Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Pakistan's Former Spymaster Says US Must Talk to Mullah Omar. The U.S. must negotiate a political settlement to the Afghanistan war directly with Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar because any bid to split the insurgency through defections will fail, said the Pakistani former intelligence officer who trained the insurgent chief.

Omar is open to such talks, asserted retired Brigadier Sultan Amir Tarar, a former operative of Pakistan's premier spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. He is popularly known as Colonel Imam, whose exploits have gained him near-legendary status in central Asia.

"If a sincere message comes from the Americans, these people (the Taliban) are very big-hearted. They will listen. But if you try to divide the Taliban, you'll fail. Anyone who leaves Mullah Omar is no more Taliban. Such people are just trying to deceive," said Tarar, a tall, imposing man with a long gray beard and white turban, in an interview with McClatchy.

His comments came as the U.S. and its NATO allies appear increasingly anxious to find a path toward a political resolution to the more than eight-year-old war whose escalating human and financial costs are fueling growing popular opposition.

In Washington, U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones was asked by McClatchy if the Obama administration ruled out having the ISI act as a conduit between Omar and the U.S., as Pakistani officials are advocating.

"We are pursuing a general strategy of engagement," replied Jones, a former four-star Marine general. "We'll see where this takes us."

Senior U.S. and European officials have in recent days been heavily promoting a "re-integration" plan under which low-level Taliban fighters are to be offered jobs, education and protection in return for renouncing al Qaida and defecting to the Afghan government. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is expected to unveil the initiative at an international conference on Afghanistan in London on Thursday.

Karzai also is being encouraged to reach out to senior Taliban leaders, who U.S. commanders think may be induced to switch sides under the pressure of a stepped up military campaign by the 116,000-strong U.S.-led international force bolstered by 30,000 more American soldiers, most of who are due to arrive this summer.

"The U.S. remains committed to continued engagement by the Afghan government to politically reconcile any Afghan citizen willing to renounce al Qaida and violence and to accept the Afghan Constitution," said an administration official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

Some U.S. officials and experts, however, see little chance for progress on a political resolution.

Omar, who has led the Taliban since its inception in 1992 and is thought to be directing the insurgency from a sanctuary in the western Pakistani city of Quetta, has repeatedly rejected negotiations until all foreign forces leave Afghanistan, they pointed out.

Furthermore, the insurgents have expanded to 34 of Afghanistan's 36 provinces, and they think they're winning and that they only have to out-wait the Obama administration, which set July 2011 as the start of a U.S. troop withdrawal.

"If I were sitting on the side of those trying to be brought into some kind of reconciliation process, I'd be saying time is on my side," said a former senior U.S. intelligence official with long experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan who requested anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity.

Tarar, 65, a key player in Afghanistan from the 1979-89 Soviet occupation until 2001, said he trained Omar after he graduated from an Islamic seminary in 1985 to fight as a guerrilla against the Soviet forces. At the time, the ISI was running secret camps for "mujahedin" fighters along the Afghan border with U.S. funding.

Tarar, who worked closely with the CIA and was schooled in guerrilla warfare at Fort Bragg, N.C., arranged for Omar's medical treatment after he was injured. They met again in 1994 after the Pakistani official was posted in the western Afghan city of Herat and "got closer to each other," Tarar said.

The ISI saw the potential of Omar's movement of Islamic purists in the mid-1990s and heavily backed them against the government formed by the victorious anti-Soviet mujahedin. When the Taliban swept into Kabul in 1996, they gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden.

The Pakistani security establishment thinks that Omar's ambitions are limited to Afghanistan, and that the Taliban can now be persuaded to share power with other Afghan factions.

"Mullah Omar is highly respected, very faithful to his country. He's the only answer. He's a very reasonable man," said Tarar, who insisted he was speaking in a personal capacity. "He's a very effective man, no other man is effective. He's for peace, not war. The Americans don't realize this. He wants his country to be peaceful. He doesn't want to destroy his country."

Tarar said that Omar would be willing to cut a deal, if it would lead to the departure of foreign troops and included funds to rebuild Afghanistan. "I can help," he said. "But can I trust the Americans?"

Pakistan admitted last weekend that it is talking to "all levels" of the Taliban.

Western diplomats think the ISI must be involved in any negotiations or it would act as a spoiler, continuing to provide aid to the Taliban and allied insurgent groups as part of a goal to install in Kabul a pro-Pakistan regime that would sever close ties with India.

Tarar said that without talks, the war would grind on with U.S. forces ignoring the counterinsurgency textbooks that call for the use of minimal force and winning the support of the people.

"The time is on the Taliban's side. The longer the Americans stay, the more complete will be their defeat. They will not be routed but they will be worn out, psychologically and physically," he said. [Shah&Landay/Mcclatcydc/25January2010] 

Japanese Reporter Cleared of Espionage Charges. A Japanese reporter who was sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of giving money to activist students to conduct espionage activities for North Korea in 1974 was acquitted in a retrial.

The troubles of Tachikawa Masaki, the 65-year-old former reporter for the Japanese newspaper Nikkan Gendai, began when he gave 7,500 Won to a university student being sought by the police. Masaki came to South Korea to cover the student protest against the Yusin Constitution, and interviewed Seoul National University student Yu In-tae, who would later be sentenced to death in the Mincheong Hangnyeon Incident, in his motel room in April of 1974. When Yu told him about how difficult things had become and that he was surviving only on ramyeon, Masaki handed Yu 7,500 Won, telling him to treat himself to the Korean beef dish bulgogi. The money was labeled as North Korean operational funds during a later investigation, and Masaki was labeled a foreign spy taking orders from North Korea. He could not bear to look at his father and wife as they sat in the audience of a foreign military court.

Masaki was freed just 10 months later, but his life lay in ruins around him. His wife fell mentally ill from the shock and stress of the trial, and his father, who was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease, kept repeating "It is unfair" just before his death. His three-year-old son drowned while his wife stepped away for one moment in her deteriorated condition.

Some 36 years later on Jan. 27, 2010, the Seoul Central District Court acquitted Masaki of charges of instigating civil disorder and violating the Anti-Communist Law, and dismissed charges that he violated the Emergency Act. The bench said the reason Masaki cited in requesting the retrial has some basis, given that he was told by prosecutors that the trial was only a formality and that he needed to admit to the charges to return to Japan and hence seemingly confessed. In the audience, Japanese reporters from the Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo Shimbun, Kyodo News and TBS watched as their senior reporter's stain was removed.

When asked if South Korea could be forgiven, Masaki responded that for 36 years, he harbored bad memories, but deeply respects the South Korean people's deep faith in democratization. He also said he has learned a great deal from the many good South Koreans he has met, and that South Korea is a good country, requesting that ill not be spoken of it. [Hani/27January2010]

Napolitano Outlines DHS Priorities for 2010. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano provided reporters with an overview of her department's priorities in 2010 in a press conference.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will place an extraordinary focus on aviation security, border security, information sharing, and immigration reform as the Obama administration enters its second year, Napolitano said, speaking at DHS headquarters in Washington, DC.

The attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253 by suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab continues to dominate the department's agenda, Napolitano confirmed. The attack created a renewed sense of urgency among US and international agencies to combat terrorism through all instruments of national power, including diplomacy, military, intelligence, and law enforcement, she added.

To bolster aviation security, Napolitano vowed to add new technologies, more law enforcement, and more canine teams to US airports.

But, she cautioned, DHS would be foolish to concentrate on aviation security just because the last attack occurred in the air.

DHS also will increase its efforts to share intelligence and information with state and local law enforcement agencies, she said.

Napolitano also promised that the administration had not forgotten about immigration reform. Changes to US immigration law are necessary to ensure "effective national security" by bringing illegal immigrants out of the shadows, the secretary said.

As such, the department is continuing to work with Congress to introduce bills that would enact comprehensive immigration reform this year.

While announcements on these activities will be forthcoming within weeks, DHS also will continue to tackle high priorities in cybersecurity, weapons of mass destruction, and emergency response - among other areas, Napolitano acknowledged. [MacCarter/HSToday/27January2010] 

U.S. Gives Yemen Key Intelligence to Strike Al Qaeda. U.S. military and intelligence agencies have been sharing satellite and surveillance imagery, intercepted communications and other sensitive information to help Yemen pinpoint strikes against al Qaeda targets, according to officials.

U.S. Special Forces, the CIA and the National Security Agency have played an important part in the growing covert assistance program aimed at helping Yemeni forces track down and kill the leaders of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

The Pentagon and the CIA have sought to keep their roles quiet, in part to avert a public backlash against the Yemeni government, which, besides al Qaeda, is battling Shi'ite rebels in the North and faces separatist sentiment in the South.

The covert program was launched before a Nigerian man allegedly trained by AQAP attempted to blow up a U.S. airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day, but it has since picked up pace with a series of high-profile raids by Yemeni war planes and ground forces.

The Pentagon and the White House had no immediate comment on a Washington Post report that President Barack Obama had personally approved the joint operations, which began six weeks ago and killed six regional al Qaeda leaders.

But Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell praised Yemen's "aggressive and forceful response" to the al Qaeda threat, and said Washington was supportive - "be it financially, be it training, be it advice" - of Yemen's efforts.

"If that is something that the Yemeni government continues to find helpful, we will look for ways to continue to do that, if not broaden it, but this is obviously a sensitive issue for the Yemeni government and we are mindful of their sovereignty," Morrell told a news briefing.

U.S. Special Forces have not taken part directly in attacks in Yemen, nor have U.S. intelligence agencies provided the Yemenis with specific "target lists," officials said.

"It is truly Yemeni-led," a U.S. military official said. "We are sharing information with them to allow their strikes to be more effective."

The military official declined to discuss the extent of U.S. assistance, but other officials said it included images from U.S. satellites and other surveillance aircraft, as well as communication and telephone intercepts to help Yemen prepare for strikes and identify potential targets.

U.S. officials say satellite and signal intelligence is a critical component of the campaign against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula because the Yemeni government has few capabilities of its own, and holds little sway outside major population centers, leaving large tracts of territory open to al Qaeda and other groups.

U.S. intelligence agencies estimate AQAP is composed of several hundred operatives.

Expanded U.S. security assistance for Yemeni forces has drawn fire from some human rights groups.

Annual U.S. State Department reports on human rights in Yemen have highlighted allegations of torture by Interior Ministry forces, some of which play an increasingly important role in tracking and fighting al Qaeda leaders there.

Yemen's share of publicly disclosed U.S. counterterrorism funding under the so-called 1206 program has grown sharply in recent years, from $4.6 million in fiscal 2006 to $67 million in fiscal 2009, and is poised to increase sharply this year.

General David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, has proposed more than doubling military assistance for Yemen to about $150 million, but it is unclear how much covert assistance will be provided on top of that. [Entrous/Reuters/27January2010] 

CIA Ups Foreign Language Requirements for Top Staff. Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta announced that the CIA is raising language requirements for employees looking to be promoted to the top ranks of the agency, the Senior Intelligence Service.

Panetta sent a note to CIA staff saying he expects these high-ranking employees "to lead the way in strengthening this critical expertise."

"While many senior Agency officers have tested proficient in a foreign language over the course of their careers, some have not kept their skills current," the CIA said in a release. "Under the new policy, promotions to SIS for most analysts and operations officers will be contingent on demonstrating foreign language competency. If an officer is promoted to SIS and does not meet the foreign language requirement within one year, he or she will return to their previous, lower grade. This is a powerful incentive to maintain and improve skills critical to the Agency's global mission."

Panetta said the change will allow the CIA to be "better positioned to protect our nation in the years ahead."

"Deep expertise in foreign languages is fundamental to CIA's success," he said. "Whether an officer is conducting a meeting in a foreign capital, analyzing plans of a foreign government, or translating a foreign broadcast, language capability is critical to every aspect of our mission."

As part of a five-year initiative, the CIA is working to double the number of analysts and collectors who are proficient in a foreign language, expand the number of officers proficient in "mission-critical languages," including Arabic, Pushto, and Urdu, and make language skills more central in CIA hiring decisions. [Montopoli/CBSNews/29January2010]

Al Qaeda Defeat. Counterterrorism specialist Steve Coll told a House committee hearing that the al Qaeda terrorist organization remains politically weak but militarily resilient and is still a threat.

"In a strategic or global sense, al Qaeda seems to be in the process of defeating itself," Mr. Coll, president of the New America Foundation, told the House Armed Services Committee.

"Its political isolation in the Muslim world has set the stage for the United States and allied governments, with persistence, concentrated effort, and perhaps some luck, to finally destroy central al Qaeda's leadership along the Afghan-Pakistan border."

Getting Osama bin Laden, and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri "would not only provide justice for the victims of 9/11, it would also contribute to the freedom of maneuver enjoyed by the United States in the region and globally, by drawing to an end the debilitating, destabilizing narrative of hunt-and-escape that has elevated the reputations of bin Laden and al-Zawahri for so long," he said.

Mr. Coll said the effort to kill the two al Qaeda leaders through Predator drone attack or other means remains "essential" for the United States.

Al Qaeda has changed over the past decade from functioning as a central node in raising money and providing Islamist ideology and training for terrorists.

"Today that media and ideological role remains important, but al Qaeda's fundraising abilities are pinched," Mr. Coll said. "Its most practical contribution to its networked partners today may be the tactical expertise it has developed about bomb making and suicide bomb delivery."

The main strongholds for the group are in Yemen and the Pakistan-Afghanistan region.

Mr. Coll said al Qaeda has been unable to develop a political foundation and remains politically isolated, largely due to its attacks that have killed Muslims.

"Yet the outlook of bin Laden and al-Zawahri is not merely political," he said. "It is also millenarian, in the sense that both of them believe, as they often repeat, that they have been called by God to lead a war whose outcome is pre-ordained and will only finish at the end of earthly time."

By diminishing the importance of contemporary affairs, al Qaeda leaders have been unable to build a political movement that supports their terrorism, he said.

Still the group remains dangerous mainly because its central leaders are still in the field. [Gertz/WashingtonTimes/28January2010] 

Detained American Seeks Asylum in North Korea. An American man detained by North Korea after allegedly entering the communist country illegally has sought asylum and wants to join its military, a news report said Saturday.

The 28-year-old man said he came to the country because he did not "want to become a cannon fodder in the capitalist military" and "wants to serve in the North Korean military" instead.

The National Intelligence Service, South Korea's top spy agency, said it could not immediately confirm the report. The U.S. Embassy in Seoul said it had no such information.

On Thursday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency reported an American was arrested Monday for trespassing and his case was under investigation.

It was the second case of a detained American in North Korea in the past month, further complicating a relationship that has been badly strained for years over North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and periodic testing of missiles in defiance of repeated U.N. Security Council warnings.

In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the North Koreans, in a bare-bones message through their representative at U.N. headquarters in New York, provided no identifying information about the detainee.

Crowley said the U.S. has asked Swedish government intermediaries to gain access to the detainee. The Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang represents U.S. interests there as Washington has no diplomatic relations with the North.

In late December North Korea said it was holding a U.S. citizen for illegally crossing the North Korea-China border. It did not identify the man, but the State Department has said he is Robert Park, an American missionary.

South Korean activists say Park entered the North on Christmas Day to raise the issue of human rights and call on its leader, Kim Jong Il, to step down and free hundreds of thousands of people reportedly held in political camps.

Last year, North Korea freed two U.S. journalists - who had been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for trespassing and "hostile acts" - to former President Bill Clinton during a visit to Pyongyang. [Burns/WashingtonPost/30January2010] 

Pakistani Taliban Leader Is Reported Dead. Pakistani and American officials said they were increasingly convinced that the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, Pakistan's chief domestic enemy and the man behind the suicide attack on a C.I.A. base in Afghanistan in December, had died from wounds sustained in a drone strike.

The Pakistani military, which mounted a major offensive against Mr. Mehsud and his loyalists in South Waziristan last fall, said it could not confirm the report. But state-run television set off a storm of speculation on Sunday when it reported that Mr. Mehsud had died.

Government officials in the capital, Islamabad, and Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province, said they believed that there was a good chance Mr. Mehsud was dead, though they could not offer proof.

An Obama administration official in Washington said intelligence reports came close to a definitive conclusion - about 90 percent certainty - that Mr. Mehsud had died from wounds suffered in a drone strike on Jan. 14 and that he was believed to have been buried in a tribal plot in Pakistan's tribal areas.

The United States has been eager to retaliate against Mr. Mehsud after he claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing of a C.I.A. base in southeast Afghanistan in late December that killed five agency officers and two private contractors, the deadliest assault against the spy agency in more than 20 years.

American officials said they hoped the death of Mr. Mehsud would signal their resolve against the Taliban groups and their Qaeda allies who have used Pakistan's tribal areas to strike at American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

It would be a serious blow, they said, coming at a time when the group has been battered by an escalation in American drone strikes and the offensive by the Pakistani military that has disrupted their operations.

It would not necessarily be a decisive one, however, or one certain to slow the blistering insurgency that the Pakistani Taliban have waged against the Pakistani state with the backing of Al Qaeda.

When Baitullah Mehsud, Hakimullah Mehsud's predecessor, was killed in a drone attack last August, the Pakistani Taliban were briefly roiled by a succession struggle. But the group resumed its suicide bombings, initiating even more sophisticated and numerous attacks that killed more than 500 Pakistanis since October.

The death of Hakimullah Mehsud, if true, would probably set off a new power struggle. But the organizational setback could be short-lived, as the two men in line to take over from him - Wali ur-Rehman, known as the chief military strategist, and Qari Hussain, the chief instructor on suicide bombers - are considered tough operators.

Mr. Hussain, who trained with a sectarian group, Lashkar-e-Jangvi, is probably favored by Al Qaeda over Mr. Rehman, experts on the Pakistani Taliban say.

Though many government and intelligence officials have said in the past week, and repeated Sunday, that they believed the Taliban leader was probably dead, a cautionary tone weighed on the reports.

Senior Pakistani officials, including the interior minister, Rehman Malik, announced that Hakimullah Mehsud, who was about 28, was dead last September. He was reported to have been killed in a succession fight with Mr. Rehman, but later surfaced and went on to claim the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban.

After the attack on the C.I.A. base in Afghanistan on Dec. 30, Hakimullah Mehsud appeared in a pre-recorded video alongside the Jordanian double agent who carried out the suicide mission, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi.

The men claimed the attack was retribution for the death of Baitullah Mehsud, making Hakimullah Mehsud a prime target of the American drone campaign, which was stepped up through January to include more than a dozen strikes.

The competing versions about whether Mr. Mehsud is alive or not center on the aftermath of a drone attack on Jan. 14, when he was in the village of Shaktoi, a Taliban stronghold, in South Waziristan.

After that drone attack, the Taliban released two tapes of Mr. Mehsud's voice to refute assertions that he had been killed. On one of the tapes Mr. Mehsud could be heard giving the date, Jan. 17, cited as evidence that he had survived.

But intelligence agents and local tribesmen said Mr. Mehsud was badly wounded and was believed to have been taken to Orakzai, an area close to South Waziristan where his wife's relatives live.

According to Azmat Khan, the journalist for the state-owned Pakistan Television Corp. who reported Mr. Mehsud's death on Sunday, he died of injuries from the drone attack.

Two tribal leaders had told him of the death, and described a funeral that took place in the early hours of Jan. 27 in the village of Tajaka in the Mamozai area of Orakzai. Mr. Khan, who is based in Kohat, close to Orakzai, said he did not see the body or attend the funeral.

A member of the Pakistani Taliban, a fighter who was close to Mr. Mehsud's predecessor said in a telephone interview on Sunday night that there were "indications" that Mr. Mehsud had died.

The fighter said that Mr. Mehsud had indeed been moved to Orakzai in the past week for medical treatment, and that it was possible that he had died, given the severity of his injuries and the scarcity of medical supplies.

Hakimullah Mehsud was specifically chosen by Al Qaeda to succeed Baitullah Mehsud because he was considered most allied to it. His role in facilitating the attack on the American base in Afghanistan showed how much trust Al Qaeda had vested in him, American officials said. [Perlez&Shah/NYTimes/1February2010] 

Poland Agrees to Rules for Hosting US Armed Forces. Poland and the United States have agreed the legal details of deploying U.S. troops in Poland after lengthy negotiations, Deputy Defense Minister Stanislaw Komorowski said.

The "status of forces" agreement (SOFA) opens the way for deployments of a U.S. Patriot missile battery in Poland next year as part of plans to upgrade the NATO member's air defenses.

"(Polish) Prime Minister Donald Tusk has accepted the result of the negotiations I conducted with the Americans," Komorowski said.

Under the accord, due to be signed by the two sides on December 10, U.S. troops who commit any crime outside their base and outside their regular work would fall under Polish jurisdiction, Komorowski said. The deal also covers taxation of U.S. forces.

Poland, perturbed by Russia's more assertive foreign policy, has long complained that it hosts no U.S. troops or major military installations despite a strong track record of sending troops to help in U.S.-led missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Patriot deal struck last year between Warsaw and the previous Bush administration and now backed by U.S. President Barack Obama envisages an armed Patriot battery being sent to Poland from Germany several times each year until 2012.

Polish forces would use the battery to upgrade their defense systems. Komorowski told Reuters earlier this year that a U.S. battery would be permanently based in Poland from 2012 and that Warsaw would also aim to buy its own anti-missile systems.

U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden visited Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania last month in an attempt to assuage their fears that the Obama administration was more concerned about 'resetting' ties with Russia than about regional security.

Tusk told Biden Poland was ready to take part in a revamped missile defense system. Officials say this could involve hosting SM-3 interceptors targeting short and medium-range missiles under the system, which replaces Bush-era missile shield plans.  [Retuers/30January2010] 

New Teams Connect Dots of Terror Plots. The nation's main counterterrorism center is creating new teams of specialists to pursue clues of emerging terrorist plots as part of a rapid buildup that will sharply increase its analyst corps, perhaps by hundreds of people over the next year.

The action by the National Counterterrorism Center is one of the furthest reaching by the government so far to address the failings of several federal agencies in the case of a 23-year-old Nigerian man charged with boarding a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day with explosives sewn into his underwear.

A White House review this month found that no one in the government's vast intelligence system had sole responsibility for detecting and piecing together disparate threat information, telltale signs that could have prevented the man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, from boarding the plane.

In response, the counterterrorism center in the past several days has picked more than three dozen of its most capable analysts from across its ranks to form what it calls pursuit teams to focus on threats from Yemen and other offshoots of Al Qaeda that could imperil the United States, officials said.

"We have dedicated teams that don't have any responsibility for producing intelligence, but simply for following up on these small leads," Michael E. Leiter, the center's director, told the House Homeland Security Committee this week in the latest of several recent appearances on Capitol Hill.

"We've been very good at chasing down those threats that come out of Afghanistan and Pakistan," Mr. Leiter told the Senate Homeland Security Committee last week. "We're going to be better now at chasing down those small bits of information that come out of Yemen or North Africa or East Africa."

The pursuit teams are just the beginning of an ambitious effort that intelligence officials say could potentially add several hundred additional analysts to the more than 200 specialists who work on terrorism and watch list duties now, officials said. Congress would need to approve financing for the additional hires.

Any increase would be a sharp reversal of fortune for the counterterrorism center, which just days before the Dec. 25 airliner bombing plot was preparing to cut its workforce up to 20 percent, including terrorism analysts and watch list personnel, Mr. Leiter said.

The proposed increase in analysts is now before the White House's Office of Management and Budget for review, and exact details are being worked out, officials said. In the meantime, because of the increase in the number of individuals added to the government's no-fly list since the thwarted holiday plot, Mr. Leiter said he was short of people to process the new names into government databases. "Right now, I don't have enough people to do that," he said this week.

Mr. Leiter said that the new pursuit analysts had begun additional training and that the director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, was studying how to advance that training even more.

The Obama administration has been trying since the failed attack to restore public confidence by tightening airport screening procedures, revamping visa revocation rules and banning more people from flying on commercial jets to the United States.

Terrorism and national security experts applauded the counterterrorism center's decision to create the new analytical teams and start their training, but some expressed dismay that such an obvious job had not been created until now.

"It's so very fundamental and very basic that you'd think it would immediately have been an urgent matter," said Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana who was co-chairman of the commission on the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "We have not felt that the homeland security community has had the sense of urgency, and this is an illustration of that."

At the National Counterterrorism Center just outside Washington, specialists can draw on streams of information from more than 80 databases across the government.

The Christmas Day bombing plot revealed a basic flaw in how two teams of intelligence analysts worked on different parts of the same problem.

One team of about two dozen "watch list analysts" have access to the bits and pieces of information that could detect a potential terrorist, but officials said they focused largely on maintaining the lists themselves.

The second team, a cadre of about 300 "all-source analysts" are supposed to be the deep thinkers charged with preparing long-term assessments of terrorist groups, their financing and recruiting methods and their leadership. While dozens of such analysts were examining the Yemen threat well before Dec. 25, they failed to repeatedly scrutinize the raw intelligence for hints of a possible plot against the United States originating in Yemen.

"There was concern on the intelligence community's part about potential attacks by Al Qaeda in Yemen, and we were concerned even about the timing of that," Mr. Leiter said this week. "What we didn't connect was the individual's name or where that attack would occur. That was our failure."

The new pursuit teams will be responsible for identifying threads of information - the warning Mr. Abdulmutallab's father gave to officials at the United States Embassy in Nigeria, for instance - and tracking and connecting them to other tips, said an intelligence official familiar with the center's new concept.

They will not be involved in the day-to-day writing of current intelligence products or the more strategic reports, which frees them up to focus on issues that need immediate attention, the official said. [Schmitt/NYTimes/30January2010] 

Georgian Diplomat Sentenced to 20 Years in Charges of Espionage. Vakhtang Maysaya, a former employee of Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was found guilty of espionage by the Georgian city court. Maysaya now faces a 20-year prison sentence.

Maysaya, who was arrested in May 2009, was charged with transmitting classified data to foreign intelligence services during the time that he was employed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. [RT/29January2010] 

Medvedev Calls on Counter-Intelligence to Protect State Secrets. Counter-intelligence should remain a key priority for Russia's Security Service (FSB) because of spies' interest in state secrets, President Dmitry Medvedev said during a meeting with the agency's board.

"The foreign special services' interest in our state secrets and newest developments remains high," Medvedev said. Therefore, the president urged the country's intelligence to respond promptly "to any attempts to collect classified information". Criminal cases should be initiated whenever such facts are spotted.

For his part, the head of state promised to provide support for the agency and its employees.

The focus of Medvedev's meeting senior FSB officials was state security. Among major tasks in that respect the president named the necessity to provide the most up-to-date equipment at Russian borders. [RT/28January2010] 

Michigan Republican's Bill Would Let Terror Suspects Be Treated as Enemy Combatants. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Harrison Township, introduced legislation on Capitol Hill that would make it easier for law enforcement officials to treat suspected terrorists as enemy combatants instead of civilian criminals.

House Bill 4415, which is being co-sponsored by Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., is dubbed the Terrorist Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010. It calls for suspected terrorists who are "closely associated with or has provided material support to al Qaeda or any other organization dedicated to committing acts of terrorism" to be detained "for military purposes" per the authorization of the president "regardless of the location of the individual's capture."

A similar Senate bill is being sponsored by Susan Collins, R- Me., and Joe Lieberman, I-Ct.

"Today, I am offering legislation to give the president the clear authority to prosecute terrorists as enemy combatants, regardless of where they are captured," Miller said in a statement. "Terrorists are not common criminals; they are enemies of our nation engaged in an illegal war that targets innocent civilians for murder."

Miller's announcement came as the House Committee on Homeland Security on which she sits met Wednesday morning. It was just one of a series of a hearings taking place on Capitol Hill that started last week looking into the events of Flight 253, the Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam on which law enforcement officials say 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed to detonate an explosive strapped in his clothing as the plane prepared to land at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus.

Miller and a growing number of her Washington colleagues have become increasingly vocal about the treatment of Abdulmutallab following his arrest on the ground in Michigan. He was reportedly interrogated for only 50 minutes before Justice Department officials decided to read him Miranda rights and offer civilian legal representation, but without any input from U.S. intelligence or counterterrorism leaders.

Miller said her bill would prevent that from happening in the future.

"It is dangerous for America to treat them as civilian criminals," Miller said. [Hurst/DetroitNews/27January2010] 

Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

Former "Mole Hunter" Stephen De Mowbray Speaks Out. For 30 years Stephen De Mowbray has maintained a self-imposed silence on a career that once took him to the heart of one of British intelligence's most controversial episodes.

In 1979 he quit his job with the Secret Service because he believed officials had failed to take seriously the claim that British intelligence had been further penetrated by its enemy - the Soviet Union's KGB.

A number of spies had been discovered in the 1960s but De Mowbray believed there were more. But he found no-one at the top willing to listen.

"People thought I was either mad or bad because I was trying to do something," he says of that time.

Three decades later, De Mowbray decided to tell his side of the story after reading the authorized history of the Security Service (MI5), published last October. That publication dismisses the view that there were further traitors in the Security Service.

In the book, De Mowbray's claims are the subject of a chapter subtitled "paranoid tendencies" which recounts his work as well as that of two colleagues, Peter Wright (author of the controversial Spycatcher) and Arthur Martin. The book quotes an MI5 director saying of the group: "Involvement in counter-espionage cases induces in some a form of paranoia."

De Mowbray himself is referred to - although not by name - as "the leading SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) conspiracy theorist". "I was this SIS officer," De Mowbray confirms.

De Mowbray joined the Secret Service shortly after World War II and in the 1960s was assigned to work in the field of Soviet counter-intelligence investigating the operations of the KGB.

The British establishment was in the process of being rocked by a series of scandals in which a number of individuals were revealed to be working for the other side.

De Mowbray was assigned to work on the case of a KGB officer named Anatoliy Golitsyn, who defected in 1961. Golitsyn remains a controversial figure. De Mowbray argues he provided a number of crucial leads. Critics say he became prone to exaggeration. Golitsyn's information suggested there were more traitors in the West, including within its intelligence agencies.

At the same time, two MI5 officers - Arthur Martin and Peter Wright - had also both come separately to the same conclusion - that there was a penetration at the highest reaches of the Security Service. They called on MI6 to help and De Mowbray was assigned to assist them.

"There were extraordinary things going on," recalls De Mowbray. "Martin was running people against the Soviets and those operations were going wonky."

Meanwhile Peter Wright's bugging devices, which had been installed in Soviet premises around the world, were also failing to produce intelligence. These operations were known only to very few senior officers in MI5. "I was utterly horrified at the thought that this was happening," says De Mowbray.

When the small group added in Golitsyn's claims they came to believe that there was a mole at the very top - either Graham Mitchell, the number two at MI5, or his boss Roger Hollis.

"I vowed to myself that I would never let go of this case," recalls De Mowbray.

In his authorized history of MI5, Christopher Andrew describes the investigations into Hollis and Mitchell as "the most traumatic episodes in the Cold War history of the Security Service". Mitchell was investigated first. As recounted in the authorized history, this involved bugging his phone, feeding him false information and putting him under close surveillance. Even after his retirement, Mitchell was still monitored. Nothing was found. Next Hollis was investigated but eventually also cleared.

"There were suspicions with both of them," De Mowbray argues. "There are not suspicions now. But somebody was doing it."

In 1964, De Mowbray was posted to Washington where he worked more closely with Golitsyn and his sponsor in the CIA, James Jesus Angleton. Angleton became convinced that the KGB was mounting a wide-scale deception campaign to hide its true capabilities and the presence of its spies in the West. He was eventually dismissed from the CIA. Critics said he damaged the organization through his investigations into a CIA "mole" who never existed.

In the authorized history of MI5, it is argued that Golitsyn became an increasing "liability" because of his "passionately paranoid tendencies".

De Mowbray disagrees with the portrayal of Golitsyn. He says he has been misrepresented and disputes details presented of Golitsyn's visits to the UK, arguing that some of them were genuinely productive in terms of intelligence leads.

De Mowbray became increasingly frustrated at the lack of action and complained repeatedly to his superiors through the 1970s.

He was moved away from the investigation. "I could not reconcile myself to doing nothing: I had made so many commitments to myself and to others to pursue the problem to the end that I could not wash my hands and forget about it," he explains.

He argued that MI5 had not properly investigated itself and was incapable of doing so. "It was a very difficult situation for years on end," he says now of that time.

De Mowbray went as far as approaching the Cabinet Secretary, Sir John (later Lord) Hunt. He referred De Mowbray on to a former Cabinet Secretary, Lord Trend, who conducted a review of the subject and found insufficient evidence to support the allegations.

He was told he could not have his old job back in counter-intelligence and soon after De Mowbray applied for early retirement.

He went off to the US initially to help Golitsyn write a book on Soviet deception and later to help him on his unpublished memoirs. He had no further contact with the intelligence services and steered clear of public comment until reading the authorised history of MI5.

The consensus view has now developed, reflected in Christopher Andrew's book, that there were no further high-level penetrations in British intelligence.

But De Mowbray remains convinced that there is a dark secret that has still not come out.

"When I left most people were oblivious of the situation", he says. "Maybe I was wrong? But I don't think I was." [Carea/BBC/26January2010] 

A World War I-Era Terror Plot Hatched in Downtown Baltimore. The father and son enjoying lunch at the Maryland Club in 1915 would not have attracted any attention. The Hilkens, Henry and Paul, were pillars of Baltimore's German community. The son, Paul Hilken, ran the Baltimore operations of the North German Lloyd Steamship Co., as his father did before him. The elder Hilken was such an outstanding citizen that his 1937 obituary called him "the dean of the local shipping men," and Baltimore Mayor Howard Jackson and the German ambassador were honorary pallbearers. But what no one knew in 1915 was that Paul Hilken was working as a German spy.

Paul Hilken was the paymaster for a World War I German espionage-terrorism ring responsible for blowing up, spectacularly, a New York harbor arms depot, among other acts of terrorism. His name turns up in Nicholas Thompson's new book, "The Hawk and the Dove," because he was the uncle and namesake of U.S. diplomat Paul Nitze. It is also discussed in Chad Millman's 2006 work, "The Detonators" and Jules Witcover's "Sabotage at Black Tom."

This is the account that Millman and Witcover give:

Paul Hilken, a Baltimorean, was educated at City College, Lehigh and MIT, where he studied shipbuilding. While working here, he was being groomed to become the managing director of the North German Lloyd line in New York. Summoned to the Reichstag in Berlin and tapped for undercover work, he accepted readily.

His Baltimore office was the quaint, nicely preserved Hansa Haus at the northwest corner of Charles and Redwood streets. (Redwood's former name was German Street; the name change came during a burst of patriotism during World War I.) His clandestine meetings were held in its attic in private quarters. His German handlers chose him because he regularly handled huge amounts of currency, and money could pass through the doors of 2 E. Redwood St. with no questions asked.

The U.S. was then technically a neutral nation, but it was an open secret that we were supplying the Allied countries with explosives. Millions of pounds were awaiting transfer to ships anchored in Gravesend Bay in New York's harbor. The ammunition was stored at the Black Tom piers in Jersey City. Paul Hilken paid off operatives with $1,000 bills. After meeting for three hours on Redwood Street, the conspirators agreed the fires should start early on July 30, 1916. The resulting Black Tom explosions killed at least five people. Concussions could be felt in Maryland.

Germany denied all responsibility, citing evidence that fires were started by rail yard watchmen using smoke to keep down mosquitoes.

After the end of World War I, the legal fighting began (damage estimates were $20 million), and it continued for an agonizing 18 years at the Mixed Claims Commission in Washington.

Hilken, who was never charged, was a major sinner but also a saint. He provided state's evidence, but it was his word against those who called him a liar. He testified for hours before U.S. Attorney Simon E. Sobeloff.

Hilken needed to link his co-conspirators. It was now 1932, and he had to find evidence from 1916. He had returned at Christmas to 512 Woodlawn Road in Roland Park, where he lived before a divorce, and said he was hiding gifts for his daughter in the attic when he remembered a sealed wooden box he'd stashed behind the eaves. He found the box. It contained a directory, The Blue Book, whose pages had coded information concealed with disappearing ink. In addition, his ex-wife emptied the contents of a trunk used for doll clothes and found his 1916 checkbook.

This evidence was not enough. The case dragged on until the intrepid Sobeloff returned to 2 E. Redwood and the shipping lines offices. There he found business correspondence conclusively linking the ring. The letter referred to Hilken as the "von Hindenburg of Roland Park," a friendly term used by Hilken's associates who were in on the scheme. The verdict, which found the German government liable for the Black Tom explosion, came in September 1939 as Hitler was rolling through Poland. Germany made the last payment of the $50 million claim in 1976. Hilken moved to New York and became a wholesale paint salesman.

The last chief of the Mixed Claims Commission was attorney John McCloy, who was given an assignment by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to relocate 120,000 Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. On giving McCloy the assignment, the president said, "We don't want another Black Tom." [BaltimoreSun/30January2010]

Section III - COMMENTARY

Will New NIE Propel New Iran Policy?, by Robert Maginnis. President Obama is expected to announce the results of a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in his bid to win support for tougher sanctions for Iran at the United Nations Security Council next month. The new estimate will likely reverse the 2007 report, which concluded that the U.S. intelligence community had "high confidence" in information that Iran was not developing atomic weapons. The new estimate is expected to focus on whether Iran's supreme leader has given the green light to produce the bomb.

Last week, Iran officially rejected the international proposal which would have committed it to export most of its enriched uranium and receive it back in the form of fuel rods for its Tehran research reactor, but not for atomic weapons. Iran's rejection sets the stage for Obama to persuade the international community using evidence from the new NIE to impose tougher sanctions. 

But the new NIE must first overcome the much-disputed 2007 estimate. That estimate mistakenly declared that Iran had ceased its secret nuclear weapons program in 2003 after the quick defeat of Iraq by U.S. forces. That explanation was camouflage and used by anti-Bush NIE bureaucrats who wanted to make certain then-President Bush had no excuse to attack Iran. 

The waywardness of the politicized report became evident as significant and contradictory evidence surfaced and Democratic politicians like then-presidential candidate Sen. Obama cited the estimate to dangerously downplay the Iranian threat and to attack President Bush, who publicly disagreed with the findings.

The Wall Street Journal attacked the 2007 NIE authors' credibility: "Our own 'confidence' is not heightened by the fact that the NIE's main authors include three former State Department officials with previous reputations as ‘hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials." The Journal named the politicized NIE authors: Tom Fingar, Vann Van Diepin and Kenneth Brill. 

Two authors remain Obama administration officials. Van Diepen is the principal deputy assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation and Brill heads the National Counterproliferation Center. Fingar is now a professor at Stanford University.

On June 4, 2008, Fingar, then-chairman of the National Intelligence Council, told the liberal New America Foundation that he wasn't pleased with the early version of the 2007 NIE because it repeated earlier estimates that Iran was continuing to pursue nuclear weapons. "Then we got new information - significant new information," said Fingar, that caused us to look at the issue differently. 

Apparently Fingar's "new information" didn't convince key allies, Great Britain, Israel, Germany and France and/or their press, who subsequently contradicted the 2007 NIE conclusion that Iran stopped its weapons program in 2003.

The British press cited a British intelligence report that Iran has been secretly designing a nuclear warhead "since late 2004 or early 2005." Last month, the London Times disclosed intelligence documents detailing Iran's testing of a neutron initiator, the "trigger" mechanism of a workable nuclear weapon. David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, said, "This is a very strong indicator of weapons work."

Last year, Israeli Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, head of the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate, told the Knesset that Iran had "crossed the technological threshold," and that its attainment of nuclear military capability was only a matter of "incorporating the goal of producing an atomic bomb into its strategy."

A German intelligence agency (Bundesnachrichtendienst) report "showed comprehensively" that "development work on nuclear weapons can be observed in Iran even after 2003." This information, reported by the Wall Street Journal Europe, came from Germany's highest state-security court in a case about illegal trading with Iran.

The judges in the German Federal Supreme Court in Karlsruhe declared that "Iran in 2007 worked on the development of nuclear weapons." A year later, the same court said there are striking "similarities between Iran's acquisition efforts and those of countries with already known nuclear weapons programs, such as Pakistan and North Korea."

The court's decision states "The results of the investigation do in fact provide sufficient indications that the accused aided the development of nuclear weapons in Iran through business dealings." The judges continued, the businessman sold Iran "industrial machines, equipment and raw materials" for Iran's nuclear weapons program which included "Geiger counters for radiation-resistant detectors constructed especially for protection against the effects of nuclear detonations" and "high-speed cameras needed to develop nuclear warheads." 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy may be ready for action against Iran. Last week, Sarkozy told Lebanon's prime minister that France had proof that Tehran was working to develop a nuclear bomb.

One of the most credible sources of Iranian atomic activities is a defector. Brig. Gen. Ali Reza Asghari, formerly with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), reportedly provided key information about Tehran's secret atomic weapons program. Asghari, according to Newsmax, was debriefed by the U.S. and French intelligence in 2007. He allegedly contradicted what Western intelligence had said about Iran's nuclear programs. 

Newsmax asked Asghari whether the CIA used his information in the 2007 NIE. "That's not what I told the CIA," he said. "I didn't tell them that the nuclear weapons program had been shut down, but that it was ongoing."

Asghari reportedly told U.S. intelligence about the Qom enrichment facility. Last September, the White House shocked the world with the revelation that Iran is building a secret military site near the city of Qom to enrich uranium and the U.S. has known about that facility since 2006. 

The Qom facility is likely not the only such undisclosed atomic site. Remember, Iran kept secret the enrichment site at Natanz and the heavy-water plant at Arak for many years until exposed by expatriates.

Finally, the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran has all necessary components for a nuclear device. The usually hypercautious IAEA stated that Iran "has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device."

The U.S. intelligence community needs to redeem its tarnished reputation with the new NIE by providing credible information that Iran has an active atomic weapons program or not. 

Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, still believes the key findings of the 2007 NIE. Two weeks ago, Burgess said, "We have not seen indication that the [Iranian] government has made the decision to move ahead with the program. But the fact still remains that we don't know what we don't know."

But some of Obama's top advisers apparently disagree with Burgess. The New York Times reports that unnamed Obama advisers say they believe Iran's work on weapons design is continuing on a smaller scale. That explains the debate within the administration and perhaps why an unnamed Obama official told Reuters that the new NIE's conclusions would be nuanced. 

"Basically, we're talking about research (resuming) - not about Iranians barreling full steam ahead on a bomb program," the official told Reuters. "When you're looking at the Iranian nuclear program, nuance matters."

Expect Obama to tell the U.N. that Iran accelerated its atomic weapons research and is waiting for the country's supreme leader to give orders for full-scale production of nuclear weapons. But expect China and Russia, both members of the Security Council, to oppose tough sanctions for Iran no matter how compelling Obama speaks and how strong his evidence.

We are now in a waiting game. We are waiting for Iran's supreme leader to give the green light and for Obama to decide whether to accept a nuclear Iran or destroy Tehran's atomic weapons facilities. [Mr. Maginnis is a retired Army lieutenant colonel, a national security and foreign affairs analyst for radio and television and a senior strategist with the U.S. Army.]  [Maginnis/Humanevents/26January2010] 

I Spy? Not Anymore, by Michael Mazza. The National Security Council has ordered that the intelligence community downgrade China from a first to a second priority. It's another victory for an American adversary.

The Obama National Security Council has ordered the U.S. intelligence community to downgrade China as an intelligence collection priority. Though the president has made no secret of his desire to mend fences with America's adversaries, this decision to "see no evil/hear no evil" from Beijing is cause for concern. The answer to any request to "please stop spying" should be simple: "No."

The decision to downgrade China as an intelligence collection target (first reported by Bill Gertz in The Washington Times) is wrongheaded for what should be reasons obvious to the Obama administration: Since the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991, Chinese military spending has nearly quadrupled. That spending has transformed what was once dismissed as an ineffective military force into a formidable and heavily armed one. China's air force can now establish air dominance over the Taiwan Strait and possibly over Japan. Its missiles can strike U.S. bases as far away as Guam. Its navy has commissioned more than 30 new submarines since 2000 and is now pursuing an aircraft carrier fleet. And the People's Liberation Army has conducted successful missile defense and anti-satellite weapon tests. In short, China is fielding a force designed to keep U.S. military assets out of the Asia-Pacific and that places special emphasis on attacking America where it is weak - in space and cyberspace.

The U.S. intelligence community recognizes the significance of the Chinese threat. In his National Intelligence Strategy (NIS), published last summer, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair names China as one of four countries that "have the ability to challenge U.S. interests in traditional (e.g., military force and espionage) and emerging (e.g., cyber operations) ways." According to the Washington Times, the Chinese response to this document ironically served as an impetus for the White House decision to deemphasize China as a top intelligence priority. Following the strategy's release, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman "urge[d] the United States to discard its Cold War mindset and prejudice, correct the mistakes in the [NIS] report and stop publishing wrong opinions about China which may mislead the American people and undermine the mutual trust between China and the United States." Beijing objected to China's inclusion in the report through diplomatic channels as well.

And now, over the objections of Blair and Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta, the National Security Council has ordered that the intelligence community downgrade China from a first to a second priority. Administration officials, Gertz writes, "said the new policy is part of the Obama administration's larger effort to develop a more cooperative relationship with Beijing."

A more cooperative relationship with Beijing may be something worth striving for, but reducing U.S. intelligence gathering efforts aimed at the People's Republic of China (PRC) is no way to achieve that goal. A relationship requires transparency, understanding, and free-flowing dialogue. China's political system and military are notoriously opaque and Beijing does little to explain its intentions to Washington. As such, we have a limited understanding of China's decision-making process. This is precisely why intelligence on China is so important. Not until we really understand that country's inner workings can we have a fruitful relationship, and absent aggressive and effective intelligence gathering efforts (or Chinese political liberalization), it is impossible for U.S. policy makers to gain such an understanding.

The threat from China is not simply military: Chinese intelligence agents are active here and the PRC's cyber-spying now makes the news on a regular basis. Google is only the latest victim in an ongoing series of Chinese cyber-attacks, whose other targets have included Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the Dalai Lama. Yet as government officials have increasingly discussed Chinese cyber-attacks in public over the past year, China has categorically denied that it engages in any such activities. Chinese espionage directed at the United States, however, has not dampened Washington's desire to cooperate with Beijing on issues of mutual importance.

So why does the administration assume that the reverse is true - that China is less willing to cooperate due to U.S. spying? Why does the administration believe that easing our espionage in China will lead to greater Chinese cooperation? None of Obama's concessions over the past year has encouraged Beijing to cooperate on Iran or climate change. Nor will this concession; indeed, it is likely to have the opposite effect. If anything, it will encourage Beijing to offer the illusion of greater cooperation while seeking additional concessions. And without good intelligence on Beijing, attempts to negotiate with it on these issues will be unproductive.

Not until we really understand China's inner workings can we have a fruitful relationship, and absent aggressive and effective intelligence gathering efforts, it is impossible for U.S. policy makers to gain such an understanding.

This recent decision makes sense only when considered in the context of the Obama administration's operational worldview. Put simply, the world's great powers - the United States, the European Union, China, and Russia - share a broad set of common interests. As long as we demonstrate to China and Russia that the United States is a friend, the thinking goes, they will join us in pursuing those interests.

But the world does not work that way. On many if not most issues, U.S. and Chinese interests are in fact divergent. Thus the administration's acts of reassurance are bound to be fruitless. The United States could halt entirely its espionage efforts against China, and still Beijing would have no interest in sanctioning North Korea or Iran or agreeing to U.S. climate-control proposals.

This latest concession will not persuade China to cooperate more fully, but it will teach the People's Republic an important lesson: namely, that complaining is effective, and that no quid pro quo is needed for the United States to alter national security policy to satisfy Chinese President Hu Jintao. It is a lesson that the Obama administration keeps driving home, and one which China is certainly taking to heart. [Michael Mazza is a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute.] [Mazza/American/30January2010]

Obama Administration Takes Several Wrong Paths in Dealing With Terrorism, by Michael V. Hayden. In the war on terrorism, this country faces an enemy whose theory of warfare ends the hard-won distinction in modern thought between combatant and noncombatant. In doing that for which we have created government - ensuring life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - how can we be adequately aggressive to ensure the first value, without unduly threatening the other two? This is hard. And people don't have to be lazy or stupid to get it wrong.

We got it wrong in Detroit on Christmas Day. We allowed an enemy combatant the protections of our Constitution before we had adequately interrogated him. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is not "an isolated extremist." He is the tip of the spear of a complex al-Qaeda plot to kill Americans in our homeland.

In the 50 minutes the FBI had to question him, agents reportedly got actionable intelligence. Good. But were there any experts on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the room (other than Abdulmutallab)? Was there anyone intimately familiar with any National Security Agency raw traffic to, from or about the captured terrorist? Did they have a list or photos of suspected recruits?

When questioning its detainees, the CIA routinely turns the information provided over to its experts for verification and recommendations for follow-up. The responses of these experts - "Press him more on this, he knows the details" or "First time we've heard that" - helps set up more detailed questioning.

None of that happened in Detroit. In fact, we ensured that it wouldn't. After the first session, the FBI Mirandized Abdulmutallab and - to preserve a potential prosecution - sent in a "clean team" of agents who could have no knowledge of what Abdulmutallab had provided before he was given his constitutional warnings. As has been widely reported, Abdulmutallab then exercised his right to remain silent.

In retrospect, the inadvisability of this approach seems self-evident. Perhaps it didn't appear that way on Dec. 25 because we have, over the past year, become acclimated to certain patterns of thought.

Two days after his inauguration, President Obama issued an executive order that limited all interrogations by the U.S. government to the techniques authorized in the Army Field Manual. The CIA had not seen the final draft of the order, let alone been allowed to comment, before it was issued. I thought that odd since the order was less a legal document - there was no claim that the manual exhausted the universe of lawful techniques - than a policy one: These particular lawful techniques would be all that the country would need, at least for now.

A similar drama unfolded in April over the release of Justice Department memos that had authorized the CIA interrogation program. CIA Director Leon Panetta and several of his predecessors opposed public release of the memos in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit on the only legitimate grounds for such a stand: that the documents were legitimately still classified and their release would gravely harm national security. On this policy - not legal - question, the president sided with his attorney general rather than his CIA chief.

In August, seemingly again in contradiction to the president's policy of not looking backward and over the objections of the CIA, Justice pushed to release the CIA inspector general's report on the interrogation program. Then Justice decided to reopen investigations of CIA officers that had been concluded by career prosecutors years ago, even though Panetta and seven of his predecessors said that doing so would be unfair, unwarranted and harmful to the agency's current mission.

In November, Justice announced that it intended to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several others in civilian courts for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The White House made clear that this was a Justice Department decision, which is odd because the decision was not legally compelled (other detainees are to be tried by military commissions) and the reasons given for making it (military trials could serve as a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda, harm relations with allies, etc.) were not legal but political.

Even tough government organizations, such as those in the intelligence community, figure out pretty quickly what their political masters think is not acceptable behavior. The executive order that confined interrogations to the Army Field Manual also launched a task force to investigate whether those techniques were sufficient for national needs. Few observers believed that the group would recommend changes, and to date, no techniques have been added to the manual.

Intelligence officers need to know that someone has their back. After the Justice memos were released in April, CIA officers began to ask whether the people doing things that were currently authorized would be dragged through this kind of public knothole in five years. No one could guarantee that they would not.

Some may celebrate that the current Justice Department's perspective on the war on terrorism has become markedly more dominant in the past year. We should probably understand the implications of that before we break out the champagne. That apparently no one recommended on Christmas Day that Abdulmutallab be handled, at least for a time, as an enemy combatant should be concerning. That our director of national intelligence, Denny Blair, bravely said as much during congressional testimony this month is cause for hope.

Actually, Blair suggested that the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), announced by the administration in August, should have been called in. A government spokesman later pointed out that the group does not yet exist.

There's a final oddity. In August, the government unveiled the HIG for questioning al-Qaeda and announced that the FBI would begin questioning CIA officers about the alleged abuses in the 2004 inspector general's report. They are apparently still getting organized for the al-Qaeda interrogations. But the interrogations of CIA personnel are well underway. [Michael Hayden was director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009.] [Hayden/WashingtonPost/29January2010]

Section IV - BOOKS, CAREERS AND COMING EVENTS

Books

TRIPLEX: More Secrets from the Cambridge Spies, by Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev.  Nigel West, an authority on espionage, and Oleg Tsarev, a retired KGB officer, have collaborated to produce this fascinating volume as they did on an earlier book, The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the Heart of the KGB Archives.

Triplex, or XXX, was the secret classification assigned to material illicitly copied from the diplomatic pouches of neutral embassies in wartime London. Triplex was acquired by a joint MI5-SIS operation to distract diplomatic couriers overnight with male and female prostitutes on their journeys home and copy the contents of the pouches.

Invariably, the couriers flew from Hull (to Stockholm) or from Bristol (to Lisbon), but their civil aircraft would be delayed by "mechanical problems" or adverse weather conditions, causing the pouches to be lodged overnight with the airport police, thus allowing the target to reacquaint himself with the attractive individual he first encountered hours earlier on the train. Once opened and photographed by technicians, the diplomatic seals would be replaced by a team of skilled craftsmen.

The operation was conducted successfully throughout the war without incident and was never compromised. No mention of it has been made in any official history of wartime British intelligence.

However, full details were disclosed in Moscow, where the KGB archives have a collection of the Triplex product supplied by Anthony Blunt while he was the senior MI5 officer supervising the operation. His SIS counterpart was David Boyle. Within Whitehall, Triplex was considered a highly reliable but exceptionally sensitive source on a par with ULTRA, telephone intercepts and other technical sources of intelligence.

This book includes a selection of authentic MI5 and SIS documents never previously seen. This is the very first evidence of precisely what Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross betrayed to their Soviet contacts. Others in the Ring of Five were Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess.

The book contains a comprehensive list of MI5's moles placed in embassies in London, complete with their true names, their duties and their code names. Anthony Blunt promised to destroy this document by its MI5 computer because it was so sensitive. Among the premises targeted were the French, Belgian, Swiss, Brazilian and Dutch embassies.

It has the details of a staff employment agency established by MI5 that supplied domestic staff to the diplomatic community and of Japanese espionage suspects in London, including an account of the investigation of Lord Sempili, a Japanese courier reporting to his contact at the embassy in London.

The SIS' post-war plans for infiltrating the Soviet Union using "natural cover" businessmen are listed, together with SIS' contacts in each company and the full extent to which the Soviets learned of ULTRA from Kim Philby, including the location and capability of every secret British intercept station and the German wireless channels that were being monitored.

Also included is the War Cabinet's review of M15 and SIS, which was conducted by Lord Hankey, and drafted by his Secretary, John Cairncross, the Soviet spy.

This fascinating volume contains a full and instructive exposure of the British intelligence set-up. [Noorani/Hinduonnet/21January2010] 

The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One. David Kilcullen's Accidental Guerrilla is at once an intellectual memoir of the author's field research, a contribution to the academic discourse on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, and a prescription for the Western establishment to manage more smartly the many smaller conflicts included in the so-called war on terror. Kilcullen - a former Australian army officer who has served as a civilian adviser to the US government on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, including during the 2007 surge of US forces in Iraq - argues that the vast majority of persons the West faces in these conflicts had no initial intention of fighting but instead were moved to action by an extremist minority. Therefore the West should pursue courses that counteract the conditions that allow extremists to manipulate segments of populations into becoming "accidental" guerrillas rather than targeting certain individuals or groups. Engaging conflicts in the way Kilcullen suggests would have profound implications for intelligence.

Kilcullen examines recent activity in several theaters, primarily Afghanistan (2006-2008) and Iraq (2006-2007), and to lesser extents East Timor (1999-2000), southern Thailand (2004-2007), the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan (2006-2008), and immigrant communities in Europe. Though not all of Kilcullen's case studies are in Muslim areas, Islam figures prominently because of the frequency with which insurgent or terrorist activity is a function of takfiri Islam, which professes conversion to Islam by force and death for the unwilling - as a recurring script for violent resistance.

In looking at these cases the author uses a medical analogy suggesting phases of an infectious disease: "infection" - the entry of extremists into a vulnerable area; "contagion" - the spread of extremist influence; "intervention" - the engagement of establishment, often Western-partnered security services; "rejection" - the hoped-for elimination of the insurgent or terrorist group by the population.

What does Kilcullen suggest? Western intervention - if done at all - should be low-profile and should demonstrate that the West is advocating the well-being of populations and not imposing outside systems - no matter how altruistic or rational in Western eyes. Strategies should emphasize the population: building trust, creating good governance, establishing credible security services, maintaining relationships with local officials, and marketing the success of all of the above to those in the population who are wavering. Overwhelming use of force and search-and-destroy techniques that risk high collateral damage and rally locals in opposition should be avoided - though he does not dismiss selective operations against terrorist or insurgent leaders.

Kilcullen's case study of the construction of the road through Afghanistan's Kunar Province during 2007-2008 illustrates how these practices can be carried out and demonstrated that the engagement of the local population in the planning, construction, and security of the operation mattered more than the road itself. Similarly, he points out, success in Iraq involved bringing tribes and insurgent groups into sanctioned security arrangements and gave locals alternatives to the extremist option.

The success of Kilcullen's approach would seem to require intense partnering of intervening forces with the governments, especially the security and intelligence services, of the host countries, a subject that would benefit from further study. Local governments themselves must consider the repercussions of moves against violent Islamist movements in their borders. In some cases, a host government or security service might actually want to perpetuate traditional Western counterterrorist practices and lexicon - for example, by getting its internal oppositionists on certain terrorist lists or military classifications (foreign terrorist, common enemy, etc.) a host government may acquire new Western funding, legal authorities, and more powerful tools with which the host government can suppress its internal opposition. Kilcullen's thesis would have applications here, and it would be profitable to inquire further into how to manage these host interests.

Given the profound role intelligence would have to play, Kilcullen says surprisingly little of specific intelligence entities, though at one point he lauds the World War II-era US Office of Strategic Services as a model for civilian-military interaction with a strategic purpose. As he stresses, counteracting conditions that extremists exploit requires intimacy with the local environments. Collecting, analyzing, and articulating objective ground truth to decisionmakers are essential. Also important are covert, unconventional warfare options - an "indirect approach that ruthlessly minimizes American presence". These might include propaganda and counterpropaganda; increased liaison relationships with (and presumably, penetrations of) host-country intelligence services; assistance to selected local leaders or groups to increase their patronage and authority to serve as vessels of influence; support to community programs, e.g. civic centers; health care; moderate (in the case of religious-based) educational institutions; and, more broadly, elevation of expertise in the Western intelligence community.

Overall, Kilcullen's thesis is convincing, and the book is a notable addition to the literature of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism in providing another antidote to the "enemy-centric" doctrines that have often failed and to the oversimplification of the lexicon of the war on terror. Both have tended to obscure the complex realities of local conditions and prevented adoption of the best solutions. Even if concepts Kilcullen has raised are familiar to recent Western military and intelligence practitioners and students of guerrilla conflict, The Accidental Guerrilla presents a systematic way of looking, based on smart analysis and research, at the complexities of global strategy in this age. [CIA.gov/January2010]

The Wave of the Future by Duane De Mello, features an intricate web of spies, intelligence agents, terrorists and bureaucrats as they wage war over the future of the free world. 

When a group of bloodthirsty Islamic terrorists target a nuclear waste processing facility in northwestern England and a Washington, D.C. airport for their next acts of violence, it's up to CIA counterterrorist agent Mitch Vasari to stop them. But Vasari's work is complicated by terrorist mastermind Dr. Abdul-Karim bin Ahmad, a Pakistani physician working at a hospital in Scotland. Caught in the middle is Patrick Cahill, an Irish national and Dr. bin Ahmad's accomplice, who also happens to be deep undercover for Vasari and the agency. The players circle in a deadly dance of violence and deception as the clock ticks steadily toward a cataclysmic devastation.

"“Succeeding in the war on terrorism is an enormously difficult task that is fraught with danger," De Mello says. "With terrorists throwing down a gauntlet of unending prospects for acts of devastation and the loss of lives, only the most skillful and professional counterterrorist operations will serve to bring them to justice."

When the terrorist group succeeds against their first target, in England, Varsari picks up the pieces of the operation and follows the cell to their next attack, this time in the U.S. With disillusionment growing, he questions his commitment to the agency and what his future prospects are for continuing his oath of loyalty, dedication and secrecy. 

[Duane De Mello is a writer, former educator and retired CIA officer. He earned a master's degree at Stanford University and wrote his first book, The McCarthy Era: 1950-1954, while he was a high school teacher in Cupertino, Calif. After serving two tours in Vietnam as a civilian advisor, De Mello stayed in Asia for two decades working as a businessman in Hong Kong, the Philippines and Japan. Returning to the U.S. and managing a laser and sensor technology firm in southern California, he eventually joined the CIA as an operations officer and returned to work overseas. De Mello is now retired and lives with his wife in southern Maryland where he is at work on another novel.]  [BookSurge/January2010]

Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, by Marc Thiessen. White House speechwriter Marc Thiessen was locked in a secure room and given access to the most sensitive intelligence when he was tasked to write President George W. Bush's 2006 speech explaining the CIA's interrogation program and why Congress should authorize it. Few know more about these CIA operations than Thiessen, and in his new book, Courting Disaster, he documents just how effective the CIA's interrogations were in foiling attacks on America, penetrating al-Qaeda's high command, and providing our military with actionable intelligence. Thiessen also shows how reckless President Obama has been in shutting down the CIA's program and releasing secret documents that have aided our enemies. Courting Disaster proves:

- How the CIA program thwarted specific deadly attacks against the U.S.
- Why "enhanced interrogation" was not torture by any reasonable legal or moral standard
- How the information gained by "enhanced interrogation" could not have been acquired any other way
- How President Obama's actions since taking office have left America much more vulnerable to attack

In chilling detail, Thiessen reveals how close the terrorists came to striking again, how intelligence gained from "enhanced interrogation" repeatedly stymied their plots, and how President Obama's dismantling of this CIA program is inviting disaster for America. [Amazon/January2010]

Careers

Islamist Watch Director. The Middle East Forum, a think-tank based in Philadelphia, seeks to hire a full-time director for Islamist Watch.
Islamist Watch focuses on a threat too often overlooked in fighting terrorism, the ideas and institutions of non-violent and non-criminal Islamism in the United States and other Western countries. The project also works to strengthen moderate Muslims.
For more information on Islamist Watch, please go to http://www.islamist-watch.org/about.php.
Job description:

* Research into lawful Islamist activities.
* Write, commission, and edit articles, appear in the media, and give public talks.
* Engage in activism.
* Assist other members of the MEF staff.
* Supervise other Islamist Watch personnel (paid staff, interns, volunteers).
* Fundraise.
* Administer (e.g., prepare progress reports).

Job requirements:

* An M.A. in Middle East studies or equivalent job experience.
* A proven public record of writing and speaking.
* An ability to take initiative, work cooperatively with colleagues, meet deadlines, show attention to detail, and work hard.
* An outlook consonant with that of the Middle East Forum: "Promoting American interests in the Middle East while protecting the Constitutional order from Middle Eastern threats."
* Standard computer skills.

Location: Work from the Forum's office in Philadelphia for at least one year; subsequently, telecommuting via the Internet is possible.
Compensation: Competitive.
To apply: Please send to Personnel@MEForum.org, a cover letter, resume, brief writing sample, and names of references with contact information and combine them into a single Word document. The subject line should read "Application for Islamist Watch directorship."
Deadline: Friday, February 12, 2010, 5 p.m. EST. http://www.meforum.org/2581/job-announcement-islamist-watch-director

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Deputy Assistant Commandant for Intelligence and Criminal Investigations, United States Coast Guard. 

Vacancy Announcement: 
Open Period: 1/27/2010
Salary Range: $119,554 - $179,700 USD
Position Location: Washington, DC 

The Deputy Assistant Commandant for Intelligence and Criminal Investigations, in conjunction with the Assistant Commandant, manages the Coast Guard's intelligence and criminal investigations programs. The Deputy implements the process to source and screen proposed enterprise solutions, internal and external, including new systems, technologies, and strategies for improving intelligence efforts and their effectiveness; assures their consistent and equitable application throughout the service and interoperability within the Department of Homeland Security and the Intelligence Community. Serves as the strategic planning coordinator to decide, prioritize and direct the Directorate's capabilities to align with actual and anticipated USCG, Agency, Intelligence Community, executive branch, and other federal agency requirements. Directs and leads staff in the design and implementation of policies, regulations, and procedures; represents the USCG in national and international programs; and advocates USCG positions on policy negotiations and decision-making.

Key Requirements:
U.S. Citizenship 
TOP SECRET/SCI security clearance
Public Financial Disclosure Report (SF-278)
Subject to drug testing

To review basic job requirements and to apply to this vacancy please visit: http://usajobs.opm.gov/ and enter CG-SES-10-01 in the keyword search.

If you have any questions, please give me a call or send me an email.

Respectfully,

Colette Pinkney
Civilian Recruiter
202-475-5302

Coming Events

EVENTS IN COMING TWO MONTHS....

MANY Spy Museum Events in January and February with full details are listed on the AFIO Website at www.afio.com. The titles for some of these are as follows:

• True Lies/True Lives: Famous Spies of the 20th Century - Wednesdays in February and the first Wednesday in March; 10:15 am
  Location: International Spy Museum, Washington, DC
• Wednesday, 3 February 2010; 10:15 am - Washington, DC - Aldrich Ames: High Pay for High Crimes - at the International Spy Museum
• Thursday, 4 February 2010; 6:30 pm - Washington, DC - The Counterfeiters at the International Spy Museum
• Wednesday, 10 February 2010; 10:15 am - Washington, DC - John Walker: The Ring Leader at the International Spy Museum
• Wednesday, 17 February 2010; 10:15 am - Washington, DC - Oleg Penkovsky: The Heroic Spy
• Thursday, 18 February 2010; 12 noon – 1 pm - Washington, DC - The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State at the International Spy Museum
• Wednesday, 24 February 2010; 10:15 am- Washington, DC - Robert Hanssen: The Anonymous Spy
• Wednesday, 3 March 2010; 10:15 am - Washington, DC - Ana Montes: Cuba’s American Mole at the International Spy Museum

Tuesday, 09 February 2010, 1130 hrs - Tampa, FL - The AFIO Suncoast Chapter will hold its Spring meeting and luncheon on "Psychology of Terrorism" at the MacDill AFB Officer’s Club.

Dr. Borum topic is “Psychology of Terrorism and Radicalization”. Randy Borum, Psy. D., serves on the Defense Science Board Task Force on Understanding Human Dynamics in Military Operations; provides support for US Special Operations Command and the Joint Special Operations University (combating terrorist networks); and served on the NSF Review Panel for Social/Behavioral Research on National Security. Additional background information can be found on the USF web site, http://www.usf.edu/Faculty-Staff/.

A full Luncheon, Lasagna and fresh garlic bread, with normal salad, rolls, dressing of choice, coffee and tea -- and in preparation for everyone enjoying forthcoming Valentine Day, dessert will be Red Velvet Cake, will be served for the usual $15, all inclusive. We will have the wine and soda bar open at 1100 for those that wish to come early for our social time.

Check-in registration will commence at 1130 hours, opening ceremonies and lunch at noon, followed by our distinguished speaker Randy Borum from the College of Behavioral Sciences at USF.Reply ASAP, with your name and any guests accompanying you, to: Bill Brown at billbrown1@tampabay.rr.com; Donwhite@tampabay.rr.com; or Gary Gorsline at garyg@x-link.info

Your check payable to 'Suncoast Chapter, AFIO' (or cash) should be presented at time of check-in for the luncheon. Additionally, just a reminder that this years dues, $10, are do from those who have not already paid. Should you not have 'bumper stickers' or ID card for access to MacDill AFB, please so state in your response. Be sure to include your license number, name on drivers license and state of issue for yourself and for any guests you are bringing on base. And don't forget, all of you needing special roster gate access should proceed to the Bayshore Gate entrance to MacDill AFB (need directions, let us know). The main gate will send you to the visitors center and they will not be able to help you get past security, unless you are just asking for directions to the Bayshore Gate.

Tuesday 9 February 2010, 11:45 a.m. - AFIO Hampton Roads Norman Forde Chapter meeting features FBI Agent who Broke Walker Spy Ring in 1985.
Robert W. Hunter, retired FBI agent who in 1985 broke the spy ring of John Walker, one of the Soviet Union's most dangerous and damaging spies, addresses AFIO Hampton Roads/Norman Forde Chapter members at this Buffet Luncheon at the Breezy Point Officers' Club, Norfolk Naval Station.
Hunter was a special agent for the FBI in Norfolk from 1967 until his retirement in 1989. The last 10 years of his career were spent in the field of foreign counterintelligence.
In that decade, he was the case agent and lead investigator on cases that resulted in 5 espionage convictions, the most successful counterintelligence career on record in the history of the FBI.
Within the intelligence community, Bob Hunter is known as the agent who caught master spy John Walker and brought an end to what many top officials call the most damaging espionage ring in U.S. history.
John Walker was one of the Soviet Union's most successful agents for nearly 20 years before he was finally caught in May 1985. Walker and his ring probably provided over a million pages of classified documents to the Soviets over two decades and seriously compromised U.S. defense capabilities. Bob Hunter's book, "Spy Hunter" is about the famed Walker case and is available for sale on Amazon.com.
Registration/Questions to Melissa at MWSaunders@cox.net or call her at 757-897-6268

10 February 2010 - Scottsdale, AZ - The Arizona Chapter of AFIO meets to hear Randy Parsons, Department of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration Federal Security Director Randy D. Parsons was appointed as the Federal Security Director overseeing Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and seven other Arizona airports in 2009.
Mr. Parsons retired from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2005 after twenty years of service. His last assignment was as the Special Agent in Charge for the Counterterrorism Program in the Los Angeles office. Mr. Parsons led four Joint Terrorism Task Forces and directed the operational readiness of personnel and systems for crisis preparedness and response. He practiced law prior to entering the FBI, is a former university professor and police officer.
He was a Vice President for the AECOM global consortium of companies providing architectural, design and engineering services to diverse critical infrastructure clients. Mr. Parsons founded Global Strategic Solutions, LLC in 2007, providing consultation and guidance for strategic policy, planning and development within a variety of risk environments to governmental and private sector clientele.
This event is being held at: McCormick Ranch Golf Club (7505 McCormick Parkway, Scottsdale AZ 85258 ~ Phone 480.948.0260) Our meeting fees will be as follows: • $20.00 for AFIO members• $22.00 for guests. For reservations or questions, please email Simone sl@4smartphone.net or simone@afioaz.org or call and leave a message on 602.570.6016.
Arthur Kerns, President of the AFIO AZ Chapter, president@afioaz.org.

15 - 17 February 2010 - Heidelberg, Germany - The United States European Command Director for Intelligence is using this convention outfit to arrange an Intelligence Summit.
The website for this event managers is https://www.ncsi.com/eucom09/index.shtml

13 February 2010 - Orange Park, FL - The North Florida Chapter will meet for its quarterly luncheon at the Country Club of Orange Park starting at 11:00 am.Guest speaker will be Dr. Christopher Stubbs, whose unique subject will be "Spooks & Geeks: The Perspective of an Interested Citizen Scientist."  For further information about the Chapter or the upcoming meetings, please contact Chapter Secretary Quiel Begonia at qbegonia@comcast.net or 904-545-9549.

23 February 2010 - Arlington, VA - The Defense Intelligence Forum meets at the Alpine Restaurant, 4770 Lee Highway, Arlington, VA 22207. Jon Wiant will speak on Imaginative Writing - The World of Fabricating Intelligence. Dr. Wiant is Adjunct Professor of Intelligence Studies at The George Washington University and lectures at the Intelligence and Security Academy. He has held the Department of State chair at the National Defense Intelligence College. He has served as Assistant Inspector General for Security and Intelligence Oversight, Chairman of the National HUMINT Requirements Tasking Center, Senior Advisor for Policy to ASD (C3I), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and Director for Intelligence Policy on the National Security Council. This forum will follow a modified Chatham House Rule. You may use the information, but with the exception of the subject and speaker's name, you may make no attribution.

Make reservations for you and your guests by 16 February by email to diforum@verizon.net. Pay at the door with a check for $29 per person payable to DIAA, Inc. Registration starts at 1130, lunch at 1200. Give names, telephone numbers, email addresses, and choices of chicken, veal, or salmon. Pay with a check. The Forum Doesn't Take Cash.

24 February 2010, 9 am - 5 pm - Ft Lauderdale, FL - The FBI/INFRAGARD has invited AFIO Members to the FEBRUARY 24, 2010 Conference on Counterterrorism measures at Nova Southeastern University.

If you plan to attend, please RSVP to AFIO Miami Chapter President, Tom Spencer, at TRSMIAMI@aol.com. Provide your AFIO National member number, address, phone number. Your information will be provided to the FBI for assessment. Their decision of which members can attend is final. AFIO bears no responsibility for costs or arrangements made in anticipation of attending this Infragard/FBI event based on the decisions of their security personnel. If available, bring your government issued ID. Infragard is the public/private partnership of the FBI. You can get more information on Infragard at www.infragard.net.
Please respond to Tom Spencer no later than February 10, 2010 via email.
Location: NOVA Southeastern University , Knight Lecture Hall, Room # 1124
3301 College Ave, Ft. Lauderdale, Fl 33314
Abbreviated AGENDA
09:00 - 09:30 AM - Registration and coffee
09:30 - 10:00 AM Welcoming Remarks - Carlos "Freddy" Kasprzykowski, InfraGard South Florida Chapter President; Eric S. Ackerman, Ph.D., NSU Assistant Dean and Director of Graduate Programs; SA Nelson J. Barbosa, InfraGard Coordinator/FBI Miami
10:00 - 11:00 AM - Stephanie M. Viegas, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Coordinator, Miami FBI Field Division Will give an overview on how the FBI responds and coordinates WMD threats and related cases.
11:00 - 11:15 AM - Break
11:15 -11:30 AM - FBI employment needs - SA Kathleen J. Cymbaluk, Miami FBI Recruiter. This presentation will discuss current hiring needs of the FBI and
requirements on how to qualify and apply.
11:30 - 12:30 PM - Christopher L. Eddy, Supervisory Intelligence Analyst. The use of Intelligence Information in the FBI. This presentation will discuss how intelligence is collected, analyzed, and pushed to the right people at the right time and place and how vitally important it is to the security of our nation and its interests.
12:30 - 01:45 PM - LUNCH (Food court available on campus)
01:45 - 02:45 PM - Gun Running from Broward and Palm Beaches Counties
SSA Mark A. Hastbacka; This presentation will touch on IRA gun running operation in the above counties from a Counter terrorism investigation point-of-view.
02:15 - 03:15 PM - FBI Extraterritorial Responsibilities: Focus Iraq ASAC Scott A. Gilbert, FBI Miami. This presentation will focus on FBI activities in the International
Terrorism Organizations (ITO) and in the Middle East in general, with specific focus on IT and kidnapping investigations.
03:15 - 03:30 PM - BREAK
03:30 - 04:30 PM - Overview of Current Terrorism Trends: South Florida
SIA Vincent J. Rowe. This presentation will focus on terrorism trends in the South Florida
territory.
04:30 - 05:00 PM - Conclusion

Wednesday, 10 March 2010, 6:30 p.m. - Washington, DC - A "Weapons of Mass Disruption Program from Cold War to Cyber War" featuring Gail Harris, Naval Intelligence Officer - at the International Spy Museum

WHAT: “I decided to be unorthodox."—Gail Harris
When Gail Harris was assigned by the U.S. Navy to a combat intelligence job in 1973, she became the first woman to hold such a position. By the time of her retirement, she was the highest ranking African American female in the Navy. Her 28-year career included hands-on leadership in the intelligence community during every major conflict from the Cold War to Desert Storm to Kosovo. Captain Harris was at the forefront of one of the newest challenges: cyber warfare, developing intelligence policy for the Computer Network Defense and Computer Network Attack for the Department of Defense. Harris, author of A Woman's War: The Professional and Personal Journey of the Navy's First African American Female Intelligence Officer, will share her unique experience providing intelligence support to military operations while also battling the status quo, office bullies, and politics. She’ll also offer her perspective on the way intelligence is used and sometimes misused.
WHERE: International Spy Museum, 800 F St NW, Washington, DC, Gallery Place/Chinatown Metrorail Station. TICKETS: $12.50. Advance Registration required. Tickets are non-refundable. To register: order online; or purchase tickets in person at the International Spy Museum.

10 March 2010 - Scottsdale, AZ - The Arizona Chapter of AFIO meets to hear Robert Parrish on "Private/Public Partnership Protecting the Homeland." Robert Parrish, Director of Corporate Security, the Arizona Public Service, will speak on "Private and Public Partnership in Protecting the Homeland."
Parrish is responsible for all APS physical security (except PaloVerde), all investigations including power diversions, site assessments,threat assessments response plans, security installations, security monitoring, and workplace violence. He is a retired Commander from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, Phoenix AZ. Dates of service: 1983 to 2005.
This event is being held at: McCormick Ranch Golf Club (7505 McCormick Parkway, Scottsdale AZ 85258 ~ Phone 480.948.0260) 
Our meeting fees will be as follows: • $20.00 for AFIO members• $22.00 for guests. 
For reservations or questions, please email Simone sl@4smartphone.net or simone@afioaz.org or call and leave a message on 602.570.6016.
Arthur Kerns, President of the AFIO AZ Chapter, president@afioaz.org.

Friday, 12 March 2010 – San Francisco, CA – The AFIO Jim Quesada Chapter hosts Michael Rinn, Vice President/Program Director for the Missile Defense Systems Division at The Boeing Company. He will be discussing the Airborne Laser Program. 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 chicken or fish): afiosf@aol.com and mail check made out to "AFIO" to: Mariko Kawaguchi, P.O. Box 117578 Burlingame, CA 94011

13 March 2010, 10 am to 1 pm - Coral Gables, FL - AFIO Miami Chapter hosts talk on FUTURE WARS by Dr. John Alexander.
Please save the date. Dr. John Alexander, author of Future Wars, will be leading a presentation and discussion.
Event to be held at the Hyatt Coral Gables. For further information contact chapter president Tom Spencer at trsmiami@aol.com

18 March 2010, 11:30 am - Colorado Springs, CO - AFIO Rocky Mountain Chapter hears Bryan Cunningham on "National At Risk." Talk to occur at the Air Force Academy, Falcon Club. Markle Foundation's Bryan Cunningham speaks on "Nation at Risk." Cunningham is with the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age. RSVP to Tom Van Wormer at robsmom@pcisys.net

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

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