Plain Stuff, Sept 25

[John Macartney]

CONFIRMATION OF NEW DDCI DELAYED.  The Senate is playing cat and mouse
with the CIA over the stalled nomination of John McLaughlin, a veteran
analyst, to be the No. 2 agency official.  Various senators have placed
a "hold" on Mr McLaughlin's nomination.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring-2000922212837.htm

ESPIONAGE CONVICTIONS OF KURT STRAND & THERESA SQUILLACOTE UPHELD.  The
U. S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the convictions of a
Washington couple on various charges of spying for East Germany and the
KGB.  The couple are Kurt Stand and wife Theresa Squillacote. Stand's
parents fled Germany during the Nazi era but retained close contacts in
East Germany after the war. According to testimony, when Stand was 18,
his father introduced him to Lothar Zeimer, an office for the East
German intelligence agency MfS.  Zeimer worked with the MfS's HVA
office, tasked with gathering intelligence
about the U. S. Stand began working as an HVA agent in the early 1970s
and in due course brought his wife into his work.
The HVA operational plan called for Squillacote to attend law school,
which she did.  She worked first for the National Labor Relations Board
and then moved to a staff job with the House Armed Services Committee.
In 1991, she obtained a temporary job as a lawyer with the Department of
Defense and "began obtaining the sort of information Zeimer was
interested in."  When East Germany collapsed, Zeimer shifted to the KGB
and kept his contacts with Stand and Squillacote.
In 1992, Zeimer was arrested and convicted of espionage; Stand and
Squillacote were two of the agents he named. Looking for other spy
outlets, Squillacote sent a letter to the deputy defense minister of
South Africa -- a communist party member who had trained in East
Germany.  The FBI moved in with a sting operation in which an agent
posed as a South African intelligence officer;  in a meeting,
Squillacote mentioned bringing Zeimer and other East German agents into
the operation. She also gave the FBI agent four classified documents
from DoD. They were arrested soon afterwards and convicted.
In their appeal, the couple raised several issues. First, they argued
that evidence gathered under a surveillance pursuant to the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) should be suppressed, arguing there
was no probable cause to believe they were agents of a foreign power.
The district (trial) court reviewed the FISA application and supporting
evidence and ruled what was done was legal. The appeals court viewed the
same material and agreed. It also rejected Stand and Squillacote's
demand that the FISA materials be disclosed to them.
On another issue, the couple argued that the search of their home was
illegal because FBI agents exceeded the bounds of the warrant. Although
the warrant stated that the search should be conducted from 6am to 10pm,
agents were at the house for six days, often overnight. The FBI stated
that
agents remained there to protect evidence, not to search.  The court
held
that the bureau's conduct did not justify suppressing spying evidence
found in the house.
The third appeals ground involved FBI intercepts of telephone calls
between Squillacote and her psychiatrist. The couple claimed the
district
court should have given them a hearing on suppression. As the Legal
Times reported, "The court determined that the suppression of any
evidence derived from the privileged conversations would not be proper
because it was based on a privilege that was testimonial or evidentiary,
and a hearing was not warranted because the privilege was not
constitutionally based."  (Submitted by AFIO member Joe Goulden; United
States v. Squillacote, Nos. 99-4088, 99-4099, Decided August 11, 2000.
Legal Times summarized the opinion August 27,2000)

NEW HI-TECH AIRPORT SECURITY DEVICES are "so sensitive they can tell if
a person has even touched illegal drugs or explosives days previously.
The two commercial devices about to go on the market both use ion
mobility spectrometry, which relies on analyzing the rate of movement of
a particular molecule, to determine exactly what substances the heavy
molecules form. If they find something on their list of problem
substances, an alarm sounds. If the system finds a suspicious substance,
a red light shines and the substance name appears on a video screen. The
process takes about seven seconds."  Obviously, these new technologies
also have intelligence applications are almost certainly to figure in
future (or current?) collection devices.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/CuttingEdge/cuttingedge.html

EDMOND POPE CASE:  MOSCOW "ENRAGED" ABOUT US PRESSURE.  Moscow has
lashed out against the possible use of economic pressure by the U.S. to
free American businessman Edmond Pope, currently in deteriorating health
and being held in a Russian prison on espionage charges.
US News & World Report also has an article on Pope this week.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_westerman_news/20000923_xnwes_moscow_hit.sh
tml

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/001002/spy.htm

RADIO LIBERTY REPORTER DEAD (MURDERED?) IN MOSCOW.
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=202274&section=default

"VIRTUAL ORGANIZATIONS" FOR THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY?  There were two
forward-looking books on intelligence reform published early this year
that advocated a "virtual intelligence community."

Bruce Berkowitz & Allen Goodman, BEST TRUTH: Intelligence in the
Information Age, Yale U Press, 2000.

Robert Steele, ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World,
AFCEA, 2000/

Both books advocated much less secrecy in the intelligence business and
much more interaction with the private sector both as sources and
consumers of US intelligence information.  And both books envisioned
intelligence operating in "virtual," or temporary organizations. In the
private sector, especially in the IT business, a "virtual organization"
is one that is ad hoc, is constituted temporarily and informally for a
specific task at hand, has little or no hierarchy (no one in charge),
and it disbands once the task is accomplished (employees are temporary,
not careerists).  Those 2 books also postulated that a virtual community
would involve people in academia, think tanks, the media, etc, as well
as in government.
Well, I thought both books were provocative and quite interesting.
However, given the bureaucratic and hierarchical structure of the
government organizations, and the culture of secrecy, especially in the
Dept of Defense, those ideas, I thought, were going nowhere.
WELL, I heard a senior US intelligence official speak recently -- the
head of a large agency (non-attribution forbids me from being specific
here).  To my surprise, he/she seems to be trying to move in the
"virtual" direction.  In practice, that means there may be a lot of buy
outs and early retirements to downsize the existing workforce and change
it from its Cold War roots.  It also means there will be more
outsourcing -- to private hi-tech companies which can more quickly adopt
new technologies and more readily establish new and specialized work
forces and pay competitive salaries.
WILL THIS WORK?  That remains to be seen, as does the utility of all
this.  Apparently there is a great deal of nervousness now among career
employees who see, correctly, that they may be expendable.  As a result
bureaucratic resistance may squash the whole effort.  If not, if these
kind of changes come to pass, we can expect a much different US
intelligence community in the years ahead.  --jdmac
http://www.yale.edu/yup/books/080115.htm
http://www.oss.net/Papers/white/Summary.rtf

CIA RESPONSE TO THE INFORMATION AGE.  An article by Dan Verton in
Federal Computer Week, tells of a recent CIA report that indicated that
CIA analysts are unlikely to consult with other intelligence community
analysts, let alone academics and other civilian experts.
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0828/pol-cia-08-28-00.asp
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0828/pol-ciabox-08-28-00.asp

AMERICAN AMBASSADOR LOSES SECURITY CLEARANCE.  The State Department has
suspended the security clearance of US Ambassador to Israel Martin S.
Indyk until it completes an investigation into "suspected violations" of
security standards, State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher
confirmed yesterday.  According to the media, Indyk is an Australian who
did not become a US citizen until 1993, and who has long been associated
with pro-Israeli organizations.  So far, there is no mention of
espionage -- the Ambassador is accused of mishandling classified
information and preparing classified memos on unsecured laptop
computers.  [To my knowledge, is it unprecedented for an ambassador to
be stripped of his or her security clearances -- there  may be more to
this case, such as suspicions of espionage.  --jdmaca]
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64977-2000Sep22.html
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/000923/06/ambassador-suspended

PORK IN THE DOD BUDGET -- MUCH NON-DEFENSE RELATED:
$3 million for "post-polio syndrome"

$6 million for "coronary/prostate disease reversal"

$5 million for the "Hawaii federal health care network"

$12 million for the "ovarian cancer research program"

$50 million for the "overall peer review medical research program"

$3 million for black colleges and universities

$2.5 million for marijuana eradication in Hawaii

$7.5 million for the national counter-narcotics training center

$20 million for National Guard counter-drug support Funding for Native
American health care

$5 million for public schools "that have unusually high concentrations
of special needs military dependents enrolled"
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_dougherty/20000923_xnjdo_nondefense.shtml

IRANIAN COURT REDUCES SENTENCES OF 10 JEWS.  An
appeals court in Iran reduced the sentences of 10 Iranian Jews who had
been convicted of "cooperating with Israel" in a trial that drew
relentless international scrutiny and widespread criticism.  The
sentences, which previously had been set at 4 to 13 years, were reduced
to 2-6 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/22/world/22IRAN.html

GLOBAL HAWK RECONNAISSANCE UAV ENDORSED.  Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk
long-endurance unmanned reconnaissance aircraft has been declared
"militarily useful" in a key evaluation by the services. More
importantly, the design has been recommended for  production. ....
Global Hawk has demonstrated it can fly 1,200 naut. mi.,
spend 24 hr. orbiting an area of interest at 60,000 ft., and return to
base in a single 32-hr. mission. .....  The problem for the U.S. is that
there is only one complete sensor system (synthetic aperture radar and
either a video
or infrared camera) and parts of a second.
http://www.aviationnow.com/TwoShare/getPage?sid=3941153482426199397

CIA OFFICIAL SPARED PROSECUTION.  The CIA officer, a Los Angeles based
woman in a domestic intelligence collection unit, will not be prosecuted
for allegedly alerting Hughes Space company 2 years ago about a
confidential Senate inquiry into the transfer by Hughes of missile
technology to China.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200092222150.htm

WEN HO LEE:  A COUNTERINTELLIGENCE OFFICER'S PERSPECTIVE.  In a letter
to the editor published in the Wall Street Journal, Stuart Herrington,
former career CI officer, provides his perspective, which was condensed
in AFIO's WIN #38-00, 22Sep2000.

> The series of miscues and errors that saw the Los Alamos investigation
>compromised in the media are not
> unprecedented. One need only to recall the late 1980's case against
>foreign service officer Felix Bloch, captured on
> videotape passing an attachÈ case to a known Soviet intelligence officer,
>only to have the investigation blown in the
> press. Mr. Bloch, considered guilty by all familiar with the case, but no
>fool, went to ground, protested his innocence
> and was never prosecuted. The Lee and Bloch cases underscore a
>fundamental aspect of the spy-catching art: to
> make an espionage case against a suspect, government investigators must
>pursue their quarry covertly. One leak to
> the media, and the alerted suspect is unlikely to communicate with his
>foreign agent handler again, or commit other
> compromising acts.
> Concerning Beijing's targeting of our military secrets, we would do well
>to remind ourselves that virtually all
> governments - our own included - spy to obtain information in support of
>their nation's security and interests. The
> outrage about espionage should be directed at more deserving targets.
>Herrington's nominations:
> (1) Those responsible for the deplorable degradation of security at DOE
>facilities during the past eight years.
> Security specialists generally urge prudent security measures. Management
>(scientists and academicians are the
> hardest to handle) object because they see them as inconvenient,
>expensive and restrictive of the free exchange of
> ideas. Or, incredibly, in the case of Ms. O'Leary's Energy Department,
>somehow demeaning to those unfortunate
> souls whose lower access levels would restrict their forays into
>top-secret files and areas. This leads to unauthorized
> disclosures and finger-pointing. Management, sensing danger becomes more
>Catholic than the Pope and full of
> excessive zeal. Then, after the heat is off, things return to normal and
>security officers relapse into frustrated apathy.
> (2) Government officials who failed to see the Lee case as a potentially
>serious breach of security. If the FBI affidavit
> requesting authority to intrusively investigate Mr. Lee was packed with
>the same kind of probable-cause information
> these requests normally contain, denying the FBI the requested authority
>was an egregious error by the Justice
> Department.
> (3) The individual or individuals who condemned the investigation by
>airing it in the media. In 1988 the New York
> Times, demonstrating commendable restraint, suppressed a story on
>suspected Army spy Clyde Lee Conrad, who,
> as a result, went to jail. Could not the Lee case have been handled the
>same way?
> (4) Those in the public arena who promoted charges that Lee was merely a
>victim of racism. As Intelligence
> professionals know, Chinese (as well as other nations') intelligence
>services place a high priority on spotting,
> assessing and recruiting agents from their national overseas communities.
>If investigators had not focused on Lee,
> an ethnic Chinese US citizen with access to nuclear secrets, who had
>traveled to China (on government business),
> they would have been negligent.
> Herrington concludes by saying that this affair was so abysmally
>mishandled that we'll never know whether Mr. Lee
> was a nuclear spy who got away with it, or a mild-mannered scientist who
>was unfairly accused and persecuted. But
> the American people can take no pride or comfort in what the Wen Ho Lee
>case tells us about how we keep the
> nation's nuclear secrets at a time when nuclear-weapons proliferation is
>one of the principal threats we face. (WSJ,
> 15Sep// Stuart Herrington) (via AFIO, http://www.afio.com/)
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4897-2000Sep23.html
>

ISRAELI SPY JONATHON POLLARD FIGURES IN NY SENATE RACE.
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-2000924135354.htm

NSA OPEN HOUSE FOR "FAMILY DAY."
http://live.altavista.com/scripts/editorial.dll?ei=2213491&ern=y

POLITICAL SPY SUSPECTED IN BUSH CAMP?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9037-2000Sep24.html

OCTOBER SURPRISE?  REPROACHMENT WITH IRAN?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_exnews/20000925_xex_clinton_iran.shtml

___________________________________

BOOKS & OTHER SOURCES

WEN HO LEE HEARINGS SCHEDULED THIS WEEK
Senate Judiciary Committee will hold two hearings on the Wen Ho Lee case
next week.
SEPT 26:  Full committee will hear the following witnesses: FBI Director
Louis Freeh; Assistant Attorney General James Robinson of the Justice
Department Criminal Division; and U.S. Attorney Norman Bay  (9:30 AM,
226 Dirksen Senate Office Building).
SEPT 27:  Sen Arlen Specter's Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight
(9:30 AM, 226 Dirksen Senate Office Building).
(Steven Aftergood, FAS, http://www.fas.org/sgp/index.html)

George Maschke & Gino Scalabrini, THE LIE BEHIND THE LIE DETECTOR,
published on-line and free at: http://antipolygraph.org/pubs.shtml
In The Lie Behind the Lie Detector, my co-author and I discuss the
scientific basis for polygraphic lie detection (there is none) and
review
polygraph policy, including discussion of the use of polygraphy in:
* the Aldrich Ames espionage case
* the case of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee
* the case of Army engineer David Tenenbaum
* the case of CIA lawyer Adam Ciralsky
* the case of FBI Special Agent Mark Mallah
* FBI pre-employment screening
We also provide a thorough exposition of the trickery on which polygraph

"testing" depends, followed by a detailed chapter on polygraph
countermeasures, which truthful persons may use to protect themselves
from a false positive outcome (and which deceptive persons may use to
avoid detection).  (George Maschke, http://antipolygraph.org)

STORY OF DARING BRITISH SAS COMMANDO RAID IN SIERRA LEONE ON SEPTEMBER
6th.  "While the British Army continued to negotiate with Kallay in the
hope of a peaceful resolution, the SAS's task was to supply intelligence
that would facilitate any eventual rescue mission.  Working in pairs,
SAS troopers lay in shallow trenches, just below eye-line, dressed in
"ghillie suits" - a type of overall to which
they attach twigs, leaves and branches picked up from local vegetation
as camouflage. Eating carefully packed rations, and urinating into
bottles, they used night-vision, thermal and infrared scopes to provide
commanders in Northwood with information so detailed that a replica of
the West Side Boys' camp was built for training purposes. "
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/09/17/stifgnafr03003.html

CIA TO RELEASE SEALED RECORDS ON REINHARD GEHLEN.  The CIA's
announcement marks the first acknowledgment by that agency that it had
any relationship with Gehlen and opens the way for declassification of
records about the relationship. Gehlen, who had served as Hitler's most
senior military intelligence officer on the eastern front, was one of
the ex-Nazis who became a U S intelligence resource after the war. He
ran an extensive network of spies with Nazi and collaborationist
backgrounds known as the Gehlen Organization. The network was aimed at
the Soviet Union during the postwar period, and purportedly received
millions in U.S. funding.   Working immediately after the war with Army
Intelligence, the Gehlen Organization became the responsibility of the
CIA, which continued the relationship until 1956.
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0920-151.html

DOD NET ASSESSMENT OF SITUATION IN KOREA (Sep 2000).  The FY2000
National Defense Authorization Act (Section 1233) directed the
Secretary of Defense to submit a report on the security situation on the

Korean Peninsula.  This report provides an assessment of the warfighting

capability of the Republic of Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command when
compared to the armed forces of North Korea. It also provides an
assessment of the North Korean threat to the Republic of Korea.
Finally, it examines the current status and future direction of North
Korea's weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep2000/korea09122000.html

_________________________________

OLD "STUFF."
http://www.intelbriefing.com/newswatch.htm


     John Macartney
      jdmaca at bellatlantic.net
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