AFIO Weekly Intelligence Notes #25-10 dated 6 July 2010

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CONTENTS

Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

Section III - COMMENTARY

Section IV - OBITUARIES, BOOKS AND COMING EVENTS

Obituaries

Books

Coming Events

Current Calendar New and/or Next Two Months ONLY

Events at the International Spy Museum in July & August with full details

  • Wednesday, 7 July 2010; 6:30 pm - Washington, DC - "A New Cold War: Inside Nuclear Iran" at the International Spy Museum
  • Thursday, 15 July 2010; 12 noon – 1 pm - Washington, DC - "Eyes in the Sky: Eisenhower, the CIA, and Cold War Aerial Espionage" at the International Spy Museum
  • Thursday, 5 August 2010, noon - Washington, DC - "Silent Sentry: The Untold Story of the National Security Agency" - at the International Spy Museum
  • Wednesday, 11 August 2010, 6:30 pm - Washington, DC - "Uneasy Alliance: The CIA and ISI in Pakistan" - at the International Spy Museum
  • SpyCruise� Eastern Caribbean setting sail November 13th, 2010. For information on the upcoming cruise, visit https://www.afio.com/index.html#spycruise 

    SpyCruise Stateroom Discount Program
    As some of you may know, you may earn a free stateroom if you acquire 15 other stateroom bookings (double occupancy). For some this can prove difficult.  Therefore, in order for each of you to be able to benefit from this program, we want to offer everyone a discount based whatever number of additional staterooms you are able to fill.  For every additional stateroom you get booked for SpyCruise, your stateroom will be discounted by 1/15th of the cost of the additional stateroom.  In order for your stateroom to be completely free, you would need to acquire 15 additional bookings of the same category or greater than the one you book.  When your friends, colleagues, family or neighbors book their SpyCruise, they will need to tell the agent that you recruited them.  This way we can track who has earned the discounts.  Of course, each of those guests may participate in this program as well.
  • Comment by Adm. Mac Showers on Suzanne R. Stone’s Aikenstandard.com [Aiken, SC] article “Radio interception program began 1924” released 6/18/2010 and mentioned in the Weekly Notes two weeks ago. Adm Showers pointed out that Ms. Stone did not understand that the terminology for many encryption/decryption devices differed based on political and service rivalries and nuances in terminology. And he asked that AFIO point out that Ms. Stone's assertion that the decrypted Japanese diplomatic codes provided enough early warning of a pending attack…on Pearl Harbor…which she ascribed to possible nefarious, devious, or inefficient actions. None of that is true, says Adm. Showers.  “Bureaucratic delays and misfires kept the advance notice from reaching troops on the ground before the bombing had done its damage to the Navy fleet” is completely false. Capt. Emil Levine USN in Austria – also urged corrections to the Stone story and did what AFIO tells all readers who see errors in a new account: use the link we have at the end of every story, click on that to locate the actual online story, look for a "comment" link, click on that and enter your correction. Such a comment has a far greater impact because it corrects the original source, online, which is seen by thousands or millions of readers. Meanwhile, we thank Admiral Mac Showers, USN (Ret) for letting us know of the mistakes in the Aiken Standard (SC) story.

REGISTER NOW

18 - 20 August 2010

AFIO National GREAT LAKES Intelligence Symposium 2010

"Intelligence and National Security on the Great Lakes and Northern Border"

at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Cleveland, OH

Co-Hosted with the AFIO Northern Ohio Chapter

Includes presentations by U.S. Coast Guard on Great Lakes/Northern Border security;
National Air/Space Intelligence Center; Air Force Technical Applications Center; Ohio Aerospace Institute, Dinner/Cruise on Nautica Queen on Lake Erie.

Spies-in-Black-Ties Reception and Banquet

Make your reservations here.

Agenda is here.

To reserve rooms at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Cleveland, Ohio now at the $89/nite special event rate, use the following link: http://tinyurl.com/37frwnl


Documents From Two Intelligence Symposia, Now Online...

Strategic Warning and the Role of Intelligence: Lessons Learned From The 1968 Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia

The Czechoslovak crisis began in January 1968. The Czech communist leadership embarked on a program of dramatic liberalization of the political, economic, and social orders. These reforms triggered increasing Soviet concerns culminating in the invasion of 21 August 1968. This collection of documents pertains to these issues, the responses and analysis of this event in history. Follow this link to the documents.

Baptism By Fire: CIA Analysis of the Korean War

This collection includes more than 1,300 documents consisting of national estimates, intelligence memo, daily updates, and summaries of foreign media concerning developments on the Korean Peninsula during 1947 - 1954. The release of this collection, which coincides with the 60th anniversary of the start of the war, makes available to the public the largest collection of Agency documents released on this issue. The release of these documents is in conjunction with the conference, "New Documents and New Histories: Twenty-First Century Perspectives on the Korean War," co-hosted by the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and the CIA in Independence, Missouri. Follow this link to the documents.

Rosetta Stone

The Mysterious Rosetta Stone: A Code-Cracking International Treasure

Dr. Joel Freeman speaks at the National Cryptologic Museum Foundation Summer Cryptologic meeting.

Wednesday, 21 July 2010, 10 am - 12:45 pm - Annapolis Junction, MD

All AFIO members are invited to hear guest speaker, Dr. Joel Freeman, CEO and President of the Freeman Institute, discuss the history of the Rosetta Stone, focusing on the historical connection between the Rosetta Stone and the breaking of codes. Guests will have an opportunity to view the full-sized, three-dimensional Rosetta Stone replica normally on display in the lobby of the National Cryptologic Museum. Dr. Freeman is a gifted speaker and author. As part of the program there will be a brief presentation to acknowledge the Milt Zaslow Memorial Award for Cryptology that was presented for the first time at this year's Maryland History Day Ceremony on 24 April.
Location: the L3 Conference Center in the National Business Park. Lunch will be served at 11:45 following the presentation. L3 Conference Center is located at 2720 Technology Dr, Annapolis Junction, MD 21076 in the Rt. 32 National Business Park.
Cost: the fee is $25 to cover program & lunch costs.
Confirm your attendance by Wednesday, 14 July, by calling (301) 688-5436 to pay by credit card or by mailing a check to NCMF, POB 1682, Ft. Meade, MD 20755. We look forward to seeing you there.


CALL FOR PAPERS
for 2011 NSA Conference

6 - 7 October 2011
- Laurel, MD -
The NSA's Center for Cryptologic History hosts their Biennial
Cryptologic History Symposium.
2011 theme: "Cryptology in War and Peace: Crisis Points in History."
Full Details


WIN CREDITS FOR THIS ISSUE: The WIN editors thank the following special contributors to this issue:  dh, pjk, fm, cjlc, th, and fwr.  

They have contributed one or more stories used in this issue.

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

Section I - INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Supposed Iranian Spy "Escapes CIA." A video with a man claiming to be an Iranian nuclear scientist kidnapped by CIA agents aired on Iranian state television on earlier in June.

The individual claimed that he was Iranian atomic researcher Shahram Amiri, who disappeared during a pilgrimage trip to Mecca last year and that he had escaped his CIA minders.

ABC news reported in March that Amiri had defected to the United States after arriving in Saudi Arabia and had become a CIA asset.

Amiri's disappearance preceded the revelation of a second uranium enrichment facility that Iran has been building near the city of Qom, raising speculation that Amiri may have given the West information on it or other parts of the nuclear program.

"Minutes ago I managed to escape American security agents in the state of Virginia. I am now in a safe place making this video," the supposed Amiri said in the film. "I could be arrested again by American security agents any minute ... I am not free here and I do not have permission to contact my family or others and if anything happens to me or if I do not return to (my) country, the American government is directly responsible," he added.

The authenticity of the video has not been independently verified. [Jpost/30June2010] 

Knowledge Sharing Among US Diplomats. A Rice University study of the U.S. State Department's Wikipedia style knowledge-sharing platform suggests that such tools could improve information management in other areas of government. 

Dubbed Diplopedia, the open-source platform for the U.S. diplomatic corps allows a registered user to post articles and edit other pages, with all contributions directly traced to that user. 

In three years, the site has grown to more than 11,000 articles, creating a knowledge base of expertise for working diplomats. [WorldFutureSociety/30June2010] 

Cyber Terrorism Is Now Seen as a Real Threat. Quaint details such as letters written in invisible ink, rendezvous in parks and buried stashes of cash have made the alleged Russian spies now under arrest in the U.S. sound very old fashioned. Moscow chose to add to that impression, with the Foreign Ministry criticizing the U.S. action as being "in the spirit of Cold War-era spy stories."

But while the Cold War finished, the spying never stopped. According to the website of MI5, the U.K.'s security service, "The threat of espionage [spying] did not end with the collapse of Soviet communism in the early 1990s. Espionage against U.K. interests continues from many quarters." It estimates that at least 20 foreign intelligence services are operating against the country, with Russia and China of most concern. "The number of Russian intelligence officers in London has not fallen since Soviet times," it declares. And if Russia has retained that level of interest in the U.K., it is unlikely to have lessened the attention it pays to the U.S.

Whatever the alleged Russian agents were up to, there are suggestions that they had access to some relatively sophisticated technology. They may have spent years patiently embedding themselves and their assumed identities into comfortable suburban locations but the computers that they were using in the local coffee shops seem to have impressed the FBI investigators.

Fast-evolving technology is affecting both the spying game and potential terrorist tactics. Cyber terrorism is now perceived as a real threat. The U.K. parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, in its 2009/10 annual report, cited evidence it had received from the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6. He had said that "The whole question of cyber security is shooting up everybody's agendas" and that it is "a major new challenge to the intelligence community."

The fear is that modern nations are so dependent on technology that widespread interference with systems could wreak havoc. Remember the dire warnings that preceded the dawning of the new millennium? Scare-mongers assured us that computers would be unable to cope with the change of digit involved in passing from the 1990s into the year 2000. Unless the "millennium bug" was fixed, they claimed, elevators would freeze, cash machines would refuse to pay up and, in the most extreme scenarios, there would be "blood on the streets."

In the event, the warnings, some of which emanated from people keen to expensively rectify the bug, proved unfounded. However, deliberate concerted attacks on a nation's technology could engender real chaos. In the words of the MI6 director-general: "At the moment my understanding is that there will be considerable impact if a state, be it Russia or China, and probably those are the most likely, decided to do serious damage to us one way or another."

There are already believed to have been state-sponsored cyber attacks. In 2007, during a diplomatic row between Estonia and Russia, Estonia found many of its government, banking and media Web-sites disrupted. Russia denied any involvement although Estonia insisted that it could trace some of the million or more computers it estimated were used in the attack to addresses in Russia.

More recently, Dennis Blair, the U.S. director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence committee that "Malicious cyber activity is occurring on an unprecedented scale with extraordinary sophistication."

He added that: "Sensitive information is stolen daily from both government and private-sector networks, undermining confidence in our information systems and in the very information these systems were intended to convey."

Mr. Blair was talking as Google had accused the Chinese authorities of hacking into its computers in the escalating dispute over Chinese users being denied unfettered access to the service. However, his remarks indicated that his fears were of a much graver threat. Some see the potential for damage to be inflicted by attacking a country's technology infrastructure as so great that they have dubbed it a "cyber Pearl Harbor".

There are other, less apocalyptic, motives behind much of the cyber-espionage that is currently taking place. Certain countries are keen to gather up any commercial and scientific information that they can reach and are doing so through the use of battalions of smart hackers. Companies keen to protect themselves against such spying have to be constantly vigilant about Internet security, but that may prove no match for the sophisticated spies.

Security experts are clear that potential aggressors are now amassing detailed information with which they could launch a cyber-terrorism attack. Since last year, the U.K. has a Cyber Security Strategy but it will struggle to beat those that have a cyber terrorism strategy. [Wheatcroft/WallStreetJournal/29June2010] 

Espionage Probe Casts Shadow on Ties with China. When German Chancellor Angela Merkel flies to Beijing in July, she will have plenty of the usual accolades for the Chinese. She will say that relations between the two countries are excellent and communication is amicable and intense. "I believe that one can say that relations are gaining a lot of momentum," the chancellor typically says on such occasions.

What Merkel will probably not mention publicly is the other side of the German-Chinese relationship, which is also gathering momentum. It takes place in the world of espionage and intelligence agencies, and it has to do with Chinese agents in Germany, secret investigations and discreet diplomats. This dark side sometimes comes to the surface, as it did in a town near the northern German city of Hanover, where a team from the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), appeared at the house of Dan Sun (editors' note: the name has been changed) on a Wednesday morning in mid-May and presented a search warrant.

Dan Sun, a slim, amiable man, opened the door and asked the men to come into his study, where there is a statue of Buddha on a shelf and the air smells of incense. The German Federal Prosecutor's Office is investigating Sun on suspicion of working as an intelligence agent. The investigators accuse him of having spied on members of the Falun Gong movement for the Chinese intelligence service. He can expect an indictment, but the investigators are, in fact, more interested in two high-ranking Chinese government officials from Shanghai who are also alleged of being involved in the case. [ChinaDigitalTimes/30June2010] 

Pentagon Spies Build New Database on Foreign and Domestic Threats. The Pentagon's main spy outfit, the Defense Intelligence Agency, is building a new database which will consolidate in one system "human intelligence" information on groups and individuals - potentially including Americans - collected by DIA operatives in United States and abroad.

A notice published earlier this week in the government's regulatory bulletin, the Federal Register, says the manager of the system will be a little-known DIA unit called the Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC).

Records held in the database, the notice says, could include information on "individuals involved in, or of interest to, DoD intelligence, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and counternarcotic operations or analytical projects as well as individuals involved in foreign intelligence and/or training activities." Among the data to be stored: "information such as name, Social Security Number (SSN), address, citizenship documentation, biometric data, passport number, vehicle identification number and vehicle/vessel license data." Actual intelligence reports from the field and analytical material which would help "identify or counter foreign intelligence and terrorist threats to the DoD and the United States" will also be included.

"That's potentially a lot of information," Donald Black, chief spokesman for DIA, acknowledged in an interview with Declassified. But he said that material entered into the new database would be carefully reviewed - as regularly as every 90 days - to ensure that out-of-date, discredited, or irrelevant data on individuals would be destroyed if there was no longer a good reason to keep it.

Black said that the new database would not include the highly controversial aspects of TALON, a database assembled by a spooky Pentagon spy outfit called Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), set up during the George W. Bush administration. The Pentagon shut down TALON in 2007 after revelations that CIFA, whose mission included collating intelligence collected by local law-enforcement agencies and military-intelligence units on potential threats to U.S. defense installations, had assembled files on peace marchers and other nonviolent antiwar protestors. The Pentagon later said that CIFA would be broken up. Apart from its alleged monitoring of antiwar activists, the unit became tainted by a major contracting scandal that resulted in the imprisonment of former California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. As NEWSWEEK reported here, some defense experts were alarmed when CIFA attempted - and failed - to take over a Pentagon agency responsible for inspecting the security arrangements of defense contractors, and maintaining security-clearance files on millions of contractor employees. Critics feared that such a merger could result in the creation of a military secret police.

Two U.S. officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said that while CIFA had been disbanded on paper, many of its personnel and some of its functions were transferred to DCHC. One of the officials said that DCHC is now in the same office space that CIFA once occupied, in a complex near suburban Washington's Reagan National Airport.

A defense official, who also did not want to be named, insisted that the new unit, unlike CIFA, had no law-enforcement powers. He maintained that the new system would not repeat abuses similar to those which occurred with TALON. But the official said that theoretically, stored data could include information on domestic activists or protestors who might not be violent at present, but could be deemed to pose a potential threat of violence in future. The official said that unlike TALON, the new DCHC database would not include field reports generated by military counterintelligence agencies with domestic field offices, such as the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, the Navy Criminal Investigative Service, or the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. However, if those agencies were to ask DIA or DCHC to become involved in one of their cases, then information about the case could well be entered in the new DCHC database. The official had no estimate of how many records on individual subjects - including Americans - would be stored.

Some civil-liberties experts are already expressing dismay about the new DIA database. Mike German, a former FBI investigator who now works for the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Washington Post's Spy Talk blog that while the functions of the new database were still murky, "We do know that DIA took over 'offensive counterintelligence' for the DoD once CIFA was abandoned... It therefore makes sense that this new DIA data base would be collecting the same types of information that CIFA collected improperly, so Americans should be just as concerned." [Hosenball/Newsweek/18June2010]

Industrial Spying Rises in South Korea. South Korean industrial spying cases have risen consistently, largely in the electronics industry, a center tied to the chief national intelligence agency said.

During the past six years, 203 cases have involved current and former employees who stole and tried to sell South Korean technologies abroad, the National Industrial Security Center said in a report.

The center is affiliated with South Korea's National Intelligence Service, the country's chief intelligence agency.

Cases rose to 43 in 2009 from 26 in 2004, the report said, pointing to 42 cases in 2008, 32 in 2007, 31 in 2006 and 29 in 2005.

No cases were cited for this year, the Yonhap News Agency reported.

South Korea's electronics industry accounted for 48.3 percent of the cases, the security center report said.

More than 80 percent of cases involved current and former employees, the report said.

South Korean prosecutors indicted 18 people this year for allegedly stealing chip-manufacturing technology from Samsung Electronics Co. and Hynix Semiconductor Inc., formerly Hyundai Electronics, the world's second-largest memory chipmaker. [UPI/4July2010]

Poland: Israeli 'Spy' Faces Extradition. Alleged Israeli spy Uri Brodsky, who purportedly provided the fake German passport used in the Dubai assassination in January, may be extradited from Poland to Germany this week.

A hearing is slated for Monday in Warsaw to determine if Brodsky will be extradited to Germany for unlawful secret service activity and providing false information to a Cologne passport agency. The Federal prosecutor in Karlsruhe alleged that Brodsky illegally obtained a German passport, which allowed a hit man using the name Michael Bodenheimer to travel to Dubai to kill Hamas commander and Iranian arms smuggler Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January.

The Brodsky affair has caused diplomatic friction among two of Israel's most important European partners. According to media reports in Germany, Israel has turned the diplomatic screws on Poland and Germany to prevent an extradition of Brodsky to Germany. A polish diplomat told Rzeczpospolita, a daily newspaper in Poland, in June that "if we extradite him we will anger the Israelis. If we release him, we will anger the Germans. When we discovered this man...we should have pretended that we had not seen him. But now it is too late."

The federal prosecutor told the Jerusalem Post in June that the matter is based on the forgery of a German passport and illicit secret service activity in Germany. He insisted that the pursuit of the alleged secret service agent is purely a legal matter, and would not identify the agent as Israeli. The alleged Israel spy could face incarceration during the legal process, or the court may release him on bail while the judicial proceeding unfolds. The German government could also decide to release the Israeli suspect. [Weinthal/JerusalemPost/7uly2010]

Espionage Expert Claims GCHQ Could Merge with MI5 and MI6 to Save Costs. GCHQ could merge with Britain's two other top intelligence agencies, according to an espionage expert.

Author Richard Aldrich says Government spending cuts and centralization could dictate the move.

The historian believes a union of the Cheltenham-based intelligence headquarters, the Secret Intelligence Service, or M16, and the Security Service, or M15, would follow a growing trend of "inter-service collaboration" to respond to an increasingly blurred distinction between foreign and domestic threats.

Costs would be cut, even if the intelligence budget was only �2.3 billion pounds compared to a �155 billion government budget deficit for 2009/10.

"There are obviously economies of scale," said Mr. Aldrich, professor of International Security at the University of Warwick.

"With big cuts sought in most ministries' spending, the services will be asked to contribute. Globalization has made a complete nonsense of boundaries and borders.

"In reality they almost have merged. You rarely find a team of agents from a single service."

GCHQ is a signals intercept service, MI6 intelligence officers run agents overseas and MI5 operates intelligence networks at home.

MI5 is also responsible for counter-espionage.

Officials have not publicly demanded a merger. But the services are working hard on efficiencies, according to the 2009/10 annual report of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), a group of lawmakers who oversee the three agencies.

Mr. Aldrich has published a study, GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency.

He says all three agencies will face calls to unify functions such as personnel, finance and data storage. But it could mean foreign agents who penetrate one large service would have far wider access to data and it would be harder to detect human rights abuses.

Government officials have declined to comment.

A GCHQ spokesman denied any moves to merge.

He said: "We are doing more and more collaborative working with the other intelligence agencies where it makes sense, but there are no plans to merge and little operational or financial advantage in doing so." [ThisIsGloucestershire/4July2010]

Venezuela Says Detained Salvadoran Wanted in Cuba. A Salvadoran man wanted by Cuba as a suspect in a series of bombings was arrested with a false passport at Caracas' airport, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Friday.

Chavez said the suspect, Francisco Chavez Abarca, was detained upon arrival Thursday by Venezuelan intelligence agents and is accused of placing bombs in Havana in 1997.

He called the Salvadoran a "big terrorist" who is closely associated with Cuban militant Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative wanted for allegedly plotting the 1976 bombing of a Cuban plane that killed 73 people.

"My heart tells me this gentleman came here to kill me. I have no doubt," the president said.

"This terrorist ... has shown that his presence was to launch a phase of attacks to provoke violence and destabilization to disrupt the forthcoming elections," Interior Minister Tareck El Aissami told state television.

Abarca is accused of being a member of a group led by Carriles, a former CIA operative and Cuban exile wanted in Cuba and Venezuela on charges including masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.

A Cuban-born naturalized Venezuelan, the 82-year-old Carilles escaped from prison in Venezuela in 1985. He requested political asylum in the United States in 2005 but is awaiting trial on immigration charges and perfury.

Chavez calls him the region's biggest terrorist and has demanded Washington extradite him. [WorldBulletin/4July2010]

Petraeus Plays High-Stakes Game with Special Forces Push. The CIA may be wondering why its phones aren't ringing as much as they used to. The U.S. military is increasingly gathering its own intelligence.

The New York Times recently reported that General David Petraeus has ordered an expansion of covert missions in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa. Small teams of special operations soldiers will carry out intelligence-gathering missions in both hostile and friendly nations, according to the newspaper.

The goal is to disrupt and destroy growing militant groups in countries such as Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Somalia.

"To do their job military commanders need bespoke intelligence so that they can understand for themselves what the big picture is," said David Livingston, an international security expert with London-based Chatham House think tank. "It's a classic special forces role, operating in advance of other military units without needing to incorporate other agencies. But they must be very careful. The decision to go in must come from the very highest political level, as the potential for political embarrassment is so high."

Military officials confirmed that U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) forces are currently conducting "more than 110 missions in around 60 countries."

While some commentators have expressed concern about the impact Petraeus' order could have on already fragile political relationships, one special forces soldier said intelligence gathering was in many ways a "stereotypical" mission.

"The ultimate aim of all special forces missions is to go in and get out without anyone ever knowing about it," he told msnbc.com on condition of anonymity.

USASOC forces have been operating in the Philippines for many years in a bid to combat the growing number of fundamentalist cells in the region. In 2009, two U.S. soldiers were killed there when their Humvee hit a roadside bomb. In Somalia, U.S. spy drones are already flying circles over Mogadishu, keeping track of insurgents being trained there.

As the cost of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq grows daily, experts say that gathering intelligence on prospective threats could save lives and dollars in the future.

"By going in early and preventing things from happening you stop the very expensive outcome, both in blood and treasure, of a military intervention later on," Livingston added. [Kiernan/NBCNews/3July2010]

Nixon and Kissinger Joked over Chile Assassination. President Richard M. Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, joked that an "incompetent" CIA had struggled to successfully carry out an assassination in Chile, newly available Oval Office tapes reveal.

At the time, in 1971, Nixon and Kissinger were working to undermine the socialist administration of Chilean President Salvador Allende, who would die during a U.S.-backed military coup two years later.

One of the key figures to stand in the way of Chilean generals plotting to overthrow Allende was the Chilean army commander-in-chief, Rene Schneider, who was killed during a botched kidnapping attempt by military right-wingers in 1970.

The question of the CIA's role in Schneider's death has been hotly debated for decades.

The new tapes won't end the argument, but they add persuasive evidence that the CIA was at least trying to eliminate Schneider, and perhaps with the connivance of Nixon and Kissinger.

The key exchange between the president and his national security adviser occurred on June 11, 1971.

They were discussing another assassination in Chile, this time of one of Allende's political adversaries, former Christian Democratic party interior minister Edmundo P�rez Zujovic, who was murdered on June 8, 1971, by an extreme leftist group.

On learning that some in the Chilean press had blamed the CIA for the Zujovic killing, Nixon reacted with disbelief. Kissinger joked that the CIA was "too incompetent."

Kissinger: They're blaming the CIA.
Nixon: Why the hell would we assassinate him?
Kissinger: Well, a) we couldn't. We're -
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: CIA's too incompetent to do it. You remember -
Nixon: Sure, but that's the best thing. [Unclear].
Kissinger: - when they did try to assassinate somebody, it took three attempts -
Nixon: Yeah.
Kissinger: - and he lived for three weeks afterwards.

"The comments seem to fit the facts of what we know from congressional investigations of CIA covert actions at the time about the Schneider assassination [and] contradict official denials of a CIA role," says John Dinges, author of two books on Chile, including "The Condor Years."

"Two Chilean groups, both with ties to the CIA, carried out three attempts to kidnap the general, and on the third attempt shot him. He languished for three days (not three weeks) before dying on October 22, 1970," Dinges added.

"Kissinger's denial, in his book and in statements to Congress, alleges that the CIA had broken off contact with the group before it carried out the third and successful attempt against the general. The clear language of Kissinger's remarks to Nixon, and Nixon's affirmation of his comments, is that the assassination-kidnapping was a CIA operation," Dinges said.

"That is a perfectly reasonable inference by an expert on Chile and Latin America," said Richard Moss, one of the scholars who uncovered this and several other Nixon White House tapes for nixontapes.org. But he added, "We think the tape itself is suggestive but not conclusive."

For its part, the CIA said there was nothing new in the tape, one of 3,700 hours worth of recordings between mid-February 1971 and July 1973, mostly in the Oval Office. During most of that time, Allende was Chile's elected president.

Agency spokesman Paul Gimigliano disputed the interpretation offered by Dinges, a former NPR managing editor and now the Godfrey Lowell Cabot Professor of Journalism at Columbia University.

"This incident from October 1970 - almost 40 years ago - has been, as I understand it, thoroughly dissected, examined, and investigated," Gimigilano said in response to a query. "And now, based on someone's interpretation of part of a conversation, it's time for a completely different conclusion? Give me a break."

Kissinger could not be reached for comment late Friday. [Stein/WashingtonPost/2July2010]

Pelosi Reportedly Blocks Intel Bill in Bid for Increased Congressional Oversight of CIA. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is standing in the way of an intelligence authorization bill as she tries to press President Obama for greater congressional oversight of the CIA's covert activities - a move that is angering fellow Democratic leaders, the Hill newspaper reported Friday.

Pelosi's intel obstruction comes one year after she accused the CIA of lying to Congress about the use of enhanced interrogation practices, including waterboarding, on terror suspects - an allegation that the CIA has strongly disputed.

Now she wants to enable Congress to use the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to probe the CIA and is demanding that the CIA and other intelligence agencies provide more information about their covert activities with the entire Senate and House intelligence committees instead of just the leaders, according to the newspaper.

Pelosi made her demands known to National Security Adviser Jim Jones in a meeting Wednesday, the newspaper said.

With the intel bill blocked, the nomination of Lt. Gen. James Clapper to replace the ousted Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence is in limbo.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif, chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, isn't pleased with Pelosi's maneuvering.

"It's been five years since anyone has been able to get a bill through," she told the newspaper. "If you want strong congressional oversight you have to begin to pass these bills."

Pelosi blocked the bill after Feinstein and the administration lent their support to a deal that didn't include GAO oversight but expanded congressional notification requirements.

"We're in agreement, the two committees, we've taken GAO out and we've negotiated the notification requirements to three, which are acceptable to the administration," Feinstein told the newspaper. "So we have a bill that can pass and be signed by the president."

Pelosi's feud with the CIA last year appeared to end in a stalemate. Her account of the allegations changed several times as she sought to clarify what she did or didn't know about the interrogation methods that she was pushing to investigate. 

She initially said that she was never told that the controversial interrogation methods were being used. But a national intelligence report later showed that she was briefed eight years ago on the tactics while she was on the House Intelligence Committee.

Her spokesman then said the speaker thought the techniques were legal and that waterboarding was not used.

Since then, Pelosi has largely remained silent on the matter, except to say that she has confidence in the agency to do its job. [FoxNews/2July2010]

Subway Plotter Najibullah Zazi Met with Key Al Qaeda player Adnan Shukrijumah, Feds Believe. U.S. counterterror officials believe subway plotter Najibullah Zazi may have met with a key Al Qaeda player, the Daily News has learned.

Zazi has confessed to huddling in Pakistan with Adnan Shukrijumah, a Saudi-born Al Qaeda veteran who grew up in the U.S. and has a $5 million FBI reward on his head.

The confession isn't proof, but other intelligence has made the claim more credible.

"There are some additional indications Zazi possibly did meet with Shukrijumah, but it hasn't been confirmed," said a source familiar with the case.

Shukrijumah lived in Florida but left the U.S. just before the 9/11 attacks. His father was once imam at a Brooklyn mosque.

Zazi, a Pashtun tribesman from near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, was raised in Brooklyn and left last year for Waziristan. Al Qaeda taught him bombmaking there, he confessed.

He has pleaded guilty to conspiring to use suicide bombers to attack the subways around last year's 9/11 anniversary.

Shukrijumah has been seen as the successor - and may have already been promoted - to replace Al Qaeda's chief of external operations, Salah al-Somali, who was killed by a CIA drone strike.

The Associated Press reported that two of Zazi's coconspirators met with al-Somali and Rashid Rauf, the mastermind of British terror plots, who also was later killed by a drone.

In a 2004 news conference, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft repeated a plea for help in finding Shukrijumah, a man viewed as an urgent threat.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have named Shukrijumah in a draft terrorism indictment. Some officials feared the extra attention might hinder efforts to capture him.

Zarein Ahmedzay also has pleaded guilty in the subway plot, while alleged conspirator Adis Medunjanin awaits trial.

Ahmedzay and Medunjanin also may have met with al-Somali, Rauf and Shukrijumah, the source said. [Meek/NYDailyNews/1July2010]


Section II - CONTEXT & PRECEDENCE

Spies, Lies & The KGB. The arrest of alleged Russian spies in New York suggest that the paranoid days of Cold War intrigue are not over.

A major investigation was launched after claims that a member of the Russian gang held a fake British passport. And some experts say that the KGB's successor - the Federal Security Service or FSB - is as active now as it ever was.

Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned to death in 2006 and the former KGB man accused Russian authorities of ordering the assassination.

Here we look at more shocking revelations that show how the Russian security service has placed spies at the heart of British and US life since the Soviet Union was created...

The most extensive and dangerous network ever uncovered was the Cambridge Five.

Recruited at the city's university, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and Kim Philby worked their way into the heart of the establishment - while passing secrets to their Russian bosses.

The identity of the fifth Cambridge spy has never been revealed. [Ed. WRONG. John Cairncross was identified as the fifth spy, and confessed to it, before his death many years ago].

Thousands of confidential documents made their way to Moscow. But in 1951 - as the net closed in on Burgess and Maclean - they were tipped off by Philby, who had been the head of British intelligence's counter espionage unit.

The pair disappeared, surfacing five years later in Moscow.

It took years before the roles of all five were revealed and decades more for the British security services to fully recover.

In America Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in 1953 for passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union.

They were communists but insisted they were innocent. The couple were convicted on the evidence of Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, who admitted spying but was spared execution in return for testifying against them.

He had worked on the American nuclear program and said his sister typed up secrets which were passed to the KGB.

But he later admitted he lied to save his own life. In 2001, Greenglass, who spent 10 years in jail, said: "I would not sacrifice my wife and my children for my sister. Every time I am haunted by it, my wife says 'Look, we are still alive'."

In 1999 a frail gran was exposed as having been a spy for 40 years. Melita Norwood lived quietly at her suburban home in Bexleyheath, South London, and enjoyed making chutney.

But the unassuming white-haired old lady was really Agent Lola who had been recruited in 1937.

She passed secrets from her work with the Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association - a cover for Britain's nuclear program - including the plans for our atomic bomb.

Melita, the holder of the Order of the Red Banner, said: "I did what I did not to make money but to help prevent the defeat of a new system which had, at great cost, given ordinary people food and fares which they could afford, a good education and a health service."

After fighting the Nazis with the Dutch Underground during the Second World War, George Blake then joined the Special Operations Executive - the precursor of MI6.

He was captured and imprisoned by communist forces during the Korean War and returned home a hero when released in 1953.

Blake was then sent to work in West Berlin where he was ordered to recruit Soviet officers as double agents - but he became a double agent himself.

During his nine-year posting, he betrayed 400 MI6 agents to the KGB. But a defector then betrayed him and he was sentenced to 42 years in prison.

In 1966 he managed to escape from Wormwood Scrubs in London and fled to the USSR.

By 1971, there were estimated to be 120 Russian intelligence officers in Britain who were working from the Soviet Embassy.

And a host of seemingly respectable establishment figures were revealed to be spies.

Bulgarian Georgi Markov defected to the West in 1969 and quickly became a critic of his country's Communist regime.

As he crossed Waterloo Bridge in London in 1978, he was jabbed with an umbrella by a passer-by.

The poison ricin had been injected into his leg and he died four days later aged 49.

CIA counter intelligence officer Aldrich Ames was heavily in debt after a costly divorce when he decided to sell secrets to the Soviet Union.

He got $2.7million for information which led to 100 intelligence operations being compromised and the execution of at least 10 US sources.

Eventually, he gave them the name of every American agent in Russia. [Palmer/Mirror/30June2010] 

Former Agent Says Only Bad Spies Get Caught. Allegations that 11 people acted as Russian agents in a long-term mission in the United States have again shone a light on the murky world of espionage.

Some of the suspects adopted phony identities, including those of dead Americans, and posed as married couples, according to New York court documents. The suspects engaged in secret communications including exchanges of bags, money drops and use of invisible ink, as well as using more modern touches such as wireless computer networks between specific laptops, the documents said.

The alleged plot could have come straight from a Frederick Forsyth or John Le Carre novel and revived memories of 2006 allegations by Russia that a fake rock found on a Moscow street was being used by British diplomats to transmit classified data back home.

But analysts said the new case - if true - really exposed the incompetence of the alleged Russian spies while highlighting the age-old problem for undercover agents of how to communicate with their bosses.

"It's just bad tradecraft. If they were good we wouldn't know about them," Harry Ferguson, a former British MI6 agent and author of "Operation Kronstadt," told CNN on Tuesday. "Only bad spies get caught. They were either forced to act in haste or they just didn't think."

One of the suspects allegedly made contact from a bookshop with a Russian government official who was driving by in a van with diplomatic plates to make the wireless connection, a court document said. And another described alleged efforts to secretly get money to the suspects to fund their clandestine activities, including money drops involving exchanged bags in public places and other subterfuge.

In one incident, one of the alleged agents, Robert Christopher Metsos, who was arrested in Cyprus on Tuesday, received money from a Russian agent and buried it in a park in northern Virginia, the document said. Two of the other alleged agents later showed up at the park to dig up the money, it added.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement the arrests were "unfounded and have unseemly goals," adding that "we do not understand the reasons why the U.S. Department of Justice has made a public statement in the spirit of the Cold War."

What the allegations, if proven, expose is the problem of using "sleepers" or "illegals" - agents who live unobtrusively in a country for several years until they are activated into service - according to analysts. "Communication is always the weakest link with illegals," Ferguson said.

"Illegals are standard espionage technique for many countries: You put them in during peacetime and activate them when you need them. Illegals are fine when they're switched off, but as soon as you start passing messages there's your problem," said Ferguson. "In this case the big mistake seems to have been contacting an SVR (Russia's foreign intelligence service) official under United Nations cover, which is real old world stuff.

"Diplomatic cover is being used less and less in the modern world by all major intelligence agencies because it's too easy to check. The idea that this guy with U.N. cover is sitting in a van is just asking for trouble. I can only imagine that there was some kind of emergency: these guys weren't following instructions and were about to do something they shouldn't, and had to be contacted quickly."

Another expert, Richard Aldrich, author of "GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency," agreed with this analysis, saying the big problem in espionage is making contact with the agent.

"When you read classic intelligence literature we think of spying with human agents or by technology, such as spy satellites or code-breaking at Bletchley Park (the British intelligence base during World War II). But increasingly the use of human agents and technology have merged and now we're seeing a fantastic array of gadgetry," Aldrich said.

"This is important for every person running a high-grade agent in place, such as a researcher on the outer fringes of President Obama's kitchen cabinet, for example. On the one hand you want to be contacting that person weekly or daily because the information is time-sensitive, but every time you contact that person you put them in jeopardy. Modern technology notionally reduces the risk of frequent contact with high-grade agents.

"Agents used to leave stuff for their handler by dead letter drops, chalk marks on pavements or phony beer cans that opened up. But now this is done electronically, and there's a constant battle of wits. I suspect there's been a technological breakthrough by the U.S. authorities that has assisted them in tracking these people and their activities." [Wilkinson/CNN/29June2010] 

Should Anthropologists Help the U.S. Contain the Taliban? Earlier this month Patrick Carnahan was out on a foot patrol with a squad of Marines, slogging in 110 degree heat from one adobe compound to the next trying to engage local residents. He was the only American without a weapon. As an embedded social scientist, his job is to help commanders get a better grasp of Afghanistan's dizzying local social and cultural dynamics so they can effectively lure people away from the Taliban.

Sometimes, however, the line between civilian and military is blurred. During one stop a man swore that his neighbor was working with the insurgents. Although the accusation could have potentially serious consequences for the person in question, Carnahan didn't hesitate to pass the information to company officers. "If we get something that's a threat to a unit, then we turn it over to them," he says. "One way or another, you're involved."

This kind of scenario lies at the crux of a running controversy over the Human Terrain System, a U.S. Army-funded program launched in Iraq and expanded in Afghanistan that pairs social scientists with warfighters. Its backers contend that civilian specialists - particularly anthropologists - with in-depth field experience are best suited to "map" the country's complex tribal structures and fault lines. In turn, they can identify key power brokers and projects needed to build public support that will marginalize the Taliban, advancing the Pentagon's counterinsurgency.

The program's outspoken critics from the academic community aren't buying that argument. They have long argued that human terrain teams are just another arm of military intelligence that violate the most basic ethics of their discipline: first do no harm. A December report by the American Anthropological Association concluded that because teams work with combat units and must conform to the goals of a military mission, their work "can no longer be considered a legitimate professional exercise of anthropology."

The job has a $200,000-plus annual salary (and the appeal, for some, of a war zone adrenaline bump) but the prospect of getting blacklisted in U.S. academia has sapped the pool of seasoned anthropologists. Today recruits are more and more likely to have a degree in political science, history or psychology. Some only have a bachelor's degree. And though they might insist that they joined to help both Afghan and American lives, many of them make no apologies for their patriotic streak. "There's another school of thought that says when you're country is at war ... you support your armed forces in the vested interest of the country," says Brian Ericksen, a burly former Army ranger with a political science degree who also works with Marines in insurgency-wracked Helmand province. "For me, the politically motivated criticism just isn't valid."

It's the kind of hard-boiled take one might expect from an ex-soldier who has spent the past several years living dangerously in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, setting the ethical debate aside, the question persists: How much of an asset can trained anthropologists be in a place as perplexing as Marjah, where inter-tribal tensions have been exacerbated over the years by the drug trade and zero-sum politics?

There is also the communication gap; only a select few in the program have a working knowledge of Dari, a form of Persian prevalent in large parts of Afghanistan, or of Pashto, the language spoken in communities where Taliban influence is strongest. Even with a translator, the threat of violence often restricts the amount of time human terrain teams have with people living in the most critical areas. (So far, three have died in the field.) According to David Price, a member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, it takes at least a year of hands-on fieldwork for trained anthropologists to get their bearings. "Given [the Human Terrain System's] difficulty in hiring culturally competent social scientists," he argues, "seven minutes isn't even enough time for an ethnographer to get properly confused."

Lieut. Col. Brian Christmas, the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, disagrees. A self-described "naysayer" at first, he recalls feeling overwhelmed at a shura gathering with querulous tribal elders following the February offensive to clear the Taliban out of Marjah. The sight of hundreds of men in distinct tribal dress was hard to wrap his head around, he says. Then, a human terrain team member assigned to his battalion handed Christmas a cheat sheet minutes before the shura began. It distilled the chief concerns of local big men, their backgrounds and "other atmospherics" that gave him an edge. "[Human Terrain teams] take all the info that's out there, diagnose it, and come out with a useful product," he says, enabling battle-hardened Marines to focus more on enforcing security. He nonetheless concedes that other commanders he knows have not had as positive an experience, so it's a matter of "getting the right team."

Lawmakers, in a sense, reflect the overall divide over the program. Several years after it was created, the Human Terrain System's operating budget must still be approved and renewed by Congress each year. Concerns ripple down to the military as well. Two weeks ago, Steve Fondacaro, the retired colonel who managed and co-founded the program, was reportedly dismissed for reasons that are not yet clear. Still, the human terrain budget has swollen from $40 million in 2007 to nearly $150 million last year, with more social scientists making their way to Afghanistan's hotspots as talk of a "civilian surge" gains traction. Indeed, one development bodes well for the future of the program: Gen. David Petraeus, the new commander of international forces in Afghanistan, is a staunch supporter. [Motlagh/Time/1July2010]


Section III - COMMENTARY

Thank Our Intelligence Community, by Brian Nussbaum. In a maneuver that would make John le Carr� or Ian Fleming proud, a Russian spy arrested in Boston apparently stole the identity of a Canadian infant who died in 1962. Authorities found the birth certificate of the deceased Canadian - Donald Howard Graham Heathfield - in a Cambridge safe deposit box used by a deep-cover Russian agent living in our back yard as "Donald Heathfield."

Heathfield and his "wife" - "Tracey Lee Ann Foley" - were two of 10 people arrested on charges of being undeclared "agents" of a foreign power, and money laundering. These 10 were arrested in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Virginia, with an 11th man connected to the conspiracy being captured at an airport in Cyprus this week.

"Heathfield" and "Foley" were taken into custody on Trowbridge Street, near Harvard Square. The two appeared the following morning for a detention hearing in U.S. District Court in Boston, where they contested prosecutorial motions asking that they be moved to New York to face charges.

Either way, this Cambridge "couple" is indicative of interesting changes in the threats facing the United States.

While this incident smacks of traditional Cold War spy games, the reality is that it is - in many ways - indicative of the new, complex and often confusing world of modern intelligence.

The Cold War built up huge, bureaucratic, intelligence and espionage apparatuses in parallel on the East and West sides of the Iron Curtain. In the short interregnum between 1989 and 2001, our intelligence and national security services sought out new ways to remain relevant, focusing on narcotics trafficking and to a lesser extent other organized crime.

Following the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, these services - having spent a decade largely adrift and without focus - had a new adversary in transnational terrorist networks. These networks, however, were just the beginning of the numerous threats facing the United States, and its security apparatus.

Many of these threats are well known. Modern U.S. intelligence agencies face al-Qaida, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. They must also tangle with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation networks like that of Pakistani Nuclear Scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. They counter the proliferation and strategic efforts of "rogue states" like Iran and North Korea.

There are, however, many threats which are less well understood - at least outside government and security circles. This case of Russian agents - apparently working as talent-spotters to find potential assets for recruitment - is indicative of a much more nuanced and disturbing world of modern espionage. The threats in this world include political and military espionage by countries that are competitors with whom the U.S. maintains strong relations, like Russia and China.

It also includes economic and industrial espionage perpetrated by closer allies like France, Israel and South Korea.

Finally, it includes shadowy Internet-based criminal and intelligence networks that can engage in cyber attacks to steal money, shut off electrical grids or other key resources, or steal sensitive government or corporate information.

The FBI's National Security Service, the director of national intelligence's National Counter-Intelligence Executive, the National Security Agency and numerous other government bodies are tasked with protecting us from the threats we know about, but perhaps more importantly, from the ones we don't.

We spend a fair amount of time thinking about al-Qaida - and somewhat less about those who protect us from them. When was the last time any of us thought about those who protect us from Russian spies with stolen Canadian identities? [Brian Nussbaum formerly served as an intelligence analyst with the New York state Office of Homeland Security. He is now an assistant professor of criminal justice at Bridgewater State College.] [Nussbaum/CapeCodOnline/1July2010] 

Of Course, They're Spying On Us, Too...by Dame Stella Rimington. Ten people have appeared in a US court charged with spying for the Russians. So far, only one has admitted that they are undercover agents and one has disappeared from Cyprus in mysterious circumstances. Among the many questions that the case raises are these: What on earth were those people doing? Don't they know the Cold War is over?

Well - yes. The Russians do know the Cold War is over. But no one should be surprised that espionage is still going on, for the truth is that espionage never dies, Cold War or no Cold War. Countries want to know the secrets of their rivals and competitors, and Russia and the United States are certainly still rivals and competitors, even if the Russians no longer describe the Americans as "the Main Enemy" (as they used to in the days of the Cold War).

Russia still has a very large and well-resourced intelligence community. The successor organisations to the KGB are every bit as active as its predecessor. The names may have changed, but the practices haven't. Today's Russian agencies appear not even to draw the line at "wet jobs", as assassinations are known in spy fiction: the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London more than three years ago appears to demonstrate that Russia's intelligence services are still willing to take extreme measures against individuals believed to be damaging to them.

Western journalists have found it amusing that in today's technological world, Russian spies are still using some of the old covert communication techniques - invisible ink, brush contacts and dead letter drops. But those methods can have great advantages. If they are cleverly used, they are actually very hard to detect unless the person who is using them is already being watched. That is why those methods were frequently successful during the Cold War, when the level of counter-espionage was much higher than it is today.

The trouble with electronic methods of communication is that, once you transmit anything on any radio frequency, you run the risk that some listening station somewhere will tune in. This group appears to have been using a mixture of old and some very new techniques, such as transmitting coded material from laptop to laptop, and steganography - information buried electronically. Who knows which of these techniques, the old or the new, it was that first gave them away to the FBI.

Are the Russians up to the same sort of thing in Britain? You bet they are, if they think they can get away with it. MI5's website notes that the number of Russian intelligence officers working in Britain is back to Cold War levels. And the Russians are not the only foreign power actively spying in Britain. MI5 also mentions the level of the Chinese espionage attack. They are particularly keen to hoover up designs and plans for new technological developments, partly to copy them and manufacture similar products of their own, which they could then sell back to us, and the rest of the world, more cheaply. The Chinese are also particularly good at hacking into computer systems, with the potential of attacking government computers by planting bugs - bugs that could be activated on command.

Countering the threat posed by espionage puts a considerable strain on our security services at a time when they also have to counter the much more immediate and potentially lethal danger of Islamic extremist terrorism. Why does espionage matter when we're threatened with being blown to bits by terrorists? Many people will think that while terrorism is a direct threat to life and limb, espionage is really just a kind of game that states play: it's as much a result of their determination to keep secrets from each other, and from their own people, as it is of any security imperative.

But that would be wrong. Espionage can pose serious dangers to the long-term interests of Britain - not just its economic interests, but its security interests as well. If a foreign power were to be able to make the whole government computer network malfunction, or bring down the computers that control the electricity system, that would obviously be very damaging. Our security services have to make sure it doesn't happen.

What about political espionage? Is that still relevant in today's post-Cold War world? There is the fact that if you go into a negotiation with a foreign state whose interests are opposed to yours, and the other side knows exactly what your bottom line is, what you are willing to compromise on, then you are, to put it mildly, at a considerable disadvantage.

Agreements between nations are always the result of negotiations. Each party would like to know the other's strategy, and where their weaknesses lie. It means there is always a role for political espionage - and it also means that successful espionage by hostile foreign powers has the potential seriously to damage another nation's interests.

Of course, the threat posed by espionage is not as immediate as that posed by terrorism. Like all Government departments, MI5 has to make difficult decisions on its priorities, on how to allocate the resources it receives annually from the Government. On its website it tells us that it currently devotes 88 per cent of its resources to countering terrorism, both international and domestic, while only 3 per cent is spent on countering espionage. (The remaining 9 per cent goes on countering nuclear proliferation and "protective security" - ie, providing expert advice on the protection of buildings and installations, such as nuclear power stations.)

Espionage isn't negligible, however, and MI5 are right not to dismiss it. The reaction in most of the media to the alleged spies caught in the United States has, for the most part, been amusement: what they were doing seems to have been so small scale and insignificant. The truth is, we don't actually know what they were doing. Everyone is speculating that if they passed anything on to their spymasters, it wasn't secrets but merely stuff they'd found out, or certainly could have found out, from open sources. That may be true. In my experience, the Russians attach considerable importance to material obtained covertly, even if it doesn't add much to what is freely available.

I worked on counter-espionage during the Cold War. We used to watch Russian intelligence officers from the GRU (Russia's military spying network) going to libraries and museums, where they would solemnly copy out material from books on the open shelves, which we speculated they then sent back to Moscow labelled "Top Secret". Their masters in Moscow probably weren't aware of just how much information was not (and is not) classified at all in Britain. The Russians may still think that if something is worth knowing, it must be secret, perhaps because that is how their society operates. So they go to great lengths to try to "confirm" data culled from open sources with covertly obtained material.

One of the problems of colossal intelligence bureaucracies, such as the Russians still have, is information overload: if you receive a vast amount of material, you can't analyse it properly, because you never get around to sorting out the junk from the serious stuff. The Stasi, the East German domestic spy network, is the classic example of this syndrome: the Stasi had files on just about every member of the country's population. But they were never able to do anything useful with information. They could destroy people's careers and ruin their lives, but they couldn't predict what was going to happen, nor stop the Communist regime from collapsing.

It is possible, however, that this alleged spy ring in the United States was doing something more useful and potentially serious than it seems, even if they were not gathering secrets.

Illegals, which is what these people are thought to be, are a tried and trusted espionage tool. They are highly trained intelligence personnel, equipped with false identities and nationalities. Put into a target country with the long-term objective of merging into the background, they behave like perfectly ordinary members of the communities they are infiltrating. An apparently friendly and unthreatening "illegal" in the right field can make and cultivate contacts easily. Even if there's no secret information to be acquired, useful snippets can be picked up in conversation over a meal or at a conference. What is more, if a contact seems susceptible to further exploitation, that information might be passed on to an intelligence officer from the Embassy, an apparent diplomat, for example, who might begin a long-term cultivation and a possible approach as a full-blown spy.

The holy grail for espionage is to recruit someone in the opposing nation's intelligence organisation who reaches a high level and who can therefore pass on its most precious secrets. The Russians achieved that with Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt and the other Cambridge spies, and it did enormous damage to British intelligence. The Cambridge spies were all recruited on the basis of their ideological commitment by Arnold Deutsch, a KGB "illegal" who worked in Britain.

Some of the people arrested in the United States may have had the aim of cultivating individuals who might one day work for the CIA or the FBI or some other branch of the US government with access to secrets, and the potential of handing over top secret data.

But there is another possible role for a network of illegals and that is just to be there, embedded and waiting like a virus to be activated when some front-line intelligence requirement or crisis might cause them to be triggered. Such people would be financially supported and in communication with their centre, but might not have any very significant role. Large intelligence services, such as Russia, still can afford to devote resources to what they might still see as a worthwhile insurance policy.

All of which is why our own considerably smaller security services still have to put their scarce resources into countering espionage.

[Dame Stella Rimington was speaking to Alasdair Palmer. Stella Rimington's novel 'Present Danger' is out in paperback at the end of July, published by Quercus.] [Rimington/Telegraph/4July2010]

China's Cyber Espionage Poses Costly Risk to the United States, by Richard Parker. The arrests of 11 people on charges of espionage for the Russian government were a case of old-fashioned spy craft straight from the annals of the Cold War: dead drops, moles and communicating in code, known as steganography. Yet Russia is not alone in trying to crack U.S. secrets. China is engaged in a massive espionage effort against the United States that exceeds Russian efforts on a crucial front: cyber espionage.

The Chinese military - namely the People's Liberation Army - is behind many of the cyber intrusions into U.S. government and corporate computer networks as part of a broad effort to steal technological, military and political secrets. This form of espionage costs the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars per year and represents a dangerous threat to U.S. national security.

In early 2010, news reports from Washington indicated that Google, along with other U.S.-based corporations, was being hacked by unnamed parties in China. A progressive political organization, Patriot Majority, asked me and a team of journalists and researchers to investigate the likeliest source of the attacks. After combing through government documents, military and technical literature, we concluded the Chinese military was likely behind many cyber intrusions against the U.S.

Why? In 1995, the U.S. Navy humiliated the People's Liberation Army during the Taiwan Strait Crisis by a massive show of force, as not one but two aircraft-carrier battle groups sailed unmolested between the mainland and Taiwan, quelling mainland threats of force. That episode underscored the technological inferiority of the People's Liberation Army in case of an actual shooting war.

And it set off a rush within China's huge but antiquated military to modernize. The military ramped up its spending to improve its technological quality in areas such as space and cyber warfare, as well as its traditional military's precision-strike capabilities. The conception of this effort came in the form of a book in 1999 called "Unrestricted Warfare." Written by two Chinese colonels and promoted as required reading for officers, it said, "The first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden."

As a result, and under orders from President Hu Jintao, the People's Liberation Army reorganized to engage in cyber warfare in case of war - and to engage in cyber espionage during peace. In 2004, an army white paper stated that its primary goal in modernizing was "building an informationalized force and winning an informationalized war." The military shed 200,000 troops while investing between $50 billion and $100 billion per year. The government has even conscripted entire civilian companies, in fact, and rolled them into the army as cyber warfare units.

One interesting focus of the army's modernization efforts - and a potential source of the cyber intrusions against the U.S. - is a military complex on Hainan Island in the South China Sea. Hainan features a space launch complex and an underground submarine base, and it is home to a large signals intelligence unit that seems to have been converted from eavesdropping on satellite transmissions to cyber missions.

Hainan has for years also been the scene of confrontations and collisions between U.S. efforts to gather intelligence and China's efforts to safeguard its own secrets. In 2001, for instance, a U.S. Navy EP-3E Aries II spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter and landed there. And in 2009, Chinese trawlers intercepted and harassed the U.S. spy ship Impeccable approximately 75 miles from the island.

In addition, in 2009, Canadian researchers at The SecDev Group and The Munk Center concluded that a series of cyber intrusions against political and government targets around the world included many that emanated from an Internet protocol address on Hainan. "The attacker(s)' IP addresses examined here trace back in at least several instances to Hainan Island," researchers wrote. Later, Rafal Rhozinski, one of the report's authors and chief executive of The SecDev Group, told the U.S-China Commission in testimony that there was "a high degree of certainty that the attackers were located in Hainan Island, China."

A commission member, Larry Wortzel, said that he has not seen confirmation of attacks originating in Hainan but there is no question about the involvement of the Chinese military in cyber espionage against the United States. "China has one of the most sophisticated and well-manned cyber operations around the world," Wortzel said in response to questions. "And the effort is supported by what seems to be a well-thought-through military doctrine consistent with China's military structure and capabilities."

"This is a reasonable and sensible conclusion based on decades of knowledge and work on the domestic politics of China and the workings of China's government, the People's Liberation Army, intelligence and security services and the Communist Party," according to Wortzel, who recently wrote in the Federal Times that at least 43,785 reported incidents of cyber intrusions were directed at the U.S. Defense Department alone in just the first half of 2009.

China's efforts to steal U.S. secrets, however, are not confined to the realm of computers. Cyber espionage is part of an unprecedented wave of espionage at-large against the U.S. Chinese intelligence agencies have begun to change tactics, including recruiting Americans as well as sifting huge amounts of digital information. In the first three quarters of 2009, the U.S. Justice Department prosecuted nine espionage cases involving spying for China, and the Customs Department is investigating 540 cases of potentially illegal technology transfers to China.

Intelligence gathering and military modernization are the normal business of governments around the world, particularly in peacetime. China's military would not be doing its job if it wasn't trying to steal secrets and train for conflict; the U.S. maintains a massive offensive cyber war capability, as well, and recently established a unified military command.

However, the price of China's cyber-spying is high. By one estimate, it costs at least $200 billion to the U.S. alone annually - a cost borne by both taxpayers and shareholders. Yet the national security cost is the highest price tag of all, particularly as the Chinese military focuses on attempting to cripple U.S. forces in case of an armed conflict.

There are plenty of warnings: The U.S.-China Commission provides a road map for both Congress and the administration to follow, in tracking the cyber espionage and offensive warfare capabilities of the People's Liberation Army and dealing with them. Cyber espionage may not be as spellbinding as the Russian spy ring. But right now, China's cyber spying is far more damaging to U.S. national security. [Richard Parker is a former reporter for the Knight Ridder Washington bureau and The New Republic who led an independent research project on Chinese cyber espionage for Medius Research. A copy of the report is available on Scribd.com.] [Parker/McClatchyNewspapers/3July2010]


Section IV - OBITUARIES, BOOKS AND COMING EVENTS


Obituaries

Bob Page, RIP, by Joe Goulden. It is with great sadness that I report that Bob Page died peacefully this morning at his home. He endured months of suffering, and his pain is now at an end.

Bob had a distinguished and varied career. He dropped out of high school in Highland Park, a Dallas enclave, to enter the navy during World War II and his ship was in combat in the Pacific. On his return to the states, he entered into Texas A&M and studied architecture and engineering; he was graduated with honors and as president of his class.

Bob immediately joined CIA and was dispatched to Iran to train stay-behind paramilitary forces in the northern part of the country. His chief of station was John Waller. And it was there that he met Nancy. He spent about two years with the Agency.

Afterwards, he taught at The American University in Beirut, and then was a real estate and investments advisor for the Rockefeller Brothers. He entered the construction business, and at his retirement was chairman and CEO of Kellogg, which did, in his last year, $16 billion in overseas work, chiefly in the petrochemical field.

He came to Washington to serve as assistant secretary of the army and chair of the Panama Canal Commission. After a second retirement, he taught courses in American University's continuing education program, in architecture and the Crusades (a love dating to his days in the Middle East). Survivors in addition to Nancy include daughter Megan and two sons, David and Mark.

I was privileged to have Bob as one of my dearest and most cherished friends. During his final illness we shared many afternoons and evenings together, trading war stories about Texas and beyond. He hurt. He hurt a lot. But his good spirit could not be suppressed. Rest in peace, good man. [Joe Goulden]

Douglas J. Rasmussen. Douglas J. Rasmussen, 64, of Edgecomb, died June 14 at Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick, from complications due to cancer. He was born in Sioux Falls, S.D. on March 2, 1946.

Doug was an athlete, scholar, soldier, and teacher; husband, father, and grandfather and a leader in each of those roles. He began his academic career at the University of Connecticut, where he had the dubious distinction of being on academic and social probation at the same time (he liked to deliver pizza to the second floor of the girls' dorm on his motorcycle). He was more interested in training for the state judo championship and attending Kurosawa film festivals in New York than in 101 courses at that time. He left the university and enlisted in the U.S. Army. He served as a Special Operations Officer, with two combat tours in Asia, and was retired with the rank of Captain in 1971 due to service related disabilities. His military decorations include the Combat Infantry Badge, the Army Commendation Medal, and the Bronze Star, among others.

Doug received Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of South Dakota and conducted doctoral work in Buddhist Studies at the University of Wisconsin. A fluent speaker of Mandarin Chinese, Doug spent a distinguished 22 year career with the Operations Directorate at the Central Intelligence Agency, for which he was honored with the Intelligence Commendation Medal, the Donovan Award, the Studeman Award for Excellence, and the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal. Doug was a much admired leader and mentor for many in the intelligence community. After retiring from public service, Doug was the founder and CEO of Dynaton Group, LLC, a security consulting company in Edgecomb.

Doug was a frequent and seasoned traveler who loved art, food, and architecture from around the world. He enjoyed driving sports cars and had a soft spot for kids and dogs. A voracious reader, he became a self-taught Renaissance man.

He is survived by his wife of 37 years, Colleen (Lyons) Rasmussen; sister, Dawn Nye; son, Daniel daughter-in-law, Inbal, and granddaughter Kaila; son Jamie and daughter-in-law Marlene; and son Luke, daughter-in-law Sarah, and grandson Aidan.

Family gathering will be held next weekend to celebrate his life. Doug requested no other services.

The family requests that those wishing to honor Doug make a memorial contribution to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, which provides scholarships and counseling to the surviving children of special operations personnel, P.O. Box 13483, Tampa, FL 33681-3483. CFC # 11455, www.specialops.org.

Condolences for the family may be expressed by visiting www.StrongHancock.com.

Arrangements are under the direction and care of the Strong-Hancock Funeral Home, 612 Main St., Damariscotta. [Bob Gerard]


Books

Double Death: The True Story of Pryce Lewis, the Civil War's Most Daring Spy. After an elderly man jumped from New York's Pulitzer Building in 1911, his death made the front page of the New York Times: "World Dome Suicide a Famous War Spy." By then Pryce Lewis had slipped entirely offstage; but, as Gavin Mortimer reveals, the headline did him justice, speaking to the dramatic, vitally important, and until now untold role he had played in the Civil War.

Emigrating to the United States in 1856, Lewis was soon employed as an operative by Allan Pinkerton in his newly established detective agency. Early in the Civil War Pinkerton offered the agency to President Lincoln as a secret service, spying on Southern forces and insurrectionists. Civilian spies proved crucial to both sides early on; indeed, intelligence gathered by Lewis helped give the Union army its first victory, three days after the defeat at Bull Run. Within a year, though, he and fellow Brit Timothy Webster, another Pinkerton operative, were captured in Richmond, and their high-profile trial and conviction in a Confederate court changed the course of wartime espionage. Lewis was spared the hangman's noose, but Webster was executed, and thereafter spying was left to military personnel rather than civilians.

Narrative history at its best, in recounting Pryce Lewis's gripping story, Double Death offers new angles on the Civil War, illuminating the early years of the Pinkerton Agency and the shadow world of spying throughout the war, as well as the often overlooked impact that Britain had on both sides. [WalkerBooks/August2010]


Coming Events

EVENTS IN COMING TWO MONTHS....

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

9, 16, 23 July 2010, 8 and 10 pm - Washington, DC - THE SPY MAGIC SHOW - An incredible exploration into the secrets of spies, shown through stunning sleight-of-hand magic by master magician Michael Gutenplan.

Michael Gutenplan, an expert in sleight-of-hand magic is about to expose the secrets of the CIA and you are invited to watch! In an intimate room at the famed Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C., Michael will perform world-class magical effects and tell how magicians and the CIA have worked together since its creation in 1947. Using cards, money and mind reading Michael will expose the secrets and skills that have only been rumored to exist. From thought transference and teleportation to lie detection and invisible ink, Michael will transport you to another world where fact and legend go hand- in-hand and spies are around every corner. Grab a drink, have a seat and join us for this once in a lifetime event!

Tickets can be purchased through www.spymagicshow.com or by calling 1-866-811-4111. All tickets are $40.00.

The Spy Magic Show plays Friday, July 9, 16 and 23rd at 8:00 PM and 10:00 in the Roosevelt Room at the Ritz Carlton, located at 1150 22nd Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037

Michael Gutenplan is a professional magician originally from New York and now residing in Los Angeles. He has performed his signature brand of magic around the world including in Great Britain, Spain, Israel, Jordan and across the United States. He was the creator and star of Extraordinary Deceptions, an Off-Broadway magic show that earned Michael rave reviews in the New York Times, Variety and other prestigious publications.

10 July 2010, 1000 - 1430 - Salem, MA - The AFIO New England Chapter meets to conduct business and hear Douglas Wheeler on "Writing a History of Spying" and John Behling, Jr. on "Origins of Islamic Extremism."
Our afternoon speaker will be Chapter Member John Behling Jr . John is a veteran of the OSS. He will speak on "Origins of Islamic Extremism" The morning speaker is Douglas L. Wheeler, who will discuss 'Writing a History of Spying-author's dilemma?', Doug is Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire where he taught African, Iberian & European, World and Intelligence Studies History at the University of New Hampshire, 1965-2002 and since then has taught there part-time. Schedule: Registration & gathering, 1000 - 1130, membership meeting 1130 - 1200. Luncheon at 1200 followed by our speaker, with adjournment at 2:30PM.
Location: the Salem Waterfront Hotel located in Salem MA. The hotel website is: http://www.salemwaterfronthotel.com/. For directions to the hotel look here: http://www.salemwaterfronthotel.com/location.html Information about Salem MA and local hotels can be found here: http://salem.org/
Note, as this meeting is a one day event we have not made any hotel arrangements. For additional information contact us at afionechapter@gmail.com
Advance reservations are $25.00, $30.00 at the door - per person. Luncheon reservations must be made by 1 July 2010. Mail your check and the reservation form to:
Mr. Arthur Hulnick, 216 Summit Avenue # E102, Brookline, MA 02446, 617-739-7074 or hlnk@aol.com

Thursday, 15 July 2010, 11:30 am - Colorado Springs, CO - The Rocky Mountain Chapter hears Tim Murphy on R&D Platform Usage in Intelligence. The Chapter presents an expert on Special Ops whose firm is doing an R&D intelligence platform for the Intelligence community. Retired Air Force Col. Timothy Murphy, High Altitude Balloon Surveillance, Vice President, Star Tower Division, Global Near Space Services (GNSS), who is also a graduate of the Air Force Academy. To be held at a new location the AFA Eisenhower Golf Course Club House. Please RSVP to Tom VanWormer at robsmom@pcisys.net.

Wednesday, 21 July 2010, 10 am - 12:45 pm - Annapolis Junction, MD - "The Mysterious Rosetta Stone: A Code-Cracking International Treasure" with Dr. Joel Freeman, is topic at the National Cryptologic Museum Foundation Summer Cryptologic meeting.

All AFIO members are invited to hear our guest speaker, Dr. Joel Freeman, CEO and President of the Freeman Institute, discuss the history of the Rosetta Stone, focusing on the historical connection between the Rosetta Stone and the breaking of codes. Guests will have an opportunity to view the full-sized, three-dimensional Rosetta Stone replica normally on display in the lobby of the National Cryptologic Museum. Dr. Freeman is an gifted speaker and author. As part of the program there will be a brief presentation to acknowledge the Milt Zaslow Memorial Award for Cryptology that was presented for the first time at this year's Maryland History Day Ceremony on 24 April.
Location: the L3 Conference Center in the National Business Park. Lunch will be served at 11:45 following the presentation. L3 Conference Center is located at 2720 Technology Dr, Annapolis Junction, MD 21076 in the Rt. 32 National Business Park.
Cost: the fee is $25 to cover program & lunch costs.
Confirm your attendance by Wednesday, 14 July, by calling (301) 688-5436 to pay by credit card or by mailing a check to NCMF, POB 1682, Ft. Meade, MD 20755. We look forward to seeing you there.

22 July 2010 – San Francisco, CA – The AFIO Jim Quesada Chapter hosts John Yoo, former deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism after the September 11 attacks.

John Yoo is currently a professor of law at UC Berkeley. Yoo will be discussing his new book, Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush. RSVP and pre-payment required. The meeting will be held in San Francisco: 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

24 July 2010 - Abilene, KS - Korea 60: Eisenhower the Peacemaker - Honoring Those who Served in Korea - CIA joint conference at Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, Abilene, Kansas
The Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum will host a day of programs on July 24 to honor the service of Americans who have served in the Republic of Korea from 1950 to the present.
The day begins with a presentation by intelligence agency historians and ends with dinner and entertainment. All events are free and open to the public with the exception of the dinner, which costs $20 per person.
The schedule is as follows: Eisenhower, Intelligence, and Korea Visitors Center Auditorium, 10:30 a.m. - noon -Dr. Clayton Laurie, CIA "Baptism by Fire: CIA Analysis of the Korean War" -Dr. David Hatch, NSA historian, "DDE and COMINT: Astute Consumer and Agent of Change" The Korean War was the Agency's first role in an international conflict. The opening of classified material as featured in the "Baptism By Fire" book will contribute significantly to the historic record of the Korean War, making possible new research and great understanding of early Cold War history.
Korean War and Service Veterans Panel Discussion Visitors Center Auditorium, 1 to 2:45 p.m. The panel will feature Dr. Paul Edwards, Director Emeritus, Center for the Study of the Korean War, as moderator. Panel members include veterans who have served in Korea at various times from the 1950s to the 1990s.
Keynote Address | Lt. Gen. Robert Arter, U.S. Army (Ret.) Presentation of Eisenhower Peacemaker Coins Visitors Center Auditorium, 3 to 4:30 p.m.
Keynote speaker retired Lt. Gen. Robert Arter is a veteran of the wars in Korea and Vietnam and former commander of the U.S. Sixth Army. Arter is a Civilian Aide to the Secretary of the Army, and a consultant and bank director. In 2009 he received the Distinguished Civilian Service Award for his work as a Civilian Aide. It is the highest award a civilian can receive from the Army.
The Eisenhower Peacemaker Coin is available to Korean War veterans and all those who have served to keep the peace in Korea since the signing of the armistice on July 27, 1953. (Coin recipients or their representatives MUST be present at the ceremony.) If you or a loved one served in Korea and are able to attend the ceremony, sign up to receive the Eisenhower Peacemaker Coin.
Reception and Dinner 5:30 p.m. Social | Library Lobby 6:00 p.m. Dinner | Library Courtyard Cost is $20 per person and includes the remarks by retired Maj. Gen. Singlaub and entertainment by Ray Marco. RSVPs required by July 16. Please send check, made payable to Eisenhower Foundation, to P.O. Box 339, Abilene, Kan. 67410.
Remarks | Maj. Gen. John K. Singlaub, U.S. Army (Ret.) - Singlaub is a veteran of WWII, Korea and Vietnam. From July 1976 to June 1977 he served as Chief of Staff, United Nations Command, U.S. Forces Korea. He is recipient of many decorations and awards. His autobiography, Hazardous Duty, was published in 1991.
Entertainment | Ray Marco Mr. Marco is a veteran performer of the stage, television and motion picture screen. His 1956 hit "Abilene" was the unofficial campaign song for President Eisenhower's successful re-election. Mr. Marco is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force Security Service.
This program is in partnership with the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. Please visit the Truman Library web site at www.trumanlibrary.org for a full schedule of events. The Truman Library programming focuses on the early time period of the war while the Eisenhower Library focuses on the latter time period and years since the signing of the armistice. This program is sponsored by the Eisenhower Foundation and Duckwall-ALCO Stores, Inc. It is dedicated to President Eisenhower's successful conclusion of the conflict on July 27, 1953.

28 July 2010, 9 am - 5 pm - Miami, FL - INFRAGARD South Florida and the FBI invite AFIO MEMBERS to their South Florida Conference- Law Enforcement CI CT Issues and Careers in FBI

CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS: 09:30 - 10:00 AM, Welcoming Remarks
Eric S. Ackerman, PhD, InfraGard South Florida Chapter President.
Mr. Stewart L. Appelrouth, CPA, InfraGard Treasurer
SA Nelson J. Barbosa, InfraGard Coordinator/FBI Miami
10:00 - 11:00 AM - Mr. Sam Fadel, Florida Regional Field Investigator, Corporate Security Department
This presentation will focus on data breach investigations, specifically credit card/account number breaches. Defines the roles of the issuers, law enforcement and forensic experts.
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 - Mr. Stewart Appelrouth and Mr. Ed Farath, CPA, Appelrouth/Farah & Co., P.A.
This presentation will focus on Financial Fraud, Specifically Ponzi Schemes.
12:30 - 01:45 PM - LUNCH (Food court available on campus)
01:45 - 02:15 PM - Richard Wickliffe, Team Manager, Special Investigation Unit, State Farm Insurance Companies
Will discuss Fraud, White Collar Financial Issues- and Possible Counterterrorism Implications.
02:15 - 03:15 PM - Randall C. Culp, Supervisory Special Agent, FBI
This presentation will discuss Health Care Fraud – Adapting Investigations and Prosecutions to deal with emerging trends.
03:30 - 04:30 PM - Gun Running from Broward and Palm Beaches Counties
Mark A. Hastbacka, Supervisory Special Agent, FBI
This presentation will touch on IRA gun running operation in the above counties from a counterterrorism investigation point-of view

LOCATION: Florida International University, Management Advanced Research Center, Room # 125, 11200 SW 8th St, Miami, FL 33199
RSVP Nelson Barbosa at FBI Miami Field Office: Nelson.Barbosa@ic.fbi.gov

Saturday, 31 July 2010, 10 am - 12 noon - Coral Gables, FL - AFIO/Miami Police Department Counter-Terrorism Training. In cooperation with the City of Miami Police Dept, Office of Emergency Management & Homeland Security, Officer Marcos T. Perez, AFIO will be presenting a Counter-Terrorism Training and Program. "Operation Miami Shield." There is limited space available for this program.
Please RSVP with checks enclosed before July 21, 2010. There is a $10 charge for AFIO Members. Guests will be charged at $25 per person. Checks payable to "AFIO" and mailed to Tom Spencer at 999 Ponce de Leon Blvd Ste 510, Coral Gables, FL 33134

17 - 20 August 2010 - Cleveland, OH - AFIO National Symposium on the Great Lakes - "Intelligence and National Security on the Great Lakes"

Co-Hosted with the AFIO Northern Ohio Chapter at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Cleveland, OH. Includes presentations by U.S. Coast Guard on Great Lakes security; Canadian counterparts to explain double-border issues; National Air/Space Intelligence Center; Air Force Technical Applications Center; Ohio Aerospace Institute. Cruise on Lake Erie .
Spies-in-Black-Ties Dinner and Cruise on Lake Erie. Make your reservations here. Agenda here.

Saturday, 25 September 2010, 10:30 am - Coral Gables, FL - "Management of Kidnap and Extortion Incidents" the topic at the AFIO Miami Chapter event. This program is a seminar conducted by a former Intelligence Officer expert in the subject. More details to follow soon or email trsmiami@aol.com

29-30 September 2010 - Washington, DC - Conference on the American Experience in Southeast Asia, 1946-1975 by the U.S. Department of State.

The U.S. Department of State's Office of the Historian is pleased to invite AFIO members to a conference on the American Experience in Southeast Asia, 1946-1975, which will be held in the George C. Marshall Conference Center at the State Dept. The conference will feature a number of key Department of State personnel, both past and present. Those speaking will include:
* Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger
* Former Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte
* Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard A. Holbrooke
The conference will include a panel composed of key print and television media personnel from the Vietnam period discussing the impact of the press on public opinion and United States policy. A number of scholarly panels featuring thought-provoking works by leading scholars will also take place. Registration information will be available at the State Dept website, http://history.state.gov, after August 1.

6 - 7 October 2011 - Laurel, MD - The NSA's Center for Cryptologic History hosts their Biennial Cryptologic History Symposium with theme: Cryptology in War and Peace: Crisis Points in History.

Historians from the Center, the Intelligence Community, the defense establishment, and the military services, as well as distinguished scholars from American and foreign academic institutions, veterans of the profession, and the interested public all will gather for two days of reflection and debate on topics from the cryptologic past. The theme for the upcoming conference will be: “Cryptology in War and Peace: Crisis Points in History.” This topical approach is especially relevant as the year 2011 is an important anniversary marking the start of many seminal events in our nation’s military history. The events that can be commemorated are many.
Such historical episodes include the 1861 outbreak of the fratricidal Civil War between North and South. Nineteen forty-one saw a surprise attack wrench America into the Second World War. The year 1951 began with the fall of Seoul to Chinese Communist forces with United Nations troops retreating in the Korean War. In 1961, the United States began a commitment of advisory troops in Southeast Asia that would eventually escalate into the Vietnam War; that year also marked the height of the Cold War as epitomized by the physical division of Berlin. Twenty years later, a nascent democratic movement was suppressed by a declaration of martial law in Poland; bipolar confrontation would markedly resurge for much of the 1980s. In 1991, the United States intervened in the Persian Gulf to reverse Saddam Hussein’s aggression, all while the Soviet Union suffered through the throes of its final collapse. And in 2001, the nation came under siege by radical terrorism.
Participants will delve into the roles of signals intelligence and information assurance, and not just as these capabilities supported military operations. More cogently, observers will examine how these factors affected and shaped military tactics, operations, strategy, planning, and command and control throughout history. The role of cryptology in preventing conflict and supporting peaceful pursuits will also be examined. The panels will include presentations in a range of technological, operational, organizational, counterintelligence, policy, and international themes.
Past symposia have featured scholarship that set out new ways to consider out cryptologic heritage, and this one will be no exception. The mix of practitioners, scholars, and the public precipitates a lively debate that promotes an enhanced appreciation for the context of past events. Researchers on traditional and technological cryptologic topics, those whose work in any aspect touches upon the historical aspects of cryptology as defined in its broadest sense, as well as foreign scholars working in this field, are especially encouraged to participate.
The Symposium will be held at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory’s Kossiakoff Center, in Laurel, Maryland, a location central to the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., areas. As has been the case with previous symposia, the conference will provide unparalleled opportunities for interaction with leading historians and distinguished experts. So please make plans to join us for either one or both days of this intellectually stimulating conference.
Interested persons are invited to submit proposals for a potential presentation or even for a full panel. While the topics can relate to this year’s theme, all serious work on any aspect of cryptologic history will be considered. Proposals should include an abstract for each paper and/or a statement of session purpose for each panel, as well as biographical sketches for each presenter. To submit proposals or form more information on this conference, contact Dr. Kent Sieg, the Center’s Symposium Executive Director, at 301-688-2336 or via email at kgsieg@nsa.gov.


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

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