« May 2004 |
Main
| July 2004 »
THE history of the grammar schools is the story of English civilisation. Yet, by a catastrophic coincidence, they have been destroyed not once, but twice, by the incoming Protestant Parliament in the late 1540s, and by the incoming Labour Parliament in the late 1960s. The second destruction has been called “the greatest political mistake of the 20th century”.
The archetypal royal grammar school is Eton, which has survived both devastations. On October 11, 1440, King Henry VI issued the charter of foundation for the Kings College of our Lady of Eton beside Windsor. In July, the King had paid a personal visit to William of Wykehams college at Winchester, and he appointed William of Waynflete, then the master of Winchester, as the first headmaster of Eton. Just as Winchester had been linked by its founder to New College in Oxford, Eton was linked to Kings College in Cambridge. Wykeham had founded Winchester some 50 years before.
A Victorian scholar, A.F. Leach, has pointed out that Winchester was not all that different from other schools connected to colleges at Oxford or Cambridge, but that it was unique in that for the first time a school was established as a sovereign and independent corporation, existing by and for itself, self-centred, self-controlled. Independence is the backbone of the English grammar schools.
The special position of Eton and Winchester was recognised by the first Parliament of King Edward VI; in 1548 it completed Henry VIIIs destruction of the Church-based welfare system by nationalising the assets of the remaining colleges and chantries. In the confiscation Act of King Edwards first Parliament, only four educational institutions were exempted, the colleges of Eton and Winchester, and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
Some other schools did survive. Monasteries, chantries and colleges had been dispossessed. But the assets of cathedrals, parishes and town guilds were not directly attacked; they supported their own schools. William Shakespeare had the good fortune to attend the grammar school at Stratford-upon-Avon which was funded by a rather conservative religious town guild. Some schools were refounded; the names of schools, such as King Edwards in Birmingham, commemorate these refoundations. Nevertheless, Edward VIs seizure of the remaining Church assets supporting schools went a long way towards destroying the grammar school system, which took at least a generation to recover.
From the low point of King Edwards reign to the election of the Labour Government in 1964, the grammar schools flourished; their influence spread to America and the rest of the British Empire. Benefactors created new schools.
The difficulties of travel in the pre-railway age made boarding inevitable for boys outside the main cities, but most of the schools had the same financial structure. They were financed by charitable endowments and by fees for the students; they gave scholarships to poor students, selected by patronage or on ability.
John Locke, the philosopher, was nominated for his place at Westminster by a Somerset MP, of the Popham family, who had become a governor of the school when the royalist governors were turned out. Lockes father was Pophams estate agent. Clearly Locke would have qualified on his ability, but he got his place on patronage. By the late 17th century, Eton, Winchester and the two London schools, Westminster and Charterhouse, had gained a special prestige, and attracted aristocratic pupils.
In the late 18th and 19th centuries the social appeal of the leading public schools led to a separation between the two classes of grammar school. Ambitious Victorian headmasters wanted to preside over socially prestigious institutions. The great city grammar schools, such as Manchester, Leeds and Bristol, established academic standards as high as the best public schools, and higher than all but a few. They had close connections with local business, and were often ahead in developing a scientific curriculum. It was the minor public schools which suffered most from Victorian snobbery and the cult of athleticism; the major urban grammar schools were comparatively civilised and rational. Nevertheless, both taught much the same curriculum, and prepared their students for much the same professions, including the Army, Navy and the Church.
Grammar schools provided the bulk of the recruits for those occupations which had less prestige in the Victorian and post-Victorian era, including commerce and journalism. When I was on the Financial Times in the 1950s, I remember being told by an embarrassed hostess, Oh, we dont count the Financial Times as journalism.
In 1964, Labour came to power with a manifesto commitment to abolish the grammar schools, though not the independent public schools. With the surprising concurrence of the Conservatives, who continued the policy from 1970 to 1974, they largely succeeded in their aim. This was the second act of vandalism. Again, as in the Tudor period, many schools survived, some because of benign and reactionary county councils, some because they chose to become independent. In order to solve the problem of selection, which might have been done in many other ways, the English educational tradition was destroyed, mainly by former grammar school boys, such as Harold Wilson.
Something else was destroyed in the 1960s, not just the grammar schools, but their curriculum. The independent grammar schools and the public schools still survive, but they have largely abandoned the old classical curriculum. Education is dominated not by classical learning but by naive utilitarianism.
We owe the old grammar school curriculum directly to the 15th-century Renaissance, and the revival of classical learning. No doubt the Winchester College of 1394 taught some classical subjects, including Church Latin, and disputations in Aristotelian logic. I doubt if they taught Greek; they were preparing students for New College, and ultimately for the Church. The new learning came in with the Greek scholarship of Italy, and was spread by printing; it was led by Erasmus, whose Latin adages were a standard school text for at least two centuries.
The curriculum taught schoolboys how to think, not what to think; how to express themselves, not what to say. This was achieved by teaching Latin and Greek both as languages and literatures. This process formed our English culture. If one glances through the Dictionary of National Biography, one finds that some 90 per cent of the men born between 1500 and 1900 experienced the grammar school curriculum, if not always in its full rigour.
In 1736, an advertisement appeared in the Gentlemans Magazine: At Edial, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young gentlemen are boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages by Samuel Johnson. David Garrick, Englands greatest actor, became the schools only celebrated pupil. Johnson once outlined the curriculum he taught; the letter is to be found in Boswells Life. By the time he was ready for university, the pupil should have read Cebes, Aelian, Lucian, Xenophon, Homer, Theocritus and Euripides in Greek, and Terence, Cicero, Caesar, Sallust, Nepos, Velleius Paterculus, Virgil, Horace and Phaedrus in Latin. That is a bit more than would be required for A level.
Johnson saw classical literature as a training in expression, which can only be acquired by a daily imitation of the best and correctist authors. For many years he made his living as a journalist; if the BBC were able to send its broadcasters to Edial, there would be no need to establish its new college. Yet the classical education goes far deeper than imitation. The best classicist in Parliament in the past 50 years was Enoch Powell; he had a lethal lucidity in debate. The classical teaching of the grammar schools taught clarity of expression and the logic of words. It provided an unequalled discipline for the mind. Unfortunately grammar has died with the grammar schools.
June 28, 2004 at 08:13 AM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (14) | Top of page | Blog Home
Zarqawi -- Iraq terror mastermind or bogeyman?
BAGHDAD (AFP) - The US-led coalition has identified Islamic militant Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi as prime suspect in the Iraqi insurgency but commanders and intelligence officials paint a more nuanced picture of the violence.
The coalition blames the suspected Al-Qaeda operative for at least 25 attacks in Iraq, including the March 2 coordinated suicide bombings of Karbala and Baghdad that killed about 170 people, still the bloodiest day of the insurgency.
His name is invoked readily but it is impossible to say with any certainty what attacks, if any, the man is truly responsible for.
The hysteria was summed up best by US Marine General James Mattis at the height of his troops' assault in April on the Sunni Muslim bastion of Fallujah.
Asked if the Jordanian-born Islamic militant, who has a 10-million-dollar price on his head, was in the rebel city, Mattis compared the phenomenon to America's numerous and dubious post-death sightings of rock legend Elvis Presley.
"Zarqawi is like Elvis. He is everywhere," the grizzled general said.
US military intelligence officers are generally cautious in their assessment of Zarqawi's involvement in the daily violence in Iraq.
"The vast majority of the insurgents in Iraq are local and not foreign fighters," Captain Ben Connable, the intelligence deputy for the US 1st Marine Division, told AFP during the height of the deadly fighting in Fallujah.
Connable described the ringleaders of the insurgency in restive Al-Anbar province, home to Fallujah, as veterans of Saddam Hussein's security services.
Colonel Buck Connor, the senior commander in the flashpoint city of Ramadi, described Zarqawi as dangerous because of his potential to marshal resources for veterans of Saddam's former Baath party and security agents.
"Zarqawi uses these groups. He arranges money for heavy weaponry, smuggles people. He arranges financing ... It's more like a loose spider web."
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the coalition's deputy director for operations, told AFP in late March it was possible Zarqawi had very little contact with any of his followers outside a small immediate circle.
"I stand by that statement," he told AFP on Saturday.
At the time, Kimmitt said: "It is my judgement that you may bring some foreigners in from the outside, but numerically we have far more Iraqis involved in support of these operations -- if not the actual trigger-pullers."
Out of roughly 6,000 security detainees currently in US custody, only 90 are Arab foreign nationals, according to the coalition's latest numbers.
The only arrest of an Al-Qaeda figure in Iraq was Hassan al-Gul in January.
One known Zarqawi associate was killed outside Ramadi on Febuary 19 and the only publicised arrest of a Zarqawi operative was the coalition's announcement that an aide to the militant was captured on May 30.
A senior intelligence officer said last month that Zarqawi does not drive the insurgency but his access to fighters and weapons are what make him dangerous.
The official said the insurgency was fuelled by Sunni Muslim fears of the future after the fall of Saddam, a fellow Sunni Arab.
"It (the insurgency) is motivated by a Sunni identity and an Iraqi identity and belief that the Sunnis ... have a dominant place in the future for Iraq."
After rebel attacks on Baquba last Thursday, Colonel Dana Pittard, the commander of US forces in the northeastern city, told AFP the insurgency in his area was dominated by Iraqis.
Outside experts do not discount the possibility Zarqawi is wandering Iraq, but they believe he serves as a convenient bogeyman for a complicated insurgency.
"Frankly, the coalition may generally believe he is responsible for these high-profile attacks... (but) Zarqawi is a great way of pointing the finger at a foreign terrorist threat," said International Crisis Group security analyst Robin Bhatty.
"Zarqawi is an identifiable target."
June 27, 2004 at 10:46 AM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (31) | Top of page | Blog Home
The current conflict in the Middle East has its roots in the botched carve-up of the region in 1921, writes Christopher Catherwood
Two men, one British, one French, met in London on December 1, 1918. “Well, what are we to discuss?” asked the Frenchman.
“Mesopotamia and Palestine,” the Briton replied.
Tell me what you want, replied the Frenchman.
I want Mosul, responded the Briton.
You shall have it. Anything else?
Yes, I want Jerusalem too.
You shall have it, but Pichon (the foreign minister) will make difficulties about Mosul.
This conversation, between David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau, the British and French prime ministers, is at the heart of what is wrong with the Middle East today, more than 85 years later.
We live in the world created by a few statesmen in the aftermath of the first world war. In particular, we remain haunted by their failure to create an effective settlement to succeed the fallen Ottoman empire, which Britain defeated in 1918 and which finally vanished in 1922. Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and Clemenceau played the major role, but so too did Winston Churchill, the creator of modern Iraq.
The wars in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, in which hundreds of thousands of people died in Europes back yard, are one legacy that has lasted. So too is the intractable problem of the Israel-Palestine conflict. All these are former Ottoman territories.
But it is the problem of Iraq that has its roots in how Churchill tried in a few weeks in 1921 to solve the mess created by the allied victory in 1918.
What the allies attempted was to create new states where none had existed before, in the hope that the infant states would be strong enough to survive in the post-war world order. Of those created in 1918-21, only Iraq now exists.
Yugoslavia, the kingdom cobbled together from bits of the old Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, lasted until 1941, when it disintegrated into a vicious civil war. United under Titos strong rule, the reconstituted communist version lasted until the 1990s when it too collapsed, this time with a series of civil wars even more vicious than the last.
In other words, the mess we saw in the 1990s in the Balkans and the chaos we see today in Iraq are all part of the same problem. It is the legacy of a failed empire and the way in which the West tried to sort out its dissolution more than 80 years ago.
Empires, by definition, seldom consist of a single ethnic group or religion. This was true of the Ottoman empire, not all of whose majority Islamic population were from the Turkish ruling race some were Bosnian Muslims and a large proportion were Arab or Kurd. Even within the Muslim majority there were differences. A significant proportion of the Arab Muslims were Shiite, with close links to fellow Shiites in Iran.
The Sunni/Shiite rift goes back to the origins of Islam and a battle fought as long ago as 680 at Karbala, in present-day Iraq. The Ottomans, like 85% of contemporary Muslims, were Sunni. But in what is now Iraq, more than 50% of the Arab population was Shiite (perhaps 60% today). Arcane though these differences seem to us, to Muslims they are at the heart of who they are and what they believe.
This was as little understood by Churchill, the British cabinet minister designated to find a solution, as it is to most of us today. As the baffled colonial secretary asked his officials: The Wahhabi sect is at feud with the Sunni. Is it also at feud with the Shia? What are the principal doctrinal and ritualistic differences involved between the Shia, the Sunni and the Shabi Mohammedans? A very brief answer will suffice.
Churchill also found all the names confusing: I have succeeded in disentangling Saud Bin Rashid from Ibn Saud. It will simplify matters once and for all whether you call them Bin or Ibn.
We have an excuse if we are confused. Since Churchill was about to determine the fate of the entire region, his uncertainty is perturbing.
The Middle Eastern part of the old Ottoman empire was divided into provinces, or vilayets. Each of these had their own identities. That of Basra, for example, was predominantly Shiite, with trading links to the south. The province of Mosul, so casually transferred to British from French control by Clemenceau, was overwhelmingly Kurdish. It looked to the other Kurdish areas to the north and east (in Iran), and was Sunni in its version of Islam. In between was the province of Baghdad, mainly Sunni Arab, but with large Jewish and other minorities. Allegiances, in so far as people had any, were to the local tribe and to the Islamic faith. Iraq, as a place, simply did not exist.
In 1914 the Ottomans decided to ally with Germany against Britain, France and Russia. Britain, based in Egypt, had several military options to pursue.
The first significant British attempt to attack Ottoman territory ended in complete military failure in Kut, near Baghdad. The Churchillian brainwave of trying to decapitate the Ottoman empire by launching an invasion of Constantinople by seizing the Dardanelles met with equally catastrophic failure at Gallipoli.
It was not until General Allenby launched an invasion from Egypt that the Ottoman empire was finally brought down. In becoming colonial secretary in 1921, Churchill was very conscious of the need to have a success to make up for his wartime failures.
The British and French had tried to carve up the Middle East earlier in the war, when Sir Mark Sykes MP and the diplomat Georges Picot drew up an agreement to partition the region. But soon the British were desperate to get more territory for themselves. All this happened without any consultation with the local inhabitants. There was a serious rebellion in the three vilayets of Basra, Mosul and Baghdad in 1920, which was only suppressed with much effort, loss of life, and enormous expense.
This was the situation facing Churchill in 1921, on becoming minister in charge of the new Middle Eastern Department.
Britains forces were, he realised, grossly overstretched. The Exchequer was empty. Major oil production did not begin until the late 1920s. Churchill, while an imperialist, did not want to build up a costly and vainglorious Middle Eastern empire at the expense of the British taxpayer. But he also knew that crushing the rebellion in 1920 had led to ruinous waste. British troop levels had to be promptly and drastically reduced.
One solution, which Churchill rejected, was to cut and run. The parallels with Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 are striking: We marched into Mesopotamia (now Iraq) during the war and uprooted the Turkish government which was the only stable form of government . . . We accepted before all the world a mandate for the country and undertook to introduce much better methods of government in the place of those we had overthrown.
If, following upon this, we now ignominiously scuttle for the coast, leaving sheer anarchy behind us and historic cities to be plundered by the wild bedouin of the desert, an event will have occurred not at all in accordance with what has usually been the reputation of Britain.
The other solution was to impose a single ruler on the region, who would run a puppet government under a British League of Nations mandate. Further, as Churchill realised, air power was a much more effective way of keeping the inhabitants in check than expensive garrisons of European troops. Finally, Emir Feisal had been unceremoniously expelled from Syria by the French, and as the British owed him a debt of honour, he began to emerge as a possible king for the three provinces. By installing Feisal as a stooge ruler, with the RAF keeping order, Britain could have the new state on the cheap. As Churchill wrote to a constituent:
It is my hope . . . that by means of an Arab government supported by a moderate military force we may be able to discharge our duties without imposing unjustifi- able expense on the British Exchequer.
This is exactly what Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff calls empire lite empire on the cheap, precisely the goal of many in the US government today.
Churchill and his advisers met in 1921 in Cairo to solve the problem to the best advantage of the British taxpayer. This was his first folly the settlement was made in British interests, not those of the local people. Palestine was divided into two areas: one in which Jews could settle; the other became Jordan. The Mosul vilayet, being under possible Turkish threat, was kept alongside those of Basra and Baghdad, even though Churchill was open to the idea of an independent Kurdish state.
Feisal became king of this new country in a rigged referendum. With a notionally independent Arab state under a compliant king, there was no longer any need for an expensive army, which was thus withdrawn, with the RAF left to look after things. Churchills plan had succeeded. A new state, Iraq, had been born.
But this, we could say, was his second folly: the creation of an entirely artificial state. From 1922 to 2003, the Shiites, more than 50% of the population, were ruled over by a narrow Sunni Arab elite whether royal, until 1958, or Baathist under Saddam Hussein. The Kurds had never wanted to be part of the new state and still do not. Repression kept Iraq together.
Now that the dictatorship has been removed, in similar circumstances to the British destroying Ottoman rule in 1917, the centrifugal forces that were long suppressed are coming back, causing chaos.
We let down the peoples of the region in 1921. Might we be doing the same in 2004? Former American ambassador Peter Galbraith has recently advocated a three-state or federal solution for Iraq, allowing the three very different entities to go their own ways. This is problematic, though. Who will get the oil? Will Turkey and Iran allow a Kurdish state? The problems Churchill left unsolved in 1921 haunt us still.
Christopher Catherwood is the author of Winstons Folly published by Constable at 12.99. Copies can be ordered for 10.39 plus 2.25 p&p from The Sunday Times Books First on 0870 165 8585 or at www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirstbuy
Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Ltd.
June 27, 2004 at 10:44 AM in Iraq | Permalink | TrackBack (30) | Top of page | Blog Home
CIA only had "handful" of spies in Iraq
By Tabassum Zakaria
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The CIA had "less than a handful" of sources in prewar Iraq and could not get access to suspected weapons programs, the departing head of the agency's spy service has said.
"As some critics have claimed, during the pre-war period, we did not have many Iraq sources. We certainly did not have enough," James Pavitt, CIA deputy director for operations, said in a speech to the Foreign Policy Association.
"Until we put people on the ground in northern Iraq, we had less than a handful," said Pavitt on Monday, who has announced plans to retire in August.
He said the CIA was unable to gain access to the "heart of Saddam's weapons programs." But in the months before the war the agency got closer to the political and military inner circles and collected intelligence the U.S. military found vital when it entered Iraq, he said.
The CIA's presence in Iraq is now the largest anywhere since the Vietnam War, Pavitt said.
The Bush administration and U.S. intelligence agencies have been criticised for prewar allegations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Although CIA Director George Tenet, who will resign next month, had assured U.S. President George W. Bush there was a convincing case, no stockpiles of unconventional weapons have been found.
The United States had faced difficulties recruiting Iraqi spies before the war because potential sources were fearful of retribution from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and wary of the U.S. commitment to overthrow him, Pavitt said.
"You cannot recruit spies in a vacuum," he said. "The decade before was a time when on the one hand we were saying quietly we needed to overthrow Saddam, on the other hand we weren't saying that with any great vigor publicly."
He said the CIA had nothing to do with misleading information given to the Pentagon by Iraqi defectors and refugees linked to exile groups intent on overthrowing Saddam. "Those controversial spies, if you will, were not my spies."
QAEDA UNABATED
The threat from al Qaeda remains nearly three years after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, he said. "Al Qaeda has unambiguous plans to hit the homeland again, and New York City, I am certain, remains a prime target."
U.S. efforts against al Qaeda have inflicted "irrevocable damage" on parts of the network, but it has "poisoned an international movement" fueling attacks around the world, Pavitt said.
"We've got to realize that the war we are in is one which in my mind has no end in sight."
Pavitt described as unwarranted and ill-informed some of the criticisms leveled at the CIA, and denied charges the agency has a risk-averse culture.
He cited successes such as finding Saddam's sons, who were then killed by U.S. forces. He credited a CIA officer in Iraq "who dealt with a nervous, jumpy intelligence volunteer who promised, and delivered, the location of Uday and Qusay Hussein."
The CIA's clandestine service has grown 30 percent in the last five years and another 30 percent increase is planned in the next five years, he said.
Now would be the wrong time for radical reorganization of the intelligence community, amid a politically-charged atmosphere and great terrorist threat, Pavitt said.
Some critics have said Pavitt's and Tenet's pending departures create "the 'Perfect Storm'" a major intelligence restructuring, Pavitt said. "Let me remind you that in the book and the movie 'The Perfect Storm,' the ship sank and the crew drowned."
June 22, 2004 at 01:33 AM in CIA | Permalink | TrackBack (20) | Top of page | Blog Home
Yahoo! News - Polish Officer, CIA Spy Buried in Warsaw
WARSAW, Poland - A Polish army officer, who spied on his country for the CIA (news - web sites) during the Cold War and warned of the 1981 military crackdown before fleeing to the United States, was buried Saturday in Warsaw.
The military ceremony, at which Col. Ryszard Kuklinski's ashes were interred, was attended by about a thousand Poles, the honorary guard of the Polish Army, Polish and American officials, and Polish war veterans.
"For us Americans, Col. Kuklinski is a hero and we are grateful for his sacrifice," said U.S. Ambassador to Poland Christopher Hill. "Thanks to him, the Cold War remained cold."
Kuklinski died Feb. 10 at the age of 73 at a military hospital in Tampa, Fla.
Kuklinski served as a liaison officer between the Polish military and the Soviet Army in 1976-1981. From behind the Iron Curtain, he passed some 35,000 pages of Warsaw Pact secrets to the CIA, telling them about the communist government's plan to impose martial law in 1981 and launch a bloody crackdown on the pro-democracy Solidarity movement.
Some Poles still regard Kuklinski as a traitor.
Kuklinski fled the country weeks before martial law was imposed in December 1981, and the government seized his house and other property.
He was sentenced to death by Poland's communist government in 1984. His family lived in hiding for years because of threats on his life, and both of his sons died in mysterious accidents after the end of communism.
Kuklinski visited his homeland in May 1998 for the first time since fleeing, months after a court cleared him of the treason charges.
June 21, 2004 at 08:59 PM in CIA | Permalink | TrackBack (27) | Top of page | Blog Home
Reuters AlertNet - Iraqi officer tied to al Qaeda - 9/11 commissioner
20 Jun 2004 17:10:21 GMT
By Peter Kaplan
WASHINGTON, June 20 (Reuters) - The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks has been given new evidence that "a very prominent member" of al Qaeda served as an officer in Saddam Hussein's militia, a panel member said on Sunday.
Republican commissioner John Lehman told NBC's "Meet the Press" program that the new intelligence, if proven true, buttresses claims by the Bush administration of ties between Iraq and the militant network believed responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America.
Lehman said the information, contained in "captured documents," was obtained after the commission report was written that stated there was no evidence of a "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda.
"Some of these documents indicate that (there was) at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaeda," Lehman said.
"That still has to be confirmed, but the vice president (Dick Cheney) was right when he said that he may have things that we don't yet have," said Lehman, a former Navy secretary. "And we are now in the process of getting this latest intelligence."
Cheney and U.S. President George W. Bush continued to insist that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda after the commission report issued last week found no evidence that Iraq collaborated with al Qaeda.
Lehman did not say whether the additional information was given to the commission in response to demands from the panel's chairman, Thomas Kean, and vice chairman, Lee Hamilton. The two called on Cheney late last week to turn over any intelligence reports that would support the White House's insistence.
The Bush administration has been accused by critics of using faulty intelligence about alleged weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi links to al Qaeda to push the nation to war.
Lehman said there was no evidence Saddam was involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America. But he said the recent information about the Fedayeen officer "demonstrates the difficulty that we've had in this commission."
"We're under tremendous political pressures -- everything we come out with, one side or the other seizes on in this election year," Lehman said.
The conclusion of the commission staff report, released last Wednesday, contradicted Bush administration contentions before and after the U.S.-led war on Iraq. The president argued a connection with al Qaeda constituted an unacceptable threat to the United States.
Some officials, including Cheney, have suggested an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 attacks carried out by al Qaeda. Bush later ruled out that possibility, but many Americans still believe it, and critics have accused the administration of misleading the public.
Bush's Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, said last week the president owed the American public "a fundamental explanation about why he rushed to war for a purpose it now turns out is not supported by the facts."
Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste told the NBC program he hoped Cheney would provide "on a current basis" information "with respect to the individual that John Lehman has talked about."
Ben-Veniste also claimed there was no political motivation behind the commission's conclusions.
"This was not an effort to discredit or modify someone else's statements," he said.
June 20, 2004 at 04:34 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (39) | Top of page | Blog Home
TheStar.com - The missing terror link or the latest bogeyman?
Al-Zarqawi busier than bin Laden, one analyst says
But Jordanian is a mysterious figure even to his hunters
MICHELLE SHEPHARD
STAFF REPORTER
He has been called everything from the next Osama bin Laden to a Washington-created bogeyman.
What is clear is that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's presence in Iraq continues to be the crucial link the United States government cites between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein at a time when the U.S. justification for invading the country is itself under attack.
"Zarqawi is the best evidence of a connection to Al Qaeda affiliates and Al Qaeda," U.S. President George W. Bush said last week, defending Vice-President Dick Cheney's assertion Monday that Saddam had longstanding ties with Al Qaeda.
"He's the person who's still believed to be responsible for killing hundreds in terrorist attacks in the last year."
But little is known about the Jordanian, dubbed by Jonathan Schanzer of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy as "Osama bin Laden 2.0."
"This is the most active terrorist in the world right now. Bin Laden has the most credits and most deaths to his name but he's in hiding. He's not coming out," Schanzer said in an interview last week.
"When you hear about the affiliate phenomenon of Al Qaeda, this man personifies it."
While he's often identified in the media as a bin Laden associate, most intelligence officials believe al-Zarqawi does not pledge allegiance to Al Qaeda or take orders from the terrorist leader. Some go so far as to suggest he is actually a rival, albeit with similar goals.
Born in Jordan as Ahmed Fadil al-Khalayleh, al-Zarqawi is believed to be 38 years old and running his own terrorist network centred in the Middle East and Western Europe.
In the past two years, according to intelligence officials, al-Zarqawi has been investigated or claimed responsibility for various terrorist acts, including:
The kidnapping and beheading of American Nicholas Berg in May. The Central Intelligence Agency believes the masked man who wielded the knife and performed the actual decapitation was al-Zarqawi himself.
The suicide boat attacks against Persian Gulf oil terminals that killed three Americans and disabled Iraq's biggest terminal for more than 24 hours in April. The bombing resembled the 2000 attack on the USS Cole off Yemen that killed 17 sailors.
The Oct. 28, 2002, murder of Laurence Foley, an Amman-based administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Eight militants were sentenced to death this April for conspiring to murder Foley. Six of them, including al-Zarqawi, were convicted in absentia.
Al-Zarqawi is also being investigated in the Madrid bombings in March that killed 200 people, and a U.S. intelligence report obtained by the Boston Globe last month stated al-Zarqawi's reach is wide with reports he is responsible for the deaths of at least 700 people in Iraq during the last year.
"Zarqawi and his network have plotted terrorist actions against several countries, including France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia," the report said.
Yet despite these claims and rumours the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation plans to increase the reward for his capture from $10 million to the $25 million also offered for bin Laden al-Zarqawi still isn't listed on the FBI's top 10 lists for fugitives or terrorists.
In fact, while the CIA and FBI seem able to authenticate his voice on audio and videotapes purportedly made by him, they know very little else, including details of his physical appearance, such as height, weight or whether he has a prosthetic leg or simply an injured one.
Al-Zarqawi's mysterious existence leads some critics of the American administration to believe he is simply the current face of terrorism the U.S. needs in the run-up to the November presidential elections.
Schanzer, who has interviewed detainees from Al Qaeda and the Ansar al-Islam group in Iraq, disagrees. "It's not that the U.S. government just came up with this guy as we see ourselves getting increasingly bogged down in Iraq," he said.
"They were talking about Zarqawi well before the war and since then he has been letting it be known that he is one of the people who's pulling strings when it comes to terrorism in Iraq. This is not something that is fabricated."
Al-Zarqawi only became an internationally recognized name after U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's February, 2003, speech to the United Nations.
Describing him as part of the "sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network," Powell said al-Zarqawi returned to Afghanistan in 2000 and oversaw a terrorist training camp specializing in biological weapons, including ricin. He had previously been among the throngs of Muslim men who travelled there in the 1980s to fight Soviet occupation.
Powell said al-Zarqawi left Afghanistan again because of an injury and travelled to Baghdad for medical treatment.
His exact whereabouts are unknown but he is believed to be moving between Iraq and Iran. Reports last week said U.S. troops had focused their search on Iraq's Falluja-Ramadi area.
June 20, 2004 at 04:29 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (14) | Top of page | Blog Home
DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism Security
The Israeli government is getting ready to offer down payments to voluntary evacuees from 21 Gaza settlements and four West Bank locations that Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon plans to remove by the end of 2005. This move is designed to stimulate departures and jump the gun on two major delaying factors: the cabinet only approved the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement outline; voting on settlement removals is not due until March 2005 and then it will be piecemeal. Secondly, compensation to departing settlers entails long and tiresome legislation, whereas down payments do not. Broad hints that the first comers will get the best deal have been thrown out already. The bargaining is clearly about to begin.
A second Middle East party has also hit on the notion of financially rewarding people willing to change address. DEBKAfiles Palestinian and Jordanian sources reveal that Jordans King Abdullah is offering non-returnable mortgages cash on the nail to high Palestinian officials willing to purchase and move to luxury villas in Amman. The king is hoping to shut the West Bank door to the Egyptians, whose arrival is described as imminent under a putative proposal agreed by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Sharon and British prime minister Tony Blair (about which more later). The Amman villas come with a proviso: purchasers must list their new addresses on their calling cards. Their dual residency is intended to provide Jordan with a foothold at Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah and represent the kings interests on the West Bank.
According to our sources, several Palestinians have taken Abdullah up on his offer; two are prominent: Yasser Abd Rabo, Palestinian co-signatory of the Geneva Accords and Jibril Rajoub, Yasser Arafats own national security adviser, evoking a nasty letter from Arafat to the palace in Amman announcing that he would not stand for Jordanian officers and agents running around Palestinian territory. The West Bank is not the Gaza Strip! He declared.
Both are anxious to stall momentum on the Mubarak-Blair-Sharon project, on which White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has been briefed, for Egypt to send 150 instructors to Jericho to set up a new training academy for intelligence and special operations officers. These instructors are to double as the nucleus of the projected Egyptian military intelligence presence which will work in harness with British Secret Service MI6 agents to supervise the reorganization (called reforms in the Middle East road map) and operation of Palestinian security and intelligence bodies.
Abdullah and Arafat share in interest in sabotaging this Jericho project, but are too far apart on everything else to collaborate.
The prime ministers office in Jerusalem has not shared the ins and outs of this proposal with outsiders including cabinet ministers. In important respects it is an offshoot of President George W. Bushs limited gains from the Europeans and the United Nations on Iraq; jocular encounters and amiable speeches have so far yielded no offers of troops or authority to fly NATO or UN flags over the US-led multinational force.
Even the presidents resuscitation of the virtually moribund Middle East Quartet elicited a tepid response. Britain, which already has troops in Iraq, was the only European power prepared to jump back into the Palestinian-Israel conflict, in its own inimitable fashion and for its own reasons.
Tony Blair believes fervently that restoring Britain to Arab favors as a lead player in the Middle East is the key to Britains revival as a political and economic power. However, he suffers from five handicaps: 1. Gone are the glory days of formidable British fighting strength. 2. Investment capital is in short supply. 3. The British public has no taste for foreign adventure. Blairs military involvement in Iraq is unpopular and eroding his own and his Labor partys electoral standing. Labor came third and last in local council elections last week, trailing the opposition Conservatives and Lib Dems. 4. Behind the grandiloquent rhetoric lauding the close US-UK pact, Washington is clearly delimiting British expansionist aspirations especially in Iraq. British military presence and influence are carefully winnowed down to a narrow albeit strategically important - strip of the south between the Iraqi-Iranian border cities of Basra and al Amara, outside the southern oil fields and with scarcely a toehold in most other cities including Baghdad. 5. Parts of the Blair government cling fondly to Britains former pretensions as the great friend of the Muslim Arab world, forgetting they were unceremoniously pushed out of the Middle East half a century ago and not always remembered with affection.
6. MI6, the operational arm of British expansion, historically opted for the Middle East camp opposed to Israel and cultivated a special relationship with Yasser Arafat going back decades.
Strictly speaking, Egyptian intelligence invented the Palestinian national leader and used his services between the 1960s and well into the 1990s. Even today, the Egyptian official assigned to keeping tabs on him is intelligence minister General Omar Suleiman. It is less well known that during those decades, British intelligence ran a covert operation to build him up as a world figure. London saw in him a vehicle for planting British influence deep inside the Arab-Muslim orbit (which is why he was never received in Islamic revolutionary Tehran) and an instrument for keeping Israeli intelligence in check and limiting its influence in Washington.
These ties were somewhat loosened after the 1993 Oslo peace accord, when he relocated from Tunis to Gaza and Ramallah. But they were never abandoned.
The British have performed two key services for the Palestinian cause:
A. They sponsored the concept of Palestinian statehood as a means of reducing the Jewish state to what London considered its natural dimensions, sitting behind Arafats shoulder and lobbying the international case for a Palestinian state year after year until it was taken up by President Bush.
Few Israelis are aware of the pivotal role parts of MI6 through the British Foreign Office played over the years in developing and shaping Palestinian diplomatic and PR strategy, helping to make the Palestinian cause far more resonant internationally than the Israeli case even when Arafat openly espoused and practiced terrorism.
B. They instigated the first Palestinian uprising against Israel in 1987; it was not provoked by Arafat then still in Tunis or even the PLO leadership, but MI6 agents operating in the Rafah refugee camp of the southern Gaza Strip. The trigger was a road accident in which an Israeli army truck ran over a group of Palestinian children. The local protest raised spread quickly and was presented opportunistically to the media as a popular uprising.
Again in 2004, British activists are working hard to win Arab hearts and minds. Now volunteers are sent over to shield Rafah residents against Israeli military operations and support Palestinian protests against Israels anti-terror barrier.
But, despite these five obstacles, Blairs chances of making progress towards his goal are a lot better now than they were in 1987.
For one thing, President Bush owes him a big favor for standing alongside the United States in Iraq. MI6 agents may therefore swarm over the West Bank under fairly lax control from Washington.
For another, the British path is paradoxically eased by the Israeli prime ministers offices spin campaign around Sharons disengagement plan and the Israeli medias readiness to buy uncorroborated reports presenting Egypt and European governments as eager to accept a role in the plans execution and lavishly fund its costs. The UK is thus granted an opportunity to depict its agents presence in the West Bank as laying the groundwork for the Egyptian military and intelligence personnel supposedly coming to supervise the reorganization and operation of reformed Palestinian security bodies.
This is far from the truth. Egypt has not yet decided finally to get involved in Sharons disengagement scheme. The coordination between London and Cairo is flimsy at best, resting only on the initiative of Muhammed Rashid, a private Palestinian Kurdish individual, who commutes regularly between the two capitals, the while pushing hard for his London-based business partner, former Gaza strongman Muhammed Dahlan, to make a comeback. Furthermore, Arafats promises to streamline his security apparatus are trumpeted far and wide without awkward questions on implementation.
Last Thursday, June 10, Israelis were afforded a rare glimpse in the sky of Venus passing the sun; on the ground, they saw the MI6 in action. Israeli radio announced dryly that a group of British intelligence officers had visited Jenin and carried out surveillance of Israeli settlements. No one asked whether the group was on a cowboy spying mission or had received authorization. And if authorized, by whom? The Israeli government is after all the competent security jurisdiction in the territory.
That was not the end of the matter. DEBKAfiles Washington sources report that shortly after the incident was discovered, the British premier handed the US president at the Georgia G-8 summit a secret intelligence report that was a clear signpost to where the Blair government is heading.
The report claims the Palestinians have made a good start on cracking down on terrorists except that they are severely hindered by the IDF. Israels Shin Beit and its troops - and their unremitting efforts day and night, year after year, to keep Palestinian suicidal terrorists at bay - rate no mention in the MI6 report except as an obstacle to Palestinian good intentions.
The London report, our sources learn, was handed to other leaders attending the summit. A copy was even addressed to Ariel Sharon and another to Yasser Arafat.
This development raises some interesting questions about the game developing around the Israeli prime ministers disengagement plan to be the subject of the second part of this DEBKAfile Special Report.
June 18, 2004 at 09:46 PM in MI6 | Permalink | TrackBack (35) | Top of page | Blog Home
Turing's almost single-handed brilliance helped the Allies crack the Nazi Enigma code, saving thousands of lives. As was the case with most WWII intelligence boffins, the need for immediate secrecy and the Brits' 30-year lid on covert operations made for an unsung hero.
Turing was a deep thinker, not scared to state his case.The Turing Test you mention reminds me of Canada's Marshall McLuhan who stated that technology is an extension, not a replacement, of human excellence.
In the 1950's Turing predicted that computers would evolve to a point where they would be programmed to mimic human intelligence.
Debate for and against the notion that a computer could replace or rival human thinking has continued ever since. Has technology advanced to this level of sophistication? Can we rely on computer systems to perform crucial functions in the role of final authority?
Thanks again for great articles!
Rodger Harding
Re: The truth about Turing (June 7)
Thank you for bringing back into the light the name of Alan Turing. I think that this man was ahead of his time, and performed work that was decades ahead of anyone alse, bringing ideas and concepts to light that have influence in the IT industry today.
The IT industry needs to acknowledge the contributions of this man. Not only did he teach about computing and mathematics, his life -- and end of life -- should teach us all about our society.
It is enormously distressing to learn that the mistakes of his era pervade our society still. Let us hope that his legacy can lead us to better machines and better behaviour, both on a societal and individual level.
June 18, 2004 at 09:41 PM in Cold War | Permalink | TrackBack (1) | Top of page | Blog Home
6/7/2004 5:00:00 PM - The IT industry should be at pains to decipher the life of this cryptographer
by Shane Schick
It must have been hard to build the world's first digital computer, but finding a way to memorialize its inventor is proving to be a project in itself.
Oh, they've tried to help us remember Alan Turing, who committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide on June 7, 1954. The best stab
at it was probably "Breaking the Code," a dramatization of his life which opened in London's West End in 1987. Derek Jacobi starred as Turing, brought to life Hugh Whitemore's play about the mathematician's cryptography work in the Second World War and his persecution as a gay man. At the time, Jacobi told a radio interviewer he was worried the high-level ideas in the script might hurt the show's prospects. "Homosexuality is box office," he said, "but mathematics! -- "
The play, in fact, discussed some of the math in detail but made scant mention of Turing's idea for a "universal machine," which would have conversations with "Turing machines" that turned thoughts into numbers. This was a blueprint for software programs and hardware about 10 years before it was possible to make them.
Fifty years after his death, however, Turing has managed to earn at least some place in the IT industry's hall of fame, though it's a small and grudging one. You're much more likely to hear about the achievements of Gordon Moore or Bill Gates than Turing in the average trade show keynote about the computer's origins. There are occasional mentions in the works of hot young technology authors (like Steven Johnson, who looks briefly at Turing's ideas in his book Emergence) and a wealth of information online, but the only physical landmark I'm aware of is a statue that sits in Manchester's Sackville Park. It is an area known as the epicentre of the city's gay village.
Turing has other strikes against him besides his homosexuality that may help explain his marginal place in the story of information technology. He's British, for one thing -- Americans tend to make sure everyone knows when a local boy makes good. More significantly, perhaps, Turing lacked the professional affiliations that might have given him better public relations in posterity. Andrew Hodges put it well in his 1983 book Alan Turing: The Enigma, when he discusses Turing's 1936-7 paper On computable numbers:
"In this passage Alan Turing opened up what would now be called the cognitive sciences, as well as settling a fundamental question within mathematics. He also founded modern computer science," Hodges wrote. "But all this came from pure scientific thought, and not at all from an economic need for computing. Business and profit-making played no part in it."
If we need reasons to remember and admire Turing, we might think of IBM's self-healing systems, Computer Associates' Nugents artificially intelligent software or anything else that brings us one step closer to a replication of the human brain. Turing theorized this was possible, as long as a random element could be introduced into the calculation process. He also came up with the Turing Test to measure an IT system's intelligence. According to that test, we should be able to get answers from machines that are indistinguishable from those a human could provide us. We're getting closer to passing that test, but without giving more credit to the man who set us on that journey, I think we're failing Turing.
June 18, 2004 at 09:37 PM in Cold War | Permalink | TrackBack (0) | Top of page | Blog Home
Irish trio cleared of charges in Colombia
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Three Irishmen have left a maximum security Colombian prison after being cleared of training Marxist rebels to build bombs and paying fines for carrying false passports.
But Jim Monaghan, Niall Connolly and Martin McCauley will not be allowed to leave Colombia until an appeal by the state runs its course, according to a court document obtained earlier in the day by Reuters.
The attorney general's office accuses the trio of being Irish Republican Army guerrillas.
If the case reached the Supreme Court, legal experts say the appeals process could take as long as five years.
Making no statements, and packed into civilian vehicles with tinted windows, the three men were driven away from Bogota's Modelo prison -- their home for most of the past three years.
The men were arrested at a Bogota airport in August 2001 after visiting a stronghold of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a 17,000-member guerrilla army known by its Spanish initials FARC.
Monaghan, Connolly and McCauley -- who deny any ties to the IRA -- admitted in court to meeting with FARC members and spending several weeks near a large guerrilla camp. But they said they travelled to the area to learn about peace talks, which subsequently collapsed.
A judge in April dismissed the state's charges, backed largely by circumstantial evidence, that the men trained the FARC in advanced bomb techniques.
But a Bogota court also dismissed their petition that they be allowed to await the state's verdict in Ireland instead of Colombia, where their lawyers say they risk reprisals by right-wing paramilitary death squads.
The trio were released on parole for carrying false passports, after paying fines of about $7,000 each.
Connolly was once a representative in Cuba of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political ally.
June 15, 2004 at 10:45 PM in Ireland | Permalink | TrackBack (41) | Top of page | Blog Home
Sinn Fein wins first seat in European Parliament
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Sinn Fein, the Irish republican party which for decades allied itself to the bloodiest guerrilla movement in post-war Europe, has won its first seat in the European Parliament, results show.
The party, which stood by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) throughout its bloody campaign for an end to British rule in Northern Ireland -- took one of four seats in Dublin.
With results still to come in from elsewhere in the country on Monday, it was pushing hard for another seat in the northwest and is almost certain to take one in Northern Ireland when the province announces its European results later.
"Instinctively, people are republican," Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams said late on Sunday in explaining his party's stunning performance, which was mirrored in local elections.
"They want to see an end to British rule, want to see a united Ireland, want to see peace between orange and green."
The party doubled its share of the vote in the Irish Republic from the last European vote in 1999, when it polled 6.3 percent. The party's Dublin candidate Mary Lou McDonald took around a 14.5 percent share.
"It's an endorsement of our work nationally, it's an endorsement of our peace strategy and it's also a reflection of people's appetite for change," she said.
"Sinn Fein is on the move and is a growing force in Irish political life."
The results represent a remarkable transformation from the days when Sinn Fein was vilified for its links with the IRA.
It has campaigned on a radical, left-wing agenda aimed at those left behind by Ireland's "Celtic Tiger" economic boom and those fed up with Britain's continued rule in the north.
More than 3,600 people were killed during the conflict between Irish nationalists, seeking a united island, and loyalists who want to maintain British rule.
Around half of those deaths were blamed on the IRA, which called a ceasefire in 1994.
June 14, 2004 at 12:19 PM in IRA | Permalink | TrackBack (55) | Top of page | Blog Home
The New York Times > Washington > Tenet's Departure May Ease an Overhaul of Intelligence
By DOUGLAS JEHL and PHILIP SHENON
ASHINGTON, June 7 - The departure of George J. Tenet as director of central intelligence may remove one obstacle to an overhaul that would make him the last person to hold the job in its current form, prominent members of Congress and some members of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks say.
Both the commission, in its review of the attacks, and the Senate Intelligence Committee, in its review of prewar intelligence on Iraq, are preparing reports that are expected to place blame for the intelligence failures in part on the current structure, in which a single person both leads the Central Intelligence Agency and, with limited budget and management authority, oversees all intelligence agencies, officials involved in the internal discussions say.
"You can't wait on reform," Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said in a telephone interview on Monday. In a speech last month, Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is the panel's chairman, said the committee's findings, still awaiting declassification by the C.I.A., "literally beg for reform."
In interviews on Monday, members of the Sept. 11 commission said the departure of Mr. Tenet would remove a prominent public opponent of the recommendations that the panel was considering.
While the commission has praised Mr. Tenet in public for his energy and dedication in running the C.I.A., the agency itself has been subject to withering criticism in a series of interim staff reports released by the commission, which is facing a July 26 deadline to complete its inquiry.
"Tenet's departure increases the chances that the commission will make recommendations for restructuring the intelligence community," said Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska who is a member of the commission. Mr. Kerrey described Mr. Tenet's resignation as "a fairly significant clap of thunder.''
"I think it creates a vacuum because Tenet was such a significant force," he said.
Another Democrat on the panel, Tim Roemer, a former House member from Indiana, said the departures this summer of both Mr. Tenet and the C.I.A.'s director of operations, James Pavitt, were part of a "perfect storm" that could open the way to an overhaul of the intelligence community, including the creation of the post of national intelligence director to oversee all intelligence agencies.
Most proponents of restructuring intelligence agencies argue that the country's primary intelligence chief needs more power, not less, to control budgets, resolve disputes, avoid overlap and fill gaps among the many intelligence agencies. But any recommendation for change would face resistance from agencies like the Pentagon that could lose power in a reorganization, and it is not clear whether any plan could win approval before Congress ends an abbreviated session in this election year.
The national intelligence post's creation was a central recommendation of a joint Congressional investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks, an inquiry on which Mr. Roemer also served. He said he would urge the independent commission to make the same recommendation, although he would not predict the outcome of the panel's deliberations.
"We need a centralized authority for these 15 disparate agencies," Mr. Roemer said. "I generally support the concept of a director of national intelligence."
Commission members said that the panel was in the middle of deliberations about the structure of the narrative portion of the report and that it had not begun to debate in earnest recommendations for change in the nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
The Senate committee plans to hold hearings on intelligence restructuring as early as the end of this month, after it releases what officials have described as a highly critical report highlighting mistakes and miscalculations made by intelligence agencies in reporting on Iraq and its suspected arsenal of illicit weapons.
Options being considered by the commission and being debated in Congress would separate in some way the two jobs that Mr. Tenet and his predecessors have tried, not always successfully, to balance. One would involve running the Central Intelligence Agency; the other, with much less authority, would involve overseeing and coordinate activities among all American spy agencies.
The Senate committee, whose report will focus on Iraq and illicit weapons, is not expected to make a specific recommendation about intelligence reform, Congressional officials said on Monday. But in the hearings that will follow, "we're going to turn our attention to the forward-looking part, which is what do you do about the problems that we're going to describe in the report," one official said.
Mr. Tenet, who has been intelligence chief since 1997, made clear his view that it would be a mistake to remove the director of central intelligence from the "troops," as he described C.I.A. personnel. Mr. Tenet would have liked to have had more power and responsibility over other agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and others, but he did not want to lose day-to-day authority over the C.I.A., people close to him have said.
But with Mr. Tenet stepping aside, effective July 11, and his deputy, John McLaughlin, designated so far only as his acting successor, some Congressional officials say the landscape is particularly suited for a major overhaul, which would require legislation.
"With Tenet's departure, the president has the opportunity to transform the job that Tenet held," said Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee and the sponsor of a bill that would create a new director of national intelligence. "We need a true director of the entire intelligence community - all 15 agencies - who has the necessary authority, responsibility and accountability."
Senator Roberts, in his speech last month, said: ''There are many in the Congress who say there is a conflict of interest inherent in a single individual serving as director of the C.I.A. and as director of the entire intelligence community. There is broad agreement that from an organizational standpoint, we need to manage the entire community rather than serve the interests of one particular agency."
President Bush said in April that he was open to the idea of intelligence changes, and administration officials said then that the White House was reviewing various options, including one presented by Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser who now heads the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
Mr. Scowcroft's proposal, drafted more than a year ago but essentially ignored by the White House until recently, would also create a director of national intelligence, one with even broader powers than in Ms. Harman's plan. More recently, however, the White House has given no indication that it might put forward a plan of its own before the Sept. 11 commission completes its work, and administration officials say it is more likely that Mr. Bush and his aides will wait to see what emerges from that panel and from the hearings on Capitol Hill.
The classified 400-page Senate report about intelligence agencies' handling of prewar information on Iraq is still being reviewed by the C.I.A., which has the power to decide how much of it can be declassified for public release. The Senate committee is tentatively planning to make the report public late next week, but that may depend on whether its members decide to protest any C.I.A. decisions about what sections must remain secret, Congressional officials say.
June 12, 2004 at 10:48 PM in CIA | Permalink | TrackBack (0) | Top of page | Blog Home
Telegraph | News | Dossier a mistake - Rimington
By Elizabeth Grice
(Filed: 12/06/2004)
The whole idea of releasing an intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was misguided and has damaged public confidence in the secret service, the former head of MI5 said yesterday.
"I feel the dossier was a mistake," said Dame Stella Rimington. "Formally putting intelligence into the public domain was not, in my view, a sensible thing to do.
"The whole point about intelligence is that it changes. What you think is the case today may be different tomorrow because of new information. The trouble is, if you put something out as a dossier, it is frozen in time."
She added: "That whole episode has probably damaged the reputation of the intelligence service, at least momentarily, in the eyes of the public, which is a great pity."
The author of the dossier was John Scarlett, then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. In his report, Lord Hutton said Mr Scarlett - who is now chief of the Secret Intelligence Service - may have been "subconsciously influenced" by the Prime Minister's wish to make a tougher case for going to war.
Asked whether, as director general, she would have resisted Tony Blair's request for a dossier, Dame Stella said: "I can't say, as I don't know the circumstances . . . but I expect I would have thought: no good will come of this."
Dame Stella, MI5's first woman director general, is currently infiltrating the male-dominated genre of spy fiction with her debut thriller, At Risk, which features a female MI5 agent based on her younger self. The book had to have official clearance before publication this month.
June 11, 2004 at 09:10 PM in MI5 | Permalink | TrackBack (36) | Top of page | Blog Home
Lair of secret wartime code-cracker opens
By Jeremy Lovell
LONDON (Reuters) - Once the most secret place in Britain, Bletchley Park is giving the public a first look into the hut where mathematics genius Alan Turing worked on cracking Nazi Germany's supposedly unbreakable Enigma codes.
Turing's Hut 8 is included in an exhibition at the complex some 50 miles (80 km) north of London that opened this week.
"The public can't actually enter the hut yet. We have much more restoration work to do before that is possible. But they can see through a window into the room where Turing worked," said Bletchley Park director Christine Large.
"They can see things like the tea cup he used to keep chained to his radiator," she said. "We hope to have it fully opened by the end of the year."
Turing was part of the team that invented Colossus, the machine that enabled cypher sleuths to crack not only the normal Enigma codes but the key Lorenz cypher that Adolf Hitler used to communicate with his field commanders.
The cracking of the code was crucial to the success of the D-Day allied invasion of mainland Europe and is credited with having shortened World War Two by some two years.
Colossus, a giant machine that used hundreds of valves to make its calculations, was the world's first programmable electronic computer. Its existence was a closely guarded secret.
Bletchley Park -- codenamed Station X -- near Milton Keynes was secretly transformed into a code-breaking centre in mid-1939 as war loomed, with the first codebreakers to arrive there -- scientists and classicists -- disguised as a shooting party.
The odds of them cracking the Nazi codes were put at 150,000,000 trillions to one, and their ultimate success was deemed one of the greatest intellectual achievements of the 20th century.
Huts three and six worked on the German Army and Air Force codes, while huts four and eight concentrated on the German naval codes -- crucial in winning the war in the Atlantic as U-boats sank millions of tonnes of vital Allied shipping.
The intelligence they supplied was codenamed "Ultra" and its circulation limited to a handful of top Allied commanders, to prevent the Germans finding out their codes had been cracked.
At the height of the war, more than 10,000 people were working at Bletchley Park, but barely nine months after hostilities ended the entire complex had been abandoned and all traces of the work there removed to maintain secrecy.
It was a secret that remained until the mid-1970s when details slowly began to emerge under a government rule that keeps such information under wraps for 30 years or more.
June 11, 2004 at 11:09 AM in Cold War | Permalink | TrackBack (14) | Top of page | Blog Home
The New York Times > Washington > The Legacy: An Impact Seen, and Felt, Everywhere
By TODD S. PURDUM
Published: June 7, 2004
ASHINGTON, June 6 - His name adorns National Airport, a California freeway, a stamp in Grenada, a ballistic missile test site in the Marshall Islands, a suite at the St. Regis Hotel in Los Angeles and a massive office building here dedicated to international trade. But if you seek Ronald Reagan's real monument, just look around.
Mr. Reagan's legacy lives in the career of another underrated actor turned governor of California, one born in Middle Europe and not the Middle West, who is now ruling Sacramento with a blend of charm and flint. It endures in a Supreme Court and federal judiciary still led by Mr. Reagan's conservative appointees.
It flourishes in a federal government that never got as small as Mr. Reagan might have wished, but in which the prevailing economic debate is now almost always over how much to cut taxes, not whether. It pulses in a transformed political landscape: in an energized, grass-roots Republican Party; in the first Republican Congress in a half-century; and in a Democratic Party still at pains to deflect and defuse Republican dominance.
Perhaps most of all, Mr. Reagan's legacy prevails in the muscular foreign policy of the current occupant of the White House, who seems far more the spiritual heir to the Reagan revolution than to his own father's presidential policies, and who reacted on Sunday to a question about virulent anti-Americanism in Europe by invoking the man a French headline once dismissed as a "cowboy justicier."
"I believe in a future that is peaceful, based upon liberty," Mr. Bush told the NBC anchor Tom Brokaw in an interview broadcast from France, where he was marking the 60th anniversary of D-Day near the site of one of Mr. Reagan's most famous speeches. "And I remember my predecessor, whose life we mourn, Ronald Reagan: they felt the same way about him. Tom, that doesn't mean a fellow like me should change my beliefs. I'm not going to. I'm not trying to be popular. What I'm trying to do is what I think is right."
It was Mr. Reagan's great fortune for most of his life and presidency to be popular, and the outpouring of tributes in the 10 years since Alzheimer's disease left him adrift in a world of his own suggested that his popularity only grew with time. But Mr. Reagan lived long enough to enable many of his old lieutenants, and some more dispassionate chroniclers as well, to argue that he had also been right on some of the bigger questions of his time.
"Ronald Reagan had a higher claim than any other leader to have won the cold war for liberty," said his old comrade Lady Thatcher, the former British prime minister. "And he did it without a shot being fired."
Mr. Reagan's command of details was far from complete. He once set aside briefing books on the eve of an economic summit meeting to watch "The Sound of Music" on television. Mario M. Cuomo, then governor of New York, loved to recount how Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan tried to present him to Mr. Reagan, who interrupted, "You don't have to introduce me to Lee Iacocca!"
After it was revealed that officials in his administration had sold arms to Iran as a ransom for American hostages, then used the proceeds to help the Nicaraguan contras, Mr. Reagan only reluctantly acknowledged that it had happened, and a commission he had appointed himself concluded that his detached management style had failed him.
But most of the time, his command of direction was crystal clear.
Stuart Spencer, a political consultant who was with Mr. Reagan from the very beginning of his campaign for governor of California in 1965, recalled in a telephone interview how decisive his old boss could be.
"It was a pretty bold act to fire 11,000 air controllers," Mr. Spencer said. "At the time he said Russia was an evil empire, I know a lot of us were really nervous about it. He cut income taxes across the board 25 percent, named a woman to the Supreme Court. Those were all pretty bold decisions. Not today, maybe, but then. And he made them."
Cass R. Sunstein, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, said Mr. Reagan's was "the most important presidency of the 20th century, with one obvious exception": Franklin D. Roosevelt. Last year, Professor Sunstein wrote in The American Prospect that Mr. Reagan's appointments had left the federal courts fundamentally different from their predecessors just two decades ago.
"What was then in the center is now on the left; what was then in the far right is now in the center; what was then on the left no longer exists," he wrote. And in a telephone interview on Sunday, he added that Mr. Reagan's influence on federal regulation was just as pervasive, because of an executive order that required all federal agencies to do a cost-benefit analysis of major proposed rules, and to make that the basis of the rule-making, to the extent allowed by law.
"That has redefined the practices of the executive branch," Professor Sunstein said. "Clinton didn't fundamentally change it."
Indeed, Bill Clinton, a founder of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council - created to reign in his party's most liberal instincts - was among the first to recognize Mr. Reagan's sweeping political legacy. Later, as president, Mr. Clinton successfully pressed for an overhaul of the federal welfare system and famously, if prematurely, declared, "The era of big government is over."
"Ever since Ronald Reagan, Washington has been playing on his side of the field," said Kenneth Duberstein, Mr. Reagan's last White House chief of staff. "Everything that has taken place since the 80's virtually has been on Ronald Reagan's territory."
It was Mr. Reagan, a New Deal Democrat turned Goldwater conservative, who lured disaffected blue-collar Democrats to vote Republican in the first place, and his upbeat personality was a crucial factor. He once cut off debate among his advisers over how much credit to give the Rev. Jesse Jackson for negotiating Syria's release of a downed American Air Force pilot by saying, "The only way we can lose is if we're not gracious."
Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, recalled how Mr. Reagan had introduced him at a rally in his long-shot campaign for the Senate 20 years ago as "my good friend Mitch O'Donnell," then continued unfazed when he realized the error, showing "how completely Teflon he was."
Mr. McConnell, now the Senate's No. 2 Republican, added: "He had an enormous impact on a lot of us, and our developing philosophies. I became a more solid conservative, and a more conviction-oriented politician, as the result of his example. He demonstrated that you don't have to flip-flop back and forth, and that you can take an unpopular position."
Newt Gingrich, whose Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994 was made possible by Mr. Reagan's years of toil, told Fox News that Mr. Reagan had taught him "cheerful persistence." Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who served Mr. Reagan as national security adviser, told CBS News that Mr. Reagan had taught him "how to be calm in the middle of a crisis; how to set a clear vision; how to use the skills you have as a communicator to push that vision forward."
If Richard M. Nixon's demons reflected a darker side of late-20th-century American conservatism, Mr. Reagan's relentless optimism projected the sun. Some of the words he used to inspire the nation and the world were the work of his speechwriters, but he shaped them meticulously, and he saw with a poet's eye.
On his 11th wedding anniversary, in 1963, he wrote his wife, Nancy: "This is really just an 'in between' day. It is a day on which I love you three hundred and sixty-five days more than I did a year ago and three hundred and sixty-five less than I will a year from now. But I wonder how I lived at all for all the three hundred and sixty-fives before I met you."
Mr. Reagan was the first president to have been divorced, and ease with his own children from two marriages often eluded him. But as the national paterfamilias, he transformed his gifts of intimate expression for use on the world's biggest stage.
"People connected to him," Mr. Spencer, the political consultant, said. "Because of his idealism, his vision. He wasn't a shouter. When he went on television, he came into your living room like a neighbor sitting on the couch. He wasn't harassing and haranguing you."
If Mr. Reagan was guided by fixed principles, he was far from inflexible. He adapted his policies to political realities, pressing for arms reductions with the Soviet Union after years of military buildup. He told his former chief of staff and Treasury secretary, James A. Baker, that he "would much rather get 80 percent of what I want than to go over the cliff with my flag flying," as Mr. Baker put it on CNN on Sunday.
Historians will long debate the impact of the huge federal budget deficits run up under Mr. Reagan's leadership, the efficacy of his tax cuts, the effects of his administration's involvements in Central America, his seeming indifference to civil rights, the environment and the plight of the poor. But few now seem likely to quarrel with his own assessment, given in his farewell address from the Oval Office on Jan. 11, 1989.
"My friends, we did it," he said then. "We weren't just marking time. We made a difference."
June 7, 2004 at 07:58 AM in US | Permalink | TrackBack (54) | Top of page | Blog Home
Toronto's trendy Distillery District has been in such financial disarray that the property managers could not meet employee payroll last fall and the site has required almost weekly financial injections, court documents allege.
The documents were filed recently in a lawsuit by William Wiener, a Toronto businessman who financed the project and now wants it put up for sale to recover his $25-million investment.
Mr. Wiener's partners in the district fired the first legal shot in March with a lawsuit against Mr. Wiener. He has now hit back with a counterclaim against them and two prominent lawyers.
Mr. Wiener alleges that his partners have committed forgery, prepared fake budgets and called in police to kick the Wiener group off the site. He is also suing two senior partners at the law firm of Minden Gross Grafstein & Greenstein, alleging that they, and the firm, intentionally damaged his interests in the project. None of the allegations have been proved.
"Given these circumstances there was a complete breakdown of trust as between the parties," the suit filed by Mr. Wiener claims. "The Distillery project must be sold and the [rival partners'] management and involvement must end immediately."
The Distillery District opened a year ago to great fanfare as the city's new centre for arts and entertainment. Its 44 Victorian-era buildings on the old Gooderham & Worts site were billed as a unique setting for a collection of galleries, cafs and boutiques.
But the future of the project has been thrown into question as the six partners who developed the site battle for control in court. The feud has torn apart the partnership and divided families who have worked together for 40 years.
The legal wrangling pits Mr. Wiener's group, which includes his wife, Lillyann Goldstein, against Mathew Rosenblatt, John Berman, James Goad and David Jackson, who run Cityscape Development and are largely responsible for the district's design. Mr. Wiener has refused to provide any more financing until the legal dispute is resolved.
None of the parties will comment on the legal fight. But documents filed in court portray a project mired in financial trouble and haphazard management. There are also allegations in the original lawsuit that Mr. Wiener was spreading rumours that members of the Cityscape group were involved in drug dealing, secret deals and phony documents. Meanwhile, construction at the site has been shoddy, according to Mr. Wiener's suit, and several tenants are complaining the project has not lived up to billing.
The partners bought the site for $10.8-million in 2001 and expected to spend about $3-million on initial renovations. They all knew each other well and had worked together on several other developments.
Mr. Wiener alleges that he agreed to provide the financing because of his 40-year relationship with Mr. Berman's father, Jules, and Mr. Rosenblatt's father, Reuben, both of whom are partners at Minden Gross. Both men are being sued by Mr. Wiener.
The relationship between all sides was so tight that no one bothered with written ownership agreements. It was simply understood that Cityscape would manage the site, in return for a $200,000 annual fee, and Mr. Wiener would provide financing, in return for a 53-per-cent ownership stake.
The district was already in financial trouble when it opened in May, 2003, according to Mr. Wiener's suit. He alleges that he was shocked to discover the project required an extra $18-million, far more than what he had been told initially. He also claims he discovered that documents related to his initial financing had been altered and that Jules Berman was actively working against him.
When Mr. Wiener demanded more control in return for added financing, he alleges that Jules Berman stated that would happen only "over my dead body." Jules Berman also allegedly gave his son a cheque for $250,000 to launch a lawsuit against Mr. Wiener's group.
The other side alleges that costs increased because Cityscape was so successful in leasing space. They claim Mr. Wiener vetoed other avenues of funding and became jealous of the media attention showered on the Cityscape group.
Mr. Wiener alleges that in October, 2003, Cityscape ran out of money, faced up to $900,000 in debts and could not meet payroll. He agreed to provide emergency financing in return for an increased ownership stake and an agreement to sell the project within six months. He claims the other side agreed, took the money and then violated the deal. He also alleges that some of the Cityscape partners, who co-own three restaurants on the site with Mr. Wiener, have cut themselves sweetheart leases.
The Cityscape group claims Mr. Wiener breached the ownership agreement and knew all about the leases on the restaurants.
By February, 2004, relations had deteriorated so badly that both sides tried to lock each other out of a corporate boardroom and tampered with each others' computers. Mr. Wiener claims the others called in the police to kick his group off the site, and Cityscape alleges Mr. Wiener's group has ordered employees to state their allegiance or risk being fired. Both sides are now suing each other for more than $100-million in damages.
June 5, 2004 at 12:48 PM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (21) | Top of page | Blog Home
Yahoo! News - Coded Cable In 1995 Used Chalabi's Name
By Walter Pincus and Bradley Graham, Washington Post Staff Writers
Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi politician suspected by U.S. authorities of having told Iran this spring that its secret communications code had been broken, was involved in an intercept episode nine years ago, according to senior administration officials.
Officials yesterday recounted an incident in early 1995 when Chalabi's name turned up in an encrypted Iranian cable reporting a purported CIA (news - web sites)-backed plan to assassinate Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), then Iraq (news - web sites)'s president. The message was intercepted by U.S. intelligence and caused a major political stir in Washington.
Similarly, it was an intercept several weeks ago of another Iranian message -- this one from an agent in Baghdad to his superiors in Tehran saying Chalabi had told him that U.S. intelligence was able to read Iran's secret cables -- that has triggered a major counterintelligence probe and concern about Washington's future ability to monitor Iranian developments.
A U.S. law enforcement source said yesterday that FBI (news - web sites) investigators, trying to determine the source of the leak, had interviewed at least one Defense Department employee in Baghdad and had administered a polygraph test. More tests were planned, some involving officials at the Pentagon (news - web sites), said the source who demanded anonymity because the investigation is secret. But several senior defense officials said yesterday that they knew of no one at the Pentagon who had yet been approached by investigators.
FBI spokeswoman Debbie Weierman said the investigation is still at its early stage. Noting that Chalabi is a British citizen, she said law enforcement officials are trying to determine "to what extent he is covered by U.S. law barring disclosure of U.S. classified information."
Chalabi, whose exile group -- the Iraqi National Congress -- has received more than $40 million in U.S. payments over the years, has denied that he disclosed secrets to Iran and demanded that the Bush administration investigate the source of the leak about the investigation of him.
The 1995 incident arose at a time when Chalabi was in northern Iraq, working with CIA backing against Hussein. The CIA case officer working with Chalabi at the time was Robert Baer.
Exactly who came up with the assassination idea is subject to some dispute. One U.S. official interviewed yesterday, who was familiar with the event, credited Baer with pushing the plan.
Baer has denied this. In his book "See No Evil: the True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism," published in 2001, he wrote that the plot to kill Hussein was phony, concocted by Chalabi in hopes of enticing Iranian support for his Iraqi opposition efforts.
To prove to the Iranians he had Washington's support to go after Hussein, Chalabi forged a letter on U.S. National Security Council stationery that asked him to contact the Iranian government for help, Baer wrote. The letter said Washington had dispatched to northern Iraq an "NSC team" headed by Robert Pope, a fictitious name.
In a meeting with Iranian intelligence officers, Chalabi left the letter on his desk while he took a phone call in another room, knowing the Iranians would read it, Baer wrote.
What happened next has not been previously reported.
The Iranian intelligence officers sent an encrypted message to Tehran about Chalabi's supposed plot, officials said yesterday. The United States intercepted the transmission. U.S. intelligence had broken Iran's secret communications codes during that period as well.
The contents of the 1995 intercept became the basis of a report that circulated fairly widely in Washington intelligence and law enforcement circles, an official recalled. The result was not only deep distrust within the CIA for Chalabi but also an FBI investigation of Baer.
The concern of investigators, as Baer recounted in his book, was that he was in violation of presidential orders and U.S. law that prohibited assassinations. Baer passed a polygraph test, but it would be almost a year before he and his team were cleared. Nevertheless, Baer's career was damaged and never recovered.
Shortly after the intercept, Chalabi's militia forces and Kurdish fighters went ahead with an attempted coup, launching a three-city strike against Hussein's troops. But the offensive quickly foundered.
The White House, having warned Chalabi not to proceed because Iraqi intelligence had learned of the operation, declined to provide air power to help him. Hussein's troops crushed the attackers, leaving the CIA angry that it had funded such a fiasco and infuriating top officials in the Clinton administration.
Taken together, the intercept and the foiled revolt marked a turning point in the CIA's relationship with Chalabi, an official said. The events explain to a large extent why the CIA later cut Chalabi off from funding and refused to administer money appropriated for his organization in the late 1990s that was aimed at bringing about Hussein's fall. CIA authorities knew the funds were headed for Chalabi, and they would not work with him any further, the official said.
For many years, Chalabi has made no secret of his contacts with leaders in Iran. He has described his ties as purely expedient, reflecting Iran's strategic significance in the region.
One of Chalabi's top lieutenants, Aras Karim Habib, who served as the Iraqi National Congress's intelligence chief, has long been considered by the CIA as a paid agent for Iranian intelligence, according to senior intelligence officials. He has denied that allegation.
Chalabi's attorney, John J.E. Markham II, said yesterday that his client has denied passing sensitive or classified information to the Iranians and is more than willing to tell that to anyone in the U.S. government. "We have not been contacted by anyone from the Department of Justice (news - web sites), the FBI or the CIA," he said.
Staff writers Steve Coll, Allan Lengel and Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.
June 4, 2004 at 11:05 AM in Iraq | Permalink | TrackBack (14) | Top of page | Blog Home
Cia Hit By Resignation Of Top Officials
A second top CIA official is to retire, just hours after the emotional resignation of director George Tenet.James Pavitt, deputy director for operations, is said to have made the decision some weeks ago.Analysts say the move will mean more upheaval in the organisation at a critical time.
Mr Tenet, 51, said he was quitting for "personal reasons".
But he has faced severe criticism for the September 11 attacks and the failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
President Bush described Mr Tenet as "strong and able" and said he would miss him.
Deputy Director John McLaughlin will take over temporarily when he leaves on July 11.
Mr Tenet's identity had been unknown until last April when, in an unprecedented move, he appeared publicly before the September 11 commission.
He said the failures that occurred before the attacks were due to woefully inadequate resources, not a lack of effort.
June 4, 2004 at 11:04 AM in CIA | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home
Yahoo! News - America's Digital Welcome Mat
By Cynthia L. Webb, washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
"Smile, you're on camera. Now turn to your left so Uncle Sam can complete your official tourist mug shot."
More and more foreign visitors soon will be greeted by camera-wielding officials when they enter the United States, now that the Department of Homeland Security has picked Accenture LLP to help expand its high-tech border security effort.
The U.S. Visit program is an ambitious effort to store vast amounts of visitors' personal data, from photographs and biometric information to travel itineraries and school affiliations (for student visa holders only). Launched at a selected few airports and seaports early this year, U.S. Visit will be rolled out at the nation's 50 busiest land ports by year's end.
As the prime contractor, Accenture stands to make a bundle on a contract that could ultimately be valued at $10 billion over five years -- "one of the largest federal technology contracts in history," as The Wall Street Journal noted in its coverage. The consulting firm can't do the job all by itself, hence a distinguished list of contract partners that includes Titan Corp., SRA International, Raytheon, Dell and KBR, a unit of Halliburton Co.
The New York Times noted that Accenture beat out Lockheed Martin and Computer Sciences for the much-coveted U.S. Visit award. "Several industry executives and analysts said that the award surprised them and that Accenture had widely been considered the outside candidate," the Times said. "Lockheed had been considered the odds-on favorite because of its experience in similar areas," according to a wire story compilation that ran on The Los Angeles Times Web site.
According to The Wall Street Journal, "the contract award drew criticism ranging from the unproven nature of the technology to the Homeland Security Department's ceding management of such a system to outsiders and to the offshore headquarters of Accenture. Keith Ashdown, of Taxpayers for Commonsense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group based in Washington, noted that most of these systems that the contractor winner is supposed to help design and implement are still unproven and not ready for prime time.'"
Schwab Soundview Capital Markets's Erik Olbeter told the Journal the some bidders were upset at how Homeland Security managed the contract award process. Olbeter "said the contest was unusual because instead of dictating requirements, the government left it to the companies to define 'their vision of how to track foreign visitors.'"
National Journal's Technology Daily reported that "Rep. Jim Turner, D-Texas, ranking member on the House Homeland Security panel, issued a statement following the department's announcement questioning its lack of details. 'Right now, we do not know how the system will work, who will be covered, what technologies will be deployed, and, how much the whole thing will cost,' said Turner."
And according to The New York Times, General Accounting Office (news - web sites) investigators "have called the program 'a very risky endeavor' because of management and financial concerns. They have estimated that the total cost, including financing needed from other agencies, could reach $15 billion."
Asa Hutchinson, the DHS Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security, had this to say to those questioning the technology underpinning U.S. Visit: "I would've been frustrated if they'd said it was not a risky endeavor," he said, as quoted in the Times. "I could've told you that from Day 1."
The DHS has posted a fact sheet about the Accenture award on its Web site.
Bermuda Triangle
It's the Bermuda connection that has quite a few lawmakers in Congress upset. Accenture may do most of its work in the good ol' USA, but its technically based on that lovely Atlantic getaway. Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) called the award "outrageous," according to The New York Times. "The Bush administration has awarded the largest homeland security contract in history to a company that has given up its U.S. citizenship and moved to Bermuda. The inconsistency is breathtaking," he said in a statement. The Washington Post picked up a similar blast from another Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas: "'Accenture isn't contributing its fair share to the costs of the very contract that it's now been given,' because of the tax advantages it receives," he said. Doggett, the Post noted, "has authored a bill to eliminate incentives for American companies that move their headquarters abroad."
Accenture has said in response that its U.S.-based unit, which got the contract, pays taxes, according to a number of the media reports on the contract. Meanwhile, the "Homeland Security Department saw no conflict in awarding the contract to a Bermuda-based company, Undersecretary of Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson said at a news conference," Bloomberg News reported.
DHS's Hutchinson insisted that the "future of US-VISIT is not going to be determined by this contractor," according to a quote picked up in Federal Computer Week. "We don't turn over our border security decisions and plans to the private sector, but we do want to utilize their experience ... to make this work better." According to The Financial Times, "administration officials said that Accenture -- based in Reston, Virginia, even though its corporate parent has a Bermuda address -- was considered a US company in the bidding for the contract."
No Great Loss For CSC and Lockheed?
Maybe losing out on U.S. Visit isn't such bad news for El Segundo, Calif.-based Computer Sciences Corp. According to the L.A. Times piece, Caris & Co.'s David M. Garrity "said in a note to investors that if CSC had won the Homeland Security contract it would have had only an incremental effect on its earnings. CSC is enjoying 'an embarrassment of riches in its robust new business bookings,' he said."
As for Lockheed, the Financial Times noted "that Accenture's team includes Titan, which Lockheed has agreed to buy for $1.6bn cash."
The Ultimate Database Challenge
In winning the U.S. Visit contract, Accenture takes on one o