Intelligence

February 29, 2004

Focus: Speak up Kofi: What's that about spies?

Times Online - Newspaper Edition

Former minister Clare Short claims Britain has been bugging the United Nations. But doesn’t everyone? Jonathon Carr-Brown and Jack Grimston investigate

TONY BLAIR was facing a busy schedule last Thursday morning and didn’t hear the bombshell dropped by Clare Short on Radio 4’s Today programme. He had a cabinet meeting to chair, and after that a press conference to announce a new initiative in Africa. Spying was not on his mind.
True, David Hill, his communications director, mentioned Short, a renegade former minister, in his morning briefing but time was pressing and Blair moved swiftly on. The cabinet, at which Patricia Hewitt droned on about free trade, ran to mid-morning. Only then, when the “murder board” went to work on Blair, did Short’s latest outburst hit home.

The murder board, nicknamed after American lawyers who drill homicide suspects for trial, is the group of Blair�s trusted advisers who prepare him for public grillings. They began to pepper him with awkward questions likely to arise at the looming press briefing.

�Are you facing a pensioners� revolt on council tax?� one aide asked. �Isn�t this announcement on Africa just a rehash of an old conference speech?� posed another. Then: �What are you going to do about Clare Short?�

This last test stumped Blair and his advisers. The seasoned spinners, including Jonathan Powell, Blair�s chief of staff, Baroness Morgan, his political adviser, and Godric Smith, his press spokesman, exchanged awkward glances.

That morning Short had accused the government of spying on Kofi Annan, the head of the United Nations, during crucial negotiations ahead of the Iraq war. She had read �transcripts� of his conversations, she said, implying that Britain had bugged Annan�s office or tapped his phone calls. �These things are done,� she said. �And in the case of Kofi�s office, it has been done for a long time.�

It was deeply embarrassing, possibly illegal and a clear breach of ministerial confidentiality.

What should Blair do, wondered his advisers: arrest �crazy Clare� for breaking the Official Secrets Act? It would look absurd, especially since a high-profile trial based on the act had collapsed the previous day. Withdraw the Labour whip? Downing Street had no desire to make Short, an MP popular in her constituency, any more of a martyr than she already pretended to be.

Deny the story? Tricky, if only because spying was meant to be a secret business never discussed by ministers.

As Blair faced a barrage of questions about the affair at the press conference that morning, his anger and impotence were almost palpable. Short, he declared, was �deeply� and �completely� irresponsible. She was also �entirely consistent�, he said � apparently in behaving disgracefully yet again. But he did not say she was wrong.

While there was confusion and plenty of misinformation over exactly what �transcripts� she had seen and where they had come from, there was no doubt among politicians, diplomats and former spooks that the UN was a hotbed of spies and eavesdropping.

One British former agent told The Sunday Times that MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, has five people in New York dedicated to the UN. �It is their entire job,� he said. �They bug places and they have been doing it for years.�

UN officials lined up to agree. Rolf Ekeus, a former chairman of the UN weapons inspectors, said he had routinely expected to be spied on and took precautions by sweeping offices for bugs and discussing sensitive matters only in parks or gardens.

�If you take telephone calls there are dozens of governments monitoring,� he said, adding wryly: �You should be flattered that someone is interested in your conversations.�

Hans Blix and Richard Butler, both also former weapons inspectors, said they thought their conversations had been bugged. Blix, while resigned to the reality of politics in the electronic age, said that bugging between supposed allies was �disgusting�.

Even Hans von Sponeck, a former assistant secretary-general of the UN, said that in Baghdad the UN had been bugged �by everybody � the Iraqis and the other intelligence services, both in the region and overseas�. The same went for UN headquarters in New York, he said. But surely Annan, the head of the whole UN, was spared? The diplomats don�t think so.

�Everybody spies on everybody,� said Inocencio Arias, Spain�s ambassador to the UN. �And when there�s a big crisis, big countries spy a lot. If your mission is not bugged, then you�re really worth nothing.�

Despite the realpolitik, Short�s allegations remained damaging. Sir Emyr Jones Parry, Britain�s UN representative, tried to smooth matters over personally with Annan that day. But the UN leader was affronted and his spokesman demanded �an explanation�.

Worse, the affair reopened Blair�s festering wound from the Iraq war: had the invasion been legal in the first place?

MI6 operatives in New York cultivate numerous sources within the UN, from diplomats to secretaries and clerks. The information they feed back is sifted and analysed, and might find its way to ministers. But politicians are unlikely to see a raw transcript of a conversation. Instead they receive reports and analysis, though these may contain some direct quotes.

Short has yet to reveal exactly what she saw. If it really was information gathered by spying, there would have been clues to its origin. Reports from informants or �human intelligence� sources can usually be identified because they tend to be described as coming from �a source who has reliably reported in the past . . .� or some such similar phrase.

But a report that is described, for example, as from �a totally reliable source with direct access� is a different matter. This indicates it has come from an intercept of a telephone call or an e-mail or other form of electronic communication.

This is by far the greatest source of secret information and it comes through two closely linked organisations: the US National Security Agency and GCHQ, the British eavesdropping agency based in Cheltenham.

With 6,500 staff and a bigger budget than any other British intelligence outfit, GCHQ can track communications across the world.

These days it likes to give an impression of openness. It has a swanky new building known as the doughnut; its discreet recruitment drives boast of plentiful staff benefits; it even has a press officer.

Don�t be fooled. Secrecy is still its lifeblood. Staff are bound by the Official Secrets Act and can say little or nothing about their tasks. They tend to work and socialise together, and often even their families do not know exactly what they do.

�GCHQ is like a university campus,� said one former member of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). �Some people there are linguists, some technologists, quite a lot come from a mathematics background. But it�s a bit incestuous. They tend to feel they are outsiders.�

The secret world, however, is no longer mapped out in the black and white of the cold war, and for some more recent recruits loyalties are not so clear. So it proved early last year for Katharine Gun, a 29-year-old translator in Mandarin.

In January 2003 Frank Koza, an official in America�s National Security Agency, sent an e-mail to GCHQ calling for a surveillance �surge� against key members of the UN security council. Koza wanted the �whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge�.

His message was marked Top Secret/COMINT/X1. According to one British security expert the X1 coding signifies that it was to be exempt from declassification in the future. It was meant to be secret and stay secret. Somehow Gun obtained a copy of the e-mail. Was she a recipient or did a more senior figure, also disaffected, pass it to her?

Either way, Gun passed the e-mail to an intermediary who passed it to a journalist. Days after it was published in newspapers, Gun was identified as the source of the leak. She cried on the shoulder of her manager � and was then hauled off to a police station and later charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act. Few, if any, intelligence observers have any sympathy for her.

�What the hell did she think she was joining at GCHQ if she didn�t think she would be listening to other people�s phone calls?� asked the former JIC member. Professor Anthony Glees, director of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, said: �GCHQ officers have been appalled. The idea that this is in the national interest is just nonsense.�

As her trial approached, Gun�s lawyers sought out Whitehall insiders. According to sources at the pressure group Liberty, which helped to defend her, the lawyers spoke to several civil servants who told them that the original advice of the attorney-general to Blair was that a pre-emptive war against Iraq would be illegal.

Certainly some experts thought an invasion would be illegal. Yesterday Elizabeth Wilmhurst, former deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office, issued a brief statement explaining why she had quit her post, after 30 years in the civil service, on the eve of the war. �I left my job because I did not agree that the use of force against Iraq was lawful,� she said.

The lawyers were constructing a potential defence for Gun. If they could obtain the attorney-general�s original advice, Gun could argue she had justifiably leaked information to prevent people being killed in an illegal war.

The defence planned to demand the disclosure of sensitive government documents. It was potentially explosive.

Those Whitehall sources who claim the original advice was that the war was illegal have not been identified. But Gun�s submission to the court, says Liberty, was going to be specific about where the information could be found.

Prosecution lawyers spin a different line. They say they dropped the case because of technical difficulties: Gun had not leaked the information directly to a newspaper. Whatever the truth, the case collapsed and in its wake Short, asked to comment on it, made her own revelations about spying on the UN.

Blair and other ministers swiftly turned on their former cabinet colleague. David Blunkett, home secretary, sniffed that he had higher security clearance than Short and he had no knowledge of any such intelligence.

One Downing Street source claimed Short was �almost driven to be destructive� after her confused emotions over the war. She had contemplated resignation on principle, but, seduced by power, had quit government only after the war was over.

George Foulkes, her deputy for many years at the Department of International Development, was scathing: �There were always tensions between her and No 10. We were having a drink in the Strangers Bar about two years ago. She told me even then she was going to �bring Tony Blair down�.�

Yesterday Short hit back and upped the stakes. She suggested that the attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, who is an old friend of Blair�s, had been �leant on� to sanction the war as legal. She insisted that Blunkett was wrong, deliberately or otherwise: she had seen transcripts of Annan�s telephone conversations. Is it just another Short shambles, or could she be right?

THE technology is certainly there to bug almost anyone. At the shipyard of the Electric Boat Company in Groton, Connecticut, for example, they are putting the finishing touches to a radical submarine. The USS Jimmy Carter, a Seawolf class nuclear vessel, has had a 60ft section added in its centre. This new �ocean interface� is designed to allow the crew to transport and work with large items � much bigger than can be released through a torpedo tube � deep on the seabed.

It is, according to one surveillance expert, designed for spying: the sub will be used to put in place �electronic labs� that can tap into the increasing number of undersea fibreoptic cables carrying international communications.

Other countries are trying to keep pace. A Dutch listening base near Groningen is being expanded from two to 20 satellite dishes. Spain and Denmark are enlarging satellite spy bases; even Switzerland operates seven listening stations and Sweden is building one near Gothenburg.

At the heart of the US-British eavesdropping system known as Echelon is a system called the Dictionary: massive computers that can target communications using specific telephone numbers, words or even voice-prints.

Is this James Bond wizardry for real? James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA, is one of the few who has spoken out. After allegations that eavesdropping had helped American firms to win, ahead of European companies, a $6 billion contract to sell aircraft to Saudi Arabia, Woolsey said: �Yes, my continental European friends, we have spied on you. And it�s true we use computers to sort through data using keywords.�

Voiceprinting technology is also thought to have tracked down Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks, after he gave an interview to Al-Jazeera television.

And according to a new book by Philip Stephens, a political journalist, the British have spied on Jacques Chirac, the French president, who was opposed to the war in Iraq. Blair apparently received �snippets of the French president�s private conversations�. Labour MPs are expected to press Blair on it this week.

So technically it is possible Annan was spied on. But until Short is more specific about what �transcripts� she saw, it remains difficult to assess exactly what happened or its import. What she saw could just have been routine material from open sources.

The next instalment of the affair will come at lunchtime today, when Short appears on ITV�s Jonathan Dimbleby programme. �She�ll either calm down or blow up,� said a Downing Street insider. �There�s just no way of knowing which way she might go�.

Within the Labour party there is increasing incredulity at her actions. Even a close friend of Short, an anti-war MP, described her credibility as �battered�.

Unlike Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who has won the respect of the left and his cabinet colleagues for his measured opposition to the government�s policy, Short is rapidly alienating the wider party and factions within her constituency.

The friend said: �Even I don�t think she should have made the revelation. It damages cabinet government and destroys trust between the security services and Labour.�

The friend added: �Clare is now going on about the way the legal case for war was presented to the cabinet on two sides of A4 without any debate. Didn�t she read it carefully at the time? Didn�t she complain at the time at the lack of scrutiny? Why did she stay in the cabinet and vote for the war if it wasn�t to stop things like this? And if she couldn�t do anything, why didn�t she resign at the time?�

Although the cabinet has been cautioned not to attack Short, former ministers such as Brian Wilson, now Blair�s envoy for the reconstruction of Iraq, have not been so reticent. Wilson described Short yesterday �as one of the biggest political frauds of her generation� who had based her entire career on �disloyalty and self-indulgence�.

With such animosity erupting, those close to Short fear she may now try to bring her grievances against Blair to a head. If so, she had better plot quietly � because all sorts of people may be listening.

Additional reporting:
Joe Lauria, Nick Fielding, Adam Nathan and Duncan Campbell

CLARE�S CLANGERS

They say �10,000, double, treble and then think of another number. It will be golden elephants next
� chiding the islanders of volcano-stricken Montserrat for requesting more aid, August 1997

There were people who opposed action being taken against Hitler
� rebuking opponents of the Kosovo war, April 1999. She earned the nickname �Bomber� Short

I think a politician that has done that much, told that many lies, isn�t really fit to be a leader
� on Bill Clinton, Tony Blair�s closest ally, October 1998

He is in danger of destroying his legacy as he becomes increasingly obsessed with his place in history
� on Blair, resignation speech in the Commons, May 2003

These things are done. And in the case of Kofi�s office, it has been done for some time . . . I have seen transcripts
� accusing British intelligence of spying on the UN, February 2004

February 29, 2004 at 11:57 PM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (102) | Top of page | Blog Home

Briton's 'bomb link' to Libya and Pakistan

Times Online - Britain

By Dominic Kennedy

A BRITISH businessman accused of helping Colonel Gaddafi’s secret nuclear programme had previously been investigated by British authorities for exporting potential atomic bomb equipment to Pakistan.
Peter Griffin, a 68-year-old grandfather, is accused in a report sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency by Malaysian police of helping Colonel Gaddafi to design an uranium enrichment workshop that could be used for nuclear weapons or nuclear power, as well as training technicians and acquiring components. He denies any wrongdoing.

Mr Griffin, an engineer from Swansea, lives in a �500,000 villa on the French Riviera protected by electronic gates, video cameras, high walls and woodland.

The Times can disclose that he has been known to the British authorities since the late 1970s, when he was investigated as part of a network helping Pakistan�s clandestine efforts to become the Muslim world�s first nuclear power.

According to officials in Islamabad at the time, the secret project was part-funded by Colonel Gaddafi, who sent millions of dollars to Pakistan on condition that he was given access to the country�s atomic weapons capability.

However, there is no evidence that Mr Griffin received any money from Colonel Gaddafi.

Mr Griffin�s name emerged again last month when President Bush denounced a black market in nuclear technology created by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue scientist known as the father of Pakistan�s atom bomb.

Last autumn a ship carrying specialised nuclear centrifuge parts to Libya was intercepted by America after being sent from Malaysia via Dubai.

The Malaysian manufacturer said that the components were made for a Dubai-based company called Gulf Technical Industries, which is owned by Peter Griffin and his 40-year-old son, Paul.

An alleged middleman, Bukhary Syed Abu Tahir, has claimed that the Malaysian company engineered more than 25,000 parts for Gulf Technical Industries, according to the police report.

Mr Griffin was alleged to be working on behalf of the disraced Dr Khan, who was providing sensitive equipment to Libya. Whatever equipment Dr Khan could not get directly to Colonel Gaddafi, the Pakistani scientist helped the dictator to build.

According to the Malaysian police report, Mr Griffin designed a workshop to make centrifuges and arranged for eight Libyan technicians to travel to Spain for training in the use of specialist lathes.

Colonel Gaddafi was acknowledged to be close to developing a nuclear bomb when he agreed publicly in December to drop his weapons of mass destruction programme.

By coincidence, British authorities had seized a computer from Mr Griffin�s home in France last June. It was an episode that brought back memories of how an invoice for equipment capable of building an atom bomb was traced from Pakistan back to a company part-owned by Mr Griffin in August 1978.

British authorities, eager to prevent nuclear proliferation, became concerned by the sale of 30 Swindon-made �inverters� capable of driving ultra-centrifuges in an uranium enrichment plant. The invoice led to Weargate, a company owned by Peter Griffin and Abdus Salam, a British citizen of Pakistani origin.

Tony Benn, then Energy Minister, ordered an investigation which concluded that the shipment was legal. However, Britain tightened up export rules three times in 1978 and 1979 to try to stop Pakistan acquiring the technology.

Simon Henderson, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The Times last week: �The British Government tried to keep one step ahead by constantly changing export control regulations.� Mr Henderson confronted Mr Griffin at his home in Swansea at the time. �He invited me inside, though hardly welcoming me, and cautiously told me what business he was doing in Pakistan. �I am not helping Pakistan make a nuclear bomb, but why shouldn�t Pakistan have a nuclear bomb anyway?� was, I recall, his line of argument. He told me that he had sold �800,000 worth of equipment.�

Mr Griffin�s partner in Weargate, Mr Salam, later emerged in Dubai, importing inverter components from Canada for Pakistan. After a quarter-century of secretive developments, Pakistan�s first nuclear bomb tests stunned the world in 1998.

At her home in South Wales, Mr Griffin�s former wife, Sheila, maintained that her son Paul had nothing to do with sending equipment to Libya. �I can assure you everything is now resolved and all hell has been let loose. It�s somebody who used his name. Honestly, I�m not telling lies,� she said. She also denied that the family had been involved with Pakistan�s weapons programme. �We didn�t have anything to do with nuclear bombs.�

Peter Griffin remarried in Swansea in 1992 and now lives in the secluded villa on a private road outside the village of Figani�res, near Fr�jus.

He publicly denounced America�s wars against Saddam Hussein in a letter to a Gulf newspaper last year. �America sent all its bills for billions of dollars to Kuwait for every missile, bomb, toilet roll, etc, used during the (1991) Gulf War,� he wrote.

�America made money from that conflict but there is nobody to pick up the bills for the next one except the American (and British) taxpayer.�

Speaking from his villa, Mr Griffin said that the Malaysian police report had been misinterpreted by all the world�s media, with the exception of the Evening Post in Swansea. �They know me,� he said. �They know that I wouldn�t do anything.�

He threatened to launch defamation actions for �lies, damned lies and statistics� and said he hoped to issue a statement in the coming week.

�I�ve got both feet on the ground,� he said. �I�m not answering questions with the press. I hope one day to be able to give interviews and sell my memoirs and make some money on this.�

There is no suggestion that Mr Griffin or his son were breaking the law. Chris Mills, a solicitor with Clyde & Co, of Dubai, said that Paul Griffin was �obviously quite distressed� since he had �no knowledge at all� of any Libya-bound shipment.

�What Paul thinks is that someone has been using his company name in order to transship goods through Dubai,� Mr Mills said.

When the goods arrived, Gulf Technical Industries had not been contacted. Instead, a so-far unidentified person had paid the freight charges to clear the items through Dubai and out again.

Paul Griffin suspected that he and his company had been �set up . . . to take the fall if this all went wrong, as it has done,� Mr Mills said.

Paul Griffin was seeking documents to show that his company had not been involved.

February 29, 2004 at 11:54 PM in Espionage - general | Permalink | TrackBack (17) | Top of page | Blog Home

Wilson gave secret advice to Greek king

Telegraph | News | Wilson gave secret advice to Greek king

By Peter Day
(Filed: 01/03/2004)

The Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, acted as a secret mentor to King Constantine of Greece when the Right-wing colonels' junta seized control of his country.

Lord Mountbatten, the king's distant cousin, set up several rendezvous for the two men while keeping the Queen fully informed.

Documents released by the National Archives show that Mr Wilson and his advisers in Downing Street were far more hawkish than George Brown at the Foreign Office, where some diplomats preferred to work with the new regime.

But at a crucial moment Mr Wilson decided it was too dangerous, diplomatically, for Constantine to fly to Britain for clandestine talks at Lord Mountbatten's home, Broadlands in the New Forest.

In November 1967, seven months after the coup, Lord Mountbatten wrote to "King Tino" explaining the decision and added that their mutual friend - Mr Wilson - "went so far as to say that you were the one hope of preserving democracy between the dangers of dictatorship and communism".

A month later the king staged a disastrous counter-coup, which collapsed within 24 hours and led to him being exiled.

The first meeting had taken place in 1966 when the king was trying to broker a peaceful solution to the dispute with Turkey over Cyprus. He asked Mr Wilson to give up the British base at Dhekelia so that the Turks could have a garrison there to protect their citizens' interests.

In 1967, when it looked likely that a Left-wing government would be formed in Greece, the Foreign Office warned Mr Wilson: "This possibility has given rise to much speculation in Athens about the possibility of some kind of 'extra-parliamentary solution' initiated by the Right. We believe that the king is opposed to this.

"It is in HMG's interests that there should be a strong and stable Greek government which will not upset the Cyprus situation, will not diminish Greek interest in Nato, will not create conditions which the Communists can exploit and will not disturb conditions in which our commercial interests can flourish.

"An 'extra-parliamentary solution' of present Greek political problems would not necessarily conflict with those interests provided it was successful."

After the colonels took over, Constantine remained in Greece. Mr Wilson's instinct was to bolster his resistance but Foreign Office advice was to do nothing in case it drove the new regime to banish the king and move further towards fascism.

When the counter-coup failed, Mr Wilson was the only statesman who publicly supported the king, and his private secretary, Michael Halls, pointed out that the FO's policy had achieved exactly what it sought to avoid. Mr Wilson did not feel it was diplomatically expedient to meet the king again until May 1968.

He recorded that he found the king "a very lonely young man, totally bereft of any reliable advice - and therefore potentially exposed to unreliable advisers. It seemed to me to be in our interest to keep in close touch with the king and indeed to give him support."

Mr Wilson advised against further military adventures, or setting up a government in exile, with unreliable politicians, and suggested that Constantine should keep communications open with the junta's figurehead, George Papadopoulos, in the hope that he would restrain the wilder young officers and the country could be guided back to democracy.

February 29, 2004 at 11:47 PM in US | Permalink | TrackBack (35) | Top of page | Blog Home

Army chiefs feared Iraq war illegal just days before start

The Observer | Special reports | Army chiefs feared Iraq war illegal just days before start

Attorney-General forced to rewrite legal advice
� Specialist unit dedicated to spying on UN revealed

Martin Bright, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday February 29, 2004
The Observer

Britain's Army chiefs refused to go to war in Iraq amid fears over its legality just days before the British and American bombing campaign was launched, The Observer can today reveal.
The explosive new details about military doubts over the legality of the invasion are detailed in unpublished legal documents in the case of Katharine Gun, the intelligence officer dramatically freed last week after Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, dropped charges against her of breaking the Official Secrets Act.

Britain's Army chiefs refused to go to war in Iraq amid fears over its legality just days before the British and American bombing campaign was launched, The Observer can today reveal.
The explosive new details about military doubts over the legality of the invasion are detailed in unpublished legal documents in the case of Katharine Gun, the intelligence officer dramatically freed last week after Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, dropped charges against her of breaking the Official Secrets Act.

The disclosure came as it also emerged that Goldsmith was forced hastily to redraft his legal advice to Tony Blair to give an 'unequivocal' assurance to the armed forces that the conflict would not be illegal.

Refusing to commit troops already stationed in Kuwait, senior military leaders were adamant that war could not begin until they were satisfied that neither they nor their men could be tried. Some 10 days later, Britain and America began the campaign.

Goldsmith also wrote to Blair at the end of January voicing concerns that the war might be illegal without a second resolution from the United Nations. Opposition MPs seized on The Observer's revelations last night, accusing Goldsmith of caving in to political pressure from the Prime Minister to change his legal advice on the eve of war.

Senior Whitehall sources involved in putting together critical legal advice on the war told The Observer that Goldsmith was originally 'sitting on the fence' and that his initial advice was 'prevaricating'. This was 'tightened' up only days before the conflict began after concerns were raised by Sir Michael Boyce, the then Chief of Defence Staff, who told senior ministers of his worries. It is believed that Boyce demanded an unequivocal statement that the invasion of Iraq was lawful. It is understood that it was only after seeing Goldsmith's final legal advice, given days before the outbreak of war, that Boyce gave his approval.

Without this legal reassurace, military leaders and their troops could have laid themselves open to charges of war crimes. At the time, UK troops were already in Kuwait poised for an invasion.

Last week, Goldsmith controversially agreed to drop the Government's prosecution of the former GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. Her defence had demanded documents relating to his legal advice, including communications with the Prime Minister.

Although Goldsmith denied his decision to drop the case was political, critics of the war believe the Government was desperate to prevent these details from being revealed in open court.

Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman, said: 'These allegations go to the very heart of the Government's case for war, and inevitably its credibility. I have no doubt whatever that if Parliament had been told these things, the Government would not have achieved its majority and been unable to go to war. Public opinion, already deeply divided, would have swung overwhelmingly against the Government.'

Opposition MPs have demanded a statement in the Commons from the Prime Minister and will redouble the pressure for an explanation. The revelations will also increase pressure for the Butler inquiry, set up by the Prime Minister into intelli gence in the run-up to the war, to study the Gun case and subsequent revelations. It will take evidence in private.

Last night former Cabinet Minister Clare Short told The Observer that she knew of military doubts over the legality the war: 'I was told at the highest level in the department that the military were saying they wouldn't go, whatever the PM said, with out the Attorney-General's advice. The question is: was the AG lent on?

'This was a very personal operation by Tony Blair. The Attorney-General is a friend of Tony's, put in the Lords by Tony and made Attorney-General by Tony.'

The Observer has also established that GCHQ, the Government's top-secret surveillance centre, has a specialist unit dedicated to spying on the UN. The revelation will strengthen claims that the bugging of Britain's diplomatic allies at the UN was routine and is likely to trigger a fresh international furore over the legality of Britain's spying operations abroad.

The former Chilean ambassador to the UN, Juan Gabriel Valdes, said last night: 'All I can say is what I said at the time when asked if I had information about spying on Chile and I said yes, it has been proved.

'It [eavesdropping] was one more element of tension during some very tense weeks. Nobody was very surprised. But it is one thing not to be surprised and another to do clearly illegal things.'

Gun leaked a top-secret email published in The Observer last March revealing a joint British-American operation to spy on the UN in the run-up to war. She claimed she acted to prevent the loss of human life in an illegal war.

The political furore continued as Short's political future remains in the balance, with the Prime Minister reserving a final decision until he has seen the round of interviews she has planned for this weekend. 'Everyone has talked about the fact that they don't want her to be a martyr, but of course the only difficulty is that we are in her hands - what will she say tomorrow?' said one senior party figure.

However, it remains highly unlikely that she will face an organised attempt to unseat her, because of the months of upheaval it would cause in the Labour party. 'The pain of extraction might finish off the patient,' said one backbencher far from loyal to Short.

Downing Street last night refused to comment on the allegations. Blair's spokesman also refused to say whether the White House had been consulted over the dropping of the Gun case, despite growing conviction at Westminster that it would have been inconceivable for the Foreign Office not to have taken its closest ally's views into consideration.

Despite Blair's refusal to give a statement to the Commons, the Government is unlikely to escape further questioning. Both Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, are already due to answer questions next week while the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, will be grilled by a joint Commons inquiry into homeland security. Labour and Opposition MPs have also tabled a string of written questions.

February 29, 2004 at 11:40 PM in Iraq | Permalink | TrackBack (7) | Top of page | Blog Home

Sinn F�in warns Blair to confront unionists

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Sinn F�in warns Blair to confront unionists

Nicholas Watt, political correspondent
Monday March 1, 2004
The Guardian

Sinn F�in yesterday gave a blunt warning that the Northern Ireland peace process is facing a "dangerous crisis" because of Tony Blair's failure to stand up to unionists who are refusing to share power with republicans.

In a hard-hitting speech to the party's annual conference in Dublin, its chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, accused Downing Street of failing to live up to its commitments to implement the Good Friday agreement. "There is no getting away from the fact that the process is in serious crisis," he said in his annual political report. "This is a dangerous crisis."

His remarks came as London and Dublin battle to keep alive the review of the Good Friday agreement, which was launched amid the refusal of unionists to share power with Sinn F�in in the light of continuing IRA activity.

David Trimble, the leader of the moderate Ulster Unionist party, which was replaced as the province's largest unionist party by the hardline Democratic Unionists in last year's assembly elections, has threatened to pull out of the review after the Provisional IRA attempted to kidnap a dissident republican.

The government has postponed today's session of the review, which is to discuss continuing paramilitary activity, until tomorrow to buy some breathing space.

Sinn F�in warned the government that it must not throw the republican party - the province's largest pro-agreement grouping - out of the review, a view shared by Downing Street, which does not want the republicans to play the "victims' card". The republicans made clear that the government must stand up to Mr Trimble and other unionist leaders who have seized on the alleged kidnapping attempt - what Sinn F�in called a "pub brawl" - to try to derail the peace process.

Mr McGuinness said: "The current stalemate is a crisis, a dangerous crisis. But it is not a crisis that began one week ago outside a bar in Belfast. It is not a crisis around the IRA or IRA intentions. The institutions have been suspended now for almost 18 months. This is the fourth suspension.

"In the same period the IRA have taken a number of initiatives to move the process forward, whereas both [the British and Irish] governments, and particularly the British, have failed repeatedly to deliver on their commitments. In the same period the securocrats have succeeded in stalling the process of change. But that is all they have managed to do. They have not halted this process, nor have they reversed it. Nor will we allow them to."

His tough message was echoed by Gerry Adams who used his presidential address on Saturday night to warn of the intense pressure faced by the Sinn F�in leadership from the republican grassroots. Mr Adams told the conference he had faced "profound difficulties" after persuading the IRA last October to embark on its largest act of disarmament, only for that to be rejected by Mr Trimble.

"Many republicans have raised what they and I consider to be reasonable questions about our handling of that episode," he said.

"There was, as one comrade put it to me, a question over the decisions made by us and by the [IRA] army leadership. 'Surely you knew better than to depend on David Trimble? Did you really expect the two governments to keep their commitments? Why is it always republicans who have to take initiatives?'".

But Mr Adams made clear that republicans were still prepared to offer further concessions if the government and unionists live up to their side of the bargain.

Sinn F�in wants the British government to embark on a wholesale process of demilitarisation, and for unionists to give a firm commitment to share power.

Describing the peace process as a "collective endeavour", Mr Adams said: "There can be no doubt if the two governments apply themselves to acts of completion of the Good Friday agreement, then others must do likewise."

February 29, 2004 at 11:39 PM in Ireland | Permalink | TrackBack (23) | Top of page | Blog Home

Search for bin Laden gathers steam

Search for bin Laden gathers steam

February 29, 2004
BY KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER

-- The United States is rounding up and questioning the relatives of fugitive al-Qaida leaders to generate information on the possible whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and his top deputies. This tactic helped lead to Saddam Hussein's capture.

So far, the information received is unconfirmed and does not mean the terrorist leader's location has been pinned down or his capture is imminent. U.S. officials caution that rumors of significant progress are overstated.

Saturday, Pentagon and Pakistani officials denied an Iranian state radio report that bin Laden had been captured ''a long time ago'' in Pakistan's border region with Afghanistan.

But some U.S. officials do say they have been able to extract useful information from Afghan and Pakistani relatives and friends of al-Qaida fugitives, providing hints on the possible whereabouts of the organization's leaders.

Meanwhile, Pakistani troops hunting for terrorists Saturday in a remote tribal region along the border with Afghanistan killed 11 people riding in a minibus that did not stop at a rural checkpoint, an army spokesman said.

Gen. Shaukat Sultan said troops opened fire on the minibus after someone fired on the paramilitary forces at a roadblock in Zeri Noor, a village just outside of Wana, the main town in tribal South Waziristan. Counterterrorism operations there last week netted 25 suspects.

Sixteen people were arrested.

The deaths were sure to raise the anger of fiercely independent tribal leaders already enraged by the presence of troops in their territory.

With the weather improving in Afghanistan, the U.S. military has sent troops and technology to the country to aid the search and to give forces on the ground more opportunity to track down bin Laden. He is the United States' most-wanted terrorist for his leadership in planning the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Rounding up relatives for questioning helped bring about the Dec. 13 capture of Saddam, the former Iraqi leader. U.S. officials hope the tactic could lead to information on the whereabouts of bin Laden and his top deputies, especially when combined with information from spy satellites, communication intercepts and prisoner interrogations.

U.S. military officials have said they are planning a spring offensive in Afghanistan in the hopes of capturing bin Laden, former Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and their associates.

AP

February 29, 2004 at 10:15 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (3) | Top of page | Blog Home

SAS joins fresh bid to snare bin Laden

Observer | SAS joins fresh bid to snare bin Laden

Jason Burke, chief reporter
Sunday February 29, 2004
The Observer
American and British forces have launched a dramatic new effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan.
SAS detachments will join thousands of US troops - including a 'super-secret' special forces unit transferred from Iraq - and contingents of Afghan soldiers in a huge sweep of mountainous border areas where the terrorists are believed to be hiding.

The push will be the biggest such operation for 18 months. Attempts to find the fugitives last year were hindered by a lack of special forces soldiers - most of whom had been deployed in Iraq - and the failure of Pakistan to cut off escape routes by closing its border with Afghanistan. Harsh winter conditions in recent months have made movement in the high ground where bin Laden is thought to be hiding impossible.

Thousands of Pakistani troops and paramilitaries are preparing to move into positions along the 1,520-mile frontier to act as an 'anvil' against which the US-led 'hammer' can strike. Reports from an Iranian news agency yesterday that bin Laden has been captured proved false but Washington is confident the Saudi-born militant will be killed or captured within a year.

The operation will be led by the ultra-secret Task Force 121 - a unit of elite Navy SEALs and Delta Force soldiers led by top intelligence analysts that was formed by the Pentagon last year to head the hunt for Saddam Hussein.

Key personnel from the unit have now been transferred to Afghanistan. The Americans are also expected to draw on British elite forces. Soldiers from territorial army units 21 SAS and 23 SAS have recently arrived in Afghanistan to join their full-time counterparts. Unmanned Predator drones have also been switched from Iraq to Afghanistan. The Predator is equipped with Hellfire missiles and powerful spy cameras which can follow cars or even individuals from thousands of feet up.

Bin Laden, 47, is believed to be hiding with his partner Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian militant, in the mountains lining the border. The terrain and sympathetic tribesmen offer substantial protection. Al-Zawahiri issued two tapes last week calling for attacks on the 'Crusader-Zionist alliance'. In one he referred to the recent controversy in France over the banning of the Islamic veil from schools, making it clear he was alive at least a month ago.

The hunt is being boosted by a computer program developed in Iraq to locate 'high value human targets'. The program charts links between thousands of people associated with a fugitive, allowing intelligence officers to detect key individuals who might have vital information.

The Americans are also employing 'psychological operations' against bin Laden, allowing news of the new push to leak into the media. US intelligence specialists know that, like Saddam, bin Laden and his aides monitor the media and are hoping that news of the operation will 'flush out' the terrorist leader, forcing him to leave winter hideouts for fear they have become known to the coalition or to Pakistan.

'The sands in their hourglass are running out. We reaffirm our effort to track these guys down and get 'em,' said Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Beevers, a US military spokesman in Afghanistan.

Officials are careful not to seem over-confident. Beevers admitted that if coalition forces knew where bin Laden and his men were, 'we'd already have him'. Last week Donald Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary, played down the prospect of catching bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban.

Most intelligence analysts believe bin Laden and a small number of associates have been hiding somewhere between the eastern Afghan city of Khost and the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta since slipping the net drawn round them by American forces at the cave complex of Tora Bora in December 2001.

American intelligence officials say bin Laden recently crossed into Afghanistan from Pakistan, where they believe he was being sheltered in the remote south Waziristan tribal agency by local leaders, during the winter. Mullah Omar is believed to be on the move in the areas of south eastern Afghanistan where support for the Taliban is strongest, travelling remote desert and mountain regions by motorbike.

Both bin Laden and Mullah Omar have been assisted by the fiercely autonomous, heavily armed tribes which straddle the border. Pakistan has adopted a 'carrot and stick' policy towards the tribesmen, many of whom see bin Laden as a hero.

Pakistani troops using helicopters and artillery flattened three housing compounds and detained at least 20 people last Tuesday in a remote region where bin Laden and other al-Qaeda fugitives are believed to have hidden recently. Four of the detainees were from the Middle East, the rest from the local Pashtun tribes. On Friday armed tribesmen raided a military compound in south Waziristan and 11 men died in a shoot-out at a border post.

Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

February 29, 2004 at 05:22 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (4) | Top of page | Blog Home

Special Ops, CIA Mix In War, Stir Legal Questions

Special Ops, CIA Mix In War, Stir Legal Questions - from TBO.com

By RICHARD LARDNER rlardner@tampatrib.com
Published: Feb 29, 2004

TAMPA - Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration progressively has blurred the line distinguishing CIA activities from military operations handled by U.S. Special Forces, according to military lawyers and national security analysts.
Although the integration has produced powerful antiterrorism capabilities, the merger has raised a number of complex political and operational issues that need be addressed to ensure this potent combination remains within legal and ethical bounds, they said.

The issues are especially relevant to U.S. Special Operations Command, based at MacDill Air Force Base. SoCom manages close to 50,000 special forces and has emerged as one of the military's most prominent players in the global war on terrorism.

``The president has committed us to a pre-emptive strategy, and that might require us to put forces in places and under circumstances that require new and creative ways of doing business,'' said retired Army Col. Michael Pheneger, former intelligence director at SoCom.

In Afghanistan, CIA units and Special Forces were on the ground a few weeks after the attacks in New York and the Pentagon. That cooperation continued in Iraq.

CIA paramilitary operatives work undercover, operating much like Special Forces and using some of the same equipment.

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has boosted SoCom's budget and given the command expanded authority to go after terrorist networks. Rumsfeld has been criticized for operating with too few controls and for intruding on the CIA's territory.

Defense officials said the issue is not about turf and control. It's about allowing Special Forces to react quickly when information is received so a critical target can't slip away.

Boundaries Being Erased

The working relationship is not a new one, with joint operations between the military and CIA dating back decades. Before al-Qaida and other terrorist groups emerged as major threats, more effort was made to separate the two communities, which are governed by separate legal authorities and have different cultures and methods of operation.

``What you're looking at are different resources, each with unique capabilities,'' Pheneger said. ``If you can orchestrate these capabilities, that's the way to go. But there are issues to be resolved.''

A significant issue relates to denial. The CIA exists in large part to conduct missions unacknowledged by the U.S. government. Yet the more often Special Forces support those covert operations, the greater the risk of linking them to the United States, according to Army Col. Kathryn Stone, staff judge advocate at U.S. Southern Command in Miami.

``As the size of the operation increases, secrecy becomes more problematic, particularly if military or paramilitary forces are involved,'' Stone wrote last year in an Army War College study. ``Forces mean people and people talk.''

CIA activities must comply with U.S. law, but much of what the CIA does is intended to skirt international law. The Defense Department is bound by both, according to Stone.

Although the war on terrorism is not a traditional war as defined by the Geneva and Hague conventions, U.S. military forces must comply with these rules as they fight in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. As the CIA and Special Forces work together, the military must be careful to remember the distinction, said Stone, who discussed her study in an interview.

Jennifer Kibbe, a national security analyst with The Brookings Institution in Washington, argued existing U.S. laws are too vague to cover a war in which the enemy is not linked to a country. The lack of clarity has allowed the Pentagon too free a hand, she said, citing Rumsfeld's interest in establishing ``hunter-killer'' teams.

There's less control over the military's planning system than the CIA's, she said.

``The way the military's system works is very different. They can come up with a mission and go ahead and execute it,'' Kibbe said. ``Their covert actions can be completely developed in-house.''

The danger, she said, is if U.S. forces track a terror suspect into a country such as Yemen or Somalia but end up capturing or killing the wrong person. Such an error would undercut worldwide support for the war, she said.

Questions Of Identity

Appearance is important on the integrated battlefield. CIA paramilitary personnel must blend into the environment. To do so, they operate without uniforms or identification as U.S. government employees. They are in the cold.

Accordingly, CIA operatives have no expectation of protections under the Geneva Conventions that govern the treatment of prisoners of war, Stone said. CIA operatives accept this possibility as part of the job.

The laws of war require military personnel to distinguish themselves, even when conducting covert operations.

W. Hays Parks, a senior Defense Department lawyer, wrote that neither the war on terrorism nor being a Special Forces member eases the requirement that full uniforms be worn. Even a minor deviation from that rule must be approved at the highest levels, Parks wrote in an article published last fall in the Chicago Journal of International Law.

Military personnel cannot be forced to purposefully hide their military identities, particularly if doing so would cause them harm, Stone said. If commandos were captured with CIA personnel during a combat operation, a variety of difficult scenarios could emerge, she said.

What if the Special Forces received Geneva Convention protections and the CIA operatives did not? What if the enemy could not distinguish between the two and decided they were all unlawful combatants? How would senior government officials react in either case? Would they demand protection for the soldiers but not for the CIA operatives?

These are critical questions, said Stone, noting the Bush administration's decision to classify Taliban and al-Qaida members as enemy combatants, not necessarily entitled to POW status.

It's possible American forces might be treated the same by a hostile nation, and commandos need to be prepared for that, Stone said.

``It's like having surgery,'' Stone said. ``There needs to be informed consent.''

Parks wrote that U.S. forces must be ``fully aware of the risks they may face if captured if they fail to comply with the laws of war.''

The CIA wouldn't comment on the integration of its personnel with Special Forces. Special Operations Command did not respond to a request for comment.

Communication Is Key

In advance testimony delivered to the Senate Armed Services Committee in July, Gen. Bryan Brown, SoCom commander, said the integration of Special Forces with conventional troops in Iraq ``was a major success.'' Brown didn't mention CIA involvement.

An after-action report on the Iraq war prepared last year by the 3rd Infantry Division offers a glimpse into the highly classified world of special operations.

In Iraq, the Special Forces- CIA commingling included conventional forces and ``was unparalleled in modern history,'' the division's report said.

The alliance produced many benefits and a few headaches.

The 3rd Infantry's size and armored power provided Special Forces and intelligence operatives, referred to in the report as ``other government agency elements,'' with a ``mobile and secure base'' from which they could operate.

``Overall, the relationship was a positive one in spite of the cultural differences between SOF and conventional forces that often create friction points between these elements,'' the report said.

Reluctance to share information was a problem. Special Forces and CIA personnel did not want to disclose much about their secret operations with the division staff for fear the mission would be compromised. This prevented the staff from learning details that might have given them an edge in combat, the division's report said.

Communication on the battlefield is critical. According to Pheneger, if an American division commander were ordered to take out an important target but detected Special Forces in the area, he would be faced with a difficult choice: Hit the target and risk harming U.S. forces or pass on the target until the Special Forces were out of the area.

Situations such as this needed to be practiced during military exercises, Pheneger said.

Guidelines Needed

Stone, the Southern Command attorney, said use of CIA operatives and Special Forces should continue because it's an effective way to fight terrorism. She recommends guidelines be developed to better manage these operations and to improve the exchange of information.

Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, CIA general counsel from 1990 to 1995, said the challenge is to develop laws and policies reflecting the new nature of warfare.

Enemies are declared and troops assembled, even though no formal declaration of war has been issued.

``It's not the absence of a declaration that is problematic here, but rather the nature of the present `war on terrorism,' which lacks bounds of time and space,'' she said. ``It's for that reason there is a blurring. There's a blurring by what we mean by war.''

Reporter Richard Lardner can be reached at (813) 259-7966.

February 29, 2004 at 10:21 AM in CIA | Permalink | TrackBack (62) | Top of page | Blog Home

February 28, 2004

Reagan Approved Plan to Sabotage Soviets

washingtonpost.com: Reagan Approved Plan to Sabotage Soviets

By David E. Hoffman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 27, 2004; Page A01
In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by a Reagan White House official.
Thomas C. Reed, a former Air Force secretary who was serving in the National Security Council at the time, describes the episode in "At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War," to be published next month by Ballantine Books. Reed writes that the pipeline explosion was just one example of "cold-eyed economic warfare" against the Soviet Union that the CIA carried out under Director William J. Casey during the final years of the Cold War.

At the time, the United States was attempting to block Western Europe from importing Soviet natural gas. There were also signs that the Soviets were trying to steal a wide variety of Western technology. Then, a KGB insider revealed the specific shopping list and the CIA slipped the flawed software to the Soviets in a way they would not detect it.

"In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply, its hard currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy, the pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines, and valves was programmed to go haywire, after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds," Reed writes.

"The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space," he recalls, adding that U.S. satellites picked up the explosion. Reed said in an interview that the blast occurred in the summer of 1982.

"While there were no physical casualties from the pipeline explosion, there was significant damage to the Soviet economy," he writes. "Its ultimate bankruptcy, not a bloody battle or nuclear exchange, is what brought the Cold War to an end. In time the Soviets came to understand that they had been stealing bogus technology, but now what were they to do? By implication, every cell of the Soviet leviathan might be infected. They had no way of knowing which equipment was sound, which was bogus. All was suspect, which was the intended endgame for the entire operation."

Reed said he obtained CIA approval to publish details about the operation. The CIA learned of the full extent of the KGB's pursuit of Western technology in an intelligence operation known as the Farewell Dossier. Portions of the operation have been disclosed earlier, including in a 1996 paper in Studies in Intelligence, a CIA journal. The paper was written by Gus W. Weiss, an expert on technology and intelligence who was instrumental in devising the plan to send the flawed materials and served with Reed on the National Security Council. Weiss died Nov. 25 at 72.

According to the Weiss article and Reed's book, the Soviet authorities in 1970 set up a new KGB section, known as Directorate T, to plumb Western research and development for badly needed technology. Directorate T's operating arm to steal the technology was known as Line X. Its spies were often sprinkled throughout Soviet delegations to the United States; on one visit to a Boeing plant, "a Soviet guest applied adhesive to his shoes to obtain metal samples," Weiss recalled in his article.

Then, at a July 1981 economic summit in Ottawa, President Francois Mitterrand of France told Reagan that French intelligence had obtained the services of an agent they dubbed "Farewell," Col. Vladimir Vetrov, a 53-year-old engineer who was assigned to evaluate the intelligence collected by Directorate T.

Vetrov, who Weiss recalled had provided his services for ideological reasons, photographed and supplied 4,000 documents on the program. The documents revealed the names of more than 200 Line X officers around the world and showed how the Soviets were carrying out a broad-based effort to steal Western technology.

"Reagan expressed great interest in Mitterrand's sensitive revelations and was grateful for his offer to make the material available to the U.S. administration," Reed writes. The Farewell Dossier arrived at the CIA in August 1981. "It immediately caused a storm," Reed says in the book. "The files were incredibly explicit. They set forth the extent of Soviet penetration into U.S. and other Western laboratories, factories and government agencies."

"Reading the material caused my worst nightmares to come true," Weiss recalled. The documents showed the Soviets had stolen valuable data on radar, computers, machine tools and semiconductors, he wrote. "Our science was supporting their national defense."

The Farewell Dossier included a shopping list of future Soviet priorities. In January 1982, Weiss said he proposed to Casey a program to slip the Soviets technology that would work for a while, then fail. Reed said the CIA "would add 'extra ingredients' to the software and hardware on the KGB's shopping list."

"Reagan received the plan enthusiastically," Reed writes. "Casey was given a go." According to Weiss, "American industry helped in the preparation of items to be 'marketed' to Line X." Some details about the flawed technology were reported in Aviation Week and Space Technology in 1986 and in a 1995 book by Peter Schweizer, "Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union."

The sabotage of the gas pipeline has not been previously disclosed, and at the time was a closely guarded secret. When the pipeline exploded, Reed writes, the first reports caused concern in the U.S. military and at the White House. "NORAD feared a missile liftoff from a place where no rockets were known to be based," he said, referring to North American Air Defense Command. "Or perhaps it was the detonation of a small nuclear device." However, satellites did not pick up any telltale signs of a nuclear explosion.

"Before these conflicting indicators could turn into an international crisis," he added, "Gus Weiss came down the hall to tell his fellow NSC staffers not to worry."

The role that Reagan and the United States played in the collapse of the Soviet Union is still a matter of intense debate. Some argue that U.S. policy was the key factor -- Reagan's military buildup; the Strategic Defense Initiative, Reagan's proposed missile defense system; confronting the Soviets in regional conflicts; and rapid advances in U.S. high technology. But others say that internal Soviet factors were more important, including economic decline and President Mikhail Gorbachev's revolutionary policies of glasnost and perestroika.

Reed, who served in the National Security Council from January 1982 to June 1983, said the United States and its NATO allies later "rolled up the entire Line X collection network, both in the U.S. and overseas." Weiss said "the heart of Soviet technology collection crumbled and would not recover."

However, Vetrov's espionage was discovered by the KGB, and he was executed in 1983.

� 2004 The Washington Post Company

February 28, 2004 at 10:09 PM in Cold War | Permalink | TrackBack (42) | Top of page | Blog Home

Saudis accused British diplomats of terror

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Saudis accused British diplomats of terror

Compensation claim by tortured Britons exposes allegations of MI6 plot against kingdom's royal family

David Pallister and Paul Kelso
Friday February 27, 2004
The Guardian

Saudi Arabia accused two senior British diplomats of orchestrating an MI6 bombing campaign to undermine the Saudi royal family, it emerged yesterday.
The allegations were revealed as seven British men tortured and falsely accused of carrying out the bombings launched legal action against Saudi officials, including the interior minister, Prince Naif bin Abdul Aziz. They are seeking compensation for more than two years' imprisonment and torture.

Five of the men appeared in televised confessions claiming responsibility for a wave of anti-western explosions that killed one Briton and injured several others. The Saudis said the bombings were the result of a turf war between western bootleggers, although they were widely acknowledged to be the work of dissident Islamist groups.

The men said their Saudi interrogators had pressurised them to admit they were low-level MI6 agents acting on orders from Simon McDonald, then the deputy head of mission and consul general, and Ian Wilson, then consul in Riyadh.

Shortly after the Foreign Office learned of the allegations both men were moved to other posts. Mr McDonald went on to become private secretary to Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and is now the ambassador to Israel. Mr Wilson is consul in Beijing.

The Foreign Office admitted last night the allegations against the diplomats had been investigated by British police, who visited Riyadh. "The allegations were found to be baseless," a spokeswoman said.

The former detainees and their lawyers said they were disappointed the Foreign Office had not acknowledged their innocence while clearing the officials.

Naming the two diplomats, William Sampson, who spent more than a year in solitary confinement, said: "I was tortured and forced to confess to spying for the British government. At the same time two diplomats were investigated by the Foreign Office. They have been cleared but we have not."

Glen Ballard, who was detained without charge for 10 months, said: "I was forced to say I was a low-level MI6 agent trying to undermine the Saudi royal family."

Mr Sampson, Sandy Mitchell and Les Walker, represented by Geoffrey Bindman, have issued writs in the high court. Lawyers representing the other four said they would join the action shortly.

Mr Bindman's clients have been given permission to take the case directly to the court of appeal, where they are expected to be joined to the case of another Briton, Ron Jones, who was accused of causing an explosion in which he was seriously injured. All the men are likely to face opposition from the British government. Mr Jones is seeking to challenge the State Immunity Act 1978, but government lawyers are preparing to lodge an argument next week formally defending the act.

Requests for a meeting with the Saudi ambassador to London, Prince Turki-al Faisal, have gone unanswered.

Five of the men are said to have produced "compelling and credible" medical evidence of torture, including beatings and sleep deprivation, after examinations at the Parker Institute, a torture treatment centre in Denmark.

In their report institute experts said there was "a high degree of consistency between the findings at physical examination and the allegations of torture".

Mr Bindman called on the government to acknowledge the men's innocence and to be more vocal in supporting their case. He said they were having difficulty finding work because, technically, they were convicted terrorists and murderers.

"I find it extraordinary that the government has not acknowledged the innocence of these men nor acknowledged that they have been tortured," he said. "Privately they have acknowledged it."

Richard Scorer, who represents James Cottle, James Lee, Peter Brandon and Mr Ballard, said: "We have mixed feelings abut the Foreign Office ... now we have compelling evidence of torture we hope they will be more vocal than in the past."

The men said they were still suffering as a result of their treatment. Describing his torture, Mr Mitchell said: "I still suffer from the shame of being broken physically and mentally. The pain was excruciating to the point where dying was preferable to living. It was the fact that I was innocent that kept me going."

February 28, 2004 at 10:07 PM in MI6 | Permalink | TrackBack (25) | Top of page | Blog Home

Iranian Radio Reports Bin Laden Captured

Yahoo! News - Iranian Radio Reports Bin Laden Captured

Sat Feb 28, 6:02 AM ET

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's state radio, quoting an unnamed source, said Saturday that Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) was captured in Pakistan "a long time ago." A Pakistan army spokesman denied he was captured.

The report said that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's visit to the region this week was in connection with the arrest.

The state radio said a reporter for its Pushtun service in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar "confirmed the news" that bin Laden had been captured in a tribal region in Pakistan. He said the news was from "a very reliable source in Peshawar, Pakistan," but the source was not identified.

Pakistani Army spokesman Gen. Shaukat Sultan told The Associated Press that the report is completely untrue. "That information is wrong," he said.

A Pakistani military operation has been under way in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan (news - web sites) and a Pakistani official said previously that members of al-Qaida are being sought there, although bin laden was not a specific target.

Iranian state radio quoted its reporter as saying the arrest happened a long time ago.

"Osama bin Laden has been arrested a long time ago, but Bush is intending to use it for propaganda maneuvering in the presidential election," he said.

Homayoun Jarir, son-in-law of Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, said he could not confirm the report.

Shamim Shahed, the bureau chief for "The Nation," an English-language newspaper in Peshawar, was cited by the director of IRNA's Pashtun radio service as the source of the bin Laden report.

But Shahed denied in an AP interview ever telling the Iranian news service that bin Laden had been captured.

"I never said this, but I have for the last year been saying that he is not far away. He is within their (the Americans) reach, and they can declare him arrested anytime," Shahed said. He gave no evidence to back up that claim.

February 28, 2004 at 01:48 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home

John Kerry Unveils Comprehensive Plan to Fight the War on Terrorism

:: John Kerry for President - John Kerry Unveils Comprehensive Plan to Fight the War on Terrorism ::

February 27, 2004
For Immediate Release
Los Angeles, CA -

In a speech today at the UCLA International Institute, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry offered his comprehensive approach to fighting the global war on terrorism. In the second of a series of speeches on national security, Kerry presented a plan to identify, disrupt, and eliminate terrorist networks using all the resources at our disposal. As CIA Director George Tenet starkly reminded us this week, we are threatened by a far-flung terrorist network that will continue to operate even if Bin Laden is caught. Last December, John Kerry addressed the Council on Foreign Relations and outlined a global vision to make America safer and more secure. Today, he is detailing the terrorism component of that vision, strengthening the nation's position in the global war on terror.

Kerry will act militarily when necessary, build strong alliances with other nations and enhance our intelligence and law enforcement capabilities. Kerry addresses the root causes of terrorism and offers a real plan to secure our homeland by safeguarding our chemical and nuclear facilities, bolstering port and aviation security, restoring 100,000 COPS on the street and adding 100,000 new firefighters in our communities.
�We cannot win the War on Terror through military power alone,� Kerry told an audience at the University of California at Los Angeles. �As President, if necessary, I will use military force to protect our security, our people, and our vital interests. But the fight requires us to use every tool at our disposal. Not only a strong military � but renewed alliances, vigorous law enforcement, reliable intelligence, and unremitting effort to shut down the flow of terrorist funds.�

�To do all this, and to do our best, demands that we work with other countries instead of walking alone. For today the agents of terrorism work and lurk in the shadows of 60 nations on every continent. In this entangled world, we need to build real and enduring alliances.�

�We need a comprehensive approach for prevailing against terror � an approach that recognizes the many facets of this mortal challenge and relies on all the tools at our disposal to do it.�

Kerry also criticized the Bush Administration�s failure to maintain the post-9/11global coalition, inaction in stemming the rise of terrorism and inadequate efforts to defend the homeland.

�Day in and day out, President Bush reminds us that he is a war President and that he wants to make national security the central issue of this election. I am ready to have this debate. I welcome it. I am convinced that we can prove to the American people that we know how to make them safer and more secure � with a stronger, more comprehensive, and more effective strategy for winning the War on Terror than the Bush Administration has ever envisioned.�

John Kerry outlined a seven-point comprehensive plan to fight the war against terror:

I. Use Direct Military Action: Kerry will use military force when necessary to capture and destroy terrorist groups and their leaders. He will also increase active duty end strength and tailor forces to be better prepared for post-conflict and stability operation.

II. Improve International Intelligence and Law Enforcement: Kerry will strengthen communication networks between intelligence agencies, build cooperative capacity with international law enforcement agencies, increase the number of linguists trained in critical languages and create a real Director of National Intelligence with budget and personnel power.

III. Cut Off the Flow of Terrorist Funds: Kerry will impose tough financial sanction against banks or nations that engage in money laundering or fail to act against it and will launch a �name and shame� campaign against those that finance terror.

IV. Control the Spread of Weapons on Mass Destruction: Kerry will appoint a high-level Presidential envoy to lead the effort and expand the Nunn/Lugar program to buy up and destroy stockpiles of loose WMD materials.

V. Win the Peace in Iraq and Afghanistan: Kerry will bring real security in Iraq by broadening the coalition, including the United Nations, and creating a real Iraqi security force that can take care of itself and the people it is supposed to protect. In Afghanistan, Kerry would put forward a major increase in security and fund the promised a Marshall Plan for reconstruction.

VI. Win the War of Ideas and the Future of a Young Generation: Kerry will build bridges to the Arab and Islamic world by supporting and assisting human rights groups, independent media, and labor unions dedicated to building a democratic culture.

VII. Secure America's Homeland: Kerry will restore funding for the COPS program, add 100,000 firefighters to our streets, secure and protect our nuclear and chemical facilities, bolster port and aviation security.

John Kerry: Winning the War on Terror

I. An Integrated Strategy to Destroy Terrorists Groups

Terror is the principle threat we face. John Kerry will deny terrorists sanctuary in every cave and with every tool, by:

1. Direct Military Action. John Kerry will always be prepared to use military force when necessary to neutralize terrorists and drain the swamps where they breed.

Deploy the Best-Equipped Forces Backed by the Most Accurate Intelligence. Kerry will increase the size of the special operations forces; and, increase training for peace-keeping missions so that failed states can be secured and terrorist sanctuaries denied. He will ensure that America�s fighting men and women always have the best equipment and information.
Tailor Forces to be Better Prepared for Post-conflict and Stability Operations. Kerry will add more engineers, military police, psychological warfare personnel, and civil affairs teams to the military to ensure combat forces are not drawn away to fill roles that stability forces should fill -- and that a security vacuum does not threaten hard-won victories.
Increase Active Duty End Strength. To better meet the needs of the War on Terror and America's global obligations, John Kerry has called for a temporary increase of about 40,000 active-duty Army troops: 20,000 in such specialties as military police and civil affairs, and 20,000 combat.
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2. Improve International Intelligence and Law Enforcement. John Kerry will lead our nation in building strong international cooperation to ensure that America has the best information available and works effectively to cut financing for terrorist organizations.

Strengthen Communication Networks Between Intelligence Agencies. Kerry will ensure that our intelligence agencies receive the most accurate and timely information through established channels with intelligence and law enforcement agencies in other countries.
Build Cooperative Capacity with International Law Enforcement Agencies. Kerry will ensure that we are able to impart the latest and most effective techniques in battling terror to law enforcement agencies abroad as appropriate.
Increase the Number of Linguists Trained in Critical Languages. A Kerry Administration will increase funding and training for linguists competent in critical languages like Arabic so that American intelligence agencies have the best, most timely and translated information about terrorist planning and staging.
Create a Real Director of National Intelligence with Budget and Personnel Power. John Kerry will make the Director of the CIA the true Director of National Intelligence with real control of national intelligence personnel and budgets. John Kerry will also undertake and complete a national intelligence review immediately.
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3. Cut Off the Flow of Terrorist Funds

Impose financial sanctions against nations or banks that fail to cooperate in the effort to control money laundering. This is an urgent step to ensure that rhetoric is backed by the tough action required to cut the stream of terrorist financing.
Launch a "name and shame" campaign against individuals, banks and foreign governments that are financing terror. Those who fail to respond will be shut out of the U.S. financial system. There will be no sacred cows as we take the steps that are necessary to protect America.
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4. Control the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Appoint A High Level Envoy to Lead the Effort. John Kerry will ensure that the urgent and critical challenge of controlling the spread of WMD does not fall prey to inter-agency differences, and that a single individual is empowered to rally other nations to join an American-led effort to secure nuclear weapons and nuclear materials around the world.
Keep WMD from terrorists by aggressively refocusing and expanding efforts to secure stockpiles of loose WMD materials. Kerry will lead in this effort, and create a new international protocol to track and account for existing nuclear weapons and deter the development of chemical and biological arsenals.
Create a U.S.-Russian Commitment to Secure Russia�s Nuclear Weapons. Kerry will ensure that all of Russia�s nuclear weapons and materials are effectively secured within four years. He will significantly increase funding for Comprehensive Threat Reduction programs.
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5. Win the peace in Iraq and Afghanistan. John Kerry will bring real security in Iraq and Afghanistan to prevent terrorists from reemerging in Afghanistan or establishing a base in Iraq.

Broaden the Coalition in Iraq, Include the UN and Create Real Iraqi Security Forces for Stability. Kerry will do the tough diplomacy and hard bargaining to get more international boots and dollars and get the target off the backs of American troops. Kerry will rally the UN to help forge a transition to Iraqi sovereignty based on the need to build a stable democracy in Iraq. Kerry will be upfront about the costs, and he will make sure we meet our obligations fairly by rolling back tax cuts for the wealthiest and getting real international contributions.
Restore Security in Afghanistan and Undertake the Promised Marshall Plan. Kerry would expand the ISAF force and extend its reach into the provinces; and increase the trainees in the Afghan National Army (ANA). Kerry would pressure donor nations to meet the aid commitments they made at the Bonn Conference. He would double our counter-narcotics assistance to the Karzai government and make available a team of American counter-narcotics experts to provide technical assistance.
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II. Win the War of Ideas and the Future of a Younge Generation

John Kerry�s plan for building bridges to the Arab and Islamic world recognizes the key challenge posed by burgeoning youth cohorts. America�s security demands that young people have a future of promise and opportunity that is a clear alternative to terror and extremism.

Build Networks to Improve Education and Fight Brain Drain. Kerry will build closer integration between business communities and educational institutions so that curricula are developed and tailored to impart marketable skills to students. The project should build an infrastructure of knowledge and excellence that has suffered from brain drain and a dearth of important materials � from textbooks to news programming.
Assist Civil Society Through Human Rights Groups, Independent Media, and Labor Unions. Kerry will ensure that the U.S. government works with the private sector and international institutions to help civil society groups and governments aid democracy, public participation, free expression, transparency and efficient economic management.
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III. Secure America's Homeland

Recent reports have revealed alarming gaps in security procedures at our nation�s most critical facilities. John Kerry will secure out nuclear weapons storage sites, nuclear power plants and chemical facilities. Kerry will ensure our first defenders are equipped, that we can respond to biological attacks, and air transportation security is made safer.

1. A New First Defenders Initiative to Ensure Local Responders are Equipped and Ready. John Kerry will ensure that first defenders have the gear to do their jobs safely and effectively. John Kerry has proposed creating a new fund for fire fighters � named after a September 11th hero, Father Mychal Judge, the chaplain of the New York City Fire Department who died delivering last rites. The Father Judge Fund would be similar to the COPS program and will hire up to 100,000 new firefighters and to provide the equipment necessary to assure firefighters are prepared. Kerry also believes we must restore funding to COPS to realize its initial mission of 100,000 new police officers. This initiative would also develop appropriate standards for preparedness in our cities and provide resources so communities can meet these goals.

2. A National Homeland Health Initiative. America�s public health system has risen to important challenges before, but it lacks the advances necessary to detect or contain a major outbreak. John Kerry believes we must connect the nation�s public health systems with a real time detection system to pool patient data across the country. This initiative would also provide training in developing plans for a surge in patients. We also need to increase research � and bring together the best of the public and private sectors to develop broad-spectrum designer antidotes so that our first responders and our population can be protected and treated from the widest possible range of attacks.

3. Increase Port Security and Accelerate Border Security. Currently, 95% of all non-North American U.S. trade moves by sea, concentrated mostly in a handful of ports. John Kerry believes improvements in port security must be made, while recognizing that global prosperity and America�s economic power depends on an efficient system. Kerry�s plan would develop standards for security at ports and other loading facilities for containers and assure facilities can meet basic standards. To improve security in commerce, John Kerry believes we should accelerate the timetable for the action plans agreed to in the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico �smart border� accords as well as implement security measures for cross-border bridges. Finally John Kerry will pursue modest safety standards for privately held infrastructure and will help owners find economical ways to pay for increased security.

4. Secure Nuclear Power Plants, Nuclear Weapons Facilities and Chemical Facilities. John Kerry will appoint an Energy Secretary who takes nuclear plant security seriously and ensures meticulous follow-up to any security violations. He would also order an immediate review of engagement orders and weaponry for plant guards, and ensure attack simulation drills be as realistic as possible. A Kerry Administration would ensure that security of our nuclear weapons facilities is a U.S. government responsibility � not cede it to private contractors as the Bush Administration considered doing. A Kerry Administration will tighten security at chemical facilities across the nation that produce or store chemicals, focusing first on facilities in major urban areas where millions of Americans live within the circle of vulnerability.

5. Tighten Aviation Security and Combat Threats to Civilian Aircraft. John Kerry will close loopholes in existing regulations on cargo carried by passenger flights and increase the reliability of new screening procedures. Kerry will increase perimeter inspections of U.S. airports and work with international aviation authorities to make sure the same standards are in place at all international airports. He will work with our allies to crackdown on the sale of shoulder-fired missiles that could be used in an attack on civilian aircraft, and are sold on the black market.

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February 28, 2004 at 11:34 AM in US | Permalink | TrackBack (7) | Top of page | Blog Home

Global Warming a Greater Threat Than Terrorism!!

Report on potential for crisis in 20 years, as a result of global warming.

Pentagon.pdf

February 28, 2004 at 11:27 AM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (13) | Top of page | Blog Home

Split of DHS, CIA Intel Functions Leaves Lawmakers Muddled

FOXNews.com - Politics - Split of DHS, CIA Intel Functions Leaves Lawmakers Muddled

Friday, February 27, 2004

WASHINGTON — One year after the Homeland Security Department (search) was opened to be a center for intelligence analysis, another shop overseen by CIA Director George Tenet (search) appears firmly ensconced as the intelligence community's leading brain trust.

That leaves some congressional members wondering who in the intelligence community is in charge of what.

The Homeland Security Department's inspector general warned in December that the main objective of the department's intelligence division - to centralize analysis and information about threats to the homeland - may be duplicated or trumped by other organizations, including the increasingly prominent Terrorist Threat Integration Center (search).

John Brennan, the threat center director who reports to Tenet, said his center fills a need spotted by the Bush administration to protect U.S. interests at home and abroad, pulling expertise from the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and elsewhere.

Homeland's mission stopped at the U.S. shore, he noted in an interview this week at CIA headquarters.

"Did you really want to give this new organization (Homeland) the responsibility for setting something up, with secure communications systems and networks and having a fully trained analytic cadre?" Brennan asked. "No, you don't want to do that. What you want to do is tap into that capability that already exists."

Some lawmakers are not convinced.

Congress created Homeland and its information analysis, or intelligence, division in November 2002 as part of the largest government reorganization in more than 50 years.

Congressional sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were surprised when, just before President Bush's 2003 State of the Union, they learned Bush planned to announce another intelligence analysis center operating under Tenet's umbrella.

Lawmakers recently have been grilling administration officials about which agency is responsible for what.

In an October letter, Senate Government Affairs Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, and the panel's top Democrat, Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, asked how the intelligence community is operating - "to avoid any overlap, any confusion, any kind of uncertainty as to who has the principal responsibility," Levin said, following up at a hearing this month.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said: "The Homeland Security Act called for a robust intelligence fusion center within the Department of Homeland Security, but the administration created a separate threat center ... which does not truly break down the turf barriers among intelligence agencies."

Homeland's inspector general cautioned in December that two groups, including the terrorist threat center, either "overlap with, duplicate or even trump" the department's responsibility for centralizing terrorist threat information.

"Ensuring that DHS has access to the intelligence that it needs to prevent and/or respond to terrorist threats is, under such circumstances, an even harder challenge than it would otherwise be," the report said.

Brennan, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and other officials insist that the system works.

The threat center "is fulfilling DHS's mission," Brennan said. "We don't see ourselves as a competitor at all."

When asked at a hearing Wednesday about duplication, Ridge replied, "Some people call it duplication, others call it competitive analysis." He said diverse opinions help the process.

Brennan says his shop leads analysis operations, culling information from Homeland and other sources to develop threat reports for policy makers. Ridge and other officials can ask for more, or use the information to determine the nation's color-coded threat level or recommend air marshals.

Critics note that Homeland lacks resources and hasn't hired all the employees that Congress funded.

"It's a joke," said Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief who maintains contacts in the intelligence community. "What do you gain by having a DHS intelligence shop?"

Privately, even some in U.S. law enforcement and intelligence circles have called Homeland's analysts inexperienced and reactionary.

A senior French official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while the French have had a good working relationship with the FBI and CIA, Homeland officials are far less experienced and sometimes appear overly cautious. The official said the department tends to "open the umbrella" at the hint of rain.

Brennan, though, insists Homeland did a "superlative job" handling aviation threats over Christmas. But he says some allies may still be getting used to dealing with new players.

February 28, 2004 at 11:01 AM in CIA | Permalink | TrackBack (19) | Top of page | Blog Home

Amid debate on responsibility, CIA oversees threat analysis

Amid debate on responsibility, CIA oversees threat analysis

Friday, February 27, 2004
By Katherine Pfleger Shrader
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — An office overseen by the Central Intelligence director now plays the key role of analyzing threats to the United States, even though the Department of Homeland Security was opened a year ago for that reason.
Lawmakers are asking pointed questions about who's in charge, amid worries the overlap and confusion that plagued intelligence efforts before Sept. 11, 2001, could recur.

Homeland's inspector general warned in December that a principal objective in creating the department's intelligence division � to centralize analysis and information about threats to the United States � may be duplicated or trumped by other organizations, including the increasingly prominent Terrorist Threat Integration Center, overseen by Central Intelligence Director George Tenet.

The threat center's director John Brennan, who reports to Tenet, said, however, that his center is filling a need spotted by the Bush administration to protect U.S. interests at home and abroad, pulling expertise from the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and elsewhere. Homeland's mission stopped at the U.S. shore, he noted in an interview this week at CIA headquarters.

"Did you really want to give (Homeland) the responsibility for setting something up, with secure communications systems and networks and having a fully trained analytic cadre?" Brennan said. "No, you don't want to do that. What you want to do is tap into that capability that already exists."

Still, some in Congress are not convinced. In November 2002, Congress created Homeland and its information analysis, or intelligence, division as part of the largest government reorganization in more than 50 years.

Congressional sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they were surprised when, just before President Bush's 2003 State of the Union, they learned Bush planned to announce another intelligence analysis center under Tenet's umbrella.

Lawmakers in recent weeks have repeatedly grilled administration officials about which agency is responsible for what.

In an October letter, Senate Government Affairs Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) and the panel's top Democrat, Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, asked how the intelligence community is operating � "to avoid any overlap, any confusion, any kind of uncertainty as to who has the principal responsibility," Levin said, after a hearing this month.

Said Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.): "The Homeland Security Act called for a robust intelligence fusion center within the Department of Homeland Security, but the administration created a separate threat center ... which does not truly break down the turf barriers among intelligence agencies."

In December, Homeland's inspector general cautioned that two groups, including the terrorist threat center, either "overlap with, duplicate or even trump" the department's responsibilty for centralizing terrorist threat information.

"Ensuring that DHS has access to the intelligence that it needs to prevent and/or respond to terrorist threats is, under such circumstances, an even harder challenge than it would otherwise be," the report said.

Brennan, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and other officials insist, however, the system is working.

The threat center "is fulfilling DHS's mission," Brennan said. "We don't see ourselves as a competitor at all."

Asked at a hearing Wednesday about duplication, Ridge replied: "Some people call it duplication, others call it competitive analysis." He said diverse opinions help the process.

Brennan says his shop is the lead analysis operation, culling information from various sources, including Homeland, to create threat reports for policy makers. Ridge and other officials can ask for more, or use the information to determine the nation's color-coded threat level or recommend air marshals.

Critics note that Homeland lacks resource and hasn't hired all the employees Congress has funded.

"It's a joke," said Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief who still maintains contacts in the intelligence community. "What do you gain by having a DHS intelligence shop?"

Privately, even some in U.S. law enforcement and intelligence circles have quietly called Homeland's analysts inexperienced and reactionary.

Internationally, a senior French official, speaking on condition of anonymity recently, said that while the French have had a good working relationship with the FBI and CIA, Homeland officials are far less experienced and sometimes appear overly cautious. The official said the department's reflex is to "open the umbrella" at the hint of rain.

Brennan, though, insists Homeland did a "superlative job" handling aviation threats over Christmas. But some allies may still be getting used to dealing with new players, he acknowledges.

"People are probably out of their comfort zones in some of these areas," Brennan said. "But DHS has some very important responsibilities."

� 2004 Associated Press � All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

February 28, 2004 at 11:00 AM in CIA | Permalink | TrackBack (14) | Top of page | Blog Home

John Kerry Unveils Comprehensive Plan to Fight the War on Terrorism

John Kerry for President Blog

Los Angeles, CA– In a speech today at the UCLA International Institute, John Kerry offered his comprehensive approach to fighting the global war on terrorism.
In the second of a series of speeches on national security, Kerry presented a plan to identify, disrupt, and eliminate terrorist networks using all the resources at our disposal. As CIA Director George Tenet starkly reminded us this week, we are threatened by a far-flung terrorist network that will continue to operate even if Bin Laden is caught.

Last December, John Kerry addressed the Council on Foreign Relations and outlined a global vision to make America safer and more secure. Today, he is detailing the terrorism component of that vision, strengthening the nation�s position in the global war on terror.

Kerry will act militarily when necessary, build strong alliances with other nations and enhance our intelligence and law enforcement capabilities. Kerry addresses the root causes of terrorism and offers a real plan to secure our homeland by safeguarding our chemical and nuclear facilities, bolstering port and aviation security, restoring 100,000 COPS on the street and adding 100,000 new firefighters in our communities.

�We cannot win the War on Terror through military power alone,� Kerry told an audience at the University of California at Los Angeles. �As President, if necessary, I will use military force to protect our security, our people, and our vital interests. But the fight requires us to use every tool at our disposal. Not only a strong military � but renewed alliances, vigorous law enforcement, reliable intelligence, and unremitting effort to shut down the flow of terrorist funds.�

�To do all this, and to do our best, demands that we work with other countries instead of walking alone. For today the agents of terrorism work and lurk in the shadows of 60 nations on every continent. In this entangled world, we need to build real and enduring alliances.�

�We need a comprehensive approach for prevailing against terror � an approach that recognizes the many facets of this mortal challenge and relies on all the tools at our disposal to do it.�

Kerry also criticized the Bush Administration�s failure to maintain the post-9/11global coalition, inaction in stemming the rise of terrorism and inadequate efforts to defend the homeland.

�Day in and day out, President Bush reminds us that he is a war President and that he wants to make national security the central issue of this election. I am ready to have this debate. I welcome it. I am convinced that we can prove to the American people that we know how to make them safer and more secure � with a stronger, more comprehensive, and more effective strategy for winning the War on Terror than the Bush Administration has ever envisioned.�

John Kerry outlined a seven-point comprehensive plan to fight the war against terror:

I. USE DIRECT MILITARY ACTION: Kerry will use military force when necessary to capture and destroy terrorist groups and their leaders. He will also increase active duty end strength and tailor forces to be better prepared for post-conflict and stability operation.

II. IMPROVE INTERNATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND LAW ENFORCEMENT: Kerry will strengthen communication networks between intelligence agencies, build cooperative capacity with international law enforcement agencies, increase the number of linguists trained in critical languages and create a real Director of National Intelligence with budget and personnel power.

III. CUT OFF THE FLOW OF TERRORIST FUNDS: Kerry will impose tough financial sanction against banks or nations that engage in money laundering or fail to act against it and will launch a �name and shame� campaign against those that finance terror.

IV. CONTROL THE SPREAD OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION: Kerry will appoint a high-level Presidential envoy to lead the effort and expand the Nunn/Lugar program to buy up and destroy stockpiles of loose WMD materials.

V. WIN THE PEACE IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN: Kerry will bring real security in Iraq by broadening the coalition, including the United Nations, and creating a real Iraqi security force that can take care of itself and the people it is supposed to protect. In Afghanistan, Kerry would put forward a major increase in security and fund the promised a Marshall Plan for reconstruction.

VI. WIN THE WAR OF IDEAS AND THE FUTURE OF A YOUNG GENERATION: Kerry will build bridges to the Arab and Islamic world by supporting and assisting human rights groups, independent media, and labor unions dedicated to building a democratic culture.

VII. SECURE AMERICA�S HOMELAND: Kerry will restore funding for the COPS program, add 100,000 firefighters to our streets, secure and protect our nuclear and chemical facilities, bolster port and aviation security.

February 28, 2004 at 12:56 AM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (14) | Top of page | Blog Home

CIA plot led to huge blast in Siberian gas pipeline

Telegraph | News | CIA plot led to huge blast in Siberian gas pipeline

By Alec Russell in Washington
(Filed: 28/02/2004)

A CIA operation to sabotage Soviet industry by duping Moscow into stealing booby-trapped software was spectacularly successful when it triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian gas pipeline, it emerged yesterday.

Thomas Reed, a former US Air Force secretary who was in Ronald Reagan's National Security Council, discloses what he called just one example of the CIA's "cold-eyed economic warfare" against Moscow in a memoir to be published next month.

Leaked extracts in yesterday's Washington Post describe how the operation caused "the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space" in the summer of 1982.

Mr Reed writes that the software "was programmed to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds".

The CIA learned of Soviet ambitions to steal the software via a French KGB source, Col Vladimir Vetrov, codenamed Farewell. His job was to evaluate the intelligence collected by a shadowy arm of the KGB set up a network of industrial spies to steal technology from the West.

The breakthrough came when Vetrov told the CIA of a specific "shopping list" of software technology that Moscow was seeking to update its pipeline as it sought to export natural gas to Western Europe.

Washington was keen to block the deal and, after securing President Reagan's approval in January 1982, the CIA tricked the Soviet Union into acquiring software with built-in flaws.

"In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply, its hard currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy, the pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds," Mr Reed writes.

The project exceeded the CIA's wildest dreams. There were no casualties in the explosion, but it was so dramatic that the first reports are said to have stirred alarm in Washington.

The initial reports led to fears that the Soviets had launched a missile from a place where rockets were not known to be based, or even had detonated "a small nuclear device", Mr Reed writes in his book.

While some of the details of the CIA's counter-offensive have emerged before, the sabotage of the gas pipeline has remained a secret until now. Mr Reed told the Post he had CIA approval to make the disclosures.

Mr Vetrov's spying was discovered by the KGB and he was executed in 1983.

February 28, 2004 at 12:45 AM in Cold War | Permalink | TrackBack (17) | Top of page | Blog Home

February 26, 2004

Haiti�s Lawyer: US Is Arming Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries, Calls For UN Peacekeepers

Haiti’s Lawyer: US Is Arming Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries, Calls For UN Peacekeepers

by Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill

The US lawyer representing the government of Haiti charged today that the US government is directly involved in a military coup attempt against the country’s democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ira Kurzban, the Miami-based attorney who has served as General Counsel to the Haitian government since 1991, said that the paramilitaries fighting to overthrow Aristide are being backed by Washington.
“I believe that this is a group that is armed by, trained by, and employed by the intelligence services of the United States,” Kurzban told the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!. “This is clearly a military operation, and it's a military coup.”

There's enough indications from our point of view, at least from my point of view, that the United States certainly knew what was coming about two weeks before this military operation started,� Kurzban said. � The United States made contingency plans for Guantanamo.�

If a direct US connection is proven, it will mark the second time in just over a decade that Washington has been involved in a coup in Haiti.

Several of the paramilitary leaders now rampaging Haiti are men who were at the forefront of the US-backed campaign of terror during the 1991-94 coup against Aristide. Among the paramilitary figures now leading the current insurrection is Louis Jodel Chamblain, the former number 2 man in the FRAPH paramilitary death squad.

Chamblain was convicted and sentenced in absentia to hard-labor for life in trials for the April 23, 1994 massacre in the pro-democracy region of Raboteau and the September 11, 1993 assassination of democracy-activist Antoine Izm�ry. Chamblain recently arrived in Gonaives with about 25 other commandos based in the Dominican Republic, where Chamblain has been living since 1994. They were well equipped with rifles, camouflage uniforms, and all-terrain vehicles.

Among the victims of FRAPH under Chamblain's leadership was Haitian Justice Minister Guy Malary. He was ambushed and machine-gunned to death with his bodyguard and a driver on Oct. 14, 1993. According to an October 28, 1993 CIA Intelligence Memorandum obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights "FRAPH members Jodel Chamblain, Emmanuel Constant, and Gabriel Douzable met with an unidentified military officer on the morning of 14 October to discuss plans to kill Malary." Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, was the founder of FRAPH.

An October 1994 article by journalist Allan Nairn in The Nation magazine quoted Constant as saying that he was contacted by a US Military officer named Col. Patrick Collins, who served as defense attach� at the United States Embassy in Port-au-Prince. Constant says Collins pressed him to set up a group to "balance the Aristide movement" and do �intelligence� work against it. Constant admitted that, at the time, he was working with CIA operatives in Haiti. Constant is now residing freely in the US. He is reportedly living in Queens, NY. At the time, James Woolsey was head of the CIA.

Another figure to recently reemerge is Guy Philippe, a former Haitian police chief who fled Haiti in October 2000 after authorities discovered him plotting a coup with a group of other police chiefs. All of the men were trained in Ecuador by US Special Forces during the 1991-1994 coup. Since that time, the Haitian government has accused Philippe of master-minding deadly attacks on the Police Academy and the National Palace in July and December 2001, as well as hit-and-run raids against police stations on Haiti's Central Plateau over the following two years.

Kurzban also points to the presence of another FRAPH veteran, Jean Tatun. Along with Chamblain, Tatun was convicted of gross violations of human rights and murder in the Raboteau massacre.

�These people came through the Dominican border after the United States had provided 20,000 M-16's to the Dominican army,� says Kurzban. �I believe that the United States clearly knew about it before, and that given the fact of the history of these people, [Washington is] probably very, very deeply involved, and I think Congress needs to seriously look at what the involvement of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency has been in this operation. Because it is a military operation. It's not a rag-tag group of liberators, as has often been put in the press in the last week or two.�

Kurzban says he has hired military analysts to review photos of the weapons being used by the paramilitary groups. He says that contrary to reports in the media that the armed groups are using weapons originally distributed by Aristide, the gangs are using highly sophisticated and powerful weapons; weapons that far out-gun Aristide�s 3,000 member National Police force.

�I don't think that there's any question about the fact that the weapons that they have did not come from Haiti,� says Kurzban. �They're organized as a military commando strike force that's going from city to city.�

Kurzban says that among the weapons being used by the paramilitaries are: M-16's, M-60's, armor piercing weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. �They have weapons to shoot down the one helicopter that the government has,� he said. �They have acted as a pretty tight-knit commando unit.�

Chamblain and other paramilitary leaders have said they will march on the capital, Port-au-Prince within two weeks. The US has put forth a proposal, being referred to as a peace plan, that many viewed as favorable to Aristide�s opponents. Aristide accepted the plan, but the opposition rejected it. Washington�s point man on the crisis is Roger Noriega, Undersecretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs.

�I think Noriega has been an Aristide hater for over a decade,� says Kurzban, adding that he believes Noriega allowed the opposition to delay their response to the plan to allow the paramilitaries to capture more territory. �My reaction was they're just giving them more time so they can take over more, that the military wing of the opposition can take over more ground in Haiti and create a fate accompli,� Kurzban said. �Indeed, as soon as they said, �we need an extra day,� I predicted, unfortunately, and correctly, that they would go into Cap Haitian (Haiti�s 2nd largest city) and indeed the next morning they did.�

The leader of the �opposition� is an American citizen named Andy Apaid. He was born in New York. Haitian law does not allow dual-nationality and he has not renounced his US citizenship. In a recent statement, Congressmember Maxine Waters blasted Apaid and his opposition front, saying she believes �Apaid is attempting to instigate a bloodbath in Haiti and then blame the government for the resulting disaster in the belief that the United States will aid the so-called protestors against President Aristide and his government.�

�We have the leader of the opposition, who Mr. Noriega is negotiating with, who Secretary Powell calls and who tells Secretary Powell, you know, �we need a couple more days� and Secretary Powell says �that's fine,�� says Kurzban. �I mean, there's some kind of theater of the absurd going on with this opposition where it's led by an American citizen, where they're just clearly stalling for time until they can get more ground covered in Haiti through their military wing, and the United States and Noriega, with a wink and nod, is kind of letting them do that.�

Kurzban says that because Aristide�s opponents rejected Washington�s plan, �the next step clearly is to send in some kind of UN peacekeeping force immediately.�

�The question is,� says Kurzban. �Will the international community stand by and allow a democracy in this hemisphere to be terminated by a brutal military coup of persons who have a very, very sordid history of gross violations of human rights?�

Democracy Now! (www.democracynow.org) is a nationally-syndicated radio and TV program broadcast on Pacifica Radio, NPR, community TV stations and Free Speech TV Channel 9415 of the DishNetwork. Mike Burke and Sharif Abdel Kouddous contributed to this report. mail@democracynow.org.

February 26, 2004 at 07:10 PM in US | Permalink | TrackBack (40) | Top of page | Blog Home

CIA: AL QAIDA TURNS INTO COLLECTION OF GROUPS

Middle East Newsline -

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Al Qaida has been transformed into a collection of regional networks that operate autonomously.
In an updated assessment of the organization, the intelligence community has determined that Al Qaida has relinquished its control over many Islamic insurgency groups. Instead, Al Qaida permits its satellite organizations to designate targets and plan attacks.

"These far-flung groups increasingly set the agenda, and are redefining the threat we face," CIA director George Tenet said. "They are not all creatures of Bin Laden, and so their fate is not tied to his. They have autonomous leadership, they pick their own targets, they plan their own attacks."

In testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Tenet said the Al Qaida network contains dozens of Sunni groups. Tenet cited Ansar Al Islam in Iraq the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Salifiya Jihadiya in Morocco.

February 26, 2004 at 10:58 AM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (3) | Top of page | Blog Home

February 23, 2004

Blunkett wants big expansion of MI5 and new security laws to counter terror threat

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Blunkett wants big expansion of MI5 and new security laws to counter terror threat

Alan Travis and Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday February 23, 2004
The Guardian

The home secretary will this week propose a major extension of anti-terrorism powers and the biggest expansion of the security services for nearly 50 years to counter the threat of Islamist extremism in Britain.
David Blunkett will present what officials describe as an "options paper" on Wednesday which will be subjected to six months consultation with legislation expected after the general election.

He is to confirm his desire to introduce legal powers, including lowering the standard of proof, to enable pre-emptive action against British terror suspects, including potential suicide bombers.

He will also announce a huge increase in MI5 officers, from the current 2,000 to 3,000, to be devoted to countering the threat of Islamist extremism. Mr Blunkett has been persuaded by Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, that she does not have sufficient resources to combat what the security and intelligence agencies say is a serious, long-term threat.

"We are facing a very high level of threat. It is a long-term threat which will not go away. That is why it is very important to renew the powers in the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act to be able to detain foreign nationals we think are terrorists," the Home Office minister responsible for counter-terrorism, Beverley Hughes, said yesterday.

The recruitment of the extra MI5 surveillance officers, linguists and technical staff, over the next three years, will herald its biggest expansion since the end of the second world war. The budget for the security services is expected to rise from �1.1bn to �1.5bn.

MPs will be asked on Wednesday to vote to approve the renewal of internment powers in part four of the 2001 terrorism legislation.

The Commons will also debate the outcome of a critical review of the anti-terrorist legislation by the former Tory cabinet minister, Lord Newton, which demanded he find alternatives to the indefinite detention of 14 foreign nationals held without trial as suspected international terrorists.

Mr Blunkett is to publish his "options paper" outlining how similar powers might be incorporated into British criminal law so they can be used against suspected British terrorists even though they involve derogating from key human rights conventions.

The options paper will examine how intelligence information can be used to secure "pre-emptive" convictions in a British criminal court without compromising the security sources involved. Mr Blunkett made clear during his trip to India this month that it could include a lower standard of proof in such cases.

The existing anti-terrorist legislation passed after September 11 contains "sunset clauses" which mean its powers will expire in November 2006 if not replaced by a new anti-terrorism law. Mr Blunkett will confirm that he has no intention of waiting until then to start the debate.

He will also make clear that the existing system of public interest immunity certificates, developed in Irish terrorist cases to protect intelligence sources, is no longer sophisticated enough and will have to be replaced. Since September 11, MI5 has concentrated on suspect Islamist extremists, a far more difficult target, security sources say, than Irish-based terror groups. Islamist extremists, linked in different degrees to the al-Qaida network, are not regimented and their affiliations are much more amorphous, security and intelligence officials say.

They meet informally, use the internet and mobile telephones whose numbers they frequently change. Britain has mainly been a centre for communications and support activities such as funding by credit card and other financial fraud.

Few individuals are judged to be prepared actually to commit terrorist acts in Britain. However, police and security sources, aware of the difficulty of preventing attacks by determined extremists, have been saying in recent months that a suicide bombing in Britain is a matter of when, not if.

MI5 has been seeking informants in the Muslim community through messages on the internet in Arabic. It is also seeking Arabic speakers for its staff. The agency's website is offering careers to "full time Arabic (all dialects including North African)" speakers - as well as speakers of Urdu, Persian, Turkish, Punjabi and Russian, Kurdish, Bengali, and Tamil - with a starting salary of �20,100.

MI5 has won the backing of Tony Blair to allow the product of telephone taps to be used in court cases. By a legal anomaly, covert video surveillance and the product of bugging property can be used in criminal trials but not recordings or transcripts of the taps.

February 23, 2004 at 07:52 AM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (124) | Top of page | Blog Home

February 22, 2004

Ghost Wars 1: A Secret Hunt Unravels in Afghanistan

washingtonpost.com: A Secret Hunt Unravels in Afghanistan

By Steve Coll
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 22, 2004; Page A01
First of two articles.
The seeds of the CIA's first formal plan to capture or kill Osama bin Laden were contained in another urgent manhunt -- for Mir Aimal Kasi, the Pakistani migrant who murdered two CIA employees while spraying rounds from an assault rifle at cars idling before the entrance to the CIA's Langley headquarters in 1993.
For several years after the shooting, Kasi remained a fugitive in the border areas straddling Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. From its Langley offices, the CIA's Counterterrorist Center asked the Islamabad station for help recruiting agents who might be able to track Kasi down. Case officers signed up a group of Afghan tribal fighters who had worked for the CIA during the 1980s guerrilla war against Soviet occupying forces in Afghanistan.

The family-based team of paid agents, given the cryptonym FD/TRODPINT, set up residences around the city of Kandahar. They were rugged, bearded fighters -- often in teams of a dozen or so -- who rolled around southern Afghanistan in four-wheel-drive vehicles, blending comfortably into the region's militarized tribal society.

In the years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the CIA carried out a secret but ultimately unsuccessful manhunt for bin Laden. It was based at first on the band of Afghan tribal agents, and later expanded to include other agents and allies, especially the legendary guerrilla leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. But the search became mired in mutual frustrations, near misses and increasingly bitter policy disputes in Washington between the Clinton White House and the CIA.

An ambitious plan for the TRODPINT team to kidnap bin Laden from his bed and hold him in an Afghan cave telegraphed the CIA's audacity, despite what operatives saw as a restrictive mandate from the president. At the same time, the CIA's inability to pinpoint bin Laden's location or capture him drew pointed questions from the White House about the agency's effectiveness.

This account, a detailed history of the pursuit of bin Laden before the terrorist attacks of 2001, describes for the first time aborted CIA plans to seize bin Laden at his Kandahar farm, another attempt to rain Katyusha rockets on him, and the final struggle to work with Massoud, all in vain. It is based on several dozen interviews with participants and officials in the United States, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, as well as documents, private records and memoirs about the CIA covert action program in Afghanistan, which was designed in the 1980s to expel occupying Soviet forces and later to capture bin Laden or disrupt his activities.

When the TRODPINT team set out to find Kasi, one or two senior family members handled the face-to-face contacts with the CIA. Case officers working from the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad supplied them with cash, assault rifles, land mines, motorcycles, trucks, listening devices and secure communications equipment.

Together they concocted a bold plan to capture Kasi and fly him to the United States for trial. If the Afghan agents found Kasi, they would detain him until U.S. Special Forces secretly flew into Afghanistan to bundle the fugitive away. With the TRODPINT team acting as spotters, the CIA identified a desert landing strip near Kandahar that could be used for this clandestine American extraction flight. The White House approved the plan, and President Bill Clinton secretly dispatched a Special Forces team to southern Afghanistan to confirm the coordinates and suitability of the makeshift airstrip.

In the end, Kasi was found elsewhere. In late May 1997, an ethnic Baluch man walked into the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, and told a clerk he had information about Kasi. He was taken to a young CIA officer who was chief of base in the city. The informant handed her an application for a Pakistani driver's license recently filled out by Kasi under an alias. It contained a photo and a thumbprint that confirmed Kasi's identity.

Three weeks later, a team of CIA officers, Pakistani intelligence officers and FBI agents arrested Kasi at a Pakistani hotel, flew him to the United States and jailed him for trial. (He was convicted of murder in 1997, sentenced to death in 1998 and executed in Virginia on Nov. 14, 2002.)

In the weeks that followed Kasi's arrest, a new question was raised inside the CIA's Counterterrorist Center: What would become of their elaborately equipped and financed TRODPINT assets? The agents had filed numerous reports about where Kasi might be, but none of these had panned out. Ultimately, the team played no direct role in Kasi's arrest. Despite this questionable record, it seemed a shame to just cut them loose, some Langley officers believed.

The Hunt Begins

At CIA headquarters, the unit set up to track Kasi was located in the Counterterrorist Center. A few partitions away was another small cluster of analysts and operators who made up what the CIA officially called the "bin Laden issue unit."

The unit had been created early in 1996 to watch bin Laden, who was then living in Sudan. By that point, the United States had decided for security reasons to close the embassy and CIA station in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, where officers had previously been collecting intelligence about bin Laden's financial support for Islamic radicals in North Africa and elsewhere. In the spring of 1996, Sudan yielded to international pressure to expel bin Laden. The Saudi found sanctuary in Afghanistan in May.

The CIA had no station or base in Afghanistan, however, and it had no paid agents in the country at the time, other than those hunting for Kasi near Kandahar and a few loose contacts working on drug trafficking and recovering Stinger shoulder-fired missiles, according to Tom Simons, then U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, whose account is supported by several other U.S. officials familiar with the CIA's Afghan agent roster.

Back at Langley, the bin Laden unit, using classified channels, regularly transmitted reports to policymakers about threats issued by bin Laden against American targets -- via faxed leaflets, television interviews and underground pamphlets. The CIA's analysts described bin Laden at this time as an active, dangerous financier of Islamic extremism, but they saw him as more a money source than a terrorist operator.

To senior career officers in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, the TRODPINT tribal team now beckoned as a way to watch bin Laden in Afghanistan. The paid Afghan agents could monitor or harass the Saudi up close, under CIA control -- and perhaps capture him for trial, if the White House approved such an operation. Operators and analysts in the bin Laden unit argued passionately for more active measures against him. Jeff O'Connell, then director of the Counterterrorist Center, and his deputy, Paul Pillar, agreed in the summer of 1997 to hand them control of the TRODPINT agent team, complete with its weapons and spy gear.

As bin Laden's bloodcurdling televised threats against Americans increased in number and menace during 1997, the CIA -- with approval from Clinton's White House -- turned from just watching bin Laden toward making plans to capture him.

Working with lawyers at Langley in late 1997 and early 1998, the TRODPINT agents' CIA controllers modified the original Kasi capture plan -- with its secret airstrip for extraction flights -- so it could be used to seize bin Laden and prosecute him, or kill him if he violently resisted arrest.

A long and frustrating hunt for bin Laden had formally begun.

During the three years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the hunt would eventually involve several dozen local paid CIA agents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a secret commando team drawn from Uzbek special forces, another drawn from retired Pakistani special forces and a deepening intelligence alliance with Massoud, the northern Afghan guerrilla leader. Despite these varied efforts, bin Laden continually eluded their grasp.

Years later, those involved in the secret campaign against bin Laden still disagree about why it failed -- and who is to blame.

On the front lines in Pakistan and Central Asia, working-level CIA officers felt they had a rare, urgent sense of the menace bin Laden posed before Sept. 11. Yet a number of controversial proposals to attack bin Laden were turned down by superiors at Langley or the White House, who feared the plans were poorly developed, wouldn't work or would embroil the United States in Afghanistan's then-obscure civil war. At other times, plans to track or attack bin Laden were delayed or watered down after stalemated debates inside Clinton's national security cabinet.

At Langley, CIA officers sometimes saw the Clinton cabinet as overly cautious, obsessed with legalities and unwilling to take political risks in Afghanistan by arming bin Laden's Afghan enemies and directly confronting the radical Taliban Islamic militia. But at the Clinton White House, senior policymakers and counterterrorism analysts sometimes saw the CIA's efforts in Afghanistan as timid, na�ve, self-protecting and ineffective.

Some of the agency's efforts involved collecting intelligence about bin Laden's whereabouts; others grew into covert actions designed to capture or kill leaders of bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Both tracks were carried out in deep secrecy mainly by career clandestine service officers in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center and the Near East Division of the agency's Directorate of Operations.

Audacious Plans Take Root

As the TRODPINT team began its work on bin Laden early in 1998, a federal grand jury in New York opened a secret investigation into the Saudi's terrorist-financing activity. The probe had been prompted by a defector from bin Laden's inner circle, financial evidence from terrorist attacks in Egypt and elsewhere, and old files from earlier terrorist cases in New York. No one outside the Justice Department was supposed to know about the grand jury's work, but it began to leak to officials involved with the CIA's planning.

CIA officers working from Islamabad, led by station chief Gary Schroen, assumed in early 1998 that if their agents captured bin Laden in southern Afghanistan, a U.S. grand jury would quickly indict him. If not, the CIA or the Clinton White House would ask Egypt or Saudi Arabia to take custody of bin Laden for trial. Schroen kept asking the Counterterrorist Center at Langley, "Do we have an indictment?" The answers, according to several officials involved, were cryptic: Bin Laden was "indictable," the Islamabad station was told.

The TRODPINT team developed a detailed plan to hold bin Laden in a cave in southern Afghanistan for 30 days before U.S. Special Forces flew in secretly to take him away. The agents located a cave where they could hide out comfortably. They assured their CIA handlers that they had stored enough food and water in the cave to keep bin Laden healthy while he was there.

By imprisoning bin Laden in the cave, the agents hoped to ease his extraction. If enough time passed after bin Laden's initial capture, al Qaeda's agitated lieutenants would be less alert when the Americans flew in to bundle bin Laden off. Also, the detention would allow time to persuade either a U.S. lawyer or a foreign government to hand down criminal charges.

If CIA officers and their paid agents detained bin Laden for an eventual trial in the United States, they would be operating under the authority of Executive Order 12333, which allowed the CIA to aid the pursuit of international fugitives. The measure was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and renewed by successive presidents. A thick archive of Justice Department memorandums and court opinions upheld the right of American agents to abduct fugitives overseas and return them to U.S. courts in many instances.

At the same time, Executive Order 12333 banned assassination by the CIA or its agents. [See article at top of Page A17.] CIA officers met with their TRODPINT agents in Pakistan to emphasize that their plan to capture bin Laden and hold him in the Afghan cave could not turn into an assassination. "I want to reinforce this with you," one officer told the Afghans, as he later described the meeting in cables to Langley and Washington. "You are to capture him alive."

Physical and Political Risks

As they refined their kidnapping plans in the spring of 1998, the bin Laden unit at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center looked with rising interest at Tarnak Farm. This was a compound of perhaps 100 acres that lay isolated on a stretch of desert about three miles from the Kandahar airport. On some nights, bin Laden slept at Tarnak with one of his wives. He chatted on his satellite phone in this period and lived fairly openly, protected by bodyguards. The question arose: Could the CIA's tribal agents be equipped to raid bin Laden's house and take him from his bed?

Tarnak's main compound was encircled by a mud-brick wall about 10 feet high. Inside were about 80 modest one-story and two-story structures. Flat plains of sand and sagebrush extended for miles. Kandahar's crowded bazaars lay a half-hour drive away.

CIA officers based in Islamabad spent long hours with the TRODPINT team's leaders to devise a plan to attack Tarnak in the middle of the night. The Afghans had scouted and mapped Tarnak up close; the CIA had photographed it from satellites.

The agents organized an attack party of about 30 fighters. They identified a staging point where they would assemble all of their vehicles. They would drive to a secondary rallying point a few miles from Tarnak.

The main raiding party would walk across the desert at about 2 a.m. They had scouted a path that avoided minefields and had deep gullies to mask their approach. They would breach the outer wall by crawling through a drainage ditch on the airport side.

A second group planned to roll quietly toward the front gate in two vehicles. They would carry silenced pistols to take out two guards at the entrance. Meanwhile the other attackers would have burst into the several small huts where bin Laden's wives slept. When they found the tall, bearded Saudi, they would cuff him, drag him toward the gate, and load him into a Land Cruiser. Other vehicles back at the rally point would approach in sequence and they would all drive together to the provisioned cave about 30 miles away.

Satellite photography and reports from the ground indicated that there were dozens of women and children living at Tarnak. Langley asked for detailed explanations from members of the tribal team about how they planned to minimize harm to bystanders during their assault.

The CIA officers involved thought their agents were serious, semiprofessional fighters who were trying to cooperate as best they could. Yet "if you understood the Afghan mind-set and the context," recalled an officer involved, it was clear that in any raid the Afghans would probably fire indiscriminately at some point.

In Washington, Richard Clarke, the White House counterterrorism coordinator, drove out to Langley late in the spring of 1998 to meet with his CIA counterpart, O'Connell, who briefed him on the details of the Tarnak attack plan and how much it would cost. O'Connell also outlined the political risks, including the potential problem of civilian casualties.

Members of the White House counterterrorism team reacted skeptically. Their sense was that the TRODPINT agents were old anti-Soviet mujaheddin who had long since passed their peak fighting years and were probably milking the CIA for money while minimizing the risks they took on the ground. If they did go through with a Tarnak raid, some White House officials feared, women and children would die and bin Laden would probably escape. Such a massacre would undermine U.S. interests in the Muslim world and elsewhere.

The CIA's top leaders reviewed the proposed raid in June 1998. The discussion revealed similar doubts among senior officers in the Directorate of Operations. In the end, as CIA Director George J. Tenet described it to colleagues years later, the CIA's relevant chain of command -- Jack Downing, then chief of the Directorate of Operations, his deputy James Pavitt, O'Connell and Pillar -- all recommended against going forward with the Tarnak raid.

By then there was no enthusiasm for the plan in the Clinton White House, either. "Am I missing something? Aren't these people going to be mowed down on their way to the wall?" Clarke asked his White House and CIA colleagues sarcastically, one official recalled.

Tenet never formally presented the raid plan for Clinton's approval, according to several officials involved.

The decision was cabled to Islamabad. The tribal team's plans should be set aside, perhaps to be revived later. Meanwhile, the agents were encouraged to continue to look for opportunities to catch bin Laden away from Tarnak, where, among other things, an ambush attempt would carry relatively little risk of civilian deaths.

Some of the working-level CIA officers involved in the planning reacted bitterly to the decision. They believed the kidnapping plan could succeed.

Less than two months later, on Aug. 7, 1998, two teams of al Qaeda suicide bombers launched synchronized attacks against two U.S. embassies in Africa. In Nairobi, Kenya, 213 people died and 4,000 were injured. In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the toll was 11 dead and 85 wounded. Within months, the New York federal grand jury previously investigating bin Laden delivered an indictment of the Saudi for directing the strikes, among other alleged crimes.

At Langley's Counterterrorist Center, some CIA analysts and officers were devastated and angry as they watched the televised images of death and rescue in Africa. One of the bin Laden unit's analysts confronted Tenet. "You are responsible for those deaths," she said, "because you didn't act on the information we had, when we could have gotten him" through the Tarnak raid, one official involved recalled her saying. The woman was "crying and sobbing, and it was a very rough scene," the official said.

Tenet stood there and took it. He was a boisterous, emotional man, and he did not shrink from honest confrontation, some of his CIA colleagues felt. After the Africa attacks, Tenet redoubled his pressure on the bin Laden unit's covert campaign to find their target.

By then, however, bin Laden had dramatically increased his security. He discarded his traceable satellite phone and moved much more stealthily around Afghanistan.

For those who had worked on the Tarnak raid plan, the questions lingered. Why had the CIA's leaders turned the idea down?

Down in the trenches of a bureaucracy enveloped in secrecy, the resentments festered, amplified by rumors, office grievances and the intensity of the daily grind.

On Aug. 20, acting on intelligence reports of a scheduled meeting of bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders, Clinton ordered 75 cruise missiles launched from a submarine in the Arabian Sea against a network of jihadist training camps in eastern Afghanistan. The attack killed at least 21 Pakistani volunteers but missed bin Laden.

'Weekend Warriors'

By mid-1999, the sense both at the White House and in Tenet's seventh-floor suite at CIA headquarters in Langley was that the Counterterrorist Center had grown too dependent on the TRODPINT tribal agents. One of Tenet's aides referred to them derisively as "weekend warriors," middle-aged and now prosperous Afghan fighters with a few Kalashnikovs in their closets.

At the White House, among the few national security officials who knew of the agents' existence, the attitude evolved from "hopeful skepticism to outright mockery," as one official recalled it.

At one point the agents moved north to Kabul's outskirts and rented a farm as a base. They moved in and out of the Afghan capital to scout homes where bin Laden occasionally stayed. They developed a new set of plans in which they would strike a Kabul house where bin Laden slept, snatch the Saudi from his bed and retreat from the city in light trucks. The CIA supplied explosives to the agents because their plan called for them to blow up small bridges as they made their escape.

The agents never acted. Their rented farm was a working vineyard. William B. Milam, then U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, who was briefed on the operation, asked his CIA colleagues sarcastically, "So what are they waiting for -- the wine to ferment?"

To shake up the hunt, Tenet appointed a fast-track executive assistant from the seventh floor, known to his colleagues as Rich, to take charge of the bin Laden unit. Tenet also named Cofer Black, a longtime case officer in Africa who had tracked bin Laden in Sudan, as the Counterterrorist Center's new director. The bin Laden unit and its chief reported directly to Black; during the next two years they would work closely together.

When Black took over, the bin Laden unit had about 25 professionals. Most of them were women, and two-thirds had backgrounds as analysts. They called themselves "the Manson Family," after the crazed convicted murderer Charles Manson, because they had acquired a reputation within the CIA for wild alarmism about the rising al Qaeda threat.

Their reports described over and over bin Laden's specific, open threats to inflict mass casualties against Americans. They could not understand why no one else seemed to take the threat as seriously as they did. They pleaded with colleagues that bin Laden was not like the old leftist, theatrical terrorists of the 1970s and 1980s who wanted, in terrorism expert Brian Jenkins's famous maxim, "a lot of people watching but not a lot of people dead." Bin Laden wanted many American civilians to die, they warned. They could be dismissive of colleagues who did not share their sense of urgency.

"The rest of the CIA and the intelligence community looked on our efforts as eccentric and at times fanatic," recalled a former chief of the bin Laden unit. "It was a cult," agreed a U.S. official who dealt with them. "Jonestown," said another person involved, asked to sum up the unit's atmosphere. "I outlawed Kool-Aid."

Working with the Islamabad station, the bin Laden unit pushed for the recruitment of agents who could operate or travel in Afghanistan.

Some of those were informal sources, helping the CIA because of their political opposition to the Taliban. Others were recruited onto the CIA's payroll. Case officers working the Afghan borderlands began to recruit a few Taliban military leaders, including a brigade-level commander in eastern Afghanistan. One young case officer operating from Islamabad recruited six or seven Taliban commanders operating in the eastern region. Yet none of the recruited agents was close to bin Laden. The CIA could not recruit a single agent inside the core al Qaeda terrorist leadership.

Black knew that the CIA was in trouble "without penetrations" of bin Laden's organization, as a classified Counterterrorist Center briefing to Clinton's national security aides put it late in 1999. "While we need to disrupt [terrorist] operations . . . we need also to recruit sources," even though "recruiting terrorist sources is difficult."

The CIA had the best agent coverage around Kandahar. Even so, its classified tracking reports from multiple sources always seemed a day or two behind bin Laden's movements. The lack of a source in al Qaeda's inner circle made forecasting the Saudi's hour-to-hour itinerary impossible. Moreover, Kandahar was the Taliban's military stronghold. The Taliban had provided safe haven to bin Laden in Afghanistan in exchange for money and al Qaeda's troops. Even if the CIA pinpointed bin Laden downtown, there was no easy way to organize a capture operation; the attacking force would face strong opposition from Taliban units.

In the summer of 1999, a truck bomb detonated outside the Kandahar house of Taliban leader Mohammad Omar. Afterward, bin Laden used his wealth to build new compounds for the Taliban leader. In Omar's home province of Uruzgan, bin Laden built a new training complex for foreign al Qaeda volunteers.

The CIA ordered satellite imagery and agent reports to document this camp. Officers hoped bin Laden might wander in for an inspection. At one point a team of four or five Afghan agents from the original TRODPINT group approached the camp at night. Al Qaeda guards opened fire and wounded one of them, they reported.

Kabul was a relatively easy place to spy. The Afghan capital was a sprawling and ethnically diverse city, a place of strangers and travelers. At one point the CIA believed bin Laden had two wives in Kabul. He would visit their houses periodically. The Islamabad station recruited an Afghan who worked as a security guard at one of the Kabul houses bin Laden used. But the agent was so far down the al Qaeda information chain that he never knew when bin Laden was going to turn up. He was summoned to duty just as the Saudi's vehicles rolled in.

Traveling 'the Circuit'

Bin Laden's travels within Afghanistan followed a somewhat predictable path. He would often ride west on the Ring Road from Kandahar, then loop north and east through Ghowr province. The CIA mapped guesthouses in obscure Ghowr, one of Afghanistan's most isolated and impoverished regions. From there the Saudi usually moved east to Kabul and then sometimes on to Jalalabad before turning south again toward Kandahar.

Americans who studied this track called it "the circuit." At the White House, counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke tried to develop logarithmic formulas that attempted to predict where bin Laden was likely to move next when he was at any given point.

The CIA's bin Laden unit sought to trap bin Laden out of "KKJ," an insider's abbreviation for the densely populated cities of Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad. They hoped to catch him in lightly populated rural areas. Yet they struggled to find a convincing plan.

They knew that on the ground in Afghanistan by the summer of 1999, there was only one experienced, proven guerrilla leader waging war and collecting intelligence day in and day out against the Taliban, bin Laden and their radical Islamic allies. This was the legendary Tajik guerrilla leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, a man with a long and mutually frustrating history with the CIA.

From 1997 onward, Massoud's Northern Alliance militia forces waged a brutal, existential war against the Taliban north of Kabul, often battling directly against bin Laden's Arab, Chechen and Pakistani volunteers. They knew bin Laden not only as a preacher, financier and terrorist planner, but sometimes as a military field commander who wandered near their battle lines.

There were serious doubts inside Clinton's cabinet about the history of drug trafficking and human rights violations among Massoud's Northern Alliance forces. But at the CIA, in the Counterterrorist Center, analysts and officers in the bin Laden unit knew one thing for certain: Massoud was the enemy of their enemy.

A deeper, more active, more lethal alliance with Massoud, these CIA officers argued, offered by far the best chance to capture or kill bin Laden before he struck again.

Staff writer Griff Witte contributed to this report.

NEXT: The CIA and Massoud.

February 22, 2004 at 11:44 PM in Middle East | Permalink | TrackBack (14) | Top of page | Blog Home

Ghost Wars 2: Flawed Ally Was Hunt's Best Hope

Flawed Ally Was Hunt's Best Hope (washingtonpost.com)

Afghan Guerrilla, U.S. Shared Enemy
By Steve Coll
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 23, 2004; Page A01
Second of two articles.
A team of CIA operators from the agency's Counterterrorist Center flew to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in October 1999. Code-named JAWBREAKER-5, the group was led by the chief of the center's Osama bin Laden unit, known to his colleagues as Rich, a veteran of CIA postings in Algiers and elsewhere in the developing world.

They went to a secluded airfield, boarded an old Soviet-made Mi-17 transport helicopter, and swooped toward the jagged, snow-draped peaks of northern Afghanistan.

Their aim was to revive secret intelligence and combat operations against bin Laden in partnership with guerrilla commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, a ragged coalition of Afghan fighters, many of them veterans of the war against the Soviets. Massoud's hardened militiamen clung to their positions in the stark Panjshir Valley.

"We have a common enemy," the CIA team leader told Massoud, according to participants, referring to bin Laden. "Let's work together."

Massoud remained Afghanistan's most formidable military commander. A sinewy man with penetrating dark eyes, he had become a charismatic, popular leader, especially in northeastern Afghanistan. There he had fought and negotiated with equal imagination during the 1980s, punishing and frustrating Soviet occupation forces. He was an impressive tactician, an attentive student of Mao and other guerrilla leaders.

He was above all an independent man. He surrounded himself with books. He prayed piously, read Persian poetry and studied Islamic theology. During the mid-1990s his militia forces had at times engaged in horrendous massacres, however. American and British drug enforcement officials continued to accuse his men of opium and heroin smuggling.

By 1999, Massoud was seen by some at the Pentagon and inside the Clinton Cabinet as a spent force commanding bands of thugs. An inner circle of the Cabinet with access to the most closely guarded secrets was sharply divided over whether the United States should deepen its partnership with him. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Henry H. "Hugh" Shelton -- reflecting the views of professional analysts in their departments -- argued that Massoud's alliance was tainted and in decline.

But at the CIA, especially inside the Counterterrorist Center, career officers passionately described Massoud by 1999 as the United States' last, best hope to capture or kill bin Laden in Afghanistan before his al Qaeda network claimed more American lives. Massoud might be a flawed ally, they declared, but bin Laden was by far the greater danger.

This article, detailing the CIA's pursuit of bin Laden from 1999 to 2001, is based on several dozen interviews with participants and officials in the United States, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, as well as documents, private records and memoirs about the CIA covert action program in Afghanistan.

A Deal Is Made

Frightened by swelling intelligence reports warning that al Qaeda planned new terrorist strikes, President Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, and his counterterrorism director, Richard Clarke, approved the JAWBREAKER-5 mission. They were uneasy about Massoud but said they were ready to try anything within reason that might lead to bin Laden's capture or death.

Massoud was at war across northern Afghanistan against the Taliban, whose puritan mullahs had allied themselves with bin Laden's al Qaeda fighters in a drive to control all Afghan territory and destroy Massoud's coalition. Massoud's men often maneuvered in battle against bin Laden's brigade of Arab volunteers, as well as al Qaeda-sponsored Pakistani volunteers and Chechen fighters. Ultimately, Cofer Black, then director of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, hoped Massoud would capture bin Laden during one of these engagements and either kill him or hand him over for trial.

In dimly lit Panjshir Valley safe houses in October 1999, Massoud told the JAWBREAKER-5 team that he was willing to deepen his partnership with the CIA, but he was explicit about his limitations. Bin Laden spent most of his time near the southern city of Kandahar, in the eastern Afghan mountains, far from where Massoud's forces operated. Occasionally bin Laden visited Jalalabad or Kabul, closer to the Northern Alliance's lines. In these areas Massoud's intelligence service had active agents, and perhaps they could develop more sources.

Massoud also told the CIA delegation that U.S. policy toward bin Laden and Afghanistan was doomed to fail. The Americans directed all of their efforts against bin Laden and a handful of his senior aides, but they failed to see the larger context in which al Qaeda thrived. What about the Taliban? What about the Taliban's supporters in Pakistani intelligence? What about its financiers in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates?

"Even if we succeed in what you are asking for," Massoud told the CIA delegation, his aide and interpreter Abdullah recalled, "that will not solve the bigger problem that is growing."

The CIA officers told Massoud they agreed with his critique, but they had their orders. The U.S. government rejected a military confrontation with the Taliban or direct support for any armed factions in the broader Afghan war. Instead, U.S. policy focused on capturing bin Laden and his lieutenants for criminal trial or killing them in the course of an arrest attempt. If Massoud helped with this narrow mission, the CIA officers argued, perhaps it would lead to wider political support or development aid in the future.

"What was irritating was that in this whole tragedy, in this whole chaotic situation," recalled one of Massoud's intelligence aides who worked closely with the CIA during this period, "they were talking about this very small piece of it: bin Laden. And if you were on our side, it would have been very difficult for you to accept that this was the problem. For us it was an element of the problem but not the problem."

Still, Massoud and his aides agreed they had nothing to lose by helping the CIA. "First of all, it was an effort against a common enemy," recalled Abdullah. "Second, we had the hope that it would get the U.S. to know better about the situation in Afghanistan."

Cautioned by History

Massoud had a long and checkered history with the CIA. Among those with the proper security clearances, the accusations and stories of perfidy had become legend.

The CIA first sent Massoud aid in 1984. But their relations were undermined by the CIA's heavy dependence on Pakistan during the war against the Soviets. The Pakistani intelligence service despised Massoud because he had waged a long and brutal campaign against Pakistan's main Islamic radical client, the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. As the war against the Soviets ended, Pakistani intelligence sought to exclude Massoud from the victory, and the CIA mainly went along. But under pressure from the State Department and members of Congress, the agency eventually reopened its private channels to Massoud.

In 1990 the CIA's secret relationship with Massoud soured because of a dispute over a $500,000 payment. Gary Schroen, a CIA officer then working from Islamabad, Pakistan, had delivered the cash to Massoud's brother in exchange for assurances that Massoud would attack Afghan communist forces along a key artery, the Salang Highway. But Massoud's forces never moved, so far as the CIA could tell. Schroen and other officers believed they had been ripped off for half a million dollars.

Schroen, who has now agreed to be publicly identified, renewed contact with Massoud during a solo visit to Kabul in September 1996. By then bin Laden had found sanctuary in Afghanistan, and the CIA sought allies to watch and disrupt al Qaeda. Schroen and Massoud settled their old dispute. (Massoud claimed he had never received the $500,000.) The guerrilla leader agreed to cooperate on a secret CIA program to repurchase Stinger antiaircraft missiles. He sold the agency eight missiles he still possessed and began to talk sporadically with Langley about intelligence operations against bin Laden.

Schroen met Massoud again in the spring of 1997 at his new headquarters in Taloqan, in Afghanistan's far north. By then, the Taliban had stormed into Kabul and seized the capital as Massoud withdrew. Looking to win American favor for his prolonged war against the Taliban and its foreign Islamic militant allies, Massoud began to buy up Stingers across the north for the CIA. He also agreed to notify the agency if he got a line on bin Laden's whereabouts.

A series of clandestine CIA teams carrying electronic intercept equipment and relatively small amounts of cash -- up to $250,000 per visit -- began to visit Massoud in the Panjshir Valley. The first formal group, code-named NALT-1, flew on one of Massoud's helicopters from Dushanbe to the Panjshir Valley late in 1997.

Three other teams had gone in by the summer of 1999. The electronic intercept equipment they delivered allowed Massoud to monitor Taliban battlefield radio transmissions. In exchange the CIA officers asked Massoud to let them know immediately if his men ever heard accounts on the Taliban radios indicating that bin Laden or his top lieutenants were on the move in a particular sector.

Given the doubts about Massoud inside the Clinton administration, the CIA's push to deepen its partnership with him faced close scrutiny at the White House. The National Security Council's intelligence policy and legal offices drafted formal, binding guidance.

Massoud was at war with the Taliban. The United States had declared a policy of official neutrality toward that war as a co-sponsor of all-party peace talks, which dragged on inconclusively. Clinton enacted economic sanctions against the Taliban but was unwilling to fund or arm Massoud. The White House sought to ensure that the CIA's counterterrorism mission in the Panjshir Valley concentrated only on bin Laden. The administration did not want the CIA to use its intelligence-collection and counterterrorism partnership with Massoud for a secret, undeclared war against the Taliban.

Clinton told his top national security aides that he was prepared to work with Massoud on intelligence operations, despite what he saw as a record of brutality, but he was not ready to arm the Northern Alliance, participants recalled. The Pentagon and the intelligence community both provided secret analysis to Clinton arguing that Massoud had all the weapons he needed from other suppliers, the president recounted later to colleagues. In any event, Clinton recalled, Massoud would never be able to defeat the Taliban or govern Afghanistan from Kabul.

At the White House, some national security aides briefed on the CIA's missions feared that, as with the Salang Highway operation in 1990, Massoud would just take the CIA's cash and sit on his hands.

In the end, the National Security Council approved written guidance to authorize intelligence cooperation with Massoud. But the highly classified documents made clear that the CIA could provide no equipment or assistance that would, as several officials recalled its thrust, "fundamentally alter the Afghan battlefield."

Afghans Seize the Moment

A few months after the JAWBREAKER-5 team choppered out, the CIA's Counterterrorist Center picked up intelligence that bin Laden had arrived in Derunta Camp, in a jagged valley near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.

It was a typical bin Laden facility: crude, mainly dirt and rocks, with a few modest buildings protected by ridges. Massoud's sources reported that no Afghans were permitted in Derunta, only Arabs. Testimony from al Qaeda defectors and interrogation of Arab jihadists showed that Derunta was a graduate school for elite recruits. The Defense Intelligence Agency had relayed reports that bin Laden's aides might be developing chemical weapons or poisons there. The White House's Counterterrorism Security Group, led by Richard Clarke, routed satellites above the camps for surveillance.

The CIA recruited Afghan agents who traveled or lived in the region, an area of heavy smuggling and trade and relatively weak Taliban control. Through their liaison in the Panjshir, CIA officers pushed intelligence-collection equipment to Massoud's southern lines, near Jalalabad. Besides radio intercepts, the technology included an optical device, derived from technology used by offshore spy planes, that could produce photographic images from a distance of more than 10 miles. Massoud's men, with help from CIA officers, set up an overlook above Derunta and tried to watch the place.

The Counterterrorist Center's bin Laden unit relayed a report to Massoud that bin Laden had arrived in Derunta. Massoud ordered a mission. He rounded up "a bunch of mules," as a U.S. official who was involved later put it, and loaded them up with Soviet-designed Katyusha rockets. He dispatched this small commando team toward the hills above Derunta.

After the team was on its way, Massoud reported his plan to Langley: He was going to batter bin Laden's camp with rocket fire.

The CIA's lawyers convulsed in alarm. The White House legal rules for liaison with Massoud had not addressed such pure military operations against bin Laden. The Massoud partnership was supposed to be about intelligence collection. Now the CIA had, in effect, provided intelligence for a rocket attack on Derunta. The CIA was legally complicit in Massoud's operation, the lawyers feared, and the agency had no authority to be involved.

The bin Laden unit shot a message to the Panjshir: You've got to recall the mission.

Massoud's aides replied, in effect, as a U.S. official involved recalled it: "What do you think this is, the 82nd Airborne? We're on mules. They're gone." Massoud's team had no radios. They were walking to the launch site. They would fire their rockets, turn around and walk back.

Langley's officers waited nervously. Some of them muttered sarcastically about the absurd intersections of U.S. law and secret war they were expected to manage. Massoud's aides eventually reported back that they had, in fact, shelled Derunta. But the CIA could pick up no independent confirmation of the attack or its consequences. The lawyers relaxed and the incident passed, unpublicized.

Taking On the Taliban

During 2000 Massoud planned an expanding military campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda. His strategy was to recruit allies such as the guerrilla leaders Ismail Khan and Abdurrashid Dostum and seed them as pockets of rebellion against Taliban rule in northern and western Afghanistan, where the Taliban was weakest. As these rebel pockets emerged and stabilized, Massoud explained, he would drive toward them with his more formal armored militia, trying to link up on roadways, choking off Taliban-ruled cities and towns.

Once he had more solid footing in the north, Massoud planned to pursue the same strategy in the Taliban heartland in the south. He hoped to aid ethnic Pashtun rebels such as Hamid Karzai, a former Afghan deputy foreign minister from a prominent royal tribal family who had been forced into exile in Pakistan. By 1999 Karzai had turned against the Taliban and wanted to lead a rebellion against the militia in its southern homeland around Kandahar. Massoud dispatched aides to meet with Karzai and develop these ideas.

In private talks in person and by satellite telephone, Karzai told Massoud he was ready to slip inside Afghanistan and fight. "Don't move into Kandahar," Massoud told him, Karzai later recalled. "You must go to a place where you can hold your base." Massoud invited Karzai to the north. "He was very wise," Karzai recalled. "I was sort of pushy and reckless."

A Flying Miracle

To pursue his plans in a serious way, Massoud needed helicopters, trucks and other vehicles. Some CIA officers working with Massoud wanted to help him by supplying the mobile equipment, cash, training and weapons he would need to expand his war against the Taliban and al Qaeda. Yet as 2000 passed, the CIA struggled to maintain the basics of its intelligence liaison with Massoud.

It was difficult and risky for the agency's officers to reach the Panjshir Valley. The only practical route was through Tajikistan. From there CIA teams usually took one of the few rusting, patched-together Mi-17 transport helicopters the Northern Alliance managed to keep in the air. On one trip, the Taliban scrambled MiG-21 jets in an effort to shoot down Massoud's helicopter. If successful, the militia would have discovered American corpses in the wreckage.

Even on the best days, the choppers would shake and rattle and the cabin would fill with the smell of fuel. The overland routes were no better. When a CIA team drove in from Dushanbe, one of its vehicles flipped over and a veteran officer dislocated his shoulder.

These reports accumulated on the desk of Deputy Director of Operations James Pavitt, who had overall responsibility for CIA espionage. Pavitt was a blue-eyed, white-haired former case officer and station chief who had served in Europe during the Cold War. Like Director George J. Tenet, who had appointed him, he was a spy manager with a feel for politics. Pavitt began to ask why CIA officers were taking such huge physical risks to work with Massoud. Were they getting enough to justify the possibility of death or injury?

Those opposed to the Panjshir missions argued, as one official recalled it, "You're sending people to their deaths."

The agency sent out a team of mechanics knowledgeable about Russian helicopters. When Massoud's men opened up one of the Mi-17s, the mechanics were stunned: They had patched an engine originally made for a Hind attack helicopter into the bay of the Mi-17 transport. It was a flying miracle.

Afterward Tenet signed off on a compromise: The CIA would secretly buy its own airworthy Mi-17 helicopter, maintain it properly in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and use CIA pilots to fly clandestine teams into the Panjshir.

But the helicopter issue was a symptom of a larger problem. By the late summer of 2000, the CIA's liaison with Massoud was fraying on both sides.

Frustrated by daunting geography and unable to win support for Massoud in Cabinet debates, the CIA's officers felt stifled. For their part, Massoud's aides had hoped their work with the agency would lead to clearer recognition of Afghanistan's plight in Washington and perhaps covert military aid. They could see no evidence that this was happening.

Instead they were badgered repeatedly about mounting a "Hollywood operation," as one of Massoud's intelligence aides put it, to capture bin Laden alive. The aide likened the mission urged on them by the CIA to a game of chess in which they would have to capture the king without touching any other piece on the board.

Massoud's men asked their CIA counterparts, as this intelligence aide recalled it: "Is there any policy in the government of the American states to help Afghanistan if the people of Afghanistan help you get rid of your most wanted man?"

Disappointments for Massoud

After the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000, in which 17 sailors were killed at Aden, Yemen, the CIA's Panjshir teams tried to revive their plan to supply Massoud with more extensive and more lethal aid. CIA officers sat down at Langley in November and drew up a specific list of what Massoud needed. In addition to more cash -- to bribe commanders and to counteract a Taliban treasury swollen with Arab money -- Massoud needed trucks, helicopters, light arms, ammunition, uniforms, food and maybe some mortars and artillery. He did not need combat aircraft. Tanks were not a priority.

The list of covert supplies they proposed for Massoud would cost between $50 million and $150 million, depending on how aggressive the White House wanted to be.

Under the plan, the CIA would establish a permanent base with Massoud in the Panjshir Valley. Rich, the bin Laden unit chief at the Counterterrorist Center, argued that the agency's officers had to be down around the campfire constantly with Massoud's men.

The CIA wanted to overcome the confusion and mutual mistrust that had developed with Massoud over operations designed to capture or kill bin Laden. The plan envisioned that CIA officers would go directly into action alongside the Northern Alliance if they developed strong intelligence about bin Laden's whereabouts. There would be no more embarrassments like the mission against Derunta.

In the late autumn, Clarke sent a memo outlining the CIA's proposal to Berger, Clinton's national security adviser. But they were worse than lame ducks now at the White House. The November presidential election had deadlocked; White House aides were enduring the strangest post-election transition in a century just as the CIA's paper landed on their desks.

The word went back to the Counterterrorist Center: There would be no new covert action program for Massoud.

As the Bush administration took office early in 2001, Massoud retained a Washington lobbyist. He wrote a letter to Vice President Cheney urging the new administration to reexamine its policy toward Afghanistan. He told his advisers he knew he could not defeat the Taliban on the battlefield as long as the ruling militia was funded by bin Laden and reinforced from Pakistan. He sought to build up a new political and military coalition within Afghanistan to squeeze the Taliban and break its grip on ordinary Afghans. For this, sooner or later, he told visitors, he would require the support of the United States.

His CIA liaison had slackened, but his intelligence aides still spoke and exchanged messages frequently with Langley. That spring they passed word that Massoud had been invited to France to address the European Parliament.

Gary Schroen and Rich flew to Paris to meet with Massoud. They wanted to reassure him that even though the pace of their visits had slowed because of the policy gridlock in Washington, the CIA still intended to keep up its regular installment payments of several hundred thousand dollars as part of their intelligence-sharing arrangements. They also wanted to know how Massoud felt about his military position.

Massoud told them that he thought he could defend his lines in the northeast of Afghanistan, but that was about all. The United States had to do something, Massoud told the CIA officers quietly, or eventually he was going to crumble.

"If President Bush doesn't help us," Massoud told reporters in Strasbourg a few days later, "then these terrorists will damage the United States and Europe very soon{ndash}and it will be too late."

A Fatal Blow

Early in September 2001, Massoud's intelligence service transmitted a routine classified report to the CIA's Counterterrorist Center about two Arab television journalists who had crossed Northern Alliance lines from Kabul.

The intelligence-sharing between Massoud and the CIA concentrated mainly on Arabs and foreigners in Afghanistan. In this case officers in the bin Laden unit at the Counterterrorist Center took note of the movement of the two Arab journalists. It did not seem of exceptional interest.

Members of the Bush Cabinet met at the White House on Sept. 4. Before them was a draft copy of a National Security Presidential Directive, a classified memo outlining a new U.S. policy toward al Qaeda, Afghanistan and Massoud.

It had been many months in the drafting. The Bush administration's senior national security team had not begun to focus on al Qaeda until April, about three months after taking office. They did not forge a policy approach until July. Then they took still more weeks to schedule a meeting to ratify their plans.

Among other things, the draft document revived almost in its entirety the CIA plan to aid Massoud that had been forwarded to the lame-duck Clinton White House -- and rejected -- nine months earlier. The stated goal of the draft was to eliminate bin Laden and his organization. The plan called for the CIA to supply Massoud with a large but undetermined sum for covert action to support his war against the Taliban, as well as trucks, uniforms, ammunition, mortars, helicopters and other equipment. The Bush Cabinet approved this part of the draft document.

Other aspects of the Bush administration's al Qaeda policy, such as its approach to the use of armed Predator surveillance drones for the hunt, remained unresolved after the Sept. 4 debate. But on Massoud, the CIA was told that it could at least start the paperwork for a new covert policy -- the first in a decade that sought to influence the course of the Afghan war.

In the Panjshir Valley, unaware of these developments, Massoud read Persian poetry in his bungalow in the early hours of Sept. 9. Later that morning he finally decided to grant an interview to the two Arab journalists visiting from Kabul.

As one of them set up a television camera, the other read aloud a list of questions he intended to ask. About half of them concerned bin Laden.

A bomb secretly packed in the television equipment ripped the cameraman's body apart. It shattered the room's windows, seared the walls in flame and tore Massoud's chest with shrapnel.

Hours later, after Massoud had been evacuated to Tajikistan, his intelligence aide Amrullah Saleh called the CIA's Counterterrorist Center. He spoke to Rich, the bin Laden unit chief. Saleh was sobbing and heaving between sentences as he explained what had happened.

"Where's Massoud?" the CIA officer asked.

"He's in the refrigerator," said Saleh, searching for the English word for morgue.

Massoud was dead, but members of his inner circle had barely absorbed the news. They were all in shock. They were also trying to strategize in a hurry. They had already put out a false story claiming that Massoud had only been wounded. Meanwhile, Saleh told the Counterterrorist Center, the suddenly leaderless Northern Alliance needed the CIA's help as it prepared to confront al Qaeda and the Taliban.

On the morning of Sept. 10, the CIA's daily classified briefings to Bush, his Cabinet and other policymakers reported on Massoud's death and analyzed the consequences for the United States' covert war against al Qaeda.

Officers in the Counterterrorist Center, still hopeful that they could maintain a foothold in northern Afghanistan to attack bin Laden, called frantically around Washington to find a way to aid the rump Northern Alliance before it was eliminated.

Massoud's advisers and lobbyists, playing for time, tried to promote speculation that Massoud might still be alive. But privately, as Sept. 10 wore on, phone call by phone call, many of the Afghans closest to the commander began to learn that he was gone.

Karzai, who was in Pakistan when his brother reached him, had spoken to Massoud a few days earlier. He was considering a plan to fly into Massoud's territory, work his way south and open an armed rebellion against the Taliban -- with or without U.S. support.

Karzai's brother said it was confirmed: Ahmed Shah Massoud was dead.

Karzai reacted in a single, brief sentence, as his brother recalled it: "What an unlucky country."

Staff writer Griff Witte contributed to this report.

� 2004 The Washington Post Company

February 22, 2004 at 10:58 PM in CIA | Permalink | TrackBack (33) | Top of page | Blog Home

Pub crawl nearly sank Pegasus Bridge raid

Telegraph | News | Pub crawl nearly sank Pegasus Bridge raid

(Filed: 23/02/2004)

Many of the paratroopers who captured two vital bridges on D-Day had been arrested during a night out just before the operation. Michael Smith reports
The British attack on Pegasus Bridge - one of D-Day's most audacious military operations - was almost jeopardised by partying soldiers.

Col David Wood MBE, the last surviving officer of the assault, said a decision to pay the British paratroopers the day before the attack so they could have a last night out almost led to disaster.

The attack on the bridge, over the Caen Canal west of Ranville, took place at 0200 on June 6, 1944, several hours before the D-Day landings. It was codenamed Pegasus after the British airborne troops' winged insignia.

A single company of the 2nd Battalion the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, part of the 6th Airborne Brigade, landed near the bridge in six gliders.

Their mission was to prevent German panzer divisions using the bridges, the only routes across the Orne and the Caen Canal, to sweep down from the Pas de Calais to repel the Allied invasion.

They surprised the German troops guarding the Pegasus Bridge and the nearby bridge over the River Orne, codenamed Horsa, capturing both before the enemy troops could destroy them.

The mission required split-second timing and the troops prepared repeatedly, mounting three days of round-the-clock assaults on two similar bridges on the River Exe and the Exeter Canal in Devon.

At the end of the exhausting exercises, and with D-Day only days away, their commanders decided they needed to be allowed to let their hair down briefly.

They were given an advance of their pay and allowed to go out on the town in Exeter, hitting the city's public houses and getting very drunk whereupon some became involved in fights and a number of windows were broken.

Many of the troops were arrested and detained by police, threatening to leave the force too short of men to carry out its mission.

Col Wood, who will lead 15 veterans to France for the 60th anniversary of the Normandy raid in June, said: "The men were absolutely sick of the sight of those practice bridges.

"Night and day they had been put through a seemingly endless and complicated series of rehearsals, attacking both bridges from different directions using a variety of permutations.

"Finally, they found themselves let loose on Exeter. They were paid out early and they all went into the city. There was pub crawling, some drank too much and damage was done to more than one window."

But Major John Howard, the company commander, was himself a former police officer, and he made a personal approach to the superintendent in charge of the Exeter police, securing the release of his men. "He got everyone back to camp without facing charges," said Col Wood, who was then a lieutenant in charge of one of the company's platoons.

"I as duty officer had to go into Exeter to collect the men. The people of Exeter were really very good about it."

Col Wood, 81, of Cullompton, Devon, said the 180 men, who included a party of Royal Engineers, ensured that the Allies' eastern flank was secure from attack.

When the German counter-attack came, they knocked out an enemy tank causing its ammunition to go up in a massive explosion. This led British paratroopers advancing on the bridges to believe a major battle was under way.

The Pegasus and Horsa raids were later dramatised in the epic war film The Longest Day, starring John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Sean Connery and Richard Burton.

Col Wood, the president of the Exeter branch of the Normandy Veterans Association, played down his own role in the raids, saying he remembers little of what happened.

"Unfortunately I was hit in the leg by three rounds from a German Schmeiser machine gun," he said. "It was rather a nuisance but by then the job was done.

"All that advance training in Exeter almost drove us mad. Yet it proved absolutely vital because it ensured we could adapt to any circumstance.

"One of the gliders landed seven miles away from the bridges. Despite this we still managed to take control inside 10 minutes."

February 22, 2004 at 10:03 PM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (31) | Top of page | Blog Home

'Execution kidnap' fuels fears over IRA ceasefire

Telegraph | News | 'Execution kidnap' fuels fears over IRA ceasefire

By Thomas Harding, Ireland Correspondent
(Filed: 23/02/2004)

The violent abduction of a dissident republican has severely damaged the chances of restoring power sharing in Northern Ireland, political sources said yesterday.

While the Government believes that a return to full-scale IRA violence is unlikely, there is an increasing worry that the paramilitary ceasefires are faltering as politicians fail to make progress to restore the collapsed Stormont assembly.

The IRA is suspected of kidnapping Bobby Tohill, an alleged member of the Real IRA, to take him to South Armagh for torture and execution because of his criticism of the Provisionals.

He needed 98 stitches after being beaten by four men armed with police batons who then sprayed Mr Tohill with CS gas before bundling him into a car.

The vehicle was rammed by a police car as it headed out of central Belfast and four men were arrested on Friday night. Another two were arrested yesterday. Hugh Orde, the Chief Constable, publicly blamed the Provisional IRA for the kidnapping that he said was part of numerous punishment beatings by the terror group.

The latest kidnapping puts considerable pressure on the political process, with trust between the republicans and unionists being further undermined.

Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists, Northern Ireland's biggest party, won last year's election on a mandate of not sharing power with Sinn Fein while its military wing, the IRA, remained active.

Ian Paisley Jnr said the arrests "vindicated our stance that we cannot go into government with Sinn Fein while the IRA exists".

There was also strong condemnation from the Irish Republic where Sinn Fein hopes to build a substantial political base in coming local and European elections.

Michael McDowell, the justice minister, accused Sinn Fein of "stomach-churning hypocrisy" by discussing human rights while the IRA was still "breaking people's legs when it suits them".

The IRA's refusal to cease all paramilitary activity and disarm has dogged the peace negotiations since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

David Trimble's Ulster Unionist Party paid the price of agreeing to sharing government with Sinn Fein after it was beaten in last year's election, mainly as a result of the IRA's failure to disband.

A Downing Street source said IRA activity had to end "otherwise the whole process won't work".

Mr Tohill, 44, who has a conviction for murdering a part-time soldier, told a Sunday newspaper that the IRA "nutting squad" told him "that they would take me across the border, torture me and then execute me".

Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, suggested that it was not proven that the IRA was involved and reiterated his party's "commitment to peaceful and democratic politics".

February 22, 2004 at 09:59 PM in Ireland | Permalink | TrackBack (60) | Top of page | Blog Home

MI5 recruitment drive will focus on Asians

News

By Kim Sengupta
23 February 2004
The counter-intelligence agency MI5 is to focus on Britain's Asian community as it recruits 1,000 more staff in a bid to combat Islamic terrorism.
But MI5 chiefs acknowledge that they face intense competition from private companies and other government agencies for Arabic speakers. Last year 9 per cent of MI5's 250 recruits came from ethnic minorities.

The service's starting salary for graduates is between �20,100 and �21,000, with extra for skills such as languages. Private security firms and financial concerns with Middle Eastern interests can offer higher salaries.

Recruits with ethnic backgrounds are also wanted by MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service), the listening post GCHQ, and the armed forces.

MI5 and MI6 need not only Arabic speakers but also those with a command of specific dialects. Terror groups are said to have become increasingly active in rooting out infiltration by government agents.

As well as linguists for G branch, which deals with international terrorism, the new recruits are likely to be earmarked for A4, the surveillance section, and T branch, which provides security.

The director general of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, warned the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, in November that her service was having difficulty coping with the rise in Islamic terrorism as a result of inadequate resources.

The increase in MI5's numbers - due to be announced by Mr Blunkett on Wednesday - will bring staffing up to 3,000, around the level it was at during the Second World War.

Mr Blunkett will tell MPs that Britain remains in a state of emergency because of the continuing threat of attacks, including suicide bombings, from al-Qa'ida. He is also expected to announce plans for new laws to counter terrorism, including the holding of some trials in secret, lowering the burden of proof for the prosecution to obtain convictions and allowing the use in court of evidence obtained from telephone tapping.

The annual budget for MI5 is secret, but is believed to be �200m. MI6 is said to account for �250m and GCHQ �450m.

Patrick Mercer MP, the Conservative homeland security spokesman, welcomed the announcement, but asked: "Why on earth has it taken them so long? We have been asking for extra resources for the intelligence agencies for over two years."

February 22, 2004 at 07:57 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (224) | Top of page | Blog Home

February 21, 2004

Police accuse IRA of kidnap

Times Online - Newspaper Edition

THE IRA has been accused of defying the Northern Ireland peace agreement by kidnapping and assaulting a dissident republican and being behind a spate of punishment beatings, writes Chris Ryder.
Hugh Orde, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, yesterday blamed the terrorist group for what he called a “serious crime” uncovered by police on Friday.

Shortly after 6pm, Bobby Tohill, 44, a former republican prisoner, was kidnapped from a bar in Belfast city centre.

Tohill was found when two police officers stopped a blue van in the city centre. Four men were arrested while Tohill was taken to hospital suffering from what police said were �serious injuries�. He later discharged himself.

At a conference on policing in Belfast yesterday Orde said: �The arrested people are connected to the Provisional IRA and we have uncovered what we say is a serious crime. What we�re talking about is kidnapping and abduction.

�I�m also clear, as we have said recently, that the punishment beatings that go on in republican areas are also carried out by the Provisional IRA. A number of operations are going on in defiance of the Belfast agreement.�

February 21, 2004 at 11:41 PM in Ireland | Permalink | TrackBack (44) | Top of page | Blog Home

MI5 recruits 1,000 spies in terror drive

Times Online - Sunday Times

David Leppard

MI5 is to recruit 1,000 extra spies to bolster Britain’s defences against the growing threat of Islamic terrorism.
The move, to be announced this week by David Blunkett, the home secretary, will boost the agency’s staff to 3,000. They will be deployed to improve the surveillance of terrorist suspects and the protection of high-profile targets.

Security officials believe that cells of Islamic militants are still operating in Britain. Last November Eliza Manningham-Buller, the director-general of MI5, warned Blunkett that her agency did not have the resources to cope with the existing terrorist threat.

The expansion of MI5, disclosed by a senior home office official, will be announced in the Commons on Wednesday. Blunkett will say Britain remains in a state of national emergency because of the continued threat from suicide terrorists working under Al-Qaeda.

Although MI5�s budget remains secret, it is thought to have accounted for some �200m of the estimated �1 billion spent on the three main intelligence agencies last year. The lion�s share goes to GCHQ, the government�s eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, with about �250m for MI6, the overseas intelligence service.

Nearly 60% of MI5�s budget is devoted to counterterrorism. The rest is dedicated to monitoring spies from hostile intelligence agencies and to countering nuclear, chemical and biological proliferation.

Many of the new staff will work for A4, the surveillance section dubbed as �the lamplighters� in John le Carr�s novels. They specialise in following and watching terrorist suspects 24 hours a day.

Other recruits will become analysts in G branch, the international terrorist section dealing with Islamic suspects. There will be huge increases in A branch with the recruitment of dozens of linguists who speak Arabic, French and Farsi.

Dozens more officers will be drafted into T branch, responsible for protective security, which also helps to improve protection for possible Al-Qaeda targets such as the Queen.

�This new money marks a step change in our capacity to undertake resource-intensive investigations,� said one official.

This week the Home Office will outline possible new laws on terrorism. These include allowing some trials of terrorist suspects in secret, lowering the burden of proof required to convict a terrorist and letting evidence from phone-tapping be used in court.

British Airways plans to change the number of flight 223, the London-to-Washington route hit by cancellations after security warnings, to BA293 from March 28.

February 21, 2004 at 11:38 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (158) | Top of page | Blog Home

Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us

� Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
� Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
� Threat to the world is greater than terrorism

Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York
Sunday February 22, 2004
The Observer

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.

Senior climatologists, however, believe that their verdicts could prove the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and happening phenomenon. They also hope it will convince the United States to sign up to global treaties to reduce the rate of climatic change.

A group of eminent UK scientists recently visited the White House to voice their fears over global warming, part of an intensifying drive to get the US to treat the issue seriously. Sources have told The Observer that American officials appeared extremely sensitive about the issue when faced with complaints that America's public stance appeared increasingly out of touch.

One even alleged that the White House had written to complain about some of the comments attributed to Professor Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, after he branded the President's position on the issue as indefensible.

Among those scientists present at the White House talks were Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief environmental adviser to the German government and head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He said that the Pentagon's internal fears should prove the 'tipping point' in persuading Bush to accept climatic change.

Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office - and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that of terrorism - said: 'If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message, then this is an important document indeed.'

Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.

'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.

'You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,' said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.

Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.

Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. 'This is depressing stuff,' he said. 'It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat.'

Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. 'We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,' he said.

'The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.'

So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign.

The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry's cause. Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net Assessment. Dubbed 'Yoda' by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast experience, he is credited with being behind the Department of Defence's push on ballistic-missile defence.

Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.'

Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added.

February 21, 2004 at 11:37 PM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (7) | Top of page | Blog Home

U.S. Agency Sees Global Network for Bomb Making

U.S. Agency Sees Global Network for Bomb Making

By DAVID JOHNSTON

Published: February 22, 2004

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 - Government forensic investigators examining how terrorists manufacture improvised explosives have found indications of a global bomb-making network, and have concluded that Islamic militant bomb builders have used the same designs for car bombs in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, government officials said this week.

"Linkages have been made in devices that have been used in different continents," said one forensic expert involved in the intelligence effort. "We know that we have the same bomb maker, or different bomb makers are using the same instructions."

The previously undisclosed intelligence operation has expanded on studies of past cases like investigations of the thwarted shoe-bomb attack aboard a Paris to Miami flight in December 2001. In a test, detonation of a similar bomb on a grounded aircraft blew a 2 feet by 2 feet in the fuselage � a potentially catastrophic event aboard a pressurized plane in flight.

In another example of the investigators' work, bomb analysts have collected fragments from hundreds of improvised devices detonated in attacks in Iraq, including large car and truck bombings and smaller assaults using explosives packed in empty artillery shells and even concrete blocks. That project has led to a better understanding of the devices and to efforts to provide commanders in Iraq with faster countermeasures to help protect American troops.

But there are many questions still unanswered about who is behind various bombings, including some of the major suicide bombing attacks in Iraq. Intelligence analysts have said they believe that Al Qaeda has been weakened by the campaign against terrorism and lacks a central command, as well as financial and recruiting structures. But the bomb investigations suggest that the terrorist network still may be disseminating bomb-making skills to a generation of militants who have fanned out around the world.

Many bomb makers may have learned how to make improvised explosives in the 1990's at Osama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan, and the methods taught there may now be showing up elsewhere.

Intelligence analysts did not say there was evidence of a single controlling entity behind the construction of the larger car and truck bombs often used in the most deadly attacks, although they suggested that there might not be many people with the technical skills to build larger bombs.

Some counterterrorism officials have emphasized the need to identify and locate the relatively small number of master bomb makers responsible for the most lethal bombings.

Behind the effort to analyze the bombs is a new forensic intelligence unit, the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center, or Tedac. The F.B.I., which took the lead in the center's creation, has found that in the last five years almost 90 percent of terrorist attacks against Americans have involved improvised explosives.

"Tedac is a multiagency effort to analyze improvised explosive devices," said Dwight E. Adams, director of the F.B.I. laboratory. "It gathers and shares intelligence related to the construction of these devices. Its purpose is to save lives."

The center's work has not previously been disclosed. Terrorism specialists in Congress were briefed on it this week.

While there is still debate about who is behind the bombings in Iraq, and none of the larger and most deadly attacks by suicide bombers have been solved, intelligence analysts said that they believed followers of Al Qaeda or ideologically sympathetic allies may be involved in some of the bombings. But the examination of bombs used in Iraq has so far yielded little information about the identity of who made them. Many bombs of different types explode every day in the country.

Examining tiny bits of bomb housings, wirings, detonation cords, fuses, switches, the chemical composition of the explosives and the electronic signatures of remote switching devices often used to detonate bombs, experts at the center have begun to compile a data bank about terror bombs. In some cases, forensic scientists have been able to obtain evidence of who made the bomb through a fingerprint or DNA material left on an explosive part.

February 21, 2004 at 10:02 PM in Current Terrorism | Permalink | TrackBack (25) | Top of page | Blog Home

Join the club and become a tax exile

Guardian Unlimited Money | Tax | Join the club and become a tax exile

It's all too common for famous names to run from the Revenue. But, writes Patrick Collinson , you don't have to be a celebrity to get out of paying your dues

Saturday February 21, 2004
The Guardian

Almost every week the multi-millionaire boss and founder of discount retailer Matalan boards his private jet for a two-hour commute to work - from his home in Monaco to the company's head office in Skelmersdale, Lancashire

Last year John Hargreaves picked up a �451,000 pay packet as chairman of the company. That sum shrivels in comparison with the value of his shareholding in Matalan, which is worth close to �400m.

But unlike the workers who pack orders and despatch goods from the firm's Skelmersdale distribution centre, Mr Hargreaves vast wealth enables him to take advantage, perfectly legally, of Britain's extraordinarily generous rules for tax exiles.

Framed in the days long before the existence of private jets, the rules on "non-residence" allow businessmen, film stars and musicians to spend half a week, every week, within Britain and yet still qualify as a tax exile.

On paper, the rules appear strict: you can only qualify as a "on-resident" if you are in the country for 90 days or less. But a loophole in the rules means that the In land Revenue effectively ignores the day that someone arrives or leaves Britain. Therefore a three-day trip by private jet, arriving on a Monday morning and leaving Wednesday night, will only count as one day in the country for tax purposes.

"It's a practice that came in in the days of steamships and may not be as appropriate for today's circumstances," says John Whiting, tax partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The existence of the loophole helps explain why in Monaco today Britain's super-rich make up the principality's second-largest foreign community, and why Nice airport has more flights to London than any other destination. While the media concentrates on the celebrity names that have made Monaco their home - Ringo Starr, Formula One driver Jensen Button and Roger Moore - they are far outnumbered by the army of business people who enjoy the country's zero income and capital gains tax rate. Even the fabulously wealthy Barclay brothers, who own one of the Channel Islands, are officially based in Monaco.

The French have started calling it "Le rocher Anglais" (the English Rock) with the expat population doubling to around 5,000 in the past decade. Estimates as to the tax lost to the UK Inland Revenue from Brits living in Monaco range from �1bn to �1.5bn.

However, these individuals do not skip taxes altogether. Someone who is non-resident in the UK is still liable for income tax on earnings arising from employment in the UK. So Mr Hargreaves' �451,000 salary should still be taxed at source just like his many workers.

Non-residents also remain liable for tax on income arising from business profits if the business is carried out in the UK, and they have to cough up tax on any property rental income.

But it still pays handsomely to become a non-resident for anyone who has a large investment income from shareholdings, mutual funds and savings accounts. A non-resident can safely switch these out of the UK and then be taxed at the rate prevailing wherever they make their formal residence. In Monaco's case, that will mean they'll pay nothing.

That tax break alone may be tasty enough for those with huge assets to encourage them to board the next flight to a tax haven.

But where non-resident status really pays dividends, is how it allows someone who has built up a business in Britain to completely sidestep capital gains tax when they come to sell it. Before 1998 this was especially easy; all that was necessary was for the individual to move abroad for a year. Since then the rules have been toughened up, so that someone has to be non-resident for five complete tax years before they can escape UK capital gains tax completely.

What's more, the capital gains tax burden in Britain has been lightened significantly by the introduction of taper relief. Yet the zero rate in tax havens such as Monaco, Andorra and the Cayman Islands still makes them attractive destinations for anyone selling their businesses.

The US authorities are tougher than their British counterparts when it comes to allowing "non-residents" to sidestep tax. An American who wants to live in Monaco and become a tax exile has to relinquish his or her US citizenship, a step few are willing to take. The UK makes no such demands; a British citizen who leaves the UK can become a tax exile while retaining British nationality.

A 1993 rule change has also removed one of the key constraints which deterred the British rich from becoming tax exiles. Before 1993, an individual could not be a non-resident in the eyes of the Inland Revenue if they owned a property in the UK. Now they can retain ownership, although they have to satisfy the Revenue that their permanent residence is overseas.

However, accountancy firms argue that the flow of British individuals seeking tax exile status has been staunched by the introduction of CGT taper relief, and that large numbers of exiles return unhappy with life in a tax haven.

Paul Falvey of Grant Thornton says: "Since taper relief kicked in, which can reduce CGT to just 10%, a lot of wealthier people see that as a reasonable price to pay. We've seen fewer people opt for non-residence status. Inland Revenue investigations into abuses are also pretty sophisticated. People leave a trail - such as mobile phone calls - which can identify how long they've been in the country.

"A lot of people are unhappy about the location they choose for exile. We see some who are counting the days until they can return."

Others, stung by criticism that they are not paying their dues, have opened their books to show that even if they are living in a tax haven, they are still paying substantial tax in the UK.

Last year Sean Connery hit out at critics who said that the outspoken SNP supporter had no right to meddle in Scottish affairs because he lives in the Bahamas. He revealed that he has paid �3.7m in taxes to the UK since 1997, although his critics argue that if he had been continuously resident in the UK for tax purposes the bill would have been much higher.

So what steps do you have to take if you want to become a fully fledged tax exile?

Step One - restrict your time in the UK: Don't spend more than 90 days, on average, in the UK each year. But note the arrival/departure loophole in which 3 days are counted as just one.

Step Two - choose your tax haven: Monaco is an obvious choice - sunny with zero personal taxes. The Channel Islands are closer, cooler, and prefer to be called "low tax" (20%) rather than a zero tax haven. Belgium is a strangely popular choice, because it allows the five-year rule on capital gains tax to be side-stepped.

Step Three - shift your assets to another jurisdiction: Don't leave your shareholdings, savings and funds registered in Britain. Try Jersey, Guernsey or Luxembourg, where they will benefit from strong financial supervision and let you declare them for tax purposes in your new residence.

Step Four - don't try it on: The rules on non-residence are not statutory and for guidance only. The Inland Revenue won't accept you coming back to the UK 89 days a year every year. You will also be regarded as "ordinarily resident" in the UK unless you can prove permanent residence abroad.

Step Five - total tax exile: You can't escape inheritance tax unless you become a "non-domicile". In practice, this is phenomenally tough; you have to give up UK nationality and cut all ties with Britain.

� Taxcafe.co.uk publishes a useful guide, Non Resident & Offshore Tax Planning priced at �19.95. The Inland Revenue publishes a leaflet, IR20, Residents & Non Residents available at inlandrevenue.gov.uk

February 21, 2004 at 05:35 PM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (48) | Top of page | Blog Home

Gaddafi was close to having bomb, UN discloses

Telegraph | News | Gaddafi was close to having bomb, UN discloses

By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor
(Filed: 21/02/2004)

Libya succeeded in making weapons-grade plutonium before announcing it would abandon its efforts to build a nuclear bomb, United Nations inspectors said yesterday.

A report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency discloses the full scale of Tripoli's ambitions to build a bomb before Col Gaddafi's change of heart.

Libya's nuclear experiments included the separation of plutonium, albeit "in very small quantities", it said.

As part of a deal in December to end its international isolation, Col Gaddafi has allowed American and British experts, backed by international inspectors, to begin dismantling its secret facilities to build weapons of mass destruction.

Libya had been able to buy many of the components needed to build a centrifuge to enrich uranium from the nuclear "supermarket" operated by the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

The IAEA report confirmed that Libya had also bought enriched uranium. This was flown to Libya from Pakistan, said a police report citing the alleged chief financier of the nuclear black market, Buhary Syed Abu Tahir.

According to Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, between the early 1980s until the end of last year, "Libya imported nuclear material and conducted a wide variety of [clandestine] nuclear activities."

The report will be discussed next month by the agency's board of governors.

Countries seeking a covert nuclear programme usually take the route of uranium enrichment because the hundreds of components needed for centrifuges are mostly "dual use" and can be bought from international suppliers.

In contrast, the plutonium route requires a large reactor.

Nevertheless, Libyan scientists clearly wanted to keep their options open and learned the chemistry required to separate plutonium from uranium that has been irradiated.

February 21, 2004 at 05:28 PM in Middle East | Permalink | TrackBack (22) | Top of page | Blog Home

Spy veterans hit at 'timid' CIA agents

Telegraph | News | Spy veterans hit at 'timid' CIA agents

By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 21/02/2004)

Today's CIA agents are spoiled, inexperienced, and hamstrung by safety rules, leaving vital operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in near disarray, senior American officials and intelligence veterans said yesterday.

Angry intelligence sources told the Los Angeles Times that the head of the CIA's Baghdad station - the largest in agency history - was sacked recently amid concern that his team of more than 500 was failing to penetrate Iraq's deadly insurgency.

In Baghdad, many CIA employees are sheltered in secure compounds at the airport or in the capital's heavily guarded "Green Zone", where the Coalition Provisional Authority is based, making discreet meetings with informants extremely difficult.

Security fears are proving equally disastrous for CIA operations in Afghanistan, where several small stations outside Kabul have closed in recent months because agency bosses "feared for the safety of their people".

CIA spokesmen insisted that there was no problem recruiting officers for dangerous assignments and one senior US official said base closures in Afghanistan were for "reasons of efficiency", not timidity.

February 21, 2004 at 05:27 PM in CIA | Permalink | TrackBack (12) | Top of page | Blog Home

'She-bomber' fears over plot for woman to blow up plane

Times Online - World

By Daniel McGrory

ISLAMIC extremists plan to use a woman suicide bomber to smuggle explosives on board an aircraft, security chiefs believe.
A leading al-Qaeda organiser, held in custody, is understood to have told his captors that a woman was thought more likely to evade airport security. He suggested that a woman has already been selected for the attack, which could involve a British aircraft.

She would hide up to 12oz of plastic explosive inside her body. The detonator and other components, which can easily be hidden in a watch, mobile telephone or electrical device, could be taken aboard by an accomplice or in hand luggage.

The explosive device would be assembled in mid-air in an aircraft lavatory. Experts say that 12oz of explosive would blow a hole in the fuselage. The prospect of a so-called �she-bomber� was investigated by British officials in the run-up to Christmas when a number of flights to America and the Gulf were cancelled.

A British security source told The Times: �The terrorists know there are sensitivities about making intimate body searches of women, particularly Muslim women, and thus you can see why some groups might be planning to use a female suicide bomber. Hiding explosives in an intimate part of the body means even less chance of dectection.�

Electronic eavesdropping has hinted that the next attack could involve what the authorities call an improvised explosive device (IED). An FBI bulletin circulated last November said: �Components of an IED can be smuggled onto an aircraft concealed in either clothing or personal carry-on items.�

The al-Qaeda detainee is understood to have claimed that terrorists have carried out �dry runs� to see if they can get the components on to a flight.

A spokesman for the US Department of Homeland Security said that the fear has led to airport security screeners being ordered to scrutinise closely women in loose clothing.

The prospect of a woman bomber has also exposed a lapse in airport security. Devices to detect explosives are used only with passengers� luggage.

Philip Baum, editor of Aviation Security International, said: �There is not a single explosive trace detection portal in use anywhere in the world for passengers getting on planes.�

There has been a marked increase in women being used by Islamic extremists. Women have staged four suicide attacks in Russia in the past eight months. In Israel there have been seven attacks by women suicide bombers.

February 21, 2004 at 05:24 PM in Current Terrorism | Permalink | TrackBack (30) | Top of page | Blog Home

MI5 expands to meet terror threat

BBC NEWS | UK | MI5 expands to meet terror threat

The home security service MI5 is to expand by 50% in response to the terrorist threat to the UK, the BBC has learned.
The home secretary will announce the move in parliament next week.
At least 1,000 extra people will be recruited, bringing MI5 back to World War II staffing levels.
The agency says it will take several years to find and vet the staff, principally to carry out surveillance and intelligence gathering work.

The agency says it will take several years to find and vet the staff, principally to carry out surveillance and intelligence gathering work.

Previously focused largely on Cold War and IRA suspects, the move highlights MI5's shift to recruit many more Arabic speakers and focus on the threat from al Qaeda.

The agency believe there are thousands of young people moving in and out of Britain with links to groups close to the terrorist network.

MI5 has been criticised in the past for failing to penetrate radical Islamic groups.

Home Secretary David Blunkett is to make the announcement in the House of Commons during next week's debate on controversial terrorism laws introduced after 11 September 2001.

He will be trying to persuade MPs to renew the legislation allowing foreign terrorist suspects to be detained without trial.

MI5 currently employs around 1,900 people, with graduates starting on a salary of �20,100 a year.

The details of the new positions have already been posted on the agency's website.

Recruits would have to undergo a 60-day intensive training and assessment period, with no guarantee of a job at the end of it.

MI5, which was founded in 1909, has recently embarked on a campaign to recruit more widely, as only 4% of staff are black or Asian at present.

February 21, 2004 at 12:45 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (108) | Top of page | Blog Home

Disappearing the Dead; Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Idea of a "New Warfare"

Disappearing the Dead: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Idea of a "New Warfare" -- Project on Defense Alternatives

Project on Defense Alternatives Research Monograph #9
Carl Conetta
18 February 2004
Among those endeavors that a state or a people may undertake, none is more terrible than war. None has repercussions more far-reaching or profound. Thus, a grave responsibility to one's own nation and to the global community attends any decision to go to war. And part of this responsibility is to estimate and gauge the effects of war, including the collateral damage and civilian casualties that it incurs.

Table Of Contents
Introduction
1. War and perception: the battle to enable American power
1.1 The evolving American calculus of war
1.2 The media, casualty intolerance, and asymmetric warfare
1.3 The public information battlespace after 9/11
1.4 Perception management in support of Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom
2. Shaping the public discourse on civilian casualties: case studies
2.1 Spinning the Iraqi market place bombings
2.2 Framing the air attack on Baghdad
Waging lawfare
Strategic bombing and the illegality of air defense
3. Framework propositions on war casualties and collateral damage
3.1 Claims about "precision attack" and the "new warfare"
3.2 Claims about damage limitation efforts
3.3 Assessing the claims
4. Precision attack and the new warfare
4.1 Have America's recent wars been "low casualty" events?
US personnel attrition
Adversary casualties
4.2 Results may vary: How measures of accuracy mislead
Errors: systematic and contingent
A 2,000 pound scalpel?
Closing the precision gap: the continuing relevance of brute force
"Precision warfare": A triumph of branding
5. Damage limitation and "military necessity"
6. Casualty agnosticism
6.1. A failed news frame: "it's not our fault and it's not a story"
6.2. A more effective frame: casualty agnosticism
What does the World Trade Center bombing teach us?
Casualty agnosticism in the Iraq war
Media impact
6.3. Assessment of casualty agnosticism
Leveraging uncertainty
The most intensively reported wars in history
The quality of media coverage
Managing uncertainty
Making policy in an uncertain world
7. "We don't do bodycounts": the irrelevance of enemy combatant casualties
8. Conclusion: The strategic significance of the casualty issue
8.1. Acceptable casualties
8.2. Effects on the ground
8.3. Impact on world opinion
8.4. Strategic consequences
8.5. Filler for the precision gap
8.6. America's damaged discourse on war

Appendix 1. A note on media "spin" and news frames
Appendix 2. Guide to Surveys and Reporting on Casualties in the Afghan and Iraq Wars, 2001-2004

Notes

As the experience of both the Afghan and Iraq conflicts suggest, estimating the casualties of a war can be as controversial as the war itself -- although this should not be the case. The number of casualties incurred in a war does not by itself decide the strategic meaning or wisdom of that war. It is only one variable among others in an equation that includes, for instance, an assessment of the ends that a war is meant to secure and the threat that it is meant to address. An estimate of collateral damage is critical in one sense, however: without it, a true cost-benefit analysis of a war is impossible.

In some circumstances, attention to collateral damage is more urgent than in others. Its importance may vary inversely with the perceived necessity of a war, for instance. When war is literally forced on a nation -- as it was on the Alliance powers in the Second World War -- the prospect of suffering casualties and adding to collateral damage may not be pivotal in the decision to take up arms. A threat to national survival trumps all other considerations. But when a prospective threat does not immediately imperil national survival, or when a contest turns on the need to broadly win hearts and minds (as does the war on terrorism), then the issue of collateral damage (as well as other war costs) may loom larger in debates about how to proceed.

1. War and Perception: the battle to enable American power
1.1 The evolving American calculus of war

During much of the Cold War, two concerns constrained the exercise of American military power: concern about inadvertent escalation (possibly to the level of global nuclear war) and concern about becoming mired in lower-intensity but protracted stalemates, such as the Vietnam conflict. The collapse of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union served to mitigate both of these concerns. Also, the experience of the first Gulf War substantially boosted American confidence regarding the practicability of regional intervention. In this context, both the Bush and Clinton administrations adopted postures on the use of force that -- each in its own way -- eschewed the commonplace "last resort" principle in favor of more flexible formulations.1 However, the same geostrategic circumstance that led US national leadership to contemplate a freer exercise of military power also, paradoxically, raised its political price. Outside the context of a global "life and death" struggle with the Soviet bloc, it proved difficult to build and maintain a reliable consensus in support of distant interventions. The 11 September 2001 attacks changed that, dramatically altering the political calculus surrounding the question of intervention.2 Nonetheless, concerns about the appropriate mode of action persisted. And these focused substantially on the issues of collateral damage, civilian casualties, and world opinion.3

1.2. The media, casualty intolerance, and asymmetric warfare

Also key in influencing recent public debates about military operations abroad has been the exponential growth of the electronic news media.4 During the Vietnam conflict -- America's first "television age" war -- the electronic media proved its capacity to broadly communicate the effects of war with a visceral immediacy not possible in earlier periods. Since then, the number of television households in the world has grown more than six-fold, to almost 1.2 billion (against a total population growth during the period of approximately 65 percent). During the 1990s alone, satellite and cable households grew from 85 million to well over 300 million, substantially increasing the demand for programming. One response has been the emergence of a dozen multi-regional all-news channels -- none of which existed 20 years ago. Complementing this growth in both the production and consumption of broadcast media has been the Internet, which now reaches almost 500 million people worldwide. Among other things, the Internet has made it possible for several million Americans to regularly access the foreign press as an alternative source of reporting on world events.5

Increased international and domestic attention to the collateral effects of military operations has been a persistent concern of the US defense community since the Vietnam war, when just three photographs depicting the horrors of that conflict did more to undermine the US effort than any three divisions of North Vietnamese regulars ever could.6 Even more so since the end of the Cold War, sensitivity to the blood price of war (whether regarding military or civilian casualties, own or other) has been broadly recognized as one of the principal constraints on a freer exercise of American military power.7 The increased capacity of the global media to inflame "casualty sensitivity" -- either in support of or opposition to foreign intervention -- has also been a subject of broad concern in the defense community.8 Both the initiation and the termination of US operations in Somalia are attributed by some (including Colin Powell) to this "CNN Effect" as is the rapid conclusion of the 1990-1991 Gulf War (following dissemination of images depicting the so-called "Highway of Death" incident).9

Since the early 1990s, the US strategic literature has been filled with ruminations on the evolving capacity of adversaries to exploit both the CNN effect and casualty sensitivity in seeking an asymmetric advantage over the United States.10 More recently, this has inspired some in the defense establishment to reconceptualize the public media as a "battlespace" and public affairs as a "weapon."11 For instance, Major Gary Pounder of the College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education writes in an Aerospace Power Journal article that:

IO (Information Operations) practitioners must recognize that much of the information war will be waged in the public media, necessitating...PA (public affairs) participation.12
While recognizing that PA specialists in the armed services might have concerns about losing credibility with the public and the press, Pounder argues that they must play a central role in information operations because "the public information battle space is simply too important to ignore."

1.3. The public information battlespace after 9/11

Certainly, the Pentagon has been more aggressive since 11 September 2001 in attempting to manage the media, control the flow of information, and shape the coverage of American operations.13 Part of the IO effort during the Afghan conflict was the establishment of public information "war rooms" in Islamabad, Washington, and London, so that the Anglo-American coalition could coordinate message development and dissemination.14 The US component of this initiative was the White House Coalition Information Center. Functionally, the effort replicated one during the Kosovo war that had comprised coordinated NATO briefings in Brussels, London, and Washington. This initiative had had the aim of dominating the news cycle across time zones. For the Iraq operation, the coalition added a center in Qatar. In early 2003 the White House center was renamed the "Office of Global Communications."

In the State Department, a complementary effort with a somewhat broader mandate was undertaken by Charlotte Beers, a public relations specialist, who in October 2001 became Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. In March 2003, Margaret Tutwiler replaced Beers in this position.15 Central to the Bush administration's news and perception management efforts has been the Rendon Group, a public relations and communications firm.16

For the Iraq operation, the Pentagon's regular public affairs activities were complemented by the efforts of the Office of Special Plans, which came under the purview of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith.17 Although the office has had as few as ten full-time personnel on staff, it also has had as many as 100 outside consultants at its behest. Besides serving as an ad hoc intelligence and planning office close to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, this office was also a source of selective intelligence leaks, especially regarding Iraqi WMD capabilities.

The most well-known and audacious public information warfare initiative was the DoD's Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), established in fall 2001 and officially closed in February 2002 when revelation of its existence stirred public controversy.18 Also answerable to Undersecretary Feith, the OSI was meant to oversee, coordinate, and augment standing DoD efforts to influence foreign public opinion. Its mission would have encompassed disinformation and propaganda efforts including the placement of false or misleading stories in the foreign press and the use of third-party outlets for covert dissemination of stories. Although the office was disbanded and disavowed, "perception management" activities have continued elsewhere, including within the Office of Special Plans. In late 2002, Secretary Rumsfeld reflected on the fate of the Strategic Influence office:

...[T]he Office of Strategic Influence. You may recall that. And 'oh my goodness gracious isn't that terrible, Henny Penny the sky is going to fall.' I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing fine I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.19
Eighteen months after the OSI imbroglio, DoD contracted a private firm, Science Applications International Corporation, to create a blueprint for a "DoD capability to design and conduct effective strategic influence and operational and tactical perception-management campaigns."20 However, DoD officials were quick to point out that this did not imply the resurrection of the OSI.

1.4. Perception management in support of Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom

With or without the OSI, the US Defense Department, State Department, and White House conducted large-scale "perception management" or "strategic influence" campaigns in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom as well as in support of the broader war on terrorism. The conduct of such campaigns is not unusual for nation-states in war or peace, nor is it necessarily antithetical to democratic practice. The recent American efforts may be singular in the post-World War II period for their prominence, magnitude, and intensity. But the real focus of concern regarding the post-911 campaigns has been their methods, choice of targets, and effectiveness.

Especially controversial has been the possibility that false or misleading information might be spread to Western and allied electorates. And, in fact, both US and British authorities have disseminated some intelligence data known to be weak or unreliable when they made the case for war.21 Looking more broadly, an analysis by USAF Colonel Sam Gardiner (retired) has identified more than 50 suspect stories on the Iraqi conflict -- all of which the author argues show signs of being products of a media manipulation campaign.22 The subjects of these stories include Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Iraqi contact with Al Qaeda, Iraqi violations of the laws of war, the surrender of Iraqi divisions, the Private Lynch episode, Iraqi execution of POWs, infrastructure attacks and civilian casualties during the war, the post-conflict situation in Iraq, and the purported support of the Russian, French, German, and Syrian governments for the Iraqi regime.

The impact or effectiveness of the post-911 perception management campaigns is difficult to gauge. Majorities or pluralities of the US electorate do entertain several false or questionable propositions favorable to war with Iraq and congruent with Bush administration positions.23 With regard to most of the world, however -- and especially Arab and Muslim countries -- the impact of perception management efforts seems to have been negligible or negative.24 Great Britain and Iraq constitute partial exceptions.25 Generally speaking, international attitudes toward the United States and its conduct of foreign policy are now at a 30-year nadir, after having improved immediately following the 11 September attacks.26

Perception management campaigns may have been effective in shaping US public reaction to collateral damage, but unnecessary and unwise. Despite concerns about American vulnerabilities to asymmetric information warfare, careful assessments of public opinion show that the US citizenry is not especially "casualty intolerant" -- as long as it assents to the purpose and necessity of a war.27 It is true, however, that the public is wary of protracted conflicts and sensitive to incidences of collateral damage that seem to contravene American values or the goals of an intervention. This seems a healthy degree of caution that can be addressed through regular political discourse -- in which the estimation of casualties would play a necessary part. The public's caution about war seems only to underscore the requirement that national authorities, when contemplating war, must make a clear, thorough, and resilient case that the use of force is necessary, proportionate, and well-tailored to desired ends. Without doubt, this requirement constrains the action of national authorities, but in a way consonant with the functioning of a democratic society. Indeed, it may provide the surest guarantee against misadventures abroad.

2. Shaping the public discourse on civilian casualties: case studies from the Iraq war

In the remainder of this report, we analyze key aspects of the US public discourse on collateral damage in the Afghan and Iraqi wars, with special attention to those concepts advanced by the US defense establishment to define and explicate the issue. Section 2.1 examines the Coalition effort to "spin" the two marketplace bombings that occurred early in the Iraq war. Section 2.2 examines the official framing of the air attack on Baghdad more generally. Subsequent sections analyze the "new warfare" and related concepts as constituting a comprehensive frame for the Coalition efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. (See Appendix 1. A note on media spin and news frames.)

Among the active efforts of the US coalition to frame coverage of casualties were suggestions by Defense and State Department officials that (1) the Hussein regime had procured military uniforms resembling those of US forces so that Iraqi personnel might enact atrocities that would be blamed on Americans and that (2) the regime was stockpiling cadavers before the war to be used to create an inflated impression of wartime civilian casualties.28 Similarly, Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified to Congress before the war that Iraq would likely destroy its own food, energy, and transportation infrastructure in order to create a humanitarian disaster that it could blame on US forces.29 A more effective and consequential example of news management was the coalition effort to "spin" the coverage of the two marketplace bombings in Baghdad that together claimed more than 70 lives early in the war.30

2.1. Spinning the Iraqi market place bombings

The first of the two market bombings occurred on Wednesday 26 March 2003 at the Al Shaab marketplace. The second occurred Friday, 28 March 2003, at the Al-Nasr (Nassar) market in the al-Shuala (Shoala) district. American and British authorities quickly suggested that these tragedies might have been the result of Iraqi air defense missiles falling back to earth.31 This called to mind similar claims regarding collateral damage in Tripoli during the 1986 US raid (which were generally rejected as implausible) as well as claims during the January 1993 air raids on Iraq regarding deadly collateral damage to the Al Rashid Hotel (which were later withdrawn when cruise missile debris was found at the site).32 Although the notion that Iraqi air defense missiles were the source of the marketplace explosions in the 2003 war was not entirely implausible, it was a substantially less likely scenario than the competing one. And this should have been clear even before debris from the site was examined, for two reasons: (1) the relative numbers of suitable weapons used by the two sides in the Baghdad area and (2) the attack vectors and performance characteristics of these weapons.

Any number of coalition air-to-surface weapons packed sufficient punch to do the damage observed at the marketplaces. On the Iraqi side, the warheads on SA-2, SA-3, and SA-6 missiles might have been large enough.33 US Central Command estimated that Iraq possessed fewer than 210 launchers for these types of missiles.34 Other sources estimated that the Iraqis possessed as many as 1,200 of the missiles themselves. More numerous were shorter-range and shoulder-fired Iraqi surface-to-air missiles; these numbered between 2,000 and 6,000.35 During the war there were 1,660 reported launches of Iraqi surface-to-air missiles.36 Most of these would have been the more numerous mobile and portable types that could rely on optical or infrared targeting (which included the SA-6s, but not the SA-2s and SA-3s). Probably no more than a few hundred of the total launches involved missiles with warheads heavier than 20 kilograms. The majority of the heavier types were probably used in and around Baghdad.

By comparison, the coalition employed almost 20,000 guided air-to-surface weapons in the war.37 Probably less than 2,000 of these were used in the Baghdad area, however (judging from the numbers and types of "aim points" attacked by the coalition). Approximately 50 percent of these generally fit the damage profiles of the marketplace bombings, being neither too large nor too small. This suggests that coalition air-to-surface weapons outnumbered Iraqi surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) as candidates for the marketplace explosions by a ratio as large as six-to-one. If we consider the rapid destruction of the relatively-immobile Iraqi SA-2 and SA-3 launchers at the start of the war, the relevant ratio were probably even higher when the marketplace bombings took place. Indeed, after the initial Baghdad blitz, many coalition pilots regarded high- and medium-altitude Iraqi SAMs as a "no show". As reported in an Air Force Times article on Iraqi air defense efforts:

Anti-aircraft artillery has filled the sky, but relatively few SAMs have been launched... [M]any pilots...characterized missions over Iraq as "surprisingly quiet," and having "little resistance."38
The attack vectors and performance characteristics of the weapons also suggested an air-to-surface culprit for the bombings. Minor errors and inaccuracies -- even standard ones -- in the delivery of air-to-surface weapons could have produced the marketplace tragedies. Shooting downward into thickly populated areas is simply a very dangerous and demanding endeavor. By contrast, for an air defense system to have been at fault would have required a string of errors and failures -- some catastrophic -- in the employment, performance, and functioning of both the system and its failsafe mechanisms. Typically, air defense missiles would be fired outward from the point or area to be defended; when they miss their targets, their warheads should explode before striking the ground. This is not to say that air defense missiles are not threatening to people and assets on the ground, as the experience of the Patriot missile in the first Gulf War attests.39 But this mostly involves debris from the missiles and their targets (when struck). Given the attack vectors of longer-range air defense launches and the momentum of their missiles in flight, we should expect considerable debris in areas surrounding Baghdad -- not in the city center.

In light of the two background factors mentioned above, the "prior probability" of an air-to-surface weapon being the culprit in each of the marketplace bombings could easily have been ten or more times greater than that of an air defense missile being the culprit. (And, as noted below, subsequent data from the bombings only added to the likelihood of an air-to-surface culprit.) All of this would have been known to coalition military leaders. Nonetheless, they sought to rivet media attention on the off-chance that Iraqi air defense weapons were to blame.

Regarding the first marketplace incident, US Brigadier General Vince Brooks said it was "entirely possible that this was an Iraqi missile that went up and came down," although the previous day US military commanders had confirmed that coalition aircraft were targeting mobile Iraqi missile launchers in Baghdad that were within 100 yards of residences.40
Two days later British intelligence sources asserted that many Iraqi air defense missiles were malfunctioning and falling back into Baghdad before exploding, although they did not substantiate the claim. Moreover, they said that Iraqi civil defense workers had been "instructed to remove Iraqi missile fragments which have fallen on residential areas before journalists arrive on the scene" (which in some cases was minutes and others hours after the fact) -- thus, supposedly, explaining the lack of corroborating evidence. (Due to their fuselage, surface-to-air weapons tend to be larger than air-to-surface ones per weight of warhead; hence, they leave more obvious debris.)41
Finally, British intelligence suggested that Iraq's air chief may had been sacked because of such incidents, although they allowed that the Iraqis might deny this: "We fully expect the commander who has been replaced to be paraded in front of the television cameras by the Iraqis to try to show this is untrue."42 (If Hussein had replaced the Iraqi general a more likely reason would have been the poor performance of Iraqi air defenses and not any suffering caused the Iraqi people.)
Notably, these propositions were advanced as possibilities only. And no one can deny that they might be true. As the British spokesperson summarized:

We are not saying definitively that these explosions were caused by Iraqi missiles. But people should approach this with due scepticism.43
While this approach could not falsify Iraqi claims regarding the bombings, it might -- and did --blunt them, at least in the United States. Picking up on these threads, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said two days later that, although he did not have certain knowledge about the cause of the damage, "I do notice that [the Iraqis] apparently have fired their air defense general because a number of things seem to be coming back down and misfiring and killing innocent Iraqis."44 Again, nothing was offered to substantiate this intelligence.

The matter might have been closed when an enterprising British reporter from the Independent traced serial numbers on debris found at the site of the second bombing to the Naval Air System Command and Raytheon, manufacturer of AGM-88 HARM anti-radar missiles.45

The Independent article also reported that the Navy had confirmed that an EA-6B Prowler "was in action over the Iraqi capital on Friday and fired at least one Harm missile." The damage at the second marketplace had been consistent with the effects of a HARM fragmentation warhead. And, both the aircraft and the putative weapon accorded with the hunt for air defense launchers in Baghdad that US officials had announced earlier.
Finally, the HARM -- which homes on radar or other electronic signals -- has a track record of going far off course when it loses the "lock" on its intended target or is attracted by some other signal source. This problem was evident in a failed 1998 attempt to destroy Iraqi air defense launchers in southern Iraq and in an incident during the 1999 Kovoso war when a HARM missed its target by more than 30 miles, eventually striking a house in Bulgaria.46
Nonetheless, UK Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon and an American official countered that the bomb fragments could have been planted by Iraqi agents.47 This hypothesis assumes extraordinary adaptiveness, luck, and intelligence on the part of Iraqis -- who would have had to quickly produce and plant a coded bomb fragment that neatly accorded not only with the bomb damage, but also the coalition's air defense suppression mission then underway and the use of HARM munitions by naval aircraft over Baghdad on the night of the attack. Of course, there is a small probability that Hoon's speculation is correct -- not because he or other coalition officials introduced any positive evidence to support it, but because there is no fact in life that is certain. There is always some room for doubt at the margin. The coalition spin on the marketplace bombings depended on mobilizing this marginal doubt. Although coalition officials sat on a trove of information that would have clarified the bombing incidents, their chosen strategy was to cast a cloud of uncertainty over them.48

Spin is a form of misdirection based on emphasizing a minor aspect of an event or promoting a tendentious or idiosyncratic interpretation of it -- one that favors one's own interest. However, for spin to work, there must be a media willing to "take the pitch" (so to speak), rather than letting it fall flat. With regard to the marketplace bombings: the news media's willingness to adopt the uncertainty frame and give the coalition "the benefit of the doubt" divided along predictable lines. While the marketplace bombings reverberated loudly in the Muslim and Arab worlds, the story had no "legs" in the United States and only short ones in Britain.

2.2. Framing the air attack on Baghdad

Waging lawfare

Since the Second World War the practice of strategic bombing and, especially, the aerial bombardment of cities, has been dogged by a growing body of international law that seeks to constrain it.49 In this light, a subset of the recent literature on asymmetric attack has been concerned specifically with the possibility that US adversaries might attempt to misuse international law to unfairly impede US combat operations while advancing their own goals -- a practice that some call "lawfare."

In a 2001 monograph, Charles J. Dunlap Jr. (now a Brigadier General and Staff Judge Advocate for the Air Combat Command headquarters), wrote that "Lawfare describes a method of warfare where law is used as a means of realizing a military objective."50 As Dunlap sees it, lawfare involves a manipulation of both public perceptions and international law that aims to create or reinforce the impression that one's opponent is violating either the letter or spirit of the law. The goal is to undermine international and domestic support for the opponent's actions or cause.

"Lawfare" might be viewed simply as a subspecies of information warfare that centers on the legitimacy of wars and of specific actions within wars. In that case, international legal institutions and authorities, such as the World Court and the International Committee of the Red Cross, might play a positive role in assessing or adjudicating claims. However, the real target of those who have theorized "lawfare" is what they perceive to be an over-extension of international law and legal mechanisms -- what Richard Betts calls "hyper-legalism".51 They see this over-extension as being especially unfavorable to those nations and political cultures that take the rule of law most seriously. The discourse about lawfare may itself be part of a putative remedy, insofar as it creates momentum for the rollback of so-called "hyper-legalism". Other possible countermeasures might include "defensive lawfare" or even "preemptive lawfare" -- stratagems that would aim to steel a domestic constituency against lawfare or to undermine the ability of an adversary to claim the legal high ground. Whether lawfare is conducted offensively or defensively, and whether its mode is reactive or preemptive, it tends to treat public debate as an object to be shaped, rather than simply informed.

Strategic bombing and the illegality of air defense

The Anglo-American framing of the Baghdad air campaign is best understood as an instance of lawfare. The coalition complemented its aerial bombardment of Baghdad with consistent complaints about the legality of Iraq's placement of air defense systems in and around residential and industrial areas of the city.52 Although there were numerous instances in the war of Iraqi combatants violating civilian structures, the coalition's case regarding air defense was overstated. It implied strictures that would have precluded any adequate air defense of the city -- an outcome not consonant with the intent of international law. In fact, it is not uniformly illegal to operate in or near civilian areas if such operations are militarily necessary. For better or worse, international law gives wide berth to military necessity. The law does require, however, that armed forces balance military necessity against the risk to civilians when conducting operations. And, of course, international law strictly forbids placing military assets near a civilian structure simply in order to take advantage of its protected legal status.

Air defense of a city under bombardment complicates the equation, however. This is evident in the case of Iraq's placement of an air defense gun on the roof of the Ministry of Information, which the coalition criticized.53 But it was not the gun that made the ministry building a likely target. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of US air war methods and practice would have expected an attack on the structure, whether or not it was protected. In this context, the placement constituted nothing more than a sensible terminal point defense against cruise missile attack.

Also questionable were coalition complaints about Iraq placing air defense systems within 300 feet of residences.54 This objection implies a standard that would have made effective air defense of the city practically impossible. To keep an air defense unit comprising two or three weapon platforms 300 feet from residences and civilian industrial sites would require placing the unit at the center of a 18-acre zone free of such residences or sites.55 The deployment of hundreds of such units under these strictures would require finding hundreds of such zones. But much of Baghdad is thickly populated; Its population density is 140 percent that of London, 160 percent that of Washington DC, and about 60 percent that of New York City. Presumably first among those structures to be avoided would be schools, hospitals, and mosques -- and Baghdad has 2,400 schools, 171 medical facilities, and hundreds of larger mosques scattered throughout the city.

Meeting these strictures would thoroughly disrupt the air defense mission, which imposes strict requirements of its own. Among these requirements are the placement of units to protect key assets and areas and to cover the main avenues of approach and egress for attacking aircraft. Effective air defense also require siting units in places that ensure wide fields of view and fire and that enable overlapping and mutually supporting fires among units.56

The option of placing air defenses only outside the city, perhaps in a thin picket line surrounding it, also contravenes basic principles of air defense, which prescribe depth and density. Such a line would be porous and its individual components, standing alone, would be easily interdicted. Defending a city as large as Baghdad, which covers 280 square miles, against omni-directional air attack requires placing air defense assets both in and around the city. And defending high value assets usually implies siting air defense platforms somewhere nearby. This fact is reflected, for instance, in the post-9/11 deployment of Avenger missile units in Washington DC, which guard the Pentagon and Fort McNair (among other sites).57

The coalition's objections to Iraqi air defense tended to obscure or distract from the determinant factors that shaped the threat to civilians, which were:

A war that aims to topple a regime is likely to entail some sort of urban combat or attack -- at least involving the capital city;
Wars fought for maximum objectives -- such as national sovereignty or regime survival -- tend to be fought intensely, even desperately. In such cases, considerations of military necessity will weigh heavily against concerns about collateral damage.
Regardless of political objectives, any method of war that emphasizes aerial bombardment including attacks on urban, political, and dual-use targets is going to turn cities into air combat zones, involving intense duels between ground attack and air defense systems.
Within these parameters, combatants can pay more or less attention to the plight of civilians -- and its important to require, as humanitarian law does, that they do the best they can to spare the innocent. But even under the best of circumstances, the exchange of thousands of warheads and bombs, hurled downward into and upward from populated areas, is going to claim a serious toll in innocent life. This arguably puts a heavy burden of responsibility on those who initiate wars of the type described above. The deciding factor is whether and to what extent the wars in question are defensive in nature and necessary. Similarly, because attack on political targets and dual-use or "dual-nature" targets (ie. industrial-military targets) inevitably imposes a significant toll on civilians, the necessity for these types of attack must be critically scrutinized. With regard to the 2003 Iraq war: the fact that the war was won quickly despite the failure of early decapitation strikes and the failure of "shock and awe" tactics suggest that some forms of strategic attack can be curtailed.

3. Framework Propositions on War Casualties and Collateral Damage

The coalition efforts to spin the Iraqi marketplace bombings (in terms of "uncertainty") and to frame the bombardment of Baghdad (in terms of the illegality of Iraqi air defense operations) represent ad hoc attempts at managing specific controversies over the war's blood cost. DoD also has advanced several ideas of broader scope to frame its recent conduct of warfare overall. The most important of these -- which include the idea of a "new warfare" -- had currency prior to the Bush administration (although the phrase "new warfare" has a recent vintage). These framework propositions are meant to influence how the US public evaluates the option of going to war and how the entire world assesses its costs once war commences. In subsequent sections we will examine four of these frameworks propositions pertaining to the issue of civilian casualties and collateral damage. The four propositions examined below are:

US precision attack capabilities have revolutionized warfare, making it possible to wage war with greatly reduced casualties and collateral damage;
US armed forces go to incomparable lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties: they are doing the best they can to spare the innocent and more than anyone else has done before;
The number of war casualties cannot be known with certainty, at any rate, and
The number of casualties is not especially meaningful in assessing the success or progress of a war effort.
Each of these propositions reflect some truth, but have only a limited utility in clarifying the problem and likelihood of collateral damage. To the extent that they are accepted uncritically or wholesale, they serve to distort the national discussion on war and its repercussions.

3.1. Claims about "precision attack" and the "new warfare"

Certainly, the notion that US precision attack capabilities make it possible to wage war with a minimum of civilian casualties has figured centrally in public consideration of America's recent wars. Indeed, the vibrant discourse on the so-called "new warfare" is really about two things: America's capacity to avoid quagmires like the Vietnam war and its ability to strictly limit casualties -- both own and other, military and civilian.

President George W. Bush outlined the implications of the "new warfare" hypothesis in a speech before workers at a Boeing aircraft plant in April, 2003:

We've applied the new powers of technology... to strike an enemy force with speed and incredible precision. By a combination of creative strategies and advanced technologies, we are redefining war on our terms. In this new era of warfare, we can target a regime, not a nation.58
Although President Bush in the same speech invoked "last resort" language with regard to the use of force, the clear implication of his claiming that the United States had "redefined war" and contained its effects was that war had become a more usable instrument of US policy. This accords with the Bush administration's policy of preemptive war (actually, "preclusive" or "precautionary" war) and the more utilitarian approach to using force that was first championed by the senior President Bush and subsequently practiced by the Clinton administration.

Prior to the Iraq war a US State Department press release (reporting on a Defense Department briefing) focused more specifically on the implications of the putative "new warfare" for civilian casualties:

Technology has improved exponentially since the 1991 Persian Gulf War to liberate Kuwait from Iraq's grasp. A senior CENTCOM official says "the ability to be that [much] more precise, intuitively tells me that there should be fewer casualties."... The precision capability that now exists "allows us to keep civilian casualties to a lower number than we've ever seen in the past," he added.59
On the eve of the war Admiral Timothy Keating, who led the US naval effort, promised that "the campaign will be unlike any we have seen in the history of warfare, with breathtaking precision, almost eye-watering speed, persistence, agility, and lethality." President Bush reiterated the admiral's claims when he spoke to the nation on the night the war began.60 Ten days later, General Franks summarized the US effort as "an incredibly precise military operation":

I think you have seen time and time and time again military targets fall while the civilian infrastructure remains in place. And it's the same with civilian lives.61
The idea that the United States had developed a capacity for a new type of rapid, decisive, low cost warfare first gained broad currency during and after the conventional phase of the 2001 Afghan war. In many media treatments, the Afghan war fulfilled the promise of a new warfare that had been only partially glimpsed in the Kosovo conflict and first Gulf war:62

The Afghan war was a "bulls-eye war" (Washington Post, 12/02/01), a "finely-tuned war" (Christian Science Monitor, 11/21/01), and a "new low-risk war" (NYT, 12/29/01), characterized by "pinpoint air power" (NYT, 12/24/01), "pinpoint bombing" (Washington Post, 12/02/01), and "information-heavy combat weapons" (Boston Globe, 11/26/01) that were "precise at hitting targets" (Knight Ridder, 10/09/01) and "built to swiftly find and destroy" (Los Angeles Times, 10/03/01) an elusive foe. The US media verdict was virtually unanimous: "Technology brings new style of warfare" (Baltimore Sun, 12/17/01), "War in Afghanistan demonstrates air power's new ability" (Associated Press, 12/19/01), "Pinpoint Air Power Comes of Age in New War" (NYT, 12/24/01), and "High-tech US Arsenal Proves its Worth" (Boston Globe, 12/09/01).
Similar notions held sway in the media in the period leading up to the Iraq war, during the war, and after it:63

Headlines extolled Operation Iraqi Freedom as exemplifying a "new way of war" (Copley News Service, 03/20/03), a "new art of war" (Daily Standard, 04/03/03), or a "new style of war" (Baltimore Sun, 04/13/03) in which "precision bombing" (NYT, 02/02/03), "precision weapons" (Baltimore Sun, 02/24/03), "pinpoint targeting" (Financial Times, 06/16/03), and "pinpoint attack" (London Times, 09/23/02) would "hit hard, hit fast, and protect civilians" (Baltimore Sun, 02/24/03). This makes it possible to wage war while "sparing civilians, buildings, and even the enemy" (op-ed, NYT, 03/30/03) or "sparing the country and its people" (Minneapolis Star Tribune, 04/27/03). Once again, "advanced weaponry" and "a more mobile force have shown their worth" (Baltimore Sun, 04/13/03). Headlines echoed General Tommy Franks description of the war as "unlike any in history" (NYT, 03/23/03; Associated Press, 03/22/03) or "like no other" (NYT, 04/10/03). With this "pivotal war" (Defense & Foreign Affairs' Strategic Policy, 05/03), "war enters a new age"(Minneapolis Star Tribune, 04/27/03) in which "advances shorten war and save lives" (Omaha World Herald, 05/18/03).
3.2. Claims about damage limitation efforts

US damage limitation efforts pertain not to technological capabilities, per se, but instead to the choice of targets and the care exercised in attacking them. US efforts along these lines include vetting targets with DoD lawyers and relying on computer simulations -- the so-called "bug splat" program -- to predict the likely "spill over" or collateral effects of an attack. With regard to the Iraq war a senior US defense official serving under General Franks told a briefing audience on 5 March:

I don't want to say there will be no damage. I don't want to say there will be no casualties. But there is a very good way to try to keep the number of casualties and the damage to the minimum.64
These ways include tailoring the size of a weapon to the target, adjusting the angle of attack or detonation point to reduce spill-over effects, timing an attack to minimize civilian exposure, and providing warning local populations in advance to avoid certain broad types of structures or assets. These procedures form the basis for JCS Chairman General Myers reassuring assertion, made in February 2003, that:

[I]n our targeting, we'll go to extraordinary lengths to protect noncombatants and civilians and--and facilities that should not be struck.. And we always do that."65
These targeting procedures were also the basis for Secretary Rumsfeld's assertion during the Afghan war that "no nation in human history has done more to avoid civilian casualties than the United States has in this conflict."66 During the period between the two conflicts, the US defense establishment made a concerted effort to better familiarize reporters with its efforts to limit collateral damage.

The issue was explored at an meeting of human rights activists, active and retired military officers, and journalists who had been reporting on civilian casualties. The meeting, the "Understanding Collateral Damage Workshop," was sponsored by the Project on the Means of Intervention, which is located at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University.

Although there was little consensus among the participants on most issues, there was agreement that publicizing US damage limitation procedures could affect the public discourse on war:

Part of preparing the battlefield, it was argued, includes getting out the story of the U.S. armed forces' efforts to prevent collateral damage.... While some questioned whether editors would ever seek a story about the care exercised by the U.S. military, many believed that the story would make a difference in shaping public, particularly foreign, attitudes towards the West's conduct of military operations.67
As it turns out, the doubters at the workshop either misread editorial appetites or underestimated the wherewithal of the Pentagon and State Department public affairs offices, which succeeded in pitching the story very broadly before and during the Iraq conflict, especially during the critical month of March 2003.68 Indeed, a limited Lexis-Nexis search of the US and British news media for the month of March finds nearly 100 stories and programs in which the specific phrase "extraordinary lengths" is used to describe coalition efforts to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties. Other permutations of the phrase -- for instance, "extraordinary care" or "extraordinary efforts" generate additional hits. And, of course, there are many other ways to express the same idea.

3.3. Assessing the Claims

US aerial bombardment is substantially more precise today (on average) than it was two decades ago. And, within the context of dropping tens of thousands of bombs, US targeting teams work very hard to balance damage limitation and what they understand to be "military necessity." But neither the precision of US weapons nor the care with which they are delivered can tell us how many people will be killed in wars by these weapons. Nor can this knowledge tell us unambiguously whether these wars will be less or more deadly than those of the past. And they certainly cannot tell us whether there will be more or fewer wars in this decade or the next compared to the 1990s or 1980s. While the new warfare has been touted as "low risk" and "low cost," the capabilities and procedures that are supposed to distinguish it cannot by themselves guarantee either of these outcomes. For this, there are several reasons.

First, the two standards upon which expectations about the new warfare are based -- weapon precision and care in targeting -- do not reflect actual casualty and damage outcomes on the battlefield. Official statements about the accuracy of US bombing and the sophistication of efforts to limit collateral damage are not based on comprehensive empirical surveys of war casualties.
Typically, the basis for making claims about low-risk bombardment is the technical performance parameters of the weapons, such as their CEP or circular error probable. At best, this measures the relationship between aim points and impact points as determined in controlled tests, not on the battlefield. Also, there is an obvious difference between hitting one's intended target and not causing unintended casualties or damage in the process. The targeting process is meant to mitigate this problem -- by vetting targets and fine-tuning the attack, as noted above. But the actual effectiveness of this process has been neither tested nor quantified empirically with regard to casualty outcomes.

Second, weapon performance parameters and procedures for limiting collateral damage are only two variables in a complex equation that determines the extent of collateral death and destruction caused by weapon use.
Even if official statements about weapon precision and care in targeting were based on thorough empirical surveys of casualties -- which they are not -- they still might not convey from one war to the next. Other factors in the war equation are simply more determinant. These include:

Operational plans and methods, which determine what types of missions will be attempted and how much they will "stress" weapon capabilities and targeting procedures. These determine, inter alia, how much a nation depends on aerial bombardment and whether its weapon capabilities will be tested in urban and populated areas.
Political-strategic factors, which include the goals for which a war is fought. These might be more or less ambitious, ranging from efforts to foil or punish aggression to efforts to topple regimes.
Issues of national strategy, which determine the role of force in a nation's foreign policy: A nation's use of force may be purely reactive (ie. defensive), preemptive, or even pre-cautionary, and its threshold for using force may be high or low. These factors will determine how often a nation goes to war, why, and under what circumstances.
Depending on how a nation's policy registers with regard to these three factors, it can generate any number of war casualties over a decade regardless of precision attack capabilities or adept targeting procedures. Of course, it is better to have these capabilities and protocols than not, but they cannot by themselves provide any guarantees about the level or extent of collateral damage actually realized on battlefields over any set period of time. Thus, there is no real paradox in the fact that during the age of "precision warfare" (beginning with the first Gulf War), US military operations have claimed the lives of approximately 50,000 people worldwide (combatants and noncombatants), while during the 14 years preceding the first Gulf War (1976-1989), overt US operations claimed the lives of approximately 2,000 people.

4. Precision attack and the New Warfare
4.1. Have America's recent wars been "low casualty" events?

For many observers, the crux of the new warfare is the capacity to win while incurring historically low numbers of casualties. In the case of Operation Iraqi Freedom, however, this characteristic actually attained in only one respect: the highly favorable attrition ratio achieved by coalition forces in their contest with Iraqi fighters during the main combat phase of the war.

US personnel attrition

During the period 19 March � 1 May, between 7,600 and 10,800 Iraqi combatants were killed by coalition forces, while only about 150 coalition troops died due to enemy action.69 This represents an average attrition exchange ratio of 60:1, which is far better than the best achieved by Israeli armies (4:1) in their contests with Arab armies.

The attrition ratio in the 2003 war was not better than the one achieved in the 1991 Gulf War, however, which was approximately 120:1. Nor was the percentage of coalition troops killed or wounded in Operation Iraqi Freedom lower than that experienced in Desert Storm. The fatality rate was 1/2000 for OIF and 1/4000 for ODS. This apparent degradation was probably due to the fact that "regime change" was the objective of the 2003 war. This is a far more ambitious goal than that which motivated Operation Desert Storm. Among other things, it required a much longer period of ground combat, which typically is the most costly component of war.

Setting aside the contrasts between the two US-Iraq wars, what they both have in common is a US casualty rate (for the main combat phase) that is well below one-tenth of one percent of deployed forces. This is no small achievement -- and it may be revolutionary in terms of American willingness to go to war. But we should remember, as noted above, that the chief determinant of US public attitudes on foreign military operations is not the number of US casualties, per se, but whether the intervention is considered worthwhile and winnable, and whether the apparent costs seem commensurate with the stakes. In this context, the Iraq war stands out as a US initiative that, by the end of January 2004, had incurred the highest cost in American lives in 27 years -- more than the first Gulf war and far more than either the Afghan war or the hunt for Bin Laden. Since 1976, approximately 900 US service people have died overseas due to hostile action; about 38 percent of these deaths occurred in Iraq during the ten month period, 19 March through 20 January 2004.

Adversary casualties

The characterization of the new wars as "low casualty" events is supposed to extend also to adversary casualties -- especially noncombatants. This is relevant to maintaining the moral authority and legitimacy of US operations and to limiting any negative or inadvertent effects. By this measure, however, the outcome of the 2003 war clearly does not set it apart as distinctly revolutionary. Indeed, the war's death toll registered within the range of those suffered in many of the strategically significant wars of the past 40 years. On the other hand, the casualty rates incurred in America's recent wars do not compare with those experienced in some of the protracted or stalemated conflicts of the past 25 years, such as the 10-year anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, and the Vietnam war. But if avoiding catastrophic quagmires such as these is supposed to count as a revolutionary achievement, then the bar has been set too low; several nations managed to jump it decades ago.

Among the strategically significant wars with casualty rates comparable to the 2003 Iraq war were:70

1956 Suez War: 3,000 military; 1,000 civilian;
1962 Sino-Indian War: 1,000 military; 1,000 civilian;
1965 India-Pakistan: 6,000 military; as many as 12,000 civilian;
1967 Arab-Israeli war: 19,600 military; less than 1,000 civilian;
1971 India-Pakistan: 11,000 military;
1973 Arab-Israeli war: 16,401 military; less than 1,000 civilian;
1982 Falklands Island War: 1,200 military;
1982 Israeli Invasion of Lebanon: 17,000 total; and,
1999 India-Pakistan Kargil War: 1,200 military.
In many of these, the number of civilians killed was notably less than in the putatively "revolutionary" 2003 Iraq conflict. Noncombatant fatalities during the month-long 2003 Iraq war actually outnumber those suffered during the three years of intensified conflict between Israelis and Palestinians -- the Al-Aqsa Intifada -- that began in September 2000. And total Iraqi fatalities (combatant plus noncombatant) in 2003 surpassed the number of fatalities incurred during the past 15 years of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Thus, it is fair to conclude that the warfighting techniques and technologies employed in the 2003 war -- however capable -- were not sufficient to keep the death toll below a level likely to have deep and enduring negative consequences.

Turning to the recent Afghan war: between 1,100 and 1,300 civilians and between 3,000 and 4,000 Taliban combatants were killed in the fighting during the period 7 October to 31 December. Hundreds more have been killed since. Although much less bloody than the Iraq war, the Afghan conflict nonetheless registers within the range of several of the significant wars listed above. And, again, its civilian and total death tolls match or surpass those suffered during the past few years of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, the Afghan war death toll has been substantially greater than that suffered in India-Pakistan clashes over the past few years.

4.2. Results may vary: How measures of precision mislead

Why the difference between the promise and the practice of "precision warfare"? In Section 3.3 we discussed how differences in operational concepts, war objectives, and national security strategies can produce significantly different casualty outcomes despite a common reliance on precision weapons. In the present section our scope is narrower: we look at why today's "precision weapons" cannot meet the expectations that the word "precision" creates -- at least with regard to inadvertent casualties.

Errors, systematic and contingent

The precision of weapon delivery systems is typically expressed in terms of Circular Error Probable (CEP), which is the radius of a circle centered on an aimpoint within which some percentage -- usually 50 percent -- of weapons fired at the aimpoint will fall. As usually stated, the CEP for a GPS-guided weapon takes into account: (1) inherent target location errors, (2) the fluctuating accuracy of the GPS system, and (3) inherent guidance and software errors. These errors are "inherent" in the sense that they reflect the limits of the systems employed and cannot be removed without improving, supplementing, or changing these systems.71 JDAMs have a tested CEP of 10.3 meters (against a requirement of 13 meters). (A 13 meter CEP is the threshold for considering a weapon "accurate"; In 1998, the CEP standard for precision weapons was 3 meters).72

Beyond inherent limitations, factors that can add to weapon delivery errors are:73

Errors of intelligence -- including intentional deception by local allies -- regarding the presence of civilians or the status and position of an intended target;
Mechanical or electronic malfunctions in guidance, navigation, flight control, or bomb release systems. By varying estimates these affect between one and ten percent of all missile and bomb launches -- although a "few percent" would seem closer to the truth;74
Human error on the part of pilots or ground controllers, including suboptimal release of weapons, incorrect identification of targets, and incorrect transmission of target coordinates. Human error can be exacerbated by fatigue or the use of stimulants, such as dexamphetamine (so-called "go pills"); and,
Unexpected, erratic, or severe atmospheric conditions.
These factors help explain estimates that only 60 to 70 percent of guided weapons destroyed their targets in the Kosovo war and predictions that only 75 to 80 percent would do so in the Iraq war.75

Among notable accidental bombings in recent wars that were likely due to faulty intelligence, system malfunction, or human error were:76

The bombings in the Kosovo war of the Chinese embassy, a convoy of refugees, and a home in Bulgaria;
The bombings in the Afghan war of a UN de-mining facility (twice), a Red Cross food warehouse (twice), the entourage of future Afghan-president Hamid Karzai (who was mildly injured), a unit of Canadian troops, coalition troops during the prison uprising near Mazaar-i-Sharif, a residential area in Kabul, several wedding parties and residences, an old age home, a boys school, and a military hospital. Also, there was an accidental release of cluster bombs over Pakistan and several reported incidents of local Afghan allies duping the coalition into attacking their rivals.
The bombings in the 2003 Iraq war of a Syrian commuter bus near the border, a coalition artillery position, and a convoy of Kurdish fighters and Special Operations personnel (killing the brother and injuring the son of Kurdish Democratic Party president Masoud Barzani). Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia were also struck during the war by six or seven stray cruise missiles. Two coalition aircraft were accidently destroyed by Patriot missiles, and a third would have been destroyed had it not struck first -- in error -- disabling a Patriot launcher it took to be Iraqi.
Contingent errors -- blunders and mistakes -- play a major role in standard explanations of collateral damage and civilian casualties. But this exaggerates the precision of current weapons and depreciates their destructive power. Apart from contingent errors and malfunctions, the inaccuracy inherent in current systems, the destructive power they possess, and the chaotic dynamics of war itself are sufficient to make it likely that substantial collateral damage and civilian casualties will occur. These attributes -- and not errors and malfunctions -- are what weigh most heavily on the civilian victims of war.

Guided-weapons constituted about 68 percent of the total air-delivered munitions used in Iraq. Among these weapons CEPs ranged between 3 and 15 meters, with the mean being approximately 8 meters or 25 feet. This is sufficiently inaccurate to guarantee that a significant percentage of weapons aimed at the center of a building will land in the street -- or in the building next door. Regarding cluster bombs: these can be delivered by guided or unguided means; either way, when they arrive at their destination, they act as relatively-indiscriminate "area weapons," spreading hundreds of submunitions over a 20-acre swath of land. And, although their delivery may be guided, they remain distinctly imprecise in the time dimension: five to 10 percent of their constituent bomblets fail to detonate, thus inadvertently (but predictably) becoming land mines that lie in wait for future victims.

A 2,000 pound scalpel?

Even given perfect intelligence and accuracy, most guided weapons in the 500- to 2000-pound range are sufficiently powerful to routinely cause some degree of collateral damage. This, because they carry hundreds of pounds of enhanced high-explosives wrapped in hundreds of pounds of steel -- an obvious point, but one that has been too often occluded or overlooked.

A 2,000 pound bomb typically contains 945 pounds of tritonal, a TNT derivative that is about 20 percent more powerful than TNT. By comparison, the bomb that destroyed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995, comprised approximately 5,000 pounds of ammonia nitrate mixed with fuel oil -- the equivalent of nearly 4,000 pounds of TNT. The portable devices used by suicide bombers typically weigh between 10 and 35 pounds; these can carry a punch equivalent to 40 pounds of TNT if a plastic explosive (C-4) is used.

Most everything will be severely damaged, injured, destroyed, or killed within 20 meters of a 500-pound bomb blast and 35 meters of a 2000 lb. blast. This lethal radius can be partly mitigated by detonation inside a large, compartmentalized building -- however, as a Rand study points out: "While structures surely have some shielding effect, building collapse and spalling are secondary yet major causes of injury."77 Averaged across different types of surfaces, a 2000-pound bomb will carve a crater 50 feet across and 16 feet deep; a 500 pound bomb will carve one 25 feet across and 8.5 feet deep. The probability of incapacitating injury to unprotected troops within 100 meters of a 2000-pound bomb blast in the open is 83 percent; for those between 100 and 200 meters it is 55 percent.78

Safe distances for unprotected troops are approximately 1,000 meters for 2000-pound bombs and 500 meters for 500-pound ones. Even protected troops are not entirely safe within 240 meters of a 2,000-pound bomb or 220 meters of a 500-pound bomb.79 Thus, it is considered bold for a combat controller to bring down a strike within 800 meters of his/her position, and the Afghan strike that killed eight coalition troops and injured Hamid Karzai and 20 others is attributed to a JDAM strike within 100 meters of their position.80 Commenting on the Karzai incident Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem of the Joint Staff rightly described the 2000-pound JDAM as a "devastating weapon", adding that, "As a pilot, when I would drop a 2,000-pound weapon, I wanted at least 4,000 feet of separation from that weapon when it went off." This distance would put an aircraft just beyond the reach of shrapnel and flying debris.

Closing the precision gap: the continuing relevance of brute force

The brute destructive power of these weapons is not ancillary to the recent success of precision attack, but central to it. A critical threshold in the development of US capabilities was passed when the CEP for the delivery of bombs in the 500- to 2000-pound class fell significantly below the destructive radius of these weapons. At that point, weapon delivery became sufficiently precise to ensure that targets would usually be encompassed by the destructive footprint of these weapons, which extends over an area of between one-quarter and one full acre. The power of these weapons is especially important in facilitating greater reliance on GPS-guided weapons. These weapons are cheaper than the laser-guided variety and far more flexible, allowing broader and more consistent use. But they are less precise on average. In this context, the terminal effects of big bombs serve to close the precision gap; they compensate for the lesser precision offered by GPS guidance.

The coalition employed 28,397 air-delivered bombs and missiles during the Iraq war. In addition, it employed 802 Tomahawk cruise missiles and numerous other missiles and shells that were surface-fired. The following table denotes the unitary air-del

February 21, 2004 at 11:09 AM in US | Permalink | TrackBack (174) | Top of page | Blog Home

Special forces quitting to cash in on Iraq

Scotsman.com News - Top Stories - Special forces quitting to cash in on Iraq

CHRISTIAN JENNINGS

BRITAIN’S elite special forces are facing an imminent crisis because record numbers of men are asking to leave their units early, lured by high wages on offer in a growing security industry in Iraq.

Defence and special forces sources have told The Scotsman that such is the demand from private military companies in Britain and the United States who are operating in Iraq for former Special Air Service and Special Boat Service soldiers that, between May 2003 and December 2004, between 40 and 60 men are expected to have sought premature voluntary release, or PVR, from the army and Royal Marines.

In operational terms, this could mean that this year, the equivalent of one entire special forces squadron out of a total of six in the SAS and SBS is on its way to seek its fortune in the new Iraq.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, anti-terrorism deployments in Europe, training commitments abroad as well as the need to have one entire SAS squadron of 65 men and one SBS unit of 20 men permanently on anti-terrorism standby in the UK, means that Britain�s special forces are very thinly stretched.

British, US and South African private military companies are all making money in Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein last year.

Former elite troops from the SAS and SBS, the US�s Delta Force, Navy SEALs and Green Berets, South Africa�s special forces and police, as well as ex-French Foreign Legionnaires, are queuing up to take up contracts safeguarding oil installations, as bodyguards or training the Iraqi police and army.

In particular demand are former members of Britain�s special forces.

"Security companies want ex-Brit SF [special forces] because they have the most amazing history," said John Davidson, who runs Rubicon International, a British security company whose interests in Iraq include contracts with BP and Motorola.

"The SAS are extremely well-trained, low-profile, not waving flags. They go about things in a quiet manner, they are the cr�me de la cr�me," added Mr Davidson, an 11-year veteran of Britain�s special forces.

An SAS captain serving in the regular regiment, 22 SAS, can earn up to �40-45,000 per year, with various allowances, while a junior sergeant or senior corporal can earn �30,000 per annum.

Such is the demand for the security skills of former SAS NCOs and officers in Iraq that pre-tax pay can range from �200 to �700 per day.

To leave his unit, any member of the British armed forces can request a PVR from his commanding officer, although the request can be turned down and the move blocked.

In addition to men asking to leave the SAS prematurely, another 24 SAS soldiers trained in amphibious warfare will now be detached each year from the SAS to the SBS.

Combined with the PVR requests, this could leave the Hereford-based 22 Special Air Service Regiment potentially depleted by nearly a quarter of its strength.Special forces soldiers cost up to �2 million each to train, and all must be chosen from men who have already served for several years in their parent units. Less than 20 men a year pass out into the regiment.

This latest development puts pressure on the current commanding officer of 22 SAS, a decorated lieutenant colonel from the Irish Guards, either to lower the standards for entry to the unit or allow younger, less experienced soldiers to apply.

To make up this shortfall, some 60 men from two Territorial Army special forces units, 21 and 23 SAS, are said to have been operating in Afghanistan.The Ministry of Defence said last night that it did not make comments specific to special forces.

February 21, 2004 at 02:11 AM in Iraq | Permalink | TrackBack (19) | Top of page | Blog Home

Japan Ups Security Against Terror Attack

Wired News | Japan Ups Security Against Terror Attack

Friday, February 20, 2004 1:18 p.m. ET

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan tightened security Friday at 650 vital facilities across the country, including nuclear power plants, government offices and U.S. facilities, to guard against a possible terrorist attack, a National Police Agency official said.
The official said the heightened alert was due to such factors as Japan's recent dispatch of a contingent of ground forces to help rebuild Iraq.

He declined to say whether there had been any new information concerning a possible attack.

were two late-night explosions near the Defense Ministry in Tokyo this week, which police said could have been carried out in a protest at the dispatch of Japanese troops to Iraq.

The dollar rose sharply against the yen in late afternoon trading in Europe after the report Japan's security level had been raised.

The National Police Agency said in December that Japan's close ties with the United States and the many U.S. facilities in the country could make it a target for attacks by Islamic militants.

Japan approved the controversial dispatch of its main army contingent to help rebuild Iraq in late January, and now has about 100 troops establishing a base in Samawa in southern Iraq, where they will help with humanitarian work and reconstruction.

Nudged by the United States, Japan plans to send up to 600 ground troops to Iraq as part of a total deployment of about 1,000 military personnel. It will be Japan's biggest and riskiest overseas mission since World War II.

Japan is one of the United States' closest allies in Asia and home base for about half the estimated 100,000 U.S. military personnel in the region. Many U.S. companies have a substantial presence in the country.

No damage or injuries were caused by Tuesday's explosions.

A leftist group calling itself "Kakumeigun" (Revolutionary Army) sent letters to Japanese media claiming responsibility, Kyodo news agency said Friday. The group said it was resorting to violence to prevent the deployment of Japanese troops to Iraq, Kyodo said.

February 21, 2004 at 02:01 AM in Japan | Permalink | TrackBack (28) | Top of page | Blog Home

CIA Struggles to Spy in Iraq, Afghanistan

Yahoo! News - CIA Struggles to Spy in Iraq, Afghanistan

Fri Feb 20, 7:55 AM ETAdd Top Stories - Los Angeles Times to My Yahoo!

By Greg Miller and Bob Drogin Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON — Confronting problems on critical fronts, the CIA (news - web sites) recently removed its top officer in Baghdad because of questions about his ability to lead the massive station there, and has closed a number of satellite bases in Afghanistan (news - web sites) amid concerns about that country's deteriorating security situation, according to U.S. intelligence sources.

The previously undisclosed moves underscore the problems affecting the agency's clandestine service at a time when it is confronting insurgencies and the U.S.-declared war on terrorism, current and former CIA officers say. They said a series of stumbles and operational constraints have hampered the agency's ability to penetrate the insurgency in Iraq (news - web sites), find Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and gain traction against terrorism in the Middle East.

The CIA's Baghdad station has become the largest in agency history, eclipsing the size of its post in Saigon at the height of the Vietnam War, a U.S. official said. But sources said the agency has struggled to fill a number of key overseas posts.

Many of those who do take sensitive overseas assignments are willing to serve only 30- to 90-day rotations, a revolving-door approach that has undercut the agency's ability to cultivate ties to warlords in Afghanistan or collect intelligence on the Iraqi insurgency, sources said.

There is such a shortage of Arabic speakers and qualified case officers willing to take dangerous assignments that the agency has been forced to hire dozens � if not hundreds � of CIA retirees, and to lean heavily on translators, sources said. The agency has also had to use soldiers for tasks that CIA officers normally perform, sources said.

Even without the personnel challenges, Iraq and Afghanistan are seen as so dangerous that it is difficult for agency officers to venture outside guarded districts and compounds without security details, making covert meetings with informants extremely difficult, sources said.

CIA officials said Thursday that the agency had no shortage of eager volunteers for tough assignments, or any lack of resolve in the war on terrorism.

But current and former officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the agency was confronting one of the most difficult challenges in its history.

One former officer who maintains close ties to the agency said it was stretched to the limit. "With Afghanistan, the war on terrorism, with Iraq, I think they're just sucking wind," he said.

But the officers also said the latest problems point to a deeper problem with the CIA leadership and culture. Some lamented that an agency once vaunted for its daring and reach now finds itself overstretched and hunkered down in secure zones.

"They claim that they've rebuilt the [clandestine service] and it's firing on all cylinders," said a former station chief in the Middle East. "Is it? I would say not. Not if you don't have trained manpower."

The CIA dismisses such criticism, and President Bush (news - web sites) has recently voiced support for six-year CIA Director George J. Tenet. The president said he believed the agency was serving the country well. The CIA has also won praise for its role in dismantling the upper ranks of Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network and helping round up the top figures in Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime.

But in many respects, the CIA is an agency under siege, with several inquiries underway into its prewar assessments on Iraq, and an independent commission still investigating intelligence failures related to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Swift Rotation

The U.S. official acknowledged that the CIA station chief in Baghdad was removed in December after weeks of increasingly deadly and sophisticated attacks against U.S.-led coalition forces and civilian targets.

"There was just a belief that it was a huge operation and we needed a very senior, very experienced person to run it," the official said.

The official declined to disclose the number of CIA personnel in Iraq, but other sources said it exceeded 500 people.

The replacement of the station chief means that the high-profile post has been held by three senior officers since Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq in May, sources said. The job of Baghdad station chief is a demanding one that includes briefing top U.S. officials in Iraq, providing frequent updates to Washington on the stability of the country, and overseeing all of the operations and analysis done in the nation.

The first of the three recent station chiefs had served at the Baghdad station before the Persian Gulf War (news - web sites) in 1991. He went to "run operations [from] across the border" before the invasion last year, was fluent in Arabic and was "extraordinarily experienced" in setting up and running large intelligence operations, according to a former senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But that officer had always planned to leave the job in June 2003, and has since moved on to another station in the Middle East, sources said.

His replacement had served as station chief in a neighboring country and was to stay in Baghdad for at least a year. But he was pushed out in December amid a combination of personnel problems and growing concern in Washington that the agency was failing to get an adequate grip on the Iraq insurgency.

Speculation Over Report

Some speculated that the officer might have angered officials in the Bush administration with a pessimistic report he produced in November saying that a growing number of Iraqis believed the U.S. coalition could be defeated. But the U.S. official denied that the report, which was quickly leaked to the media, played any role in the ouster.

The current station chief is a highly regarded officer who "rose rather meteorically" during operations in Kosovo, which was the agency's last major buildup of assets, a former CIA officer said.

Many of the CIA's employees have been based at secure compounds at the airport in Baghdad, with others working in the so-called Green Zone, the heavily fortified area in central Baghdad around the headquarters for the Coalition Provisional Authority. There are smaller offices, known as bases, in Basra, Mosul and other parts of the country.

Several sources said there had been squabbling over the agency's mission and priorities, with some saying that the CIA had been drawn too much into troop-protection work ordinarily done by the military. As a result, some are concerned that the agency has not been able to concentrate on recruiting the spies that will be needed as crucial sources of information for years to come after sovereignty is transferred from U.S. hands this year.

The CIA is also in charge of setting up a new Iraqi intelligence service, drawing at least in part on former members of Hussein's Mukhabarat. But although candidates are identified and vetted in Iraq, much of the training is said to be taking place outside the country, in Jordan or Egypt.

A number of sources said the main problem confronting the Baghdad station has been security constraints that inhibit the ability of operatives to move about the country.

The U.S. official acknowledged that instability and violence made "it harder for people to do their job. They're not locked down, but it adds to the degree of difficulty everyone faces."

Several sources said that when agency officers venture beyond their secure compounds, they are accompanied by security details or must travel in convoys. The U.S. official said all of the agency's employees being sent to Iraq are given weapons training, and that clandestine officers are given more specialized paramilitary training.

The agency is in the midst of a multiyear effort to rebuild its clandestine service, and officials say recent recruiting classes have been among the largest in history. But the service was badly depleted in the 1990s, amid post-Cold War cuts and a crackdown on perceived abuses in the service. Many of the agency's most experienced hands were demoralized by the changes and left.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the agency has brought back hundreds of retirees, dubbed "green-badgers" for the color of the identification cards issued to those who return to the fold under contract. The agency has also turned to young officers without any overseas experience.

New agency recruits with military backgrounds are being sent to Iraq as soon as they emerge from the CIA training academy in Virginia, said one former agency official.

"They don't speak the language, don't know how to recruit," the official said. "It's on-the-job training."

The U.S. official said that all of the agency's personnel in Iraq were volunteers and that the CIA has not had to make any "directed" assignments, meaning ordering someone to go. "We've got plenty of people who are anxious to take assignments," generally of one year, the official said.

But others said many of the agency's personnel were there for just one to three months. "That was true for the station as well as the [weapons search team]," said David Kay, who resigned last month as special advisor in Iraq to Director Tenet. "None of us were happy about that."

So-called domain experts on Hussein and his associates were "the clearest case," Kay said. "They were over for 30 or 60 days and then get rotated back," he said. "It was a real issue."

Former case officers said such turnover made recruiting spies almost impossible. "To get the lay of the land takes a month," one former station chief said. And if you manage to cultivate a source in that time, "you have to turn him over to someone he doesn't know the next month."

The problems also extend to Afghanistan, sources said. One CIA veteran said he recently spoke with an officer who had served as a base chief in Kandahar for 60 days, an unusually brief tenure for such an important assignment.

The base in Kandahar is one of five or six the CIA established in Afghanistan after the U.S. invaded the country in 2001, all reporting to the agency's primary station in Kabul, the capital. But a number of those remote bases have been closed in recent months, according to current and former CIA officials.

The closures have alarmed some in the intelligence community because they come at a time when remnants of the deposed Taliban regime appear to be regrouping and preparing fresh attacks designed to disrupt elections planned for the summer. The U.S. military is also planning a spring offensive, aimed at catching or killing Bin Laden.

'It's Very Frustrating'

One former senior CIA official said the bases were closed because of security concerns. "It's very frustrating" for CIA officers in the country, the official said. "They are locked down very tightly. There's very little unilateral [intelligence collection] going on, and they closed most of their bases out in the countryside because they feared for the safety of their people."

The U.S. official acknowledged that the bases had been closed. But the official said the agency had done so for several reasons, and had not reduced the number of personnel in Afghanistan.

"It's not just because it's a dangerous place � it's been dangerous all along," the official said. "The bases that have been closed have been closed for reasons of efficiency, because the job can be done better somewhere else."

The CIA has struggled to fill high-ranking posts in other countries, sources said. Four former CIA officers with close ties to headquarters said in separate interviews that the agency struggled to fill its top post in Pakistan last year, that at least five candidates turned down the job of station chief in Islamabad before the agency found an officer willing to take it.

A former senior officer in the agency's Near East Division said he was "badly jolted" by that news, and that most who turned it down did so for family reasons, such as a working spouse or children in school. "They were all the sort of things you'd expect in the corporate world," he said. "But this isn't the corporate world."

The CIA disputes those claims. "There were a number of people who wanted that job and were vying heavily for it," said the U.S. official. "I'm not aware of anybody turning it down."

February 21, 2004 at 01:56 AM in Iraq | Permalink | TrackBack (3) | Top of page | Blog Home

Rail chiefs head east for clues to perfection

Times Online - Newspaper Edition

By Ben Webster
Japanese intercity trains run on time and do not have accidents

NETWORK RAIL is to take lessons from the Japanese in how to run a railway.
Teams of rail managers are to be sent to Japan to study how the country has managed to achieve near-perfect punctuality without a single fatal train crash in 40 years of running the Shinkansen “bullet” trains.

The not-for-profit company that replaced Railtrack wants to measure its performance in every area against the standards achieved in Japan, the only other significant economy with a privatised railway.

Train delays will be top of the agenda. On the 170mph (270km/h) Shinkansen services, a delay is recorded if a train arrives 15 seconds late. Britain�s 125mph intercity trains are not considered late unless they arrive more than ten minutes behind schedule.

Instead of leaves on the line or the wrong type of snow, the only excuse for delays that Japanese passengers are ever likely to hear is that their line has been disrupted by an earthquake.

On the Tokaido Shinkansen, which carries 355,000 passengers a day between Tokyo and Osaka, the average train was 26 seconds late last year.

On Virgin West Coast in the same period, the average delay was 7 minutes 30 seconds.

Network Rail hopes to glean ideas and measure its progress through �international benchmarking�.

Ian McAllister, the chairman of Network Rail, said that the company was conscious that its monopoly made it difficult to assess its own performance.

�If we are not careful we can be fat, dumb and happy. So we have to create a substitute for competition by doing international benchmarking. We are setting up a series of structured information exchanges which go right into the detail of how the Japanese do things like rail maintenance, repairs and customer focus. We want to find out who is better in each area.�

Keiichi Kagayama, the manager of Tokyo�s Shinkan-sen control centre, said: �For us the constant pursuit of accuracy is a way of life. We try to spot potential problems before they cause delays, which means carrying out preventive maintenance.�

Network Rail believes that the quality of staff training on Japanese railways will be one of the first things it imports to Britain. Roderick Smith, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College and an expert on Japanese railways, said: �We regard staff training as a luxury that can be sacrificed. In Japan the training is so thorough that even people with the humblest jobs do them very well.� But he said Network Rail would struggle to teach its staff to embrace the Japanese attitute to work. �The mindset of the Japanese is suited to the rule- driven process of running railways like clockwork. In Britain we tend to think we can do better and don�t bother to observe the rules. It�s individualism versus collectivism.�

Professor Smith said railway workers in Britain usually focused on their individual tasks and had little experience of how the railways were run as a system. Japanese train drivers remain versatile, driving the train one day and collecting tickets the next. �This means they don�t lose contact with the passengers and can see the effect on people of delays.� Professor Smith said that Japanese staff were highly motivated because they joined one of the six regional railway companies for life. �The situation in Britain is musical chairs, with people jumping from company to company as short-term franchises come to an end,� he added.

There are no train franchises in Japan, which decided to keep track and trains under the control of a single company in each area when it privatised its railway in 1987.

Senior Network Rail officials privately admit that their preliminary visits to Japan have highlighted the benefits of keeping wheel and rail under the same ownership.

The secret of Japan�s train punctuality also lies partly with having well-behaved passengers who form orderly queues at painted markings on platforms. The markings show precisely where the doors will be when the train stops. The waiting passengers do not surge forward and block the doors but wait patiently until everyone has alighted. Such orderly queues mean that Shinkansen trains spend only 40 seconds at stations, half the time trains wait in Britain.

The co-operative attitude of Japanese passengers might also partly be explained by the freeze on rail fares since privatisation 17 years ago.

February 21, 2004 at 12:29 AM in Japan | Permalink | TrackBack (44) | Top of page | Blog Home

On the streets where beatings are routine, terror is driving teenage boys to suicide

Times Online - Newspaper Edition

By Stefanie Marsh

THE two teenage boys planned to commit suicide together. But after a punishment beating by paramilitaries, Anthony O’Neill couldn't wait. Last week he took a belt and hanged himself.
At his graveside, his best friend, 17-year-old Bernard Cairns, said under his breath: We were supposed to do this together . . . I'll be with you soon.

At Anthony’s wake, Bernard told his sister Bernie about their plan to commit suicide together. Then he climbed to the the top of scaffolding attached to a church above the Belfast ghetto where he grew up and hanged himself with his fleece jacket.

Anthony and Bernard are the latest in a spate of suicides that have claimed 13 young lives since January in North and West Belfast.

Both boys had been victims of paramilitary �punishments�. Two years ago, Bernard was abducted from a friend�s house, taken to a deserted spot and had a hole shot through both his shins.

When Anthony�s turn came he was grabbed from his bed in the middle of the night and stuffed down a manhole.

That was when the two boys decided that only their deaths stood any chance of bringing an end to the terrorism that was wrecking their lives and those of many other teenagers in the Ardoyne.

Yesterday Bernie Cairns told The Times: �We were at (Anthony�s) wake, and Barney told me that he and Anthony had decided to highlight what was going on by killing themselves in a pact.�

She believes the boys were driven to their deaths by the sheer fear to which they and their friends had been subjected since the 1998 ceasefire that has allowed INLA paramilitaries to tighten their grip on the area in the name of �community policing�. In May, another close friend, 18-year-old Philip �Pip� McTaggart, hanged himself with a length of hosepipe outside the Holy Cross Church where Bernard Cairns took his life.

Mr McTaggart was an ostensibly happy young man who had just started work in a job he loved. He killed himself a day after he smashed a car window belonging to a member of the INLA. It is thought that, fearing violent consequences, he pre-empted a paramilitary reckoning.

He knew what he could expect; just recently, a 14-year-old among his circle of friends was tarred and feathered then dragged from his home and shot through the back of the knee after the INLA accused him of being a police informer. The boy claims that the group�s leader has since threatened him with rape.

The boys, who grew up on the same street, were part of a close-knit group of seven teenagers who attended St Gabriel�s College in Ardoyne and spent all their spare time with each other. Of those seven, just two now survive.

Three other friends, Gary Black, 23, David Anderson, 18, and Piers Doherty, 18, died when the black Ford Mondeo they were driving torpedoed into a brick wall. It is believed that one of the victims, who had made an attempt on his own life in December, was also expecting a knee-capping from the INLA. In the Ardoyne, boys of 13 are approached as they play in the park and told they will be eligible for their first shooting come their next birthday. Teenagers who commit petty misdemeanours must brace themselves for the worst.

The �six pack� is a paramilitary speciality. It involves shattering the ankles, knees and elbows. The day Bernard Cairns had his legs permanently crippled, members of the INLA waited outside his house chanting: �Come out to play, Barney.�

The reaction of children brought up in the area is becoming fatalistic. Philip McGarry, a consultant psychiatrist at the Mater Hospital in North Belfast, says: �In a culture where it is acceptable for a young man to be dragged down an alleyway and shot, children grow up believing there is no such thing as respect for human dignity. They often become depressive or develop anxiety and a fatalistic approach to their own lives.

�Suicide and homicide are intimately linked. Some of these children are contemplating suicide or self-harm almost as a protective measure. They�re thinking, it�s going to happen anyway so I�ll do it instead of someone else.�

Although the police do not keep figures on paramilitary-style attacks where both perpetrators and victims are of the same religion, many of those living and working in North and West Belfast�s traditionally violent areas, claim that they have increased. �Since the Good Friday agreement and the IRA ceasefire we�ve seen more shootings and beatings than ever before,� Dr McGarry said. �We�ve seen fewer people injured by bombs or beatings from the so-called �other side� and more of these young fellows attacked by people of their own religion.

�These kids are growing up in a society where violence is acceptable, where you can go to the Sinn Fein or INLA office and they will tell you, yes, an attack is planned on your child.�

The Northern Ireland police said that, despite high levels of policing, many people in Ardoyne were still afraid to contact them for help. �We�re trying very hard but people in these areas feel they can�t be seen to support the police as Sinn Fein is not represented on the policing board.�

Father Aidan Troy, a local figurehead who came to international recognition during the Holy Cross stand-off, said: �There�s a certain tolerance of the punishment culture that arises from decades of violence and no policing but I think people are beginning to say that this is not place for any self-appointed group.�

On Sunday Patricia O�Neill, the sister of Anthony, plans to lead a peace march to the door of a key INLA member. Her plea: a guarantee from the group that no teenager in Ardoyne is under threat.

It is a brave act, never before contemplated in a country where paramilitaries are known for their vengeful tendencies.

Audrey Cairns, the mother of Bernard, plans to join Patricia on the march, along with at least 200 others.

�The INLA made my child commit suicide and it�s time that they were made to take account,� she said. �I am not afraid of the consequences of this. The worst they can do is kill you.

February 21, 2004 at 12:26 AM in Ireland | Permalink | TrackBack (23) | Top of page | Blog Home

February 20, 2004

Taleban tourists kept in the dark over release plan

Times Online - Newspaper Edition

By David Charter, Chief Political Correspondent

THE five British detainees set for release from Guantanamo Bay are unlikely to be told they are to be freed until moments before they leave in early March, The Times understands.

Guards are reluctant to tell them the news that their families have been celebrating since Thursday night because they fear that it could spark trouble among the 650 other detainees. The decision means that, despite banner headlines in Britain, the detainees will be kept in the same information-free bubble as the rest of the terrorist suspects at Camp X-Ray in Cuba until their passage out has been arranged.

Talks are continuing over whether the United States Air Force or the RAF will fly the men back. They will be flown directly to an RAF base where they are likely to undergo police interviews, with lawyers present, before being allowed to see their families again. Concerns about the spectacle of relatives and supporters gathering outside the RAF base mean that the detainees are unlikely to be held for more than 48 hours.

Louise Christian, the lawyer for Tarek Dergoul, one of the detainees to be released, said: �All the families have been told was that they would be leaving in about two weeks. The principle in Guantanamo Bay is that the detainees are not told anything about the outside world so they have no idea about the fuss there has been over here about them.�

Relatives will contrast their treatment with that of a Danish detainee who is also being returned and has been promised immediate freedom.

The remarks by David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, that none of the five is �a threat to the British people� mirrored the American Government�s own view, Home Office sources said yesterday. But a final decision on whether they will face charges rests with the Crown Prosecution Service, based on police evidence.

Although SO19, the anti-terrorist squad, has been investigating all nine of the British Guantanamo detainees for some time, legal sources believe that there will not be enough admissible evidence.

The five would be held for longer or transferred to a high security police station such as Paddington Green in London only if fresh evidence of active terrorist links came to light. But even Shafiq Rasul, the 24-year-old from Tipton who was captured after being shot while fighting with the Taleban in Afghanistan, did not seem to have broken any British laws, legal experts said.

Sir Nicholas Lyell, a former Tory Attorney-General, said yesterday that the men were unlikely to be tried for treason as demanded on Thursday by David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, if any were shown to have fought against British troops in Afghanistan. Sir Nicholas added: �It is likely to be that evidence obtained at Guantanamo will not pass the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, the normal rules that apply in Britain.� Mr Blunkett�s remarks make it more likely that a case for compensation could be brought in the United States, Anthony Scrivener, QC, a leading human rights barrister, said yesterday. The Government�s negotiations with the United States over all nine Britons were defended by Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the Lord Chancellor. He said the repatriation of five was �a good result� and said that talks would continue with the United States on the remaining four.

February 20, 2004 at 11:58 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (5) | Top of page | Blog Home

Japan on terror alert

Headline news from Sky News - Witness the event

Japan has tightened security at airports, nuclear plants and government facilities to guard against terror attacks.
Officials refused to say whether they had received a specific terrorist threat.
The tougher security follows the dispatching of Japanese troops to Iraq for humanitarian work.

The tougher security follows the dispatching of Japanese troops to Iraq for humanitarian work.

The alert also follows a failed attempt to hit the Defence Agency with projectiles earlier in the week and came ahead of the verdict in the trial of a cult leader accused of plotting the 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subways.

The security move sent a shiver through global financial markets, knocking the Japanese yen to 10-week lows against the US dollar.

A National Police official said riot police armed with automatic rifles would guard Tokyo and Kansai international airports and nuclear power and reprocessing facilities.

Additional checkpoints are being set up around the prime minister's residence, the US Embassy, military facilities and national and local assembly buildings.

Security has also been strengthened at ports, railway stations and shopping malls.

Last Updated: 20:49 UK, Friday February 20, 2004

February 20, 2004 at 04:01 PM in Japan | Permalink | TrackBack (34) | Top of page | Blog Home

February 19, 2004

Case set to be dropped against GCHQ mole who blew whistle on US bugging

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Case set to be dropped against GCHQ mole who blew whistle on US bugging

Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday February 20, 2004
The Guardian

The prosecution is preparing to abandon the case against a former GCHQ employee charged with leaking information about a "dirty tricks" spying operation before the invasion of Iraq, the Guardian has learned.
Katharine Gun, 29, is due to appear at the Old Bailey next week where she has said she will plead not guilty to breaking the Official Secrets Act.

She has said her alleged disclosures exposed serious wrongdoing by the US and could have helped to prevent the deaths of Iraqis and British forces in an "illegal war".

The case is potentially hugely embarrassing for the government and would open up GCHQ operations to unwelcome publicity. Also damaging and politically threatening is her plan to seek the disclosure of the full advice from the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, on the legality of the war against Iraq.

The government would almost certainly refuse to disclose such advice, arguing that opinions of its law officers are traditionally protected from the outside world. Ms Gun's lawyers were likely to argue she could not get a fair trial without seeing the attorney's advice on the war and the disclosure of GCHQ's activities.

Ben Emmerson QC, her counsel, told London's Bow Street magistrates court last month that she was being prevented from saying anything to her lawyers about her work at GCHQ.

Sources familiar with the case last night strongly indicated that the prosecution will ask the court to drop the case against her at a pre-trial hearing at the Old Bailey on Wednesday.

Ms Gun, a translator at GCHQ, was arrested in March but not charged until eight months later.

The long delay suggests that even then there was a fierce debate in government and GCHQ circles about the advisability of a secrets trial against an employee who said she acted out of conscience over an issue which divided the country.

Prosecutions under the Official Secrets Act need the consent of the attorney general. But the prosecution can advise the case should be dropped if a trial was considered to be against the public interest.

In sensitive cases in the past, the prosecution has dropped charges if the judge orders the disclosure of information the government and intelligence agencies say they cannot release.

A series of cases, many involving Customs, have been dropped in recent times because of a reluctance to disclose sensitive documents.

Ms Gun was arrested when it was reported that America's national security agency, GCHQ's US partner, was conducting a secret surveillance operation, bugging UN delegates' home and office telephones and emails.

The NSA told GCHQ that the particular targets of an eavesdropping "surge" were the delegates from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan - the six crucial "swing votes" on the security council. A memo sent by Frank Koza, a senior NSA official, said the information from the eavesdropping would be used against the key UN delegations.

In a statement when she was charged, Ms Gun said: "Any disclosures that may have been made were justified because they exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the US government which attempted to subvert our own security services. Secondly, they could have helped prevent widescale death and casualties amongst ordinary Iraqi people and UK forces in the course of an illegal war."

Senior Mexican and Chilean diplomats at the UN have since claimed their missions were spied on.

The former Mexican ambassador to the UN, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, told the Observer newspaper this week that American officials intervened last March - days before the war was launched against Saddam Hussein - to halt secret UN negotiations for a compromise resolution to give weapons inspectors more time to complete their work.

He claimed the intervention could only have come as a result of secret surveillance of a meeting where the compromise was being worked on.

High-profile figures in the US who have signed a statement backing Ms Gun's case include actor Sean Penn, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, president of the Newspaper Guild Linda Foley, and Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers containing evidence of US involvement in Vietnam in 1971.

Ms Gun is currently on unconditional bail.

February 19, 2004 at 11:55 PM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home

Chalabi stands by faulty intelligence that toppled Saddam's regime

Telegraph | News | Chalabi stands by faulty intelligence that toppled Saddam's regime

By Jack Fairweather in Baghdad and Anton La Guardia
(Filed: 19/02/2004)

An Iraqi leader accused of feeding faulty pre-war intelligence to Washington said yesterday his information about Saddam Hussein's weapons, even if discredited, had achieved the aim of persuading America to topple the dictator.
Ahmad Chalabi and his London-based exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, for years provided a conduit for Iraqi defectors who were debriefed by US intelligence agents. But many American officials now blame Mr Chalabi for providing intelligence that turned out to be false or wild exaggerations about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Chalabi, by far the most effective anti-Saddam lobbyist in Washington, shrugged off charges that he had deliberately misled US intelligence. "We are heroes in error," he told the Telegraph in Baghdad.

"As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants."

His comments are likely to inflame the debate on both sides of the Atlantic over the quality of pre-war intelligence, and the spin put on it by President George W Bush and Tony Blair as they argued for military action.

US officials said last week that one of the most celebrated pieces of false intelligence, the claim that Saddam Hussein had mobile biological weapons laboratories, had come from a major in the Iraqi intelligence service made available by the INC.

US officials at first found the information credible and the defector passed a lie-detector test. But in later interviews it became apparent that he was stretching the truth and had been "coached by the INC".

He failed a second polygraph test and in May 2002, intelligence agencies were warned that the information was unreliable.

But analysts missed the warning, and the mobile laboratory story remained firmly established in the catalogue of alleged Iraqi violations until months after the overthrow of Saddam.

America claimed to have found two mobile laboratories, but the lorries in fact held equipment to make hydrogen for weather balloons.

Last week, US State Department officials admitted that much of the first-hand testimony they had received was "shaky".

"What the INC told us formed one part of the intelligence picture," a senior official in Baghdad said. "But what Chalabi told us we accepted in good faith. Now there is going to be a lot of question marks over his motives."

Mr Chalabi is now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, but his star in Washington has waned.

February 19, 2004 at 07:25 PM in Iraq | Permalink | TrackBack (4) | Top of page | Blog Home

Roots of Pakistan Atomic Scandal Traced to Europe

Roots of Pakistan Atomic Scandal Traced to Europe

By CRAIG S. SMITH

Published: February 19, 2004

ARIS, Feb. 18 — The Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan has been demonized in the West for selling atomic secrets and equipment around the world, but the trade began in Europe, not Islamabad, according to court documents and experts who monitor proliferation.
The records show that industry scientists and Western intelligence agencies have known for decades that nuclear technology was pouring out of Europe despite national export control efforts to contain it.

Many of the names that have turned up among lists of suppliers and middlemen who fed equipment, materials and knowledge to nuclear programs in Pakistan and other aspiring nuclear nations are well-known players in Europe's uranium enrichment industry, a critical part of many nuclear weapons programs. Some have been convicted of illegal exports before.

The proliferation has its roots in Europe's own postwar eagerness for nuclear independence from the United States and its lax security over potentially lethal technology. It was abetted, critics say, by competition within Europe for lucrative contracts to bolster state-supported nuclear industries. Even as their own intelligence services warned that Pakistan could not be trusted, some European governments continued to help Pakistan's nuclear program.

"It was an economic consideration," said Paul Stais, a former Belgian member of the European Parliament who lobbied unsuccessfully for tighter export controls.

One name to emerge from the international investigations of Dr. Khan's nuclear trade was that of Urs Tinner, a Swiss engineer who monitored production of centrifuge parts at a factory in Malaysia. The parts were intended for Libya. Mr. Tinner's father, Friedrich Tinner, also an engineer, came under scrutiny by the Defense Department in the 1970's and again by Swiss export control authorities and the International Atomic Energy Agency in the last decade, because he was involved in exports to Pakistan and Iraq of technology used in uranium enrichment.

In the 1970's, Friedrich Tinner was in charge of exports at Vakuum-Apparate-Technik, or VAT, when the company was identified by the Defense Department as shipping items with possible nuclear-related uses to Pakistan, according to documents and VAT company officials. He later set up his own company, now called PhiTec AG, which was investigated by the Swiss in 1996 for trying to ship valves for uranium enrichment centrifuges to Iraq. The Tinners were never found to have broken any laws, Swiss officials said.

"Most of these people were heavily investigated in the 1970's, 80's and 90's," said Mark Hibbs, the European editor of the technical journal Nucleonics Week, published by McGraw-Hill.

The problem began with the 1970 Treaty of Almelo, under which Britain, Germany and the Netherlands agreed to develop centrifuges to enrich uranium jointly, ensuring their nuclear power industry a fuel source independent of the United States. Urenco, or the Uranium Enrichment Company, was established the next year with its primary enrichment plant at Almelo, the Netherlands.

Security at Urenco was by most accounts slipshod. The consortium relied on a network of research centers and subcontractors to build its centrifuges, and top-secret blueprints were passed out to companies bidding on tenders, giving engineers across Europe an opportunity to appropriate designs.

Dr. Khan, who worked for a Urenco Dutch subcontractor, Physics Dynamic Research Laboratory, was given access to the most advanced designs, even though he came from Pakistan, which was already known to harbor nuclear ambitions. A 1980 report by the Dutch government on his activities said he visited the Almelo factory in May 1972 and by late 1974 had an office there.

After Dr. Khan returned to Pakistan with blueprints and supplier lists for uranium enrichment centrifuges at the end of 1975, American intelligence agencies predicted that he would soon be shopping for the items needed to build the centrifuges for Pakistan's bomb. They soon detected a flow of equipment from Europe to Pakistan as Dr. Khan drew on Urenco's network of suppliers using a trusted group of former schoolmates and friends as agents.

The Dutch government report found that in 1976, two Dutch firms exported to Pakistan 6,200 unfinished rotor tubes made of superstrong maraging steel. The tubes are the heart of Urenco's advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges.

In 1983, a Dutch court convicted Dr. Khan in absentia on charges of stealing the designs, though the conviction was later overturned on a technicality. Nonetheless, in the late 1980's, Belgian ministers led delegations of scientists and businessmen to Pakistan, despite warnings from their own experts that they were meeting with people involved in the military application of nuclear technology.

"Every well-informed person knows the inherent danger of an intense collaboration with a country such as Pakistan," wrote Ren� Constant, director of Belgium's National Institute of Radioactive Elements in February 1987, chastising Philippe Maystadt, then the country's minister of economic affairs, after one such visit.

That same year, despite American warnings to Germany that such a sale was imminent, a German firm exported to Pakistan a plant for the recovery of tritium, a volatile gas used to increase the power of nuclear bombs. The company simply called the plant something else to obtain an export license.

"The export control office didn't even inspect the goods," said Reinhard Huebner, the German prosecutor who handled the subsequent trial of the company's chief, Rudolf Ortmayers, and Peter Finke, a German physicist who went to Pakistan to train engineers there to operate the equipment. Both men were sentenced to jail for violating export control laws.

But there were clues that the technology had spread even further: a German intelligence investigation determined that Iraq and possibly Iran and North Korea had obtained uranium-melting expertise stolen from Urenco in 1984, Mr. Hibbs reported in Nucleonics Week several years later.

In 1989, two engineers, Bruno Stemmler and Karl Heinz Schaab, who had worked for Germany's MAN New Technology, another Urenco subcontractor, sold plans for advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges to Iraq. They went to Baghdad to help solve problems in making the equipment work.

In 1991, after the first Iraq war, international inspectors were stunned to discover the extent of Saddam Hussein's hidden program. Mr. Schaab was later convicted of treason but only served a little more than a year in jail. Mr. Stemmler died before he could be tried.

David Albright, a former weapons inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he helped retrieve a full set of the blueprints from Iraq after the major combat operations ended last year. United States inspectors have not found evidence that Mr. Hussein had restarted his nuclear program, but Mr. Albright said there were still drawings unaccounted for.

"It's an unnerving issue," said Mr. Albright, who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security. "A lot of nuclear weapons design stuff could be missing in Iraq."

As recently as last year, German customs agents seized high-tensile-strength aluminum tubes made by a German company and bound for North Korea. The tubes matched the specifications for the housings of Urenco's uranium-enriching centrifuges.

One name on a list of suppliers to Iran that came to light in recent investigations was Henk Slebos, who studied with Dr. Khan at Delft Technological University in Leuven, Belgium, in the late 1960's.

In the early 1980's, Mr. Slebos was arrested for shipping an oscilloscope, used in testing centrifuges, to Dr. Khan in Pakistan. He was convicted and sentenced to a brief prison term in 1985. Mr. Slebos declined to comment for this article.

In 1998, he withdrew five Pakistan-bound shipments that the Dutch authorities had stopped in the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria because they contained "dual use" items, which could be used for uncovventional weapons as well as civilian purposes.

Last September, Mr. Slebos was among the sponsors of an international symposium on advanced materials in Pakistan organized by Dr. Khan. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who was then the Dutch foreign minister and is now NATO's secretary general, told Dutch members of Parliament that Mr. Slebos was still doing business with Dr. Khan, though he did not elaborate.

February 19, 2004 at 07:23 PM in Espionage - general | Permalink | TrackBack (14) | Top of page | Blog Home

Democracy is dying but we're too rich to care

Times Online - Comment

Simon Jenkins

The Times Literary Supplement does not do page-three girls. Instead it does page three ideas. Its last issue has a “real corker”, going to parts of the intellectual anatomy which other organs do not reach. But sensitive readers should beware. The bombshell covers not just page three but pages four and five as well. It reviews a book of 50 volumes with the knockout title, The Norwegian Study of Power and Democracy.

Sometimes we should all stand back from the turmoil and think. Six years ago this is what the Norwegian parliament did. It realised that Norway had changed over a century from desperate poverty to one of the richest nations on earth. Five million people, the same as Scotland, had enjoyed a hundred years of independent democracy. The parliament duly summoned five wise men and women and gave them unlimited resources to answer the question. How were things going? How was democracy in Norway?

The answer came back meticulous, and sensational. Democracy is not going well at all. Without urgent repair, it risks no longer meriting the name. Indeed democracy may yet go the way of other ideologies that strutted their hour upon the European stage, having strutted a shorter hour than most.

The pundits examined everything. They looking into the pattern of voting, local and national. They investigated the role of women, immigrants, minorities, rich and poor. They reported on parliament, the press, the universities, lobbyists, the law. Power was pursued up and down the land, from the Sami �aboriginals� of the North to the oil barons of Oslo.

The conclusion was that Norway is in ostensible good shape. North Sea oil has made most people well-off and happy with their welfare state. Women enjoy equality. Law is progressive and crime low. Half the population go on to higher education. Government is seen as honest and benevolent. Wealth has proved father to consent. Norway has reached the destination to which most European states still aspire.

So what is the problem? The answer is that there may be none. But there is growing evidence that contentment breeds contempt for democracy. Voters are losing interest. They are aroused by intrusions into �my backyard�. But in response they turn to here-and-now organisations, the media and direct action groups. This politics is spasmodic and mostly middle class.

The first casualty has been the ballot. Norwegians once voted with pride, nationally and locally. Turnouts are now down to 75 per cent and 55 per cent respectively. Political parties, unions, welfare associations, sports clubs, religious movements � the �little platoons� � are evaporating. Party membership is down by a half in a decade. Parties have become professional machines subsidised by the state.

Reviewing all this for the TLS, Stein Ringen, Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at Oxford University, sees a break-down in democracy�s �chain of command�. The biggest losers are two traditional institutions, the 440 municipal councils and Norway�s national parliament, the Storting.

The local councils were once the bedrock of Norwegian democracy, levying their own income taxes up to 25 per cent. Today they raise money to the limit of a central cap and carry out decisions imposed on them by central government in Oslo. This has eroded local choice and left electors feeling impotent between national elections.

National politics has not benefited from the resulting centralism. The Storting�s proportional representation is disastrous to most Norwegians. Parties may be soundly defeated at the polls yet continue to hold coalition power. Voters feel cheated and ignored by a shifting stage army of politicians in Oslo. The Storting has lost public respect and seems no more than a talent pool for government.

British readers will find this grimly familiar, as will students of democracy across much of Europe. And who are the winners? As in Britain, they are those within the charmed circle of government and with easy access to it. This means lobbyists, the media, businessmen and lawyers, mostly congregated in the capital.

In all this the Commission discerns a benign version of Lenin�s democratic centralism. The tiered democracy of Tocqueville�s �habit of association� is in decay. In its place is a relatively open and liberal elite. This enjoys �soft consent�, through periodic plebiscites (general elections) and by the disinclination of the bourgeoisie to rebel. A service industry underclass, mostly of recent immigrants, is excluded from power but is contained with �positive discrimination�.

To the majority of the Commission this was a �democratic infrastructure in collapse�. Two members (both women) disagreed. They found the new �disorder� refreshing. Women and minorities enjoyed greater leverage. Direct action was a sort of empowerment. Consent was simply shifting away from elected assemblies to more informal participation.

Lenin might cheer this latter view, but I am with the majority. For me democracy is bred in the bone. It lies in somehow sharing communal decisions, which is essentially local. Here lies what David Marquand, in his new book The Decline of the Public, calls the �domain of citizenship�. If this domain passes entirely to a central elite, to civil servants, pollsters, lobbyists and lawyers, it will end in tears. Britain�s poll tax was initiated by such an elite, and ended in a riot. Man is a social animal and his society needs some order and framework. Nimbyism, single- issue politics and fuel-tax strikes cannot substitute for elections, assemblies and accountable government.

Ringen ends his TLS review with conclusions that he shares with the commission. �The best way to repair democracy,� he says smartly, �is to repair democracy.� Constitutions must be reformed. Local democracy must be revitalised because it encompasses most of the chain of command, from people to power.

The report sees Norway�s proportional representation as a mistake. Britain�s practice of clearing out an entire cabal from time to time is refreshing. Parties should not get state subsidy but be forced to garner mass support. Excluded minorities should receive specific empowerment. Such reforms may run counter to the centralist trend. But democracy, however comfortable, must stay on guard against its foes.

There is another reason for preparedness. The report notes that government is nowadays ever more offshore and beyond reach of redress. Businesses make decisions at a distance. Norway is not a member of the European Union, yet it chooses to abide by the decisions of the Court of Human Rights and the European Court. Ordinary electors throughout Europe, inside and outside the EU, cannot realistically influence these bodies. National electorates cannot reject their laws or appeal against their decisions. These dictators may be benevolent, but for how long? Who guards them?

The message here is no less radical. All European states are de facto �within Europe�. Withdrawal is not meaningful. But national policy should be sceptical of anything supranational. Any power delegated beyond reach of national democratic control must be pursued and somehow chained. International laws must never be incorporated into national ones. Peoples should legislate their own human rights in their own parliaments, and enforce them through their own courts.

At first I found this report spine-chilling. If democracy is on the way out, I wondered, what next? Might we revert to the bureaucratic imperialism of the Habsburgs? Might we see again the mechanistic statism of Lenin�s Soviet Union? The new European constitution hints at rule by a Holy Roman Empire of pan-European oligarchs. Perhaps a century of liberal capitalism has merely made Europe safe for another bout of tyranny tempered by revolution. Must America save us yet again?

By the end I had no doubt. Good old-fashioned democracy must be returned to the fire. It must be banged on the anvil and hammered into shape. We cannot do without it. Its cutting edge must never rust. There is no safe alternative.

So thank you, Norway. Thank you for shouting a warning at the small minds of Downing Street, plodding down the road to doom. Democracy is in a bad way in both our countries. But in Norway the Northern Lights shine bright through the gloom.

simon.jenkins@thetimes.co.uk

February 19, 2004 at 07:18 PM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (8) | Top of page | Blog Home

49 to 55? You're the new golden generation

Times Online - Newspaper Edition

By Alexandra Frean, Social Affairs Correspondent

TODAY’S 49 to 55-year-olds represent a “golden” generation with more accumulated wealth than any previous age group and a greater determination to spend it themselves on retirement rather than leave it to their children, according to research.
An International Longevity Centre UK study says that the average amount of wealth for those aged 55 has reached a record �130,000. This is on top of the money they may have in their pension funds.

The findings throw important new light on Britain�s wealth base and are likely to inform the debate on pension provision and financial planning for an ageing population.

They challenge the traditional perception of all older people as needy, and suggest that the Government has to find ways to increase support for pensioners on low incomes, without giving it to the significant but growing minority of retired people who do not need it.

Michael Willmott, of the Future Foundation and the author of the report, said that it was clear that, despite fears of a pensions crisis, a significant number of middle-aged people were �over-saving� for their retirement.

�We hear a lot of talk from doom-mongers about a pensions crisis. But my view is that we do not need to panic just yet,� he said. �For the next 10 to 20 years we are likely to see the position of new retirees being better than current ones.�

Increases in home ownership coupled with the house-price boom and greater participation in company and private pensions among those now in their 40s and 50s are largely responsible for the emergence of the golden generation, Mr Willmott said.

The study, sponsored by the bank HBOS, is based on data from more than 10,000 adults taking part in the British Household Panel Study.

It charts the way that individuals accumulate liquid assets, such as saving and investments, and illiquid assets, such as housing, over the course of their lives. It concludes that most individuals do far more planning for retirement than generally thought.

The study shows that the average UK household has assets worth �86,912, in addition to any pension fund savings. Although levels of unsecured debt are high among younger people � peaking at �5,000 to �6,000 for those in their early 20s � by the age of 44 levels of consumer debt decline sharply as individuals prepare for retirement by paying off their loans and building up their savings and investments.

By retirement, very few individuals have any unsecured debt. The study also shows that key transition from becoming a mortgage-holder to an outright homeowner occurs when people are aged between 55 and 59. People from 45 to 59 are the most likely to benefit from inherited wealth.

February 19, 2004 at 08:00 AM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (9) | Top of page | Blog Home

February 18, 2004

Joy as last Cold War barrier is torn down

Times Online - World

By Richard Owen
EU enlargement finally brings unity to the divided city of Gorizia, on the Slovenian border

THE last East-West barrier in Europe was dismantled yesterday amid tears of joy.
As the leaders of Britain, France and Germany discussed the technicalities of European Union enlargement in Berlin, bulldozers were turning the Continent�s unification into reality on the ground by removing the final sections of the high metal fence that has divided the Italian border city of Gorizia from its Slovenian half, Nova Gorica, for more than half a century.

On May 1 Slovenia joins the EU along with nine other new members, most former communist nations. The day before, Romano Prodi, the European Commission President, President Ciampi of Italy and President Drnovsek of Slovenia are to swing a symbolic pick axe at the fence to mark the fall of a �mini Berlin Wall�.

By last night, however, there was no fence left to knock down. �We will have to put a bit back just for them,� Vittorio Brancati, the Mayor of Gorizia, said as the 2m (6ft 6in) fence was swept away.

The demolition left only a marker stone � inscribed �Republic of Italy� on one side and �Republic of Slovenia� on the other � standing marooned in the middle of the square outside the Habsburg-era Transalpina railway station, where the town was brutally cut in half in 1947. The fate of the stone, put up in 1977 on the 30th anniversary of the division, has yet to be decided. The fence will be cut into 100 pieces and sent to heads of state as a souvenir.

On the Slovenian side of the Piazza Transalpina, Cilka Princic, 79, said that she had lived in a flat above the railway station since 1948, and could remember when the dividing line was a barbed-wire barrier, later replaced by the concrete-and-wire mesh fence. �My husband was a railwayman. He died last year. I wish he could have lived to see this moment,� Mrs Princic said.

For 56 years she looked out at the Italian side, almost able to touch it. �It might as well have been on the Moon,� she said. �I remember one young man trying to get over to Italy in the early communist days. I saw him struggling on the barbed wire. He was hauled back by the police. I don�t know what happened to him.�

In 1991, when communism crumbled and Yugoslavia began to fall apart, Slovenia was spared the bloodshed that marked the birthpangs of independent Croatia or Bosnia. The red star on top of the Transalpina station came down, and movement across the seven checkpoints in the town became easier.

At Piazza Transalpina, General Carlo Colella, who as an army lieutenant put up the marker stone, described yesterday as unforgettable.

Signor Brancati said that some form of frontier control would remain until 2007, when Slovenia joins the Schengen Agreement on border-free travel. �But customs controls disappear on May 1 and instead of the fence there will be only a row of flower tubs and a commemorative mosaic.�

Mirko Brulc, Mayor of Nova Gorica, said that the city would be �a united town, but in two countries and with two administrations�.

He added: �We are completing a process which began in the 1960s with joint projects in sport and culture. This will now spread to transport, town planning, education and tourism.�

The town�s two halves are now ethnically divided, and even look different. Gorizia retains its Habsburg-era charm, but the Slovene side is marked by grey, concrete blocks.

Some Italian businessmen fear that Slovenia will gain an advantage through EU handouts for depressed areas. Adriano Ritossa, head of the far-right Alleanza Nazionale in Gorizia, said that Slovenes would �suck our economic resources from us. We don�t trust them.�

Signor Brancati, however, dismissed such fears, noting that more than a thousand Slovenes from Nova Gorica already cross daily to work in Gorizia. �There will be a gradual merging. What we have to do is to dismantle the psychological barriers as well,� he said.

Elvio Ferigo, 84, owner of the historic Caf� Garibaldi in Gorizia, who witnessed successively fascism, liberation and the confrontation with Tito�s Yugoslavia, said that EU membership held disadvantages for both sides.

But, he added, �all of us in this part of the world need to be part of something bigger after such a tortured history. We need Europe.�

Josco Marmolja, 73, who helped to put up the fence, said that it was a �terrible, terrible thing�, but he always knew it would come down. He had kept up friendships by chatting through it, but �it will take generations to establish trust again�.

Gorizia's changing rules

Austro-Hungarian empire, until 1918

Mussolini�s fascist Italy, from 1922

Nazi Germany, 1943-45

Rome and Belgrade split control from 1947, when the fence was built

Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia, after secession in 1991

Brussels, after Slovenia joins the EU on May 1

February 18, 2004 at 07:41 PM in Cold War | Permalink | TrackBack (99) | Top of page | Blog Home

February 17, 2004

Kerry condemns Bush's approach to Northern Ireland

Guardian Unlimited | US elections 2004 | Kerry condemns Bush's approach to Northern Ireland

Press Association
Tuesday February 17, 2004

Senator John Kerry has castigated the US president, George Bush, for pushing the Northern Ireland peace process down the White House's foreign policy agenda, it emerged today.
Mr Kerry - the frontrunner to win the Democratic nomination to fight Mr Bush in November's presidential elections - also criticised Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists for "refusing to form a government with Sinn Fein".

The senator, who has already won 14 of his party's 16 state primaries and is expected to win another in Wisconsin tonight, accused the Bush administration of failing to build on Bill Clinton's efforts to promote the peace process.

He outlined his views in a comprehensive statement on the process that has been circulated to Irish-American groups over recent weeks.

In the statement, Mr Kerry urged the IRA and loyalists to get rid of their weapons and bring an end to all paramilitary activity. A statement from the Massachusetts senator's campaign team said: "John Kerry will put the Northern Ireland peace process high on America's foreign policy agenda.

"On this issue, he will continue to follow the path set by Senator [Edward] Kennedy, President Clinton and Senator [George] Mitchell."

The team said that there had not been a US ambassador to Ireland for more than a year, adding that the Bush administration's "lack of urgency" in appointing one was "clear evidence that Ireland is not a high priority".

During his four-year term, Mr Bush has had two advisers on Northern Ireland - former State Department official Ambassador Richard Haass and his recently appointed successor, Ambassador Mitchell Reiss.

Ambassador Haass paid several visits to Northern Ireland to urge political leaders to reach agreement on power-sharing and support IRA disarmament.

He also supported police reform in the province, and the integrated education of Protestant and Catholic schoolchildren.

Last April, Mr Bush met politicians during a visit to Northern Ireland. He issued a joint statement with the prime minister, Tony Blair, and the Irish taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, urging the province to consign paramilitarism to history.

However, the primary purpose of his visit was a summit at Hillsborough Castle with Mr Blair on the Iraq war.

Mr Bush has also held St Patrick's Day receptions for Mr Ahern and Northern Ireland's leaders in the White House, although they have been more muted than those hosted by the Clinton administration.

Mr Kerry said that there had been many positive developments in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, including a marked reduction in sectarian killings, devolution, the scaling down of the British army presence, a beginning to IRA disarmament and the setting up of cross-border and British-Irish institutions.

His statement welcomed the new police service, which he hoped would "soon command the support of everyone in Northern Ireland".

However, the presidential hopeful acknowledged that more work needed to be done. His campaign team's statement said: "As a supporter of the need to hold recent elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly, he believes that repeatedly suspending democratic institutions is not the way forward for Northern Ireland.

"He urges all parties involved to work for the earliest resumption of the assembly, and he believes the review of the Belfast agreement must be just that - a review, not a renegotiation.

"The problem is not the structures of the agreement itself, but rather the failure of all to fully implement it.

"The DUP cannot be permitted to disenfranchise half the population of Northern Ireland by refusing to form a government with Sinn Fein."

Mr Kerry said that the full implementation of the agreement could not be put on hold during the review at Stormont. He added that further action was needed on the scaling down of security in the province, and on human rights.

"It is equally important that the IRA takes further substantive measures of decommissioning," he said.

"The guns are silent, which is a positive step, but the guns must be removed forever, and an end must come to all paramilitary activity, both republican and loyalist."

The statement paid tribute to the role of the Irish community in the US, and noted that the US had also played its part in building peace and in the creation of the Irish Republic's Celtic tiger economy.

Economic ties between the two countries meant that Irish companies were also a large investor in the US, creating more than 100,000 jobs, he said.

Political stability in Northern Ireland could only strengthen economic links between the province, the Irish Republic and the US, he added.

"John Kerry's administration will support these growing business ties which bring economic benefits to all," the campaign statement pledged.

Arguing that Ireland served as "an important bridge between the United States and the European Union", Mr Kerry also said that he would work with the Dublin government to repair US ties with Europe, "which were greatly damaged in President Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq".

Meanwhile, a Republican congressman is due to visit Belfast tomorrow for talks with political leaders.

New York Congressman Jim Walsh will travel to the province to meet Sinn Fein and other parties taking part in the review of the Good Friday agreement.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams is due to march in a St Patrick's day parade in Congressman Walsh's home town of Syracuse next month.

February 17, 2004 at 05:01 PM in Ireland | Permalink | TrackBack (19) | Top of page | Blog Home

Iraqi who gave MI6 45-minute claim says it was untrue

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Iraqi who gave MI6 45-minute claim says it was untrue

David Leigh and Richard Norton-Taylor
Tuesday January 27, 2004
The Guardian

The government's dogged insistence that Saddam Hussein was able to deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of the order being given suffered two serious blows yesterday as ministers braced themselves for the findings of the Hutton inquiry.
As the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, was once again forced to defend the justification for going to war, the Iraqi exile group in London which claims to have supplied MI6 with the intelligence about Saddam's 45-minute capability admitted that the information might have been completely untrue.

Nick Theros, the Washington representative of Iyad Allawi, who headed the Iraqi National Accord in exile, said it was raw intelligence from a single source, part of a large amount of information passed on by the INA to MI6.

He told the Guardian: "We were passing it on in good faith. It was for the intelligence services to verify it."

The admission came as David Kay, who resigned as the coalition's chief weapons inspector in Iraq on Friday, accused the intelligence agencies of failing to detect that Saddam's weapons programme was in disarray as a result of corruption and increasingly erratic leadership.

Mr Straw admitted that it was "disappointing" that the inspectors had not found evidence of the weapons, but said the war with Iraq was more justified today than it had been when MPs voted for the invasion.

"We were never saying that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United Kingdom... The serious and current threat [was] to the world, and that was absolutely true, and I remain convinced it was," he told the BBC Radio 4 programme Today.

The claim that Saddam could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes was highlighted by Tony Blair's preface to the dossier issued by the government in September 2002 in the run-up to the war.

It was also at the heart of the row between Downing Street and the BBC after doubt was cast on its accuracy by the government weapons scientist David Kelly.

But Mr Theros said the information now seemed to be a "crock of shit". "Clearly we have not found WMD," he said.

Mr Theros works with his father, a former US ambassador, to promote the political affairs of Mr Allawi, who is now a member of the Iraqi governing council in Baghdad.

He said the Iraqi officer who claims to have been the original source of the intelligence had in fact never seen inside the purported chemical weapons crates upon which his 45-minute claim was based.

The former INA spy, who calls himself Lieutenant Colonel al-Dabbagh, although this is not his full name, is now said to be "in hiding".

At the time, he says, he commanded a frontline unit.

He told the Sunday Telegraph and NBC television that before the September 2002 dossier was published he smuggled out sketchy intelligence about WMD to MI6 via a general in Baghdad working for the INA.

He said one of Saddam's senior officials told a meeting of air defence commanders "probably sometime in the spring" that an arsenal of unspecified secret weapons would be used for battlefield defence against US invaders.

"They told us that [coalition troops] cannot pass across Iraq because we will use everything from the knife to nuclear weapons to defend ourselves."

The colonel says his unit later took delivery of an unspecified number of crates which appeared to contain short-range weapons, such as rocket-propelled grenades.

They were supposedly to be fired from civilian jeeps as a last-ditch defence by Saddam loyalists wearing gas masks.

Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, did not deny in evidence to the Hutton inquiry that the intelligence for the 45-minute WMD claim came second-hand from a single source who was a senior Iraqi army officer.

Further damage to Downing Street's case for going to war came from Dr Kay, who said yesterday that the CIA and other intelligence agencies had failed to recognise that Iraq had all but abandoned its efforts to produce large quantities of chemical or biological weapons after the first Gulf war.

He told the New York Times that his team discovered that Iraq had plunged into what he called a "vortex of corruption" around 1997 and 1998.

Iraqi scientists realised that they could go to Saddam and present plans for weapons programmes and receive large amounts of money, without making good their promises.

February 17, 2004 at 12:23 AM in Iraq | Permalink | TrackBack (4) | Top of page | Blog Home

Israel knew Iraq had no WMD, says MP

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Israel knew Iraq had no WMD, MP says

Associated Press
Wednesday February 4, 2004
The Guardian

A prominent Israeli MP said yesterday that his country's intelligence services knew claims that Saddam Hussein was capable of swiftly launching weapons of mass destruction were wrong but withheld the information from Washington.
"It was known in Israel that the story that weapons of mass destruction could be activated in 45 minutes was an old wives' tale," Yossi Sarid, a member of the foreign affairs and defence committee which is investigating the quality of Israeli intelligence on Iraq, told the Associated Press yesterday.

"Israel didn't want to spoil President Bush's scenario, and it should have," he said.

Another member of the committee, Ehud Yatom, said Israel had told the Americans it believed the weapons existed but had not seen them.

On Sunday, the former UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, told Y-Net, an Israeli newswire, that the Israeli intelligence services reached the conclusion years ago that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction.

"In the end, if the Israeli intelligence knew that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, so the CIA knew it and thus British intelligence too" he said.

Another MP, Roman Bronfman, said if Mr Ritter was correct, it meant the government had misled the Israeli public in the run-up to the war when it ordered people to prepare sealed rooms and gas masks in preparation for a potential WMD attack.

However, questions over the quality of Israeli intelligence are unlikely to concern the public as greatly as in Britain and the US. Israelis overwhelmingly welcomed the overthrow of the Iraqi leader.

In November 2003, a respected Tel Aviv thinktank concluded that Israeli intelligence had joined the US and Britain in an "exaggerated assessment" of Iraqi weapons.

In 2002, the former head of the Mossad intelligence agency, Efraim Halevy, told a closed meeting of Nato that there were "clear indications" that Iraq had renewed its efforts to build WMD after the UN weapons inspections were halted in 1998. He also said Iraq had preserved elements of its ability to manufacture chemical and biological weapons.

February 17, 2004 at 12:22 AM in Iraq | Permalink | TrackBack (12) | Top of page | Blog Home

'SUPERMARKET' TRADE IN NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY ALARMS U.N. INSPECTOR

THEBLOGPROJECT :: 'SUPERMARKET' TRADE IN NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY ALARMS U.N. INSPECTOR

THE GUARDIAN Ian Traynor in Vienna, James Astill in Islamabad and Ewen MacAskill February 6, 2004

The UN's top nuclear official called for a new international regime to destroy the flourishing black market in nuclear technology yesterday, describing current controls as "kaput".

Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, said the trade in the technology was now a dangerous "supermarket".

He said recent revelations of clandestine sales to North Korea and Libya were "the tip of the iceberg".

International investigations, led by the CIA and the IAEA but also involving MI6, are being conducted as a matter of urgency into the network in nuclear technology stretching from Europe to Asia, with a hub in the Middle East.

February 17, 2004 at 12:20 AM in MI6 | Permalink | TrackBack (26) | Top of page | Blog Home

MI6 seized computers from British suspect

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | MI6 seized computers from British suspect

Richard Norton-Taylor, Owen Bowcott, and Ian Traynor in Zagreb
Friday February 13, 2004
The Guardian

British and French intelligence officers seized computers from the home of a British businessman named as a central suspect in the secret network supplying Libya, Iran and North Korea with nuclear equipment, the Guardian has learned.
They were taken last June from the French home of Peter Griffin by agents trying to penetrate the black market in nuclear secrets established by the disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Yesterday the Guardian revealed that Mr Griffin and his son Paul had emerged as key suspects in the international investigation because of their Dubai company's alleged involvement in a shipment of nuclear components from Malaysia to Libya last October.

They deny being involved and insist that they had been framed. They said yesterday that they had cleared all their exports with the British government.

Speaking from Dubai, Paul Griffin said their company, Gulf Technical Industries (GTI), had good relations with the Department of Trade and Industry. "We never had any problems [with it]," he said.

"I spoke to the British embassy here again and they said they know nothing about [these allegations]. It's damaging my business. The [investigating] authorities should be looking at Malaysia, it's nothing to do with us."

His father was reported in the New York Times as having checked with the DTI in London that his exports to Pakistan were officially approved.

Mr Griffin Sr, who lives in France, also denied that their company had been involved in shipping centrifuges for enriching nuclear fuel to Libya.

The DTI said it could not talk about individual cases. Its spokeswoman said that exports from Britain were carefully monitored, but those from British-owned companies overseas were not regulated. The law governing British companies operating abroad is due to change soon.

"If there is any doubt about proposed exports," the spokes woman said, "we subject it to very careful scrutiny. Half of all decisions to refuse export licences in the year 2002 was because we had concerns about their role in contributing material for ballistic missiles or weapons of mass destruction."

The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, yesterday praised the role of British and US intelligence in penetrating and dismantling the illegal nuclear weapons network established by Dr Khan.

"The whole world owes them a very great debt of gratitude for what they have done. The only thing they didn't quite get right was the scale of the activity they have begun to uncover," he said at a press conference in London.

"What we had here was somebody who had made an operational bomb, who knew all the technology and was selling this on the black market, basically to anybody who could pay the price.

"The only relative reassurance that I can provide is that there are relatively few people with the skills and experience and access to nuclear material and equipment that Dr Khan had over many years."

One of the difficulties is that so many different jurisdictions are involved, Whitehall sources say.

British officials familiar with the investigation said the network involved "crooks, governments and money-laundering".

Mr Straw said that Britain and the US would push for the International Atomic Energy Agency to be strengthened.

Britain would also urge more countries to sign the international protocol allowing IAEA officials to conduct more unannounced inspections of their nuclear facilities.

Yesterday IAEA inspectors found fresh evidence of secret and undeclared elements of Iran's nuclear programme, despite Tehran's claim to have revealed all about its nuclear effort.

Western diplomats said they had found designs for the G-2 model of a gas centrifuge for enriching uranium.

John Bolton, the US under-secretary of state in charge of nuclear proliferation, accused Iran of continuing to pursue an illicit nuclear programme.

February 17, 2004 at 12:18 AM in MI6 | Permalink | TrackBack (44) | Top of page | Blog Home

MI6 ran 'dubious' Iraq campaign

BBC NEWS | UK | MI6 ran 'dubious' Iraq campaign

British intelligence ran a campaign designed to exaggerate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, a former US intelligence officer has claimed.
Former UN chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter said the disinformation drive in the late 1990s was designed to shift public opinion.
Mr Ritter has been a vocal critic of military action against Iraq since leaving the inspections team in 1998.

A spokesman for MI6 said the allegations were "unfounded".

He told reporters in the House of Commons that he was involved personally with Operation Mass Appeal between the summer of 1997 until August 1998 when he resigned from the UN.

Mr Ritter said the MI6 operation was designed to "shake up public opinion" by passing dubious intelligence on Iraq to the media.

The so-called "non-actionable intelligence" dealt with Saddam Hussein's alleged campaign to possess and conceal weapons of mass destruction. He said the intelligence was "single source data of dubious quality".

Mr Ritter claimed this was the first time the existence of Operation Mass Appeal had been revealed.

He urged MPs to hold a fresh inquiry in the use of intelligence in the run up to the war against Iraq.

He declined to give specific examples of disinformation but said he was prepared to reveal details before a public inquiry.

Dubious data

Mr Ritter said: "I was brought into the operation in 1997 because at the UN... I sat on a body of data which was not actionable, but was sufficiently sexy that if it could appear in the press could make Iraq look like in a bad way.

"I was approached by MI6 to provide that data, I met with the Mass Appeal operatives both in New York and London on several occasions. This data was provided and this data did find its way into the international media.

"It was intelligence data that dealt with Iraq's efforts to procure WMDs, with Iraq's efforts to conceal WMDs. It was all single source data of dubious quality, which lacked veracity.

"They took this information and peddled it off to the media, internationally and domestically, allowing inaccurate intelligence data, to appear on the front pages.

"The government, both here in the UK and the US, would feed off these media reports, continuing the perception that Iraq was a nation ruled by a leader with an addiction to WMDs."

A spokesman speaking on behalf of MI6 told BBC News Online: "The allegation that Ritter was using MI6 material is unfounded."

February 17, 2004 at 12:17 AM in MI6 | Permalink | TrackBack (24) | Top of page | Blog Home

February 14, 2004

How top dogs took lead 7,000 years ago

Times Online - World

From Mark Henderson in Seattle
All canines are descended from just ten breeds developed by humans for specific talents that suited earlier civilisations

EVERY modern breed of dog is descended from one of just ten "progenitor breeds" selected for their peculiar traits hundreds or even thousands of years ago, according to a genetic and historical analysis of the evolution of man's best friend.

While more than 300 pedigree breeds are recognised today, each belongs to one of ten distinct groups bred by human beings with a purpose in mind, according to new research by American scientists.

Modern whippets and Afghan hounds are part of the �sight hound� family, probably descended from greyhounds first deliberately bred in Egypt or Mesopotamia at least 5,000 years ago.

Just as venerable is the mastiff � progenitor of the �working and guard� dog family that includes the great dane, the bulldog and the boxer � which emerged in Mesopotamia between 3,000BC and 5,000BC. At the other end of the size scale, the Maltese dates back to 3,000BC in Egypt, and gave rise to the toy and companion dog family, encompassing breeds such as the Pekingese, chihuahua and pug.

More recent additions to the canine compendium are the water spaniels and retrievers, which date back only to the breeding of the Irish water spaniel in about AD700, and include labradors and golden retrievers. Terriers, descended from the Welsh terrier, are another comparatively new group of breeds.

The list of ten groupings and the progenitor breeds from which they sprang was presented yesterday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Seattle by Deborah Lynch of the Canine Studies Institute in Aurora, Ohio.

Ms Lynch and Jenny Madeoy of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Centre in Seattle combined a genetic map of the similarities and differences between breeds with historical records of the dates at which breeds are known to have emerged, to establish the distinct categories and how and where they are likely to have originated. The result is the most scientifically rigorous family tree yet for the canine world, which expands significantly on the seven broad breed groupings used by the Kennel Club .

�It�s a new way of thinking about how the breeds evolved,� Ms Lynch said. �For the first time we have identified progenitor breeds for each type of dog. The map tells us more about the breeds� abilities, and their individual traits.

�All the sight hounds are grouped together, so the map arranges the breeds together conceptually by groups. This is genetics and history coming together.�

As an international project to map the genetic differences between dogs progresses over the next five years, Ms Lynch expects to be able to make her family tree more detailed still. This information will establish how closely different breeds are related to one another, as well as pointing out the dates and places in which they were first bred. She plans to test and refine her theories as more genetic data become available.

�Within the next five years, we will know exactly where the Pekingese came from and when,� she said. Genetic studies have already shown that all dogs are descended from the grey wolf, which was first domesticated in Asia approximately 15,000 years ago.

The first domestic dogs probably looked something like a modern Alaskan malamute or Norwegian elkhound, which are rather wolf-like in appearance, Ms Lynch said. The first of the progenitor breeds that gave rise to the ten canine families were probably well established by about 5000BC, according to her research.

The sight hounds, which have the greyhound as their progenitor, are depicted on potsherds from Mesopotamia from around 5000BC, and were also common in Ancient Egypt. Some mummified dogs have been found near tombs. They were bred for their hunting abilities, in particular their keen sight over long distances, and their bursts of speed.

Closely related are the scent hounds, which emerged in Italy in about AD300. �In a temperate climate, where there are lots of trees and it�s harder to see, you have to hunt by scent not sight,� Ms Lynch said. �The way you go after game had to change, and as a result people bred dogs like bloodhounds, with a tremendous nose and great endurance.�

The third major group are the working or guard dogs, descended from the mastiff, which is thought to have been domesticated in Tibet, and is known to have been used in Mesopotamia as long ago as 3000BC. The dogs were bred for size and aggression, and spread widely through Europe and Africa with the Romans. �These dogs were deliberately selected to be aggressive, to be alert to changes in their environment and to be suspicious,� Ms Lynch said.

Toy and companion dogs are known from Ancient Egypt. The Maltese is the progenitor breed, and probably originated with a random genetic mutation that produced dwarf animals. �Why is this breed so old when it appeared at a time when usefulness in a dog was everything that was prized?� Ms Lynch said. �The explanation is that Maltese started as a breed where most breeds have ended, as a companion in the home, particularly for women and children.�

The northern dogs are descended from the Norwegian elkhound, which is known from Norway in about 4000BC. It has specific adaptations for a cold climate, such as a heavy �guard� coat that protects against wind, rain and snow, and can rapidly be shaken dry. Other helpful traits include small, pointed ears � the large floppy ears of a beagle would freeze in these climates � and a longer nasal sinus that warms the air before it is breathed in.

Three families of dog, the flushing spaniels, the water spaniels and retrievers and the pointers, are relatively closely related, but still distinct, Ms Lynch said. Flushing spaniels were bred for short stature, to flush game birds from undergrowth. Water spaniels and retrievers are larger, and have oily, crisp coats that shed water.

Pointers were bred to work with upland game, and have a lighter, faster build. The terriers� date of origin is uncertain, although they are more recent. They were bred to be tenacious hunters of vermin, particularly in Britain.

The final breed category is the herding dogs, including sheepdogs, collies and corgis. These are descended from the Canaan dog, kept in Israel around 2200BC, and the Welsh corgi, which originated in Wales in about 1200BC. They were bred for intelligence, agility and ease of training.

February 14, 2004 at 10:40 PM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (9) | Top of page | Blog Home

Report: al-Qaida Planned Attack in Japan

Yahoo! News - Report: al-Qaida Planned Attack in Japan

TOKYO - A senior member of the al-Qaida terror network told U.S. authorities the group had plans to carry out attacks in Japan during the 2002 World Cup soccer tournament, local media reported Saturday.

U.S. authorities advised Japan of the information, which is believed to have come from the militant Islamic group's third-ranking official, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the daily Sankei newspaper reported, citing anonymous government sources.

The attacks were not carried out because al-Qaida did not have a network in Japan, which hosted the 2002 event jointly with South Korea (news - web sites), according to the Sankei.

The report said Mohammed was familiar with Japan. During a three-month stay in 1987, he reportedly studied rock-drilling machinery at a plant in central Japan, the newspaper said, citing Japanese security authorities.

Mohammed, a mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was captured last March in Pakistan and is in U.S. custody.

Kyodo news agency carried a similar report.

Concerns about possible terror threats against Japan or Japanese abroad have intensified in recent months. Many fear that the government's decision to send its military to Iraq (news - web sites) to help with reconstruction efforts could draw such attacks.

Last November, an alleged al-Qaida operative threatened to attack Tokyo if it sent troops to Iraq.

Earlier this week, there were two mortar attacks on a southern Iraqi town where the Japanese troops are based. But Japan's defense chief said they did not appear to be aimed at the soldiers.

February 14, 2004 at 11:31 AM in Japan | Permalink | TrackBack (181) | Top of page | Blog Home

Candidate's new story: 'I was drugged'

IHT: Candidate's new story: 'I was drugged'

MOSCOW Ivan Rybkin, the Russian presidential candidate who disappeared for five days before resurfacing in Ukraine this week, appeared Friday in London and offered a new explanation for his bizarre absence, saying he had been drugged and kidnapped. None of Rybkin's remarks could be corroborated, and his story contradicted statements he made after returning to Moscow late Tuesday and in a rambling radio interview the next day. He said then that he had gone away for a rest.

On Friday, Rybkin said at a news conference that he had been lured to Kiev on the pretense of meeting with Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen separatist leader who is one of Russia's most wanted men.

Rybkin, who served as a security adviser to Boris Yeltsin, the former president, was involved in the peace talks that ended the first Chechen war in 1996 and has remained an advocate of talks to end the second war, which began in 1999.
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After arriving at an apartment in Kiev and having sandwiches and tea, he said on Friday, he had felt drowsy and then had fallen unconscious for what turned out to be four days. When he awoke, he said, two armed men showed him a compromising videotape of himself, which he refused to describe except to say that it was meant to intimidate him into silence.
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Rybkin suggested that his kidnapping was an effort to discredit liberal challengers to President Vladimir Putin before the presidential election on March 14. "I do not know who did it, but I know who have benefited from it," he said, according to the official Itar-Tass news agency.
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Rybkin left Moscow by train on Feb. 5, prompting his wife and campaign aides to report his disappearance to the police, who then began a search. He surfaced on Feb. 10, calling his campaign manager to say he had gone to Kiev to relax.
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He said that he would not return to Moscow before the election, but would continue to run his campaign from London.
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"My absence from Russia will tell the Russian voters and Western governments 100 times more than my presence," he said in a statement before the news conference Friday. "After what happened in Kiev, I am convinced that this election is a game without rules."
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The New York Times MOSCOW Ivan Rybkin, the Russian presidential candidate who disappeared for five days before resurfacing in Ukraine this week, appeared Friday in London and offered a new explanation for his bizarre absence, saying he had been drugged and kidnapped. None of Rybkin's remarks could be corroborated, and his story contradicted statements he made after returning to Moscow late Tuesday and in a rambling radio interview the next day. He said then that he had gone away for a rest.
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On Friday, Rybkin said at a news conference that he had been lured to Kiev on the pretense of meeting with Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen separatist leader who is one of Russia's most wanted men.

Rybkin, who served as a security adviser to Boris Yeltsin, the former president, was involved in the peace talks that ended the first Chechen war in 1996 and has remained an advocate of talks to end the second war, which began in 1999.

After arriving at an apartment in Kiev and having sandwiches and tea, he said on Friday, he had felt drowsy and then had fallen unconscious for what turned out to be four days. When he awoke, he said, two armed men showed him a compromising videotape of himself, which he refused to describe except to say that it was meant to intimidate him into silence.

Rybkin suggested that his kidnapping was an effort to discredit liberal challengers to President Vladimir Putin before the presidential election on March 14. "I do not know who did it, but I know who have benefited from it," he said, according to the official Itar-Tass news agency.

Rybkin left Moscow by train on Feb. 5, prompting his wife and campaign aides to report his disappearance to the police, who then began a search. He surfaced on Feb. 10, calling his campaign manager to say he had gone to Kiev to relax.

He said that he would not return to Moscow before the election, but would continue to run his campaign from London.

"My absence from Russia will tell the Russian voters and Western governments 100 times more than my presence," he said in a statement before the news conference Friday. "After what happened in Kiev, I am convinced that this election is a game without rules."

The New York Times

February 14, 2004 at 11:24 AM in Russia | Permalink | TrackBack (89) | Top of page | Blog Home

Big Brother in Britain: Does more surveillance work?

Big Brother in Britain: Does more surveillance work? | csmonitor.com

By Mark Rice-Oxley | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

KINGSTON, ENGLAND – It was all over in 54 seconds. One moment the four friends were strolling home after a night out, the next they were nursing injuries inflicted by a knife-wielding assailant.

Another sad tale of crime and impunity in modern Britain? Not quite, for the incident last April in this town in southeast England was filmed from start to finish on surveillance cameras. Police were rapidly alerted; a suspect was quickly identified, apprehended, convicted, and sentenced. Case closed.

It's successes like these that are giving CCTV, or closed-circuit television, a good name in Britain. The technology has become popular and widespread, with the result that Britons are by far the most watched people on earth, with one camera for every 14 people, according to recent estimates.

More than 4 million cameras observe all aspects of life, from town centers to transport systems, office towers to banks, commercial zones to residential areas, restaurants, bars, and even churches.

In 1990, just three towns had systems. Now some 500 do, after a decade in which more than �250 million ($460 million) of public money was funneled into CCTV systems.

"The British public seem to like it," says Martin Gill, professor of criminology at Leicester University. "One of the great problems of our lives is crime and disorder, and people feel it can be tackled by having cameras on the wall."

But serious question marks hang over the technology and its dark Orwellian implications. Many cameras are hidden or not signposted, in breach of regulations. Several cases of abuse have been documented, raising fears of snooping or worse.

Civil liberty groups complain that the intrusive lens scanning for suspicious characters contravenes that pillar of civil society - the presumption of innocence.

Research meanwhile suggests that the camera systems may not actually deter criminals.

"One of the concerns about CCTV is that it can give a false sense of security," says Barry Hugill of Liberty, a civil liberties and human rights group based in London. "I suspect that the reason why people are happy with CCTV is that they say it makes us safer and stops crime. But we don't think there's evidence that that is the case."

Indeed, research has yet to support the case for CCTV.

A government review 18 months ago found that security cameras were effective in tackling vehicle crime but had limited effect on other crimes. Improved streetlighting recorded better results.

A new report being drawn up by Professor Gill for the government promises to be no more favorable in its assessment of CCTV as a crime-fighting tool.

"I have talked to offenders about this," says Gill. "They say they are not concerned by security cameras, unless they were actually caught by one."

Britain is a case apart from Europe, where most countries embraced the technology only in the late 1990s - and then with caution. According to researchers now preparing a report on comparative systems, France tends to limit coverage to high-risk locations and public buildings, while in Spain, surveillance is tightly controlled. In Austria, it is used primarily for traffic and transport systems. In Germany, it was severely restricted in public spaces until recently.

But in Britain, the public has had a soft spot for CCTV ever since it was used to dramatic effect to solve a wretched crime more than 11 years ago.

Most people can still picture the grainy footage of two juveniles leading 2-year-old Jamie Bulger by the hand out of a shopping mall in Liverpool. He was found dead days later. Without those images, experts say, police would have been looking for a culprit with an entirely different profile from the 11-year-old offenders.

"Since Jamie Bulger's case over here, the public see CCTV not as Big Brother but as a benevolent father," says Peter Fry, director of the CCTV user group, a 600-member association of organizations who use the technology.

"If you ask the public what they would like to do about crime, No. 1 is more police on the street and No. 2 is more CCTV," he adds.

The trend coincides with a growing culture of snooping in Britain, where speed cameras rule the highway, residents post their own cameras to spy on trespassers, and the favorite TV shows revolve around hidden cameras observing bland people lounging around.

But not everyone is reassured by the idea of lenses capable of reading a car license plate from half a mile away. Anecdotal evidence suggests the technology can be used for voyeurism, and concerns remain about who gets access to the tapes, which are typically held for a month before being erased.

In one case, a man's attempted suicide was caught on camera and passed on to television. Mr Lazell says he sometimes gets individuals calling on him to use the technology to spy on partners.

Prof. Clive Norris, deputy director of the center for criminological research at Sheffield University, told a recent conference that the technology "enables people to be tracked and monitored and harassed and socially excluded on the basis that they do not fit into the category of people that a council or shopping center wants to see in a public space."

Legislation requires authorities to clearly signal where cameras are in operation, yet as many as 80 percent are thought to break this rule.

Some cameras are being developed with face-recognition technology that raises further alarms.

"There are privacy concerns," says Mr Hugill of Liberty. "There are people who believe that we have fundamental human right to go about our business without being spied on. CCTV is spying. It's monitoring your every move."

Naturally, surveillance enthusiasts scoff at such logic, saying that operators will not be focusing on the average member of the public, but on anyone acting out of the ordinary.

For Mr. Lazell, it's a trade-off: a little liberty for greater security.

"All progress offers compromise," he comments. "Would you be prepared to take down all cameras in the Underground and let terrorists move about without being seen?"

February 14, 2004 at 11:19 AM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (9) | Top of page | Blog Home

Putin Kicks Off Re-election Drive

Putin Kicks Off Re-election Drive

By Caroline McGregor
Staff Writer

Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters
President Vladimir Putin kicking off his re-election campaign on Thursday with a speech to supporters at Moscow State University.

President Vladimir Putin kicked off his re-election campaign Thursday with a speech to supporters in which he laid out the achievements of his first term and plans for his all-but-assured second -- and made an unexpected promise to pick an successor.

Analysts said his remarks to a packed auditorium at Moscow State University looked more like an address to a Communist Party congress than a campaign speech.

Putin rambled through the successes of his first term: Gross domestic product has grown by 29.9 percent since 1999, he said. Unemployment has fallen by one-third. The real minimum wage has quadrupled in three years.

The president also spoke with pride at having strengthened the "executive power vertical" and reversing the weakening of the army and "the destruction of law enforcement organs."

In the speech broadcast live on state-owned Rossia and shown at length on Channel One, Putin said, "It would be inappropriate for an incumbent leader to advertise himself. That should have been done in the last four years."

He said that to strengthen the political system, "civilized political competition is absolutely necessary."

Putin has refused to debate his six challengers -- as had the pro-Kremlin United Russia party before State Duma elections, in which favorable state television coverage helped it win a two-thirds majority -- but he spoke with no evident sense of irony.

He repeated his opposition to letting the Duma change the Constitution to extend the presidential term from four to seven years, though not very categorically. Five years would be acceptable -- "it's a nice round number" -- but seven would be "too much."

Instead, Putin said, it is the task of any leader after two terms to propose someone who can carry his work forward. "If people agree, and support" the successor, the future "will be a continuation of what there is now," he said.

Analysts expressed surprise that Putin, who himself was picked by President Boris Yeltsin as his successor in 1999, spoke so directly about that matter.

"It's funny," said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist at the Russian Academy of Sciences. "His understanding of democracy means offering us an heir."

"Now it's official," said Andrei Piontkovsky, an independent political analyst. "They'll come up with an heir as a PR product to be sold to the people on television. He'll give us the same gift as Yeltsin did."

People in the Kremlin speak about such things among themselves, "but I never expected such openness," Piontkovsky said.

Putin's work, however, is not yet over, Piontkovsky said. Tasks remain, like administrative reform and restructuring the economy away from overdependence on high oil prices.

In his speech, Putin also said he would continue to build an "active" civil society, which requires "genuinely free and responsible media outlets."

"But such freedom and responsibility must have a legal and economic basis, which the government is obligated to create," he said.

The government, he said, is the "alpha and omega" of economic success.

"Today we feel that the time of uncertainty and fearful expectations is behind us. A new period has arrived, a period in which we can create conditions for a fundamental improvement in the quality of lives," Putin said from the stage, flanked by two giant video screens.

"The question naturally is: 'Will we be able to manage this?' On the basis of the results of recent years we have every reason to believe, 'Yes, we can!' It is within our capabilities."

Piontkovsky said the speech was reminiscent of those given by Communist leaders in Soviet times.

"It's a classic Party congress speech, all the talk of big achievements and new plans," he said. "Stylistically, it's 'back in the U.S.S.R.'"

Kryshtanovskaya agreed. "The tone is optimistic, with only quick mentions of problems. And he's addressing his people, not the country.

"It's as if we're in a country where there was no metro explosion last week."

After leaving the podium, Putin sat down at the dais with a teacup, and his campaign chairman, Dmitry Kozak, asked for questions from the friendly floor.

Some were softballs. Gymnast Svetlana Khorkina, for example, asked what Russian athletes could do to win in Athens.

Khorkina was one of some 300 campaign representatives attending the speech. The representatives, who are registered with the Central Elections Commission, also include Vitaly Ignatenko, the head of state-run news agency Itar-Tass, Mariinsky Theater director Valery Gergiyev and Severstal president Alexei Mordashov.

Another question came from a uniformed military officer, who asked for his views on the Soviet Union's collapse.

It was "a national tragedy of gigantic proportions," Putin replied. "I think that ordinary citizens ... won nothing."

But "we must look forward," he said. There were "certain pluses" to the current situation, among them the chance for Russia to "stop being a cow for each and all to milk."

Russia takes its partners' interests into consideration and expects the same in return, he said.

The president lashed out at what he saw as a patronizing tone from the West. "Why do we need to be helped? What, are we invalids?" Putin said.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell raised concerns over the direction of Russia's democracy during a visit two weeks ago, and the European Union released a strongly worded document warning Moscow that cooperation hinged on "common values" earlier this week.

Putin said he was frustrated with those whose thinking remains in the Cold War era. "[They] cannot get out of the freezer and see us as political counterparts. We must seek allies, must melt this ice of distrust, laid over 80 years, setting the Soviet Union apart from the rest of the world."

But he went on to name Europe and the United States as "our true partners." The main goal is to make Russia "a full member of the international community," he said.

February 14, 2004 at 11:17 AM in Russia | Permalink | TrackBack (61) | Top of page | Blog Home

I was kidnapped, says Putin election rival

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | I was kidnapped, says Putin election rival

Rybkin claims he was drugged during mystery absence

Jonathan Steele
Saturday February 14, 2004
The Guardian

Ivan Rybkin, the Russian presidential candidate who reappeared on Tuesday after vanishing last week, said yesterday that he had been kidnapped, drugged and kept unconscious for four days by armed strangers.

Speaking in London, Mr Rybkin said he had now decided to stay abroad until after polling day on March 14 because he felt this was "the only realistic guarantee for the security of my family". He was not abandoning his candidacy, nor planning to seek asylum abroad.

The disappearance of Mr Rybkin - a staunch critic of President Vladimir Putin and the only candidate to have made criticism of the war in Chechnya a central plank of his campaign - prompted anxious statements from his wife and a murder inquiry by Russian police. Others saw the move as a publicity stunt.

When he resurfaced in Kiev on Tuesday he said he had switched off his mobile phone and gone away for a rest. But in London yesterday he said these statements had been made under pressure. He had later gone home to Moscow briefly, but had decided to leave Russia and to explain what had happened.

As the secretary of Russia's security council under the former president, Boris Yeltsin, Mr Rybkin helped to end the first Chechen war by negotiating a peace treaty with the Chechen president, Aslan Maskhadov.

When Mr Putin was appointed prime minister in 1999 and tore up the deal three years later by sending Russian troops back into the devastated republic in the Caucasus, Mr Rybkin denounced the policy and became the most senior Russian figure to call for a political settlement.

It was this that led him to last week's fateful episode, he said yesterday. He was contacted two weeks ago by a human-rights activist who offered to take him to a secret location in Ukraine to meet Mr Maskhadov. Suspicious but intrigued, Mr Rybkin said he flew to London last week to seek advice from Mr Maskhadov's representative, Akhmed Zakayev, who has political asylum in Britain.

Mr Zakayev said he would need a week to check, but on his return to Moscow, Mr Rybkin was rung again by the go-between. He decided to take the risk, without Mr Zakayev's answer.

He took a train to Ukraine, and the go-between met him in Kiev. There he was taken to a flat. After being offered tea and sandwiches, he felt drowsy.

Four days later he woke up in a different flat, where he was shown a compromising video of himself.

Repeatedly declining to discuss the contents at yesterday's press conference, where he seemed close to tears, he said it was made by "horrible perverts". He also refused to say who he thought had organised his kidnapping. His captors spoke perfect Russian and were fellow Slavs, he said. "I don't know who did it, but I know who benefited from this," he added.

"It was for the benefit of those who seek to compromise or humiliate the opposition which is under heavy pressure from the government."

Asked why he had not told his wife he was leaving home overnight on urgent business, he said it was an issue of security. "I love my wife. I'm a husband who would always leave a note or phone number," he said.

Chechnya is sensitive for Mr Putin because he is widely regarded to have won election as president by exploiting anti-Chechen feelings.

Besides criticising Mr Putin for rejecting peace talks, Mr Rybkin took out a full-page ad in a Russian newspaper two weeks ago accusing the president of being "the main oligarch in Russia", and stating: "Power and money go hand in hand in dictatorial regimes. Putin's regime is no exception."

The article appeared in Kommersant, which is owned by one of Mr Putin's wealthiest opponents, Boris Berezovsky, who has political asylum in Britain. Mr Berezovsky is helping to finance Mr Rybkin's campaign, which has angered the Kremlin. State-controlled Russian media have either ridiculed Mr Rybkin's disappearance or ignored it.

Several candidates for next month's presidential election have dropped out. Some of the seven who remain on the ballot paper say they are not really opponents of Mr Putin.

As a candidate Mr Rybkin is entitled to free time on television. He said he would ask the election authorities to air his views from London.

February 14, 2004 at 11:15 AM in Russia | Permalink | TrackBack (58) | Top of page | Blog Home

Putin opponent reveals 'disgusting' video

Putin opponent reveals 'disgusting' video - World - www.smh.com.au

February 15, 2004
The Sun-Herald

Russian presidential hopeful Ivan Rybkin dropped another bombshell into the country's election campaign yesterday by saying he had been drugged and filmed in a "disgusting" video in Ukraine during the five days he was missing without explanation.
His account to journalists in London was the third time he had tried to explain why he had gone to Kiev without telling his wife or campaign aides, triggering a police manhunt, and what he did before he resurfaced

On his return to Moscow, Mr Rybkin, a harsh critic of President Vladimir Putin, said he had been with friends, but later told an interviewer he had feared for his life and had gone into hiding for part of the time he was in the Ukraine capital.

Now Mr Rybkin said he had gone to a Kiev flat with strangers to meet Chechnya's fugitive president, Aslan Maskhadov. He said he was drugged and awoke to find himself alongside two armed men who showed him and others in "disgusting" video films intended to compromise him.

"I don't know who did it, but I know who would benefit from it," Mr Rybkin said. "It benefits those who want to compromise and humiliate the opposition."

Like five other challengers running in the March 14 contest, Mr Rybkin is unlikely to score more than a few percentage points against the widely popular Mr Putin.

Mr Rybkin, a former speaker of parliament and negotiator with Chechen rebels, said he decided during his captivity he would remain in the presidential race.

"I decided that I didn't care about my reputation or whatever might happen to me and that I would do all I could to prevent all those incompetents and President Putin from destroying my country," he said.

Mr Rybkin said he would remain in western Europe until after the elections to ensure the safety of his family.

February 14, 2004 at 11:13 AM in Russia | Permalink | TrackBack (98) | Top of page | Blog Home

February 13, 2004

Found: A Smoking Gun

Op-Ed Columnist: Found: A Smoking Gun

By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: February 11, 2004

In the town of Kalar, about a hundred miles northeast of Baghdad, Kurdish villagers recently reported suspicious activity to the pesh merga.

That Kurdish militia has for years been waging a bloody battle with Ansar al-Islam, the terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and supported by Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It captured a courier carrying a message that demolishes the repeated claim of Bush critics that there was never a "clear link" between Saddam and Osama bin Laden.

The terrorist courier with a CD-ROM containing a 17-page document and other messages was Hassan Ghul, who confessed he was taking to Al Qaeda the Ansar document setting forth a strategy to start an Iraqi civil war, along with a plea for reinforcements. The Kurds turned him over to Americans for further interrogation, which is proving fruitful.

The Times reporter Dexter Filkins in Baghdad, backed up by Douglas Jehl in D.C., broke the story exclusively. Editors marked its significance by placing it on the front page above the fold. Although The Washington Post the next day buried it on Page 17 (and Newsweek may construe as bogus any Saddam-Osama connection) the messages' authenticity was best attested by the amazed U.S. official who told Reuters, "We couldn't make this up if we tried."

The author of the lengthy Ansar-to-Qaeda electronic message is suspected of being the most wanted terror operative in the world today: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, long familiar to readers of this space as "the man with the limp," who personifies the link of Ansar and Al Qaeda.

On Sept. 24, 2001 � not two weeks after 9/11 � Kurdish sources led me to report: "The clear link between the terrorist in hiding [Osama] and the terrorist in power [Saddam] can be found in Kurdistan. . . . The Iraqi dictator has armed and financed a fifth column of Al Qaeda mullahs and terrorists. . . . Some 400 `Arab Afghan' mercenaries . . . have already murdered a high Kurdish official as well as a Muslim scholar who dared to interpret the Koran humanely."

The C.I.A. blew off that report. Our National Security Council did not learn of subsequent warfare against the Kurds by the Qaeda affiliate doing Saddam's bidding until its members read it in The Times. After Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker and C. J. Chivers of The Times developed the story from inside northern Iraq, it dawned on some intelligence analysts that a "clear link" was probable.

On Oct. 7, 2002, President Bush said "We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some Al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior Al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year."

The leader whose leg was treated, perhaps amputated, in Baghdad was identified here in January 2003, as Zarqawi (twice, after one misspelling). The presence of this international terrorist for two months in a Baghdad hospital required the approval of Saddam's ubiquitous secret police.

In his U.N. speech the following month, Colin Powell publicly identified the Palestinian, born in Jordan, as one who oversaw a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan three years before: "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden."

Now we have documentary evidence of Ansar's current operation: employing suicide bombers to foment a civil war in Iraq that would reinstate safe haven for terrorists. The notion that these serial killers are not central players in the global network that attacked us � that the Ansar boss in Iraq must be found carrying an official Qaeda membership card signed by bin Laden � is simply silly.

Of the liberation's three casus belli, one was to stop mass murder, bloodier than in Kosovo; we are finding horrific mass graves in Iraq. Another was informed suspicion that a clear link existed between world terror and Saddam; this terrorist plea for Qaeda reinforcements to kill Iraqi democracy is the smoking gun proving that.

The third was a reasoned judgment that Saddam had a bioweapon that could wipe out a city; in time, we are likely to find a buried suitcase containing that, too.

February 13, 2004 at 06:53 AM in Iraq | Permalink | TrackBack (35) | Top of page | Blog Home

February 12, 2004

Baghdad leaders reveal that coup plot duped MI6

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Baghdad leaders reveal that coup plot duped MI6

Julie Flint explains how rumours of Saddam's overthrow caused British intelligence to miss vital information about Iraq's weapons programme

Sunday February 8, 2004
The Observer

British intelligence took its eyes off Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes because it had been duped into believing a military coup would leave Sunni Muslims in power in Iraq.
Sources in the country say what they missed was a push to convert chemical and biological organisms into dry agents that could be hidden until pressure on the regime was lifted. 'From the second half of 2000, the focus of the British was not on finding weapons,' says a member of Iraq's Governing Council. 'They wanted to avoid war by making a coup. M16 went out of their way to make a coup.'

Once-exiled leaders now back in Baghdad say M16 and the CIA were led to believe that the head of the Mukhabarat, the most powerful of Iraq's three intelligence agencies, would lead a coup against Saddam that would safeguard Sunni power and keep Iraq's Shia majority on the political sidelines. The link men were two Lebanese from the Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik - Issam abu Darwish and Imad el Hajj.

'Abu Darwish and El Hajj went to Baghdad to contact and turn the head of the Mukhabarat, Tahir Jalil al Habbush,' says one source. 'They told M16 and the CIA they made contact with Habbush. M16 thought they could penetrate Saddam Hussein's intelligence at the highest level. They were stupid on Iraq.'

Days before American and British forces invaded Iraq, as Habbush remained loyal to the regime, El Hajj brokered an eleventh-hour attempt by Saddam to avert war without stepping down. Washington rejected the overture.

Habbush, a member of Saddam's Tikriti clan and sixteenth in the United States's pack of 55 most wanted Baathists, is still at large. Abu Darwish's son, Mohammed, now enjoys a lucrative contract as head of security at Baghdad airport.

M16 does not comment on its undercover activities. A Foreign Office spokesman says encouraging coups 'would be just one of a range of things they would be looking at', then added: 'It's nothing we would want to comment on.'

Iraqis who were cultivated by the intelligence community say interest in Saddam's weapons programmes only returned to centre stage in April 2002 - as President Bush began planning for war in Iraq after failing to capture Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. M16's first port of call was the Iraqi National Accord, a London-based group funded by the CIA.

The INA's leader, Ayad Allawi, has acknowledged passing a number of reports to M16 'in the spring and summer of 2002' - among them, the claim that Saddam Hussein had battlefield WMD that could be fired in less than 45 minutes.

'M16 went on a fishing expedition for weapons,' says one of Allawi's colleagues. 'Their political bosses wanted justification for war. Ayad said M16 was knocking at his door all the time. They were clearly under pressure to get information.'

Iraqis say that what M16 missed in seeking information that would justify an invasion were efforts to convert VX and anthrax, Saddam's biological and chemical agents of choice, into stable, dry forms that could be concealed until Iraq's WMD capability was rebuilt and work on weaponisation could continue unhindered. (Before UN inspections destroyed it, Iraq's main chemical and biological weapons facility covered 25 sq km. Such establishments are not rebuilt overnight.) At the same time, Iraq's refusal to admit UN inspectors between December 1998 and November 2002, and the decision by some exile groups to encourage the overthrow of the regime in the framework of 'the war against terror', shut down past information flows about weapons activity.

Iraqis who interacted with Western governments are reluctant to talk publicly about weapons today. Accused for years of passing on self-serving and incorrect information, they do not want to be accused now of withholding information that might have undercut the argument that Iraq was, as Tony Blair put it, a 'present' threat.

'We wanted the Americans to remove Saddam,' says one. 'We had no interest in making an inspections regime work. The worse it got, the better it was for us.'

Speaking on condition of anonymity, however, one source says the expulsion of UN weapons inspectors in December 1998, and the establishment of a new inspection regime a year later, prompted feverish efforts to make and store VX salt and powdered anthrax - forms that are much safer to keep and easier to hide.

'Saddam was trying to dry anthrax and aerosolise it for delivery as a terrorist weapon,' he says, citing scientists who were involved in weapons programmes after UN inspectors were expelled in 1998. 'There were plans to disseminate it from crop-dusters and from canisters placed on top of high buildings in an American city.'

After 9/11, he adds: 'Saddam hid everything in anticipation of being hit.'

VX is a nerve agent so powerful that a single drop on the skin can result in death in 15 minutes. Once fired, it remains toxic for at least several days. In salt form, stabilised, it can be preserved for centuries. Anthrax, a biological agent, kills by causing extensive haemorrhaging. In dry, powdered form, it can be stored for decades.

Western experts doubt that Iraq succeeded in weaponising VX salt. 'The chemistry for VX is incredibly difficult,' says Ron Manley, a British inspector. 'Transferring it to a weapon and making it would be very difficult. But I can quite believe Iraq would have tried it because that's their nature. It was a "suck it and see" culture.'

But experts say Saddam's reported attempts to weaponise powdered anthrax confirm existing concerns.

'In 2002, 25 metric tons of aerosil were ordered for, allegedly, the Samarra Drug Industries - far in excess to what SDI could use,' says Richard Spertzel, head of Unscom's biological weapons section from 1994-99. 'SDI was involved in CW and BW activities in the 1980s. Aerosil is used by the pharmaceutical industry for inhalant medication, but can also be used in powdered BW products and in "dusty" chemical agents that will penetrate many protective suits. Where is it now?'

February 12, 2004 at 07:04 PM in MI6 | Permalink | TrackBack (35) | Top of page | Blog Home

Hume 'was Dublin spy'

::: u.tv :::

A secret document compiled by RUC Special Branch claimed that former SDLP leader John Hume and three colleagues worked as agents of the Irish government at the time of Bloody Sunday.
By:Press Association

The intelligence paper, which was submitted to the Bloody Sunday inquiry, also claimed that Taoiseach Jack Lynch had promised funds to groups working to overthrow the Stormont government.

The document stated that Mr Lynch had already paid money to the SDLP and mentioned Mr Hume, then a leading member of the party, and colleagues Ivan Cooper, Austin Currie and Paddy O`Hanlon as intelligence officers.

It stated: ``It is also worth recalling previous intelligence to the effect that Mr Lynch`s intelligence officers in Northern Ireland are Messrs Cooper, Currie, O`Hanlon and Hume, the latter now having publicly stated that only a united Ireland will satisfy the minority.``

The Special Branch assessment for the period up to February 3, 1972 claimed the shooting of 13 civilians on January 30 in Londonderry occurred after soldiers were fired on by snipers operating from flats in the Bogside.

It added that prior to a civil rights march in the city, there had been reliable intelligence that the IRA intended to exploit the presence of crowds as cover for their gunmen.

Former Special Branch Detective Chief Inspector Samuel Donnelly, giving evidence to the inquiry today, said he had no memory of intelligence relating to the intentions of either wing of the IRA on Bloody Sunday.

Mr Donnelly said: ``I have no recollection of any intelligence or information received from any source about the movements of the IRA or any other organisation before Bloody Sunday.

"Specifically I do not recall what information, if any, Special Branch received about the likely actions of the IRA on the day or the sources of any such information."

February 12, 2004 at 06:51 PM in Ireland | Permalink | TrackBack (45) | Top of page | Blog Home

Iraq 'prompts CIA method change'

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Iraq 'prompts CIA method change'

The CIA is to alter the way it analyses intelligence amid intense scrutiny of claims that Iraq had banned weapons, says the Washington Post newspaper.
The US agency plans to give its analysts more details about the sources for its intelligence, officials are quoted as saying.

The CIA has hitherto concealed its sources' identities from its analysts.

No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, despite the claims made ahead of the US-led invasion.

The changes to the agency's methods are believed to have been ordered by its director, George Tenet.

'Mistakes'

In a speech to CIA analysts on Wednesday, the agency's deputy director for intelligence, Jami A Miscik, highlighted instances where analysts had over-estimated the credibility of certain intelligence reports in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Ms Miscik mentioned cases where analysts mistakenly assumed certain data about Iraq's weapons had been corroborated by a range of sources - whereas it had only emerged from a single source.

She is also reported to have spoken of how analysts assumed, on occasion, that they were looking at information from a reliable source with first-hand knowledge of the subject.

However, the