the government of Italy, to form new relationships with African nations and to sell arms to India. 

Most CIA agents were sent to nations that were generally supportive of our efforts. Cover was not a concern in most cases. The West Germans and Thais did not spend huge amounts of time trying to identify and expel U.S. intelligence officers. We moved - as the OSS had - with the understanding that the CIA would do whatever it took to acquire the intelligence the nation needed. That meant deploying large numbers of officers under official cover to focus on countering the actions of Soviet personnel who were also operating under official cover.

This long, almost ritualized confrontation - a significant element of the Cold War - dragged on for decades. It was a tough, shadowy war, but one in which the rules became well known and were generally religiously observed. Spies might be caught. They were rarely killed. A bad day meant some period of questioning by the other side and then deportation as persona non grata. We did not target Russians for lethal action. They did not target us.

By the mid to late 1980s, this war was coming to an end. The Soviet Empire was beginning its slow-motion disintegration. New dragons - terrorism, drug smuggling and nuclear proliferation - were coming to the fore. These emerging targets did not lend themselves to attack using the methodologies of the Cold War. 

Officers under official cover were not well placed to recruit operatives who could penetrate organizations such as Hezbullah. Personnel trained and equipped to work diplomatic targets were not conditioned psychologically or physically to deal with the dangers inherent in operating against armed groups which were prepared to use murder and torture as tools of the trade.

It was time for radical change. Just as the OSS had reinvented itself into the CIA of the 1950s, it was now necessary for the CIA of the Cold War to transform into something capable of handling emerging threats. The moment had come for our premier human intelligence agency to shift form once again.

It did not happen.

The organization, which had begun life as the free-wheeling, rule-breaking, and eclectic mix of "amateurs" in 1942 had calcified into another, large, ponderous federal bureaucracy. The OSS decided what intelligence needed to be acquired and then did whatever it could to get it. Its methodology was driven by the requirement.

The CIA that had emerged decades later now worked the problem backward. It began by stating its methodology, as if it were a given, and then looked to see what intelligence it could acquire via these mechanisms. Officers who had spent their entire careers working abroad under official cover and in confrontation with other generally civilized adversaries had no intention of moving into the business of penetrating hostile, lethal, ruthless drug cartels and terrorist organizations.

The predictable happened. We began to experience catastrophic failures. In Lebanon, we lost the Marine barracks and the embassy. The CIA provided no warning. Hostages were taken and held with impunity. Time passed. The failures became more frequent and more damaging. We lost two embassies in East Africa. The USS Cole was attacked. Again, the CIA provided no warning.

Then came the 9/11 attacks. Shortly thereafter, a war was launched against Iraq based on catastrophically wrong intelligence assessments.

It has been seven years since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and Osama Bin Laden remains at large.

Within the CIA, nothing fundamentally has changed. New bureaucratic entities have cropped up. More lines have been drawn on wiring diagrams. More requirements for coordination have been put in place. Meetings and PowerPoint presentations have multiplied. None of this compensates for a failure to collect the necessary human intelligence in the first place.

The issue is not sloth. Nor is it a lack of dedication. The CIA continues to attract large numbers of resolute, patriotic Americans.

The organization has degenerated into a stiff, risk-averse bureaucracy due to abysmal senior leadership and a lack of political support.

Donovan told his people to fall forward if they fell. He tolerated failure when inevitable, because he knew in a risky business things often went awry. Today's CIA lives by the unofficial mantra.

"Big ops. Big problems. Little ops. Little problems. No ops. No problems." Donovan would roll in his grave every time it is uttered.

Since 9/11, everything we have done in the interest of so-called "intelligence reform" has carried us in exactly the wrong direction as far as human intelligence is concerned. Yet more layers of supervision and bureaucracy have been stacked on top of an already inflexible apparatus. The CIA is becoming less capable of doing the nation's business, as if caught in some self-perpetuating death spiral.

It's not that on Sept. 10, 2001, we weren't conducting enough meetings or preparing enough long-term strategic plans. The problem was that we weren't running the necessary sources inside al-Qaida to tell us the intentions of that organization. Human intelligence is not collected by staffs, offices or other bureaucratic creations. It is acquired by small number of highly creative individuals, freed of restraints and limitations, and turned loose to do the impossible.

At the end of World War II, Kermit Roosevelt wrote the official history of the OSS in an attempt to record for future generations the lessons learned. On the first page of the manuscript, he wrote: "Secret intelligence, sabotage and subversion could not be run along standard military or bureaucratic lines. In the handling of agents the human element was primary, and it was discovered many times over that a few individuals who combined understanding of this factor with imagination in operations and objectivity in evaluating results could produce far better intelligence than could larger staffs which attempted to work on a more regular, more bureaucratic or more military basis."

We don't need to add more layers of supervision, oversight and coordination to the process of collecting human intelligence. We need a new OSS. [Faddis/NationalDefenseMagazine/March2009] 

Today's CIA Serves Contractors And Bureaucrats; Not the Nation, by Philip Giraldi. Suppose you were given the dark mission of spending $50 billion a year to create a global intelligence organization that would be minimally effective. You would want to keep 90 percent of the employees in their home country and incentivize senior staff to stay "close to the flagpole" to enhance their promotion prospects. Training costs should be high - $500,000 per recruit - and bureaucracy so stifling that a third of incoming officers will swiftly wash out. To keep morale low, surround those who remain with contractors - about half of the workforce - and pay the hired guns twice as much as the staff. Add a high level of corruption, routine cover-ups of malfeasance and incompetence, and you would have today's CIA. It is, as one critic noted, "a sorry blend of Monty Python and Big Brother."

The Sept. 11 attacks caught the Agency off guard. After the devastating budget cuts of the Clinton years, the CIA was desperately trying to rebuild its capabilities, yet it was still gripped by a Cold War mindset. The over-the-horizon threat from China figured far more prominently than terrorism or nuclear proliferation. But overnight that orientation shifted, and this sclerotic bureaucracy was tasked with becoming the leading edge in the Bush administration's war on terror. Its budget exploded.

Many of the highly motivated but poorly prepared new hires came in without foreign-language fluency. Few had lived or worked outside the United States. Rather than being sent to overseas posts, most were shunted into CIA offices popping up like mushrooms across the United States. Even non-official cover operatives, very expensive and specially trained officers under business cover, were frequently given domestic assignments because there was no place to put them. When the National Clandestine Service needed to increase "operators" overseas - usually because some congressman was nosing around - it prescribed sightseeing and "area familiarization" trips, which the dispatched officers referred to as "Axis of Evil Tourism." The new CIA thus became its own false front - long on numbers, short on depth.

In a stopgap move designed to buy time to train the newcomers, numerous Agency retirees were called back to the colors as contractors, their clearances renewed. But contracting quickly became a way for senior managers to featherbed their own staffs. By 2002, contractors made up one third of the burgeoning workforce. By 2006, they were more than half, and, according to some estimates, up to 70 percent in certain areas, including the Clandestine Service. Some even found positions as chiefs of station, unimaginable when the contractor program was initiated. Experienced officers, spying an opportunity, retired early to set up their own companies and return as contractors. They could collect their pensions and also get back on the payroll at much higher salaries.

Contractors are not cheap and, once introduced into a bureaucracy, they tend to grow like Topsy. The average federal government civil servant costs $128,000 per year, including benefits and legacy issues like pensions. Intelligence contractors make that much in salary alone - and sometimes significantly more because of the market value of their security clearances. The companies that employ them use a formula that multiplies the base salary by two and a half to four to come up with the figure that they charge the government. A contractor working for the CIA can easily cost taxpayers half a million dollars per year.

Ready availability of contractors to staff the myriad layers of bureaucracy in Langley encouraged the proliferation of what would be non-jobs anywhere else, what former CIA Chief of Station Milt Bearden described as headquarters' "buggy-whip makers." Moreover, intelligence officers who serve overseas are able to retire early by American standards because the job is high stress and, after a point, the officer burns out. Contracting takes many of these officers considered to be less effective and puts them back into the system.

Eventually the growth of contracting alarmed even Congress, and in June 2007 CIA Director Michael Hayden agreed to cut the contractor numbers by 10 percent. It now appears, however, that commitment will be achieved by a hiring freeze rather than any actual cut in positions.

But concentrating on what the CIA has become since 9/11 ignores the roots of the problem. Anyone who has ever worked for the Agency would probably concede that the CIA's reality has never equaled its mystique. In Rome Station in the 1980s, officers, bemused by the oppressive bureaucracy and strutting incompetence of chiefs who could not speak Italian, would joke about the "real CIA," speculating that it must exist somewhere, possibly concealed in the Department of Agriculture offices at the embassy or hidden down in the commissary behind the rack of prosciutto.

The Agency has undeniably had successes, but weighed against the cost and measured against the national interest they have been few and far between. From its founding, the CIA has been burdened by unrealistic expectations, often poorly led, politically manipulated, and sometimes corrupt. It failed to realize that even its supposed victories would bear bitter fruit - Afghanistan is a case in point. And the Agency's ability to predict and counter threats against the United States, the purpose for which it was created by the National Security Act of 1947, has been almost nonexistent. Double agents from Russia, Cuba, China, and MI-6 all penetrated the Agency, and its old-boy culture led to the failure to identify Aldrich Ames, a traitor within its own ranks who betrayed our few agents in Moscow. Despite years of effort and billions of dollars, the CIA has never obtained policy-level information on key international adversaries. The development of nuclear weapons by the USSR and China, the Korean War, and India's test of an atomic bomb all took the Agency by surprise. From 1969 onward, it bowed to political pressure to overestimate the size of the Russian economy.

More recently, the Agency failed to predict and stop the 9/11 attacks, and its preparation of the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002 was wrong in every particular, leading to the disastrous war with Iraq. Currently, the Agency is unable to penetrate terrorist groups. Nearly every top-level agent employed over the course of 60 years has been a volunteer, a "walk-in," not the product of intensive efforts to find and recruit spies.

Since the CIA works for the president, political pressure regularly trumps honest analysis. Hundreds of incomprehensible covert actions have been launched because the White House said "do something." The overthrow of Mohammed Mossadeq in Iran in 1953 and the manipulation of elections in countries like Italy through the 1980s to keep the Communists out only encouraged corruption and inhibited positive political development. Many other operations, particularly in Latin America, did little more than install military dictators, empower leftist revolutionaries, and blacken the name of the United States.

In the wake of 9/11, the Agency failed to redeem itself. Director George Tenet grandiloquently declared war on Osama bin Laden then inexplicably failed to allocate resources to deal with the emerging terrorist threat or create career incentives to attract top officers to work in counterterrorism. He was unable to recruit Arab or Asian Americans who speak the languages and understand the cultures where terrorists germinate because the Agency's draconian standards prevented them from getting security clearances. A consummate team player and bureaucrat who always sought to please, Tenet capped his career by slanting intelligence to support the White House's plan for war against Iraq, famously declaring the case for WMD a "slam dunk."

Yet the CIA always circles the wagons to protect its own. An Agency Inspector General's report released in August 2007 recommended disciplinary action against Tenet and three of his top aides over failure to perform adequately in the lead-up to 9/11. But the recommendation was ignored by Porter Goss and Michael Hayden, the two directors who succeeded Tenet.

Examples of other mistakes abound: An officer operating in the Middle East once betrayed an entire network of agents when he tried to pass through an airport metal detector with their passports carelessly stuffed into a pocket with a steel pen. Officers in Europe in the early 1990s sent identical letters from the same mailbox on the same day to every agent in Iran, leading to the roll-up of every Agency source in that country. The agents paid with their lives; the officers involved were not punished. One became the chief of the Near East Division.

The Agency's culture is increasingly defined by a kind of insularity, along with an unwillingness to accept criticism and a belief in its own exceptionalism. CIA analysts have been rightly rebuked for their inability to find and use open-source information. They give greater weight to reports from spies even when the information being provided is wrong. And the Agency's obsessive secretiveness also goes beyond any rational need to protect sensitive material. It refuses even to acknowledge information already in the public record, including the location of its principal training center near Williamsburg, Virginia.

The most cult-like of the CIA's divisions is its spy network - designated the National Clandestine Service since 2006 but generally referred to by Agency officers as the DO, an acronym of its former name, the deputy directorate for operations. The DO has its own rites of passage, its own language and expressions. Many clandestine officers believe they belong to an elite that is undertaking extraordinarily difficult and dangerous tasks - "God's work." But the James Bond conceit is largely a fiction as few CIA officers are ever in real danger. High internal cohesion derives less from shared peril than the moral ambiguities related to spying.

This strong group identity has led to an acceptance of extraordinary levels of mediocrity or even incompetence within the ranks. As the alcoholic and utterly inept Aldrich Ames learned, it is very hard to get hired but even harder to get fired. One officer who was recorded by a Cuban film crew nonchalantly unloading a dead drop in a Havana park not only went unpunished for his failure to operate securely, he was made chief of a large station in Europe. The dead dropped message from the agent, who was a double working for Cuban intelligence, was concealed, appropriately, in a plastic dog turd fabricated by the Office of Technical Services.

Senior officers, in denial over their own lack of language and cultural skills, frequently maintain that "an op is an op," implying that recruiting and running spies is the same everywhere - an obvious absurdity. The Agency's shambolic overseas assignment process means that officers often receive only minimal language training and are expected to learn the local idiom after arriving at a post, presumably through osmosis. Most fail to do so. Frequently chiefs of station cannot converse with the heads of the local intelligence services unless their counterparts happen to speak English. Officers targeting indigenous political parties or government officials often cannot read a newspaper or speak the local language. Attempts in the 1980s to require language qualification as a sine qua non for overseas assignment foundered due the sheer immensity of the problem. In 1995, only three Agency officers could speak Arabic well enough to understand an Arab speaking colloquially. Seven years after 9/11, there are only five such officers.

As the Agency evolved into what one critic called "a global military policy," an officer corps that largely eschewed any thought of torture or secret prisons in the '80s and '90s now embraces these practices - and their tradecraft is so poor that they can't even keep their war crimes secret. The 26 CIA employees who abducted radical preacher Abu Omar from a Milan street in 2003 used passports and cell phones in false names but called their families in Virginia and claimed frequent flyer miles at their hotels in their true names, enabling Italian investigators to identify nearly all of them. The major counterterrorist operation, costing millions of dollars and with a huge supporting cast of Italians and Americans, successfully "rendered" the hapless Egyptian cleric to Cairo. He was subsequently tortured into telling everything he knew, which was more or less nothing, leading to his release by the Egyptians.

A fish rots from its head. One recent director for operations was referred to derisively by a number of European intelligence services as the "Ex-Chief of Station Luxembourg" because he lacked operational experience and Luxembourg was the most senior overseas position that he had held. He was, however, a skilled operator in the headquarters bureaucracy - which in some ways made him a welcome exception. Most Agency senior officers in the clandestine service are promoted because they are believed to be effective case officers, good at recruiting and running agents, not because they are able managers. The aggressive arrogance common in agent handlers makes them ill-suited superiors. As a result, most CIA chiefs of station are regarded by their subordinates as terrible bosses whose first priority is polishing their own reputations. By 2001, even though the terrorist threat had been growing for years, many overseas stations had become paranoid and operationally paralyzed. A well-known chief of station in Rome was so insecure about his staff that he tasked a loyal officer to crawl through the halls to eavesdrop outside offices and monitor what was being said.

Another reason the wrong officers advance is that personnel policies tend to measure performance in statistical terms. It is, perhaps, a failure of the American imagination, or an adoption of a production-line mentality, that leads to the confusion of more with better. Nowhere is this truer than at the CIA. Field officers are evaluated by the number of recruitments, called "scalps," and raw intelligence reports produced during a standard two- or three-year tour. Quality is relatively unimportant since most officers move on before the hollowness of their achievements can be fully realized by their successors. As it is extremely difficult, even impossible, to locate and recruit a terrorist, few are willing to make the effort when easier pickings can inflate the numbers. Some officers deliberately seek assignments - referred to as "recruiting tours" - in poor Third World countries where it is easy to run up the score.

Struggling to achieve within the sluggish and multilayered Agency bureaucracy, described by one critic as similar to that of the former Soviet Union, officers become more adept at working the system than collecting intelligence. In a candid moment, most retirees would admit that they never recruited an agent who actually had information vital to the United States and never produced an intelligence report that contained anything policymakers actually needed. It has been estimated that only 4 percent of finished intelligence reports originate from recruited spies, referred to as "humint."

In the wake of 9/11, analysts realized that they must write more rather than better reports - and align themselves with the prevailing view of the White House - if they wanted to get promoted. Strategic analysis, which takes more time, requires more expertise, and does not tell the White House what is going to happen tomorrow, became a lost art. As Carl Ford, a retired senior analyst, put it, "As long as we rate intelligence more for its volume than its quality, we will continue to turn out the $40 billion pile of crap that we have become famous for." The policymakers often agree. President Richard Nixon frequently asked what the hell "those clowns" were doing over at Langley. President George H.W. Bush, a friend of the Agency and onetime director, referred to the CIA as "both ineffective and scared."

Unsurprisingly, rampant operational corruption has led to personal corruption. The September 2008 conviction of the Agency's third-ranking officer, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo - who pled guilty to wire fraud after being charged with 30 separate crimes - was only the tip of the iceberg. Retired officers become contractors to take advantage of the system, while former senior personnel do even better, exploiting their international contacts to make money on a much larger scale. Several recent Clandestine Service retirees who were involved in Iraq have become partners in ventures marketing oil diverted from wells in Kirkuk and Mosul with the collusion of the Kurdish authorities. The oil is sold primarily on the black market in Eastern Europe.

Into this dysfunctional environment, President Obama has dispatched Leon Panetta - soft-spoken, judicious, wise to the ways of Washington. His lack of intelligence experience initially riled Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, who was pushing her fellow Californian, Rep. Jane Harmon. But he fielded the committee's questions with aplomb, and the consensus among former officers is that Panetta is a good pick.

He was, in fact, the second choice. Obama had been leaning toward John Brennan, a company man and close adviser to George Tenet who was forced to withdraw from consideration amid accusations that he approved Bush-era interrogation and rendition practices.

Panetta comes with fresh eyes and a pragmatic streak. As Bill Clinton's chief of staff, he imposed order on a slovenly West Wing. As a member of the Iraq Study Group, he saw firsthand the disastrous consequences of politicizing intelligence. A consummate insider, he carries enough weight to clear space for renovation.

High on Panetta's to-do list should be the introduction of a requirement that entry-level hires have foreign language skills. If officers do not achieve proficiency in the language of their target country, their assignments should be canceled. More officers should be sent overseas - under business rather than embassy cover - and they should be required to complete cultural and historical studies before going. These postings should be three years minimum to enable officers to understand the working environment and local players. 

Those who undertake arduous assignments shouldn't be penalized. Indeed, promotion should be recalibrated to gauge success relative to the difficulty of the job. An officer who works hard on terrorists but never recruits - or even meets - one should not be judged on the same scale as someone who goes to Africa and recruits a local chief of police. (In fact, there should be no reward for recruiting an African chief of police.) Moreover, senior-level assignments should no longer be plums for officers who have done their time and are just waiting to retire. And at the highest levels, officers with proven management ability should fill top posts - not necessarily people who have street skills.

These are not changes that Panetta can accomplish by himself. Bureaucracy is a sluggish beast. But he is positioned to alter CIA culture in two critical ways. He can serve as a buffer between the White House and the Agency, not a conduit for policymakers' demands, and he can encourage risk-taking against terrorist and proliferation targets by protecting and rewarding his officers who are willing to accept the challenge. In his Feb. 5 confirmation hearing, Panetta promised to "turn the page to a new chapter in the Agency's history." We'll soon see whether he has the vision, independence, and will to make good on that pledge and fix a CIA that is undeniably broken. [Giraldi/ACD/18February2009] 

Section IV - OBITUARIES, RESEARCH REQUESTS, JOBS, BOOKS AND COMING EVENTS

Obituaries

Former AFIO National Board Member Eva M. Popvich. Ms. Popovich was born in Oakville, Connecticut on May 26 1920 and died on 14 February 2009. 

While a student at George Washington University, Eva was recruited by "Wild Bill" Donovan to join the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). She was sent to London as a secretary and subsequently to Paris and Wiesbaden as Admin and Reports Officer. In the CIA she served throughout Germany and Austria in various capacities and was later assigned to New Delhi as Reports Officer. After 28 years abroad, Eva served as Ops Support Officer in a CIA technical office, set up an automatic data processing program, and was responsible for ops and admin communications to personnel in the Near East and Africa. Eva was a life member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (elected to the Board in 1993), V.O.S.S., the Central Intelligence Retiree Association (C.I.R.A.) and Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge (V.B.O.B.) where she served as chapter president in 1997. She was a political assistant for the Department of State Foreign Service Institute, the Republican Presidential Task Force, the National Republican Congressional Committee and was on the American Security Council National Advisory Board. 

Eva's life, spent in service to God and her country, was accomplished with a great sense of duty, honor, and courage. Asked many times to write a book about her life and adventures, she would respond, "I took an oath to keep my work secure and I have to honor that promise." Eva's integrity would grace the lives of all, be they her beloved family, friends, or heads of state [IreneB /.WashingtonPost/18February2009] Thank you, Eva....for your years of service and dedication to this quiet community.

Research Requests

Looking for Information on Michael Shaughnessy. My father , Michael Shaughnessy, served with the OSS during WW11 both as a civilian and later in the Marines. I believe that he continued to serve in the CIA. He died in Mexico in 1957.

While I have no records to prove that he was actually working for the CIA, he remained in close contact with many of his associates from the OSS, and It may have been an off-again, on-again relationship.

A Harvard Lawyer, he represented Alaska air during the Berlin airlift, and was in Europe during that period. During the McCarthy hearings he successfully defended Duncan Lee. Later he was in Latin America/ Mexico with (Gen.) Bill Draper. As several of his associates were involved in PBSUCCESS, it seems likely he may have participated there, in some capacity. I have some documents from the OSS, if that should prove of interest. I would appreciate any help your group can give me, Michael Shaughnessy Jr. [Shaughnessy.Michael@la.sysco.com]

-------------------------------------------------------

Trying to Contact Former COS Cairo James Eichelberger. I am a researcher involved in a book project titled, "The Lavon Affair, Leadership Analysis of Israel and Egypt", and was wondering if anyone in your organization knows how I can get in contact with James Eichelberger, CIA Station Chief of Cairo in the '50s. I am friends with one of your members, Mr. Richard Schmuker, of Nebraska, who can vouch for my bona fides.
I met Mr. Eichelberger's son in Washington, D.C. back in 2005, but was unable to get in touch with him to schedule an interview with his father (he believed his father would be agreeable to a short interview). Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated and I look forward to reviewing your website and the connected links. Daniel Egan 630-437-1183

Looking for PRC Industrial Espionage Document: I am looking for an original (Chinese language version) of this document on the techniques of PRC industrial espionage. My understanding is that it is very difficult to obtain a complete copy.
If anyone has this (or knows where to get it) in any form (microfilm, paper, digital scan) please let me know. (A unicode file is preferred)
TITLE: Guofang Keji Qingbaoyuan ji Huoqu Jishu
AUTHORS: Huo Zhongwen and Wang Zongxiao
PUBLISHER: Beijing: Kexue Jishu Wenxuan (Publishing Co.), 1991
REPLIES TO: Edward M. Roche at eroche@barracloughltd.com or at emr96@columbia.edu

JOBS

Counterterrorism Planner
Minimum Security Clearance Requirement: Candidate must be eligible to obtain DOD or other agency Top Secret or DOE “Q” clearance.
Minimum of five years Federal/State and/or private sector experience in the areas of counterterrorism and weapons of mass destruction policy and training as demonstrated by verifiable experience in one or more of the following areas:
• Interagency and/or Joint experience in the design, development, coordination and facilitation of site-specific, realistic exercises
• Law enforcement crisis management experience to detect, deter, prevent, and respond to terrorist threats
• Interagency emergency (consequence) management experience in response to the effects of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high explosive incidents
• Infrastructure protection planning to include risk-based assessments and site-specific security planning
• Continuity of operations planning and development
• Operational intelligence involving terrorist-based threats, and/or national security affairs.

This job entails the design, development, coordination and facilitation of a variety of interagency counterterrorist weapons of mass destruction (WMD) tabletop exercises (TTX) at a wide variety of locations throughout the United States. These exercises will include the participation of Federal, State, and local decision makers ranging from local first responders and law enforcement, to County, State, and Federal law enforcement agencies and emergency management, to National response assets from a variety of Federal organizations. The successful candidate must demonstrate an understanding of U.S. counterterrorism policy—the “who does what to whom” in a terrorism incident in the United States—as well as demonstrate a level of experience in the design, development, coordination, and facilitation of multi-jurisdictional exercises in support of such agencies as the U.S. Department of Energy, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Commerce, Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Defense. Scenarios will include terrorist WMD incidents, natural disasters, and/or critical infrastructure incidents. The position requires a minimum of a Bachelor’s degree, with a graduate degree preferred, in National Security Affairs, Emergency and Disaster Management, or cognate disciplines. The position requires a professional level of fluency in the Microsoft Office (particularly PowerPoint) suite of applications, excellent research skills, and strong analytical, public-speaking, facilitating, and people skills. Travel requirements comprise approximately 10% of the job. Candidates must be eligible for a DOD (or other agency) Top Secret or DOE “Q” clearance.
TO RESPOND: McMunn Associates, Inc. a Parsons Company seeks to fill a full time position. POC: Molly Ryan, (703) 481-6100 ext. 103,mryan@mcmunn-associates.com

COMING EVENTS

EVENTS IN COMING TWO MONTHS....

4 March 2009, 6:30 p.m. - Washington, DC - Josephine Baker: Singer, Dancer, Spy - A discussion at Spy Museum
“I am ready to give the Parisians my life.”—Josephine Baker
From Broadway to the Rue Fontaine, the extraordinary Josephine Baker was the toast of the international nightclub circuit. Born in the United States, the talented African American singer-dancer moved to France to escape racism in America and became an enormous star. She triumphed at the Folies Berg�re and enjoyed the acclaim of European society. Her affection for France was so great that when World War II broke out, she volunteered to spy for her adopted country. Her caf� society fame enabled her to rub shoulders with those in the know, from high-ranking Japanese officials to Italian bureaucrats, and report back what she heard. She heroically stayed in France after the invasion working closely with the French Resistance to undermine the Nazi occupation. Her espionage exploits are just one chapter in Baker’s extraordinary life. Join Jonna Mendez, former CIA chief of disguise, as she reveals Baker’s intelligence work and places it in the context of her exciting and celebrated life.
International Spy Museum, 800 F Street, NW, Washington, DC, Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail Station
TICKETS: $15; Advance Registration required. Tickets are non-refundable and do not include admission to the International Spy Museum. To register, call 202.393.7798; order online at www.spymuseum.org; or purchase tickets in person at the International Spy Museum.

5 - 6 March 2009 - Houston, TX - "Terrorism, Crime & Business" Symposium - Understanding the Fundamental Legal and Security Liability Issues for American Business. A conference sponsored by St. Mary's University., School of Law, Center for Terrorism Law. Four Main Symposium Themes: • An overview of the aims and objectives of the global terror threat posed by al-Qa’eda-styled terror groups, sub-State terror groups, and “lone-wolf” terrorists.
• An analysis of the specific threats to American business sectors that are deemed part of the nation’s “critical infrastructure,” i.e., energy, petrochemical, electric utilities, communication, transportation, health, banking and finance, agriculture, water and shipping. • An understanding of the varied legal issues associated with terrorism and criminal negligence claims against businesses that have suffered a terror attack or serious criminal act in cyberspace or the physical world. • A comprehensive review of how to develop appropriate physical security methods.
SPEAKERS and LOCATION: The symposium will be held at the Federal Reserve Bank, 1801 Allen Parkway, Houston, Texas. The registration fee is $300.00, which includes breakout refreshments, a hosted lunch,
and extensive printed materials, e.g., Terrorism Law: Materials, Cases, Comments (5th Ed. 2009). Participants may qualify for Continuing Legal Education Credits (CLE). For registration information and details, contact Ms. Faithe Campbell at (210) 431-2219; fcampbell@stmarytx.edu. Additional information is also available at the Center for Terrorism Law website: www.stmarytx.edu/ctl.

Wednesday, 11 March 2009 - Albuquerque, NM - The New Mexico Chapter of AFIO meets at the FBI Crest Academy. Inquiries and registration to JOE YARDUMIAN at jjyard@q.com

Sunday, 15 March 2009, 11:30 – 1:30 - Highland Heights, OH - AFIO Northern Ohio Chapter features “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?” Counterinsurgency (COIN) in Afghanistan: Lessons from COIN Operations against Islamist Insurgency in India. Speaker: Colonel Behram A. Sahukar (In Abstentia), The Parachute Regiment Indian Army (Retired)
Col. Behram presented his PowerPoint on this subject at the 8th Annual World Counterterrorism Summit in Herzliya, Israel in September, 2008 and that presentation went over to Chapter member Beverly Goldstein who, with Behram's permission, will make the presentation on his behalf at this event.
Location: Wellington’s Restaurant, 777 Alpha Dr, Highland Heights at I -271 at Wilson Mills Rd. 440.461.9211 or 440.442.0055 Fax 440.442.8135
DRIVING DIRECTIONS: West on Wilson Mills to Alpha Drive (about ¼ mile); right onto alpha Drive (if you see Kohl’s, you’ve made the correct turn); immediate right into parking lot at strip mall; Wellington’s is in front of you. We’re in the alcove in the restaurant. Cost: $20 per person; Mail check with written RSVP, or pay at the door
RSVP: By mail (with check), email, or phone: to Michael S. Goldstein, Esq., 31300 Solon Rd Ste 6, Solon, OH 44139 (440) 424-4071 or email him at mgoldstein@msglpa.com

Thursday, 19 March 2009, 11:30 a.m. - Colorado Springs, CO - The Rocky Mountain Chapter of AFIO will meet in the Air Force Academy Officers Club. Our speakers will be The Honorable Ronald G. Crowder of the 4th Judicial District Court and Timothy Schutz. They will speak on the Colorado Judicial System.
Please RSVP to Tom Van Wormer at 719-5708505 or robsmom@pcisys.net The buffet is $10.00

Thursday, 19 March 2009 - Phoenix, AZ - The AFIO Arizona Chapter event features CIA Officer Diana Worthern. In the 1980s, retired CIA officer Diana Worthern managed CIA's "Back Room" to protect agents from an undetected mole in US intelligence and was directly involved in the mole hunt. She joins Arizona chapter's VP John Zebatto, a former colleague, to discuss the complex story of how the KGB penetrated the inner circle of US intelligence for a decade beginning in 1985. To RSVP please contact Simone via email ~ simone@afioaz.org or Art ~ artjkerns@afioaz.org

19 March 2009 – San Francisco, CA – The AFIO Jim Quesada Chapter hosts Major Brian Shul, USAF, ret. The topic will be spy plane SR-71.
RSVP required. The meeting will be held at United Irish Cultural Center, 2700 45th Avenue, San Francisco (between Sloat and Wawona). 11:30 AM no host cocktails; noon - luncheon. $25 member rate with advance reservation and payment; $35 non-member. E-mail RSVP to Mariko Kawaguchi (please indicate trout or corn beef) no later than 5PM 3/10/09: mariko@cataphora.com or mail check made out to "AFIO" to: Mariko Kawaguchi, P.O. Box 117578 Burlingame, CA 94011. (650) 622-9840 X608

21 March 2009 - Kennebunk, ME - The Maine Chapter meeting features Dr. Terence Roehrig, Associate Professor of National Security Studies at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI.  Dr. Roehrig will speak on "North Korea and the Outlook for Peace on the Korean Peninsula".  He will examine the US-ROK alliance and recent changes, military balance on the peninsula, North Korea's nuclear weapons program and economic situation, and Kim Jong-il's health and succession among other issues.  Dr. Roehrig received a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in international relations focusing on Korea and East Asia.  He has traveled to Korea many times and recently visited India and China to do research.  The meeting will be held at 2:00 p.m. at the Kennebunk Free Library, 112 Main Street, Kennebunk, and is open to the public. For information call 207-364-8964.

24-25 March 2009 - McLean, VA - NMIA hosts their 2009 National Intelligence Symposium at The MITRE Corporation Auditorium conducted at the SECRET/NOFORN security level.
The first session will include speakers from the DOD perspective and then each of the Service – level organizations who will address changes in budget, priorities, personnel, and mission. The second session focuses on Defense Intelligence Agency support to the warfighter.
Program details and online registration: http://www.nmia.org/upcomingevents.html
Questions: Contact the National Military Intelligence Association (NMIA) Voice: 540-338-1143 or Fax: 703-738-7487 Email: Admin@nmia.org
REGISTRATION FEE: $395. Telephone requests for refund will not be accepted.
Security Information: Visit Requests need to be submitted to MITRE for all Visitors attending a Classified Meeting. Requests should be submitted at least five days prior to the meeting date.

25 - 27 March 2009 - Raleigh, NC - "Lady Spies and the Ancient Art of Seduction" is theme of The 6th annual Raleigh Spy Conference The conference salutes lady spies - and their counterparts on the other side - with expert speakers delivering riveting tales of espionage.
Lady spies have played a crucial role in espionage for centuries, from ancient civilizations through the Biblical era, world wars, the Cold War and today's sophisticated environment of modern espionage. As the flood of newly declassified documents over the past 15 years attests, female operatives were responsible for many of the most daring intelligent operations of the modern era - while others played a notorious role working against the US.
Brian Kelley, popular former conference speaker and retired CIA operations officer, returns to Raleigh with a special presentation highlighted by videotaped, jailhouse interviews of convicted spies and their wives (the spouses of former FBI agents Earl Pitts and Richard Miller along with the former wife of CIA officer, Jim Nicholson); wives who were complicit in their husband's espionage (Barbara Walker, Anne Henderson Pollard and Rosario Ames) along with an interview of the former Soviet citizen who seduced FBI agent Richard Miller on behalf of the KGB.
Ron Olive, retired special agent from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and author of the definitive book "Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History was Brought to Justice," that uncovered the complicit role of Pollard's wife Anne. He will present a power point presentation on the role of the Pollards and the incredible damage they did to our national security.
I.C. Smith, former FBI Special Agent in charge, will return to Raleigh to present the inside story of Katrina Leung, known inside the FBI as "Parlor Maid," who managed to seduce her two FBI case agents and thus compromising them during the course of this twenty year operation. She was first used by the FBI as a double agent, then "doubled back" or "tripled" by Chinese intelligence against the FBI and later becoming the only known "quadruple" (re-doubled back against the Chinese by the FBI) agent yet exposed. The intelligence which the FBI derived from the Parlor Maid case went to four US presidents.
Terry Crowdy, British espionage writer and researcher will offer the role of female spies and tales of seduction from antiquity, the Christian era to modern lady spies at work today. Crowdy's book "The Enemy Within" is considered one of the top surveys of espionage.
Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schecter is a historian and journalist with extensive first-hand experience in Russia, Ukraine, Japan, China and Southeast Asia. He began his career with the Wall Street Journal and then spent 18 years with Time Magazine. He was a foreign correspondent covering Indo-China based in the Hong Kong bureau (1960-1963); a Nieman Fellow at Harvard (1963-1964); bureau chief in Tokyo (1964-1968) and Moscow (1968-1970); White House correspondent (1971-1973) and diplomatic editor (1973-1977). While based in Moscow he was instrumental in the acquisition of Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs and their preparation for publication. LEONA P. SCHECTER is a distinguished historian and literary agent. Over the past twenty four years, she has brought to publication more than 125 books including non-fiction, literary novels and detective fiction. She has co-authored four books with her husband Jerrold Schecter: An American Family in Moscow (Little, Brown 1975) and Back In the USSR (Scribner’s 1988),with their five children, and the landmark history of Soviet secret intelligence operations, Special Tasks with Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatoli Sudoplatov. Their book, Sacred Secrets, How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History, was published in June 2002 by Brassey’s. She has sold two films to Hollywood based on books for which she was the agent and participated in the production of Back in the USSR, a documentary for Frontline on public televsion. She recently had two best selling books on former President Ronald Reagan and is the agent for Zbigniew Brzezinski’s current best seller with Brent Scowcroft, America and The World, Basic Books, 2008. She is currently at work on an espionage novel.
Nigel West, the keynote speaker is an old friend of the Raleigh Spy Conference. The former Member of Parliament - and a leading expert on modern espionage - is the author of the forthcoming on this topic will be released at this special conference. West is a popular and engaging speaker sure to offer telling insights and entertaining stories on this intriguing subject.
Click here to view the Raleigh schedule of events.
Event Locations and Accommodations in Raleigh, North Carolina USA
Information about Raleigh, North Carolina USA can be found at www.visitRaleigh.com.
For map of downtown Raleigh area: click here
For an interactive map of Raleigh area: click here .
Conference Venue: The 6th Raleigh Spy Conference will be held at the NC Museum of History. 5 East Edenton Street (between Salisbury and Wilmington Streets) in downtown Raleigh, NC 27601 ph: 919-807-7900
Costs - Full registration for all sessions and one ticket to the Spy Gala: $250
Veterans, members of the military and the intelligence community: $175
Seniors over 62, teachers and students: $145.
Special discount for ladies! Only $125 for the entire conference package.
Registration: You can register online or call 919-831-0999.
Download Raleigh Spy Conference registration form, complete, and mail, fax or email while space remains: Registration Form Spy 09.pdf.

26 March 2009, 12:30 pm - Beverly Hills, CA - The AFIO Los Angeles Chapter luncheon features Dr. Gregory Treverton speaking on "Domestic Intelligence." Treverton is current director of the RAND Corporation's Center for Global Risk and Security, who recently held the position of Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), overseeing the writing of America's National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs). Dr. Treverton's recent work examines terrorism, intelligence, and law enforcement, with a special interest in new forms of public-private partnership. The meeting will take place on the campus of Loyola Marymount University. Lunch will be provided for $15, for attendance reservations please email by no later than 3/20/09: AFIO_LA@yahoo.com check made out to "L.A. Area AFIO" mailed to Arthur Brooks 272 Lasky Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90212

Wednesday, 1 April 2009, noon – 1 pm - Deceiving Hitler: The Masterman Memorandum: A Special Briefing at the International Spy Museum
As Britain entered its second winter of World War II, nightly German Blitzes rained fire on its cities and the threat of invasion had not yet passed. Yet wartime recruit and Oxford University Professor, J.C. Masterman, had the confidence and foresight to predict a time when the tables could be turned against the Nazis. Since the outbreak of war, the British Security Service MI5 had been collecting a group of double agents. The Germans appeared to trust these spies and pressed them for more information. This presented an enormous challenge for MI5—how to preserve the credibility of the double agents without giving away vital war secrets? In a secret memorandum of 1940, Masterman presented an amazing solution. Author of Deceiving Hitler, Terry Crowdy will reveal the content of the now declassified memorandum and explore to what extent the Allies were able to realize Masterman's plan to pull off an elaborate hoax on Hitler.
Free; No registration required! International Spy Museum, 800 F Street, NW, Washington, DC, Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail Station

Thursday, 2 April 2009, noon – 1 pm - Washington, DC - The Brenner Assignment: The Untold Story of the Most Daring Spy Mission of World War II - an Author Presentation at the International Spy Museum
The low-lying Brenner Pass between Austria and Italy has been a strategic target for centuries.  In 1944 a small team of American special operatives was charged with cutting off Nazi access to the Pass by any means possible.  In The Brenner Assignment, Patrick O'Donnell reveals for the first time the facts behind this daring covert operation and the brave men and women behind it.  Join him as he brings to life the courageous American Captains, Hall and Chappell, the heroic Italian partisans including Ettore Davare and the seductive Italian Countess Isabel, and the fiendish Gestapo head Major August Schiffer, in a story as dramatic as a Hollywood film but true—and with the highest of possible stakes.
Free; No registration required!  International Spy Museum, 800 F Street, NW, Washington, DC, Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail Station.

Sunday, 5 April 2009, 11:30 – 1:30 - Highland Heights, OH - AFIO Northern Ohio Chapter features Frank Figliuzzi, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Cleveland Field Office, on "The Cyber Threat"Location: Wellington’s Restaurant, 777 Alpha Dr, Highland Heights at I -271 at Wilson Mills Rd. 440.461.9211 or 440.442.0055 Fax 440.442.8135
DRIVING DIRECTIONS: West on Wilson Mills to Alpha Drive (about ¼ mile); right onto alpha Drive (if you see Kohl’s, you’ve made the correct turn); immediate right into parking lot at strip mall; Wellington’s is in front of you. We’re in the alcove in the restaurant. Cost: $20 per person; Mail check with written RSVP, or pay at the door
RSVP: By mail (with check), email, or phone: to Michael S. Goldstein, Esq., 31300 Solon Rd Ste 6, Solon, OH 44139 (440) 424-4071 mgoldstein@msglpa.com

Tuesday, 14 April 2009, 6:30 pm - Washington, DC - "America on a Need to Know Basis: Secrecy in a Free Society" at the International Spy Museum.
Some Americans wrestle with the concept of government secrecy, but the less vocal majority (and less litigious) quickly recognize that some loss of privacy outweighs living lives of fear of terror, rampant criminal acts, and constant public danger: safety afforded by good surveillance and secrecy. How much secrecy is too much and when does classification become control without bounds? Moderator Shelby Coffey III, senior fellow of the Freedom Forum and former editor and executive vice president of the Los Angeles Times, engages a panel of experts in an exploration of these crucial questions. Join Thomas S. Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive; Peter Earnest, former chief of the CIA office responsible for FOIA, privacy, and litigation issues in the clandestine service; Ronald Goldfarb, author of In Confidence: When to Protect Secrecy and When to Require Disclosure: and Mike Levin, former chief of information policy at the National Security Agency; for a lively exchange of views on the inherent tension between the public’s right to knowledge and the government’s duty to safeguard vital national security information. Tickets: $15. www.spymuseum.org International Spy Museum, 800 F Street, NW, Washington, DC, Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail Station.

Saturday, 18 April 2009 - Richardson, Texas - CIA - University of Texas at Dallas hosts special conference on "Air America." Full details here.

20 - 24 April 2009 - Las Vegas, NV - The International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts Annual Conference. The International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts and the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit, host their Annual Conference at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. The theme will be “Criminal Intelligence: Improving the Odds”. Internationally recognized speakers who are at the forefront of the war on crime and terrorism and those who are leaders in the intelligence community will be on hand to provide up-to-date information. Private security personnel are invited to attend non-law enforcement sensitive training at the nonmember rate. Speakers and workshops will involve training related to: criminal intelligence; international and domestic terrorism; legal issues in criminal intelligence; organized crime and gangs; and information sharing among law enforcement. See the LEIU website for updated confirmed speaker information. Seminar-related Activities: • Hosted Banquet – April 23, 2009; • Additional Activities TBA. For more information, please visit the LEIU website at http://leiu-homepage.org/events/index.php

23-26 April 2009 - Great Lakes, IL - The Midwest Chapter of AFIO will host its annual conference at the Great Lakes Naval Station. Registration is $10 per person. Hotel reservations ($65 per night) can be made through April 10th by calling the Navy Lodge at 1-847-689-1485. Mention that you are with the Midwest AFIO Chapter. For more information and to confirm your attendance, please contact Angelo Di Liberti ASAP at 847-931-4184.

24 - 26 April 2009 - Nashua, NH - The Naval Cryptologic Veterans Association New England Chapter (NCVA-NE) will hold its Spring Mini-Reunion at the Radisson Hotel Nashua.
The hotel is located at 11 Tara Boulevard, Nashua, New Hampshire 03062. For information, please call (518) 664-8032 or visit their website at http://ncva-ne.org. Local individuals who served with the U.S. Naval Security Group or with its counterpart in NETWARCOM are eligible and welcome to attend the mini-reunion. New members are welcome.
Point of Contact: Vic Knorowski, NCVA-NE Publicity Chair. 8 Eagle Lane, Mechanicville, New York 12118 (518) 664-8032

30 April 2009, 8 am–6:30 pm - Gettysburg, PA - Spy City Tours™ Special - Intelligence in the Civil War: Gettysburg as a Case Study [International Spy Museum Special Event]
Why was Lee surprised at Gettysburg?  Why did Meade stand and fight on 3 July?  How did Lee describe his defeat?  Explore the dawn of modern American military intelligence with distinguished former CIA officers, Frans Bax and Barry Stevenson on this thought-provoking bus and walking tour of the Gettysburg battlefield.  Developed for new and senior U.S. intelligence officers to illustrate the essentials of their craft through in-depth analysis of the three-day battle, participants will explore the use of intelligence for decision-making by Union General Meade and how a lack of timely, accurate intelligence undermined Confederate General Lee’s capabilities.  Key decisions and choices made by the military leaders on the battlefield will be explored in depth.  The tour includes information on the development and use of intelligence in the American Civil War and will be of interest to students of the battle and lay people alike.  Lunch at the historic Cashtown Inn is included.
Tickets: $180  To register:  call 1-800-454-5768 and mention program #18181 or visit www.elderhostel.org/dayofdiscovery.

2 May 2009 - Washington, DC - The OSS Society William J. Donovan Award Dinner Honors General David H. Petraeus, USA, Commander, United States Central Command at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, 1330 Maryland Ave SW, Washington, DC. Black Tie/Dress Mess. Cocktails, $150 pp. 6:30 p.m., Dinner 7:30 p.m. For further information or to register call 703-356-6667 or visit oss@osssociety.org

13 June 2009 - Boston, MA - AFIO Boston Pops Committee commemorates the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. Join AFIO Boston-based members at Symphony Hall for a special Boston Pops Concert celebrating our nation’s triumphant achievement. Historic footage of the lunar landing provided by NASA will accompany a program of stirring patriotic music including Holst’s The Planets. Honor one of America’s proudest moments in space exploration with a spectacular Pops concert.  The AFIO Pops Committee has relocated the event back to Boston for our seventh annual Pops social event. Conductor Keith Lockhart will lead the Pops at Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue Boston, MA 02115. Join other AFIO members and friends in the Hatch Room lounge located behind the orchestra level for a social hour before the performance begins. For tickets, call Symphony Hall Charge at 888-266-1200 or online at www.bso.org. Tickets sell from $18.00 to $85.00 and are now on sale.  After purchasing your tickets, please contact Gary at wassinmaryland@aol.com  so I can add your name to the list to look for at the 1 hour social prior to the concert. Ticket prices for attending this concert does not include a gift to AFIO however the Association of Former Intelligence Officers relies greatly upon the generosity of members, corporations, foundations, and the general public who understand and wish to encourage sound intelligence policy and education in the United States.  These gifts allow AFIO and its chapters to carry out important activities in the areas of education, advocacy, seminars, publications, and conferences. Please help by making a financial donation to AFIO. Tax receipts will be issued for donations of $100 or more (does not include Pops ticket cost).  All gifts to AFIO are tax deductible.  AFIO is an IRS approved 501(c)(3) charity. We request this be done separately if you are able to contribute to AFIO. Gifts may be made here.

For Additional Events two+ months or greater....view our online Calendar of Events

-----------------------------------------------------------------------  

Disclaimers and Removal Instructions

Weekly Intelligence Notes (WINs) are commentaries on Intelligence and related national security matters, based on open media sources, selected, interpreted, edited and produced for non-profit educational uses by members and WIN subscribers. 

REMOVAL INSTRUCTIONS: We do not wish to add clutter to inboxes. To discontinue receiving the WINs: 

a)  IF YOU ARE A MEMBER -- click here: UNSUBSCRIBE and supply your full name and email address where you receive the WINs. Click SEND, you will be removed from list.  If this link doesn't open a blank email, create one on your own and send to afio@afio.com with the words:  REMOVE FROM WINs as the subject, and provide your full name and email address where you are currently receiving them.

 b) IF YOU ARE NOT A MEMBER, and you received this message, someone forwarded this newsletter to you [contrary to AFIO policies]. Forward to afio@afio.com the entire WIN or message you received and we will remove the sender from our membership and distribution lists. The problem will be solved for both of us.

CONTENTS of this WIN [HTML version recipients - Click title to jump to story or section, Click Article Title to return to Contents. This feature does not work for Plaintext Edition or for some AOL recipients]. If you wish to change to HTML format, let us know at afio@afio.com. The HTML feature also does not work for those who access their e-mail using web mail...however NON-HTML recipients may view the latest edition each week in HTML at this link: https://www.afio.com/pages/currentwin.htm

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

WINs are protected by copyright laws and intellectual property laws, and may not be reproduced or re-sent without specific permission from the Producer. Opinions expressed in the WINs are solely those of the editor(s) or author(s) listed with each article. AFIO Members Support the AFIO Mission - sponsor new members! CHECK THE AFIO WEBSITE at www.afio.com for back issues of the WINs, information about AFIO, conference agenda and registrations materials, and membership applications and much more!

(c) 2009, AFIO, 6723 Whittier Ave Suite 200, McLean, VA 22101. Voice: (703) 790-0320; Fax: (703) 991-1278; Email: afio@afio.com

Click here to return to top.