Intelligence

'They fire first and think later,' say British soldiers

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Tim Albone in Kabul The friendly-fire deaths in Helmand have reopened a schism between American and British troops over how to fight the Taleban in Afghanistan.

Although publicly British commanders insist the Americans are still a vital
ally in the fight against insurgents, privately British soldiers expressed
concern and anger at their "gung-ho" approach.

Squadron Leader John Gunther, a British spokesman in Helmand, told The Times:
“The Americans have helped us out on many occasions. The cause of the
accident is under investigation, what I will say is that although tragic,
friendly fire incidents are rare and are part of armed conflict.

“We have methods in place to stop this, but they are not fail-safe.”

However, news that an investigation was being launched did little to appease
the British soldiers on the ground.

“I just can’t figure out how this has happened. How do you tell the families
they were killed by supposed allies?” one British soldier asked.

“Whenever I hear we have American jets overhead I get f***ing worried,”
another serviceman said. “They just don’t seem to know what they are doing a
lot of the time.”

“They have a different approach to us, they fire first and think later,” said
another.

“Here we are fighting the Taleban and they (US warplanes) are dropping bombs
on us," said a British soldier. "They are meant to have the best
equipment, yet this still happens time and time again. You have to wonder
what they are doing.”

Earlier this month an unnamed senior British officer told The New York Times
that differences in tactics were such that he had asked American Special
Forces teams to pull out of the town of Sangin, in Helmand, because they
were causing so many casualties and undermining support for reconstruction
projects.

The US forces also planned to build a patrol base near a religious shrine and
a graveyard — a proposal only abandoned after British troops intervened.

Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, was forced to issue a statement after the
report, in which he said the views were those of a single officer. "It
is not the view of the alliance. These things can be said in the heat of
battle," he said.

But when The Times visited Sangin last month, other soldiers were willing to
describe the difficulties of working with their allies. “They just seem to
have no idea how to fight a counterinsurgency, we have a history but they
have no reference points” said one soldier.

“They have a different approach to us, if we get in an ambush we pull back and
assess the situation," said another. "They try and shoot their way
through it and kill as many people as possible.”

August 25, 2007 at 03:39 PM in UK, US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Ronald Reagan-Tear Down this Wall

This speech was delivered to the people of West Berlin, yet it was also audible on the East side of the Berlin wall. 2,703 words Thank you very much.

Source: Ronald Reagan-Tear Down this Wall

Chancellor Kohl, Governing Mayor Diepgen, ladies and gentlemen: Twenty-four years ago, President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin, speaking to the people of this city and the world at the City Hall. Well, since then two other presidents have come, each in his turn, to Berlin. And today I, myself, make my second visit to your city.

We come to Berlin, we American presidents, because it's our duty to speak, in this place, of freedom. But I must confess, we're drawn here by other things as well: by the feeling of history in this city, more than 500 years older than our own nation; by the beauty of the Grunewald and the Tiergarten; most of all, by your courage and determination. Perhaps the composer Paul Lincke understood something about American presidents. You see, like so many presidents before me, I come here today because wherever I go, whatever I do: Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin. [I still have a suitcase in Berlin.]

Our gathering today is being broadcast throughout Western Europe and North America. I understand that it is being seen and heard as well in the East. To those listening throughout Eastern Europe, a special word: Although I cannot be with you, I address my remarks to you just as surely as to those standing here before me. For I join you, as I join your fellow countrymen in the West, in this firm, this unalterable belief: Es gibt nur ein Berlin. [There is only one Berlin.]

Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same--still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state. Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar.

President von Weizsacker has said, "The German question is open as long as the Brandenburg Gate is closed." Today I say: As long as the gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind. Yet I do not come here to lament. For I find in Berlin a message of hope, even in the shadow of this wall, a message of triumph.

In this season of spring in 1945, the people of Berlin emerged from their air-raid shelters to find devastation. Thousands of miles away, the people of the United States reached out to help. And in 1947 Secretary of State--as you've been told--George Marshall announced the creation of what would become known as the Marshall Plan. Speaking precisely 40 years ago this month, he said: "Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos."

In the Reichstag a few moments ago, I saw a display commemorating this 40th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. I was struck by the sign on a burnt-out, gutted structure that was being rebuilt. I understand that Berliners of my own generation can remember seeing signs like it dotted throughout the western sectors of the city. The sign read simply: "The Marshall Plan is helping here to strengthen the free world." A strong, free world in the West, that dream became real. Japan rose from ruin to become an economic giant. Italy, France, Belgium--virtually every nation in Western Europe saw political and economic rebirth; the European Community was founded.

In West Germany and here in Berlin, there took place an economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder. Adenauer, Erhard, Reuter, and other leaders understood the practical importance of liberty--that just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom. The German leaders reduced tariffs, expanded free trade, lowered taxes. From 1950 to 1960 alone, the standard of living in West Germany and Berlin doubled.

Where four decades ago there was rubble, today in West Berlin there is the greatest industrial output of any city in Germany--busy office blocks, fine homes and apartments, proud avenues, and the spreading lawns of parkland. Where a city's culture seemed to have been destroyed, today there are two great universities, orchestras and an opera, countless theaters, and museums. Where there was want, today there's abundance--food, clothing, automobiles--the wonderful goods of the Ku'damm. From devastation, from utter ruin, you Berliners have, in freedom, rebuilt a city that once again ranks as one of the greatest on earth. The Soviets may have had other plans. But my friends, there were a few things the Soviets didn't count on--Berliner Herz, Berliner Humor, ja, und Berliner Schnauze. [Berliner heart, Berliner humor, yes, and a Berliner Schnauze.]

In the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted: "We will bury you." But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind--too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control.

Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

I understand the fear of war and the pain of division that afflict this continent-- and I pledge to you my country's efforts to help overcome these burdens. To be sure, we in the West must resist Soviet expansion. So we must maintain defenses of unassailable strength. Yet we seek peace; so we must strive to reduce arms on both sides.

Beginning 10 years ago, the Soviets challenged the Western alliance with a grave new threat, hundreds of new and more deadly SS-20 nuclear missiles, capable of striking every capital in Europe. The Western alliance responded by committing itself to a counter-deployment unless the Soviets agreed to negotiate a better solution; namely, the elimination of such weapons on both sides. For many months, the Soviets refused to bargain in earnestness. As the alliance, in turn, prepared to go forward with its counter-deployment, there were difficult days--days of protests like those during my 1982 visit to this city--and the Soviets later walked away from the table.

But through it all, the alliance held firm. And I invite those who protested then-- I invite those who protest today--to mark this fact: Because we remained strong, the Soviets came back to the table. And because we remained strong, today we have within reach the possibility, not merely of limiting the growth of arms, but of eliminating, for the first time, an entire class of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.

As I speak, NATO ministers are meeting in Iceland to review the progress of our proposals for eliminating these weapons. At the talks in Geneva, we have also proposed deep cuts in strategic offensive weapons. And the Western allies have likewise made far-reaching proposals to reduce the danger of conventional war and to place a total ban on chemical weapons.

While we pursue these arms reductions, I pledge to you that we will maintain the capacity to deter Soviet aggression at any level at which it might occur. And in cooperation with many of our allies, the United States is pursuing the Strategic Defense Initiative--research to base deterrence not on the threat of offensive retaliation, but on defenses that truly defend; on systems, in short, that will not target populations, but shield them. By these means we seek to increase the safety of Europe and all the world. But we must remember a crucial fact: East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other. And our differences are not about weapons but about liberty. When President Kennedy spoke at the City Hall those 24 years ago, freedom was encircled, Berlin was under siege. And today, despite all the pressures upon this city, Berlin stands secure in its liberty. And freedom itself is transforming the globe.

In the Philippines, in South and Central America, democracy has been given a rebirth. Throughout the Pacific, free markets are working miracle after miracle of economic growth. In the industrialized nations, a technological revolution is taking place--a revolution marked by rapid, dramatic advances in computers and telecommunications.

In Europe, only one nation and those it controls refuse to join the community of freedom. Yet in this age of redoubled economic growth, of information and innovation, the Soviet Union faces a choice: It must make fundamental changes, or it will become obsolete.

Today thus represents a moment of hope. We in the West stand ready to cooperate with the East to promote true openness, to break down barriers that separate people, to create a safe, freer world. And surely there is no better place than Berlin, the meeting place of East and West, to make a start. Free people of Berlin: Today, as in the past, the United States stands for the strict observance and full implementation of all parts of the Four Power Agreement of 1971. Let us use this occasion, the 750th anniversary of this city, to usher in a new era, to seek a still fuller, richer life for the Berlin of the future. Together, let us maintain and develop the ties between the Federal Republic and the Western sectors of Berlin, which is permitted by the 1971 agreement.

And I invite Mr. Gorbachev: Let us work to bring the Eastern and Western parts of the city closer together, so that all the inhabitants of all Berlin can enjoy the benefits that come with life in one of the great cities of the world.

To open Berlin still further to all Europe, East and West, let us expand the vital air access to this city, finding ways of making commercial air service to Berlin more convenient, more comfortable, and more economical. We look to the day when West Berlin can become one of the chief aviation hubs in all central Europe.

With our French and British partners, the United States is prepared to help bring international meetings to Berlin. It would be only fitting for Berlin to serve as the site of United Nations meetings, or world conferences on human rights and arms control or other issues that call for international cooperation.

There is no better way to establish hope for the future than to enlighten young minds, and we would be honored to sponsor summer youth exchanges, cultural events, and other programs for young Berliners from the East. Our French and British friends, I'm certain, will do the same. And it's my hope that an authority can be found in East Berlin to sponsor visits from young people of the Western sectors.

One final proposal, one close to my heart: Sport represents a source of enjoyment and ennoblement, and you may have noted that the Republic of Korea--South Korea--has offered to permit certain events of the 1988 Olympics to take place in the North. International sports competitions of all kinds could take place in both parts of this city. And what better way to demonstrate to the world the openness of this city than to offer in some future year to hold the Olympic games here in Berlin, East and West? In these four decades, as I have said, you Berliners have built a great city. You've done so in spite of threats--the Soviet attempts to impose the East-mark, the blockade. Today the city thrives in spite of the challenges implicit in the very presence of this wall. What keeps you here? Certainly there's a great deal to be said for your fortitude, for your defiant courage. But I believe there's something deeper, something that involves Berlin's whole look and feel and way of life--not mere sentiment. No one could live long in Berlin without being completely disabused of illusions. Something instead, that has seen the difficulties of life in Berlin but chose to accept them, that continues to build this good and proud city in contrast to a surrounding totalitarian presence that refuses to release human energies or aspirations. Something that speaks with a powerful voice of affirmation, that says yes to this city, yes to the future, yes to freedom. In a word, I would submit that what keeps you in Berlin is love--love both profound and abiding.

Perhaps this gets to the root of the matter, to the most fundamental distinction of all between East and West. The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront. Years ago, before the East Germans began rebuilding their churches, they erected a secular structure: the television tower at Alexander Platz. Virtually ever since, the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower's one major flaw, treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind. Yet even today when the sun strikes that sphere--that sphere that towers over all Berlin--the light makes the sign of the cross. There in Berlin, like the city itself, symbols of love, symbols of worship, cannot be suppressed.

As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: "This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality." Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

And I would like, before I close, to say one word. I have read, and I have been questioned since I've been here about certain demonstrations against my coming. And I would like to say just one thing, and to those who demonstrate so. I wonder if they have ever asked themselves that if they should have the kind of government they apparently seek, no one would ever be able to do what they're doing again.

Thank you and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 2:20 p.m. at the Brandenburg Gate. In his opening remarks, he referred to West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Prior to his remarks, President Reagan met with West German President Richard von Weizsacker and the Governing Mayor of West Berlin Eberhard Diepgen at Schloss Bellevue, President Weizsacker's official residence in West Berlin. Following the meeting, President Reagan went to the Reichstag, where he viewed the Berlin Wall from the East Balcony.

May 3, 2007 at 10:25 PM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The lost 20 years of CIA spies caught in China trap

Lured by a double agent and jailed secretly, the tale of Jack Downey and Richard Fecteau is one of the most extraordinary in espionage

Ben Macintyre

 

On a crisp spring morning in 1973 a pale and emaciated man made his way slowly across the Lo Wu bridge from China into Hong Kong. A British soldier at the frontier post saluted him as he approached. This was, the man later reflected, “the first act of dignity shown to him in 20 years”.

His name was Jack Downey. He was a CIA agent, and since 1952 he and a colleague, Richard Fecteau, had languished in a Chinese prison, often in solitary confinement, secret hostages in the Cold War between the US and China.

The capture, imprisonment and eventual release of these two CIA agents is one of the most extraordinary and poignant tales in the history of espionage. Some of the material relating to their captivity remains classified but 34 years after Downey stumbled to freedom the CIA has finally allowed an official agency historian access to its most secret files.

The Downey-Fecteau case, revealed last week in the CIA’s Journal of the American Intelligence Professional, is a story of suffering, endurance and ordinary individuals trapped and manipulated by geopolitics. With the recent Iranian hostage drama, the story has remarkable contemporary resonance, but with one signal difference. The British soldiers were held in Iran for 13 days, and some made a small fortune by selling their stories after their release. Downey and Fecteau — both of whom are still living —never told their story to the media, and never made a penny out of it.

In 1952, Downey and Fecteau had both recently graduated from university, Downey from Yale, and Fecteau from Boston. Downey, 22, had joined the CIA in 1951.

Fecteau, recently married for the second time, was 24, and had been a CIA agent for only a few months. Both were about to embark on their first operational mission, which would also be their last.

In June of that year, the US had parachuted five ethnic Chinese agents into Manchuria on a mission to destabilise the Communist regime by linking up with local anti-government forces and carrying out guerrilla operations.

The team, which Downey had helped to train, made radio contact in November, reporting that they had obtained important documents and wanted one of the team to be picked up by “air snatch”. This risky procedure for aerial pick-up involved flying an aircraft at low altitude and hooking a line stretched between two aluminium poles. “The line was connected to a harness in which the agent was strapped,” writes the CIA historian Nicholas Dujmovic. “Once airborne the man was to be winched into the aircraft.”

On November 29 a C47 US transport plane set off from the Korean peninsular: at the controls were pilots Norman Schwartz and Robert Snoddy; manning the winch were Downey and Fecteau. With the Korean War at its height, both men knew the perils of Operation Tropic. They did not know they were flying into a trap.

Unknown to their handlers, the Chinese agents had been captured soon after landing, “doubled” in spy parlance, and were being used to lure the CIA into an ambush. At around midnight, having received the correct torch signal from the ground, the pilots swooped low over the rendezvous point in the Manchurian foothills, where two poles had been erected and a man in harness appeared to be waiting for the pick-up.

At exactly the moment when the plane should have hooked its agent, two anti-aircraft guns, camouflaged in the snow by white sheets, opened fire at the cockpit. The pilots were killed, the engines cut out, and the plane crash-landed among some trees, breaking apart on impact. Downey and Fecteau, secured by harnesses, survived unhurt, and staggered out of the wreckage to find themselves surrounded by whooping Chinese troops.

With impressive understatement, Downey remarked to his partner that they were now in “a hell of a mess”.

The two captured Americans were tied up, bundled into a truck, and driven to Mukden, the largest city in Manchuria, where they were shackled and locked in separate cells.

When the transport plane failed to return, the CIA invented a story that Downey and Fecteau were civilian employees of the Army Department who had been aboard a commercial flight lost in the sea west of Japan. The men were presumed dead, and letters of condolence were sent to their families.

The two Americans, meanwhile, were undergoing brutal interrogation: they were never physically tortured, but prevented from sleeping or bathing, made to wear leg irons continually, and interrogated for up to 24 hours at a time. Eventually, inevitably, both confessed to being CIA agents.

The men were moved to Beijing, and finally, two years after their capture, they were put on trial before a secret military tribunal.

Seeing his companion for the first time in two years, dressed in prison garb, Fecteau whispered: “Who’s your tailor?” As the senior officer, Downey received a life sentence; Fecteau was given 20 years.

The first that the CIA knew of the real fate of the agents was a broadcast by the Chinese state news agency, announcing that two American spies had been convicted. Officially, the US Government continued to insist that the men were civilians, while allegations of espionage were dismissed by the State Department as “utterly false”.

So began the long, crushing years of incarceration. The men lived in draughty cells, on a diet of maggoty rice and vegetables. Sometimes they were allowed books and magazines. Then, with refined psychological cruelty, these would be arbitrarily removed.

The Americans developed survival strategies: daily exercise, writing, learning Chinese, and training their minds to explore the world they had once known.

Fecteau became an “expert daydreamer”, Dujmovic reports, and made an imaginary world by recalling every child in his school classes, and the sights in the Massachusetts town where he grew up.

Though they were required to study Marx and Mao, the men were never brainwashed. “They could scare you into saying just about anything . . . but actually believing it is a much more difficult proposition,” said Downey.

The Chinese jailers told them they had been abandoned by their own Government. This was untrue, for though the US refused to bargain with or recognise the Chinese Communist Government, Washington exerted whatever pressure it could for the release of the men. At one stage, the CIA even contemplated a commando raid to try to free them, but abandoned the plan because their whereabouts were too uncertain.

Small snippets of news reached the captives, tailored to show the West in the worst light: the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the riots at Kent State University. Not until their release would they learn, with astonishment, that a man had walked on the Moon.

Downey and Fecteau were held separately, but did their best to maintain contact, using a system of distinctive coughs to indicate where they were inside the prison complex, and drawing baseball scores in the dust of the exercise yard.

In the outside world, diplomatic relations between China and the US were slowly thawing. In 1971, Henry Kissinger made his secret visit to Beijing and on December 9 of that year, Fecteau was suddenly released.

Downey would remain in prison for another 15 months, before he too was set free, the year after Richard Nixon’s visit to China. The trigger for the releases was Nixon’s admission of what the US Government had denied for so long: that the two men were indeed CIA agents, captured on a spying mission inside China.

They emerged into a world utterly transformed. Fecteau’s wife had died, tragically, in a house fire soon after his capture. The baby twin daughters he had left behind were now in their twenties. Both agents had been promoted during their incarceration, and their unspent pay had steadily accumulated.

Given the continuing sensitivity of relations with China, they were deliberately released without fanfare. Both refused offers to sell their stories. Downey laconically observed that the entire experience had been a “crashing bore”. Fecteau joked that his good health was due to having spent “19 years without booze, broads or butts”.

Over the years, some parts of the story leaked out, but it was not until this year that the CIA decided to reveal the full truth. After long negotiations, in 2004 the Chinese Government allowed US scientists to retrieve human remains from the crash site, which DNA testing identified as those of Robert Snoddy. The body of the other pilot, Norman Schwartz, has never been found.

Even today, the two former captives are reticent. Contacted in his Massachusetts home, Fecteau, 80 this year, is polite but firm: “I am an old man now. I would rather not talk about that time.” Downey and Fecteau both retired from the CIA within a few years of their release. Fecteau became sports director at Boston University, his alma mater. Downey’s second life was, in some ways, as extraordinary as his first: he attended Harvard Law School, married a Chinese woman born in Manchuria near where he had been shot down, and finally became a distinguished judge in Connecticut, specialising in juvenile cases.

Downey once remarked that he thought his years in prison had given him a special sensitivity towards sentencing others. The John T. Downey Juvenile Courthouse and Detention Centre in New Haven is named in his honour: a man who lost his youth in a Chinese jail has a youth prison with his name on it.

Having denied its own agents for 20 years, the CIA has now elevated the two men to the status of icons, while their prison experience has become a case study in surviving captivity. Awarding Downey and Fecteau belated medals in 1998, George Tenet, then CIA director, observed: “Your story, simply put, is one of the most remarkable in the history of the CIA.”

April 22, 2007 at 03:48 PM in CIA, US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War - washingtonpost.com

 

Intelligence Failures Surrounded Inquiry on Iraq-Niger Uranium Claim By Peter Eisner Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, April 3, 2007; A01

Source: How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War - washingtonpost.com

It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous -- later retracted -- 16 words: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush's remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?

Burba felt uneasy because more than three months earlier, she had turned over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome documents about an alleged uranium sale by the central African nation of Niger. And she knew now that the documents were fraudulent and the 16 words wrong.

Nonetheless, the uranium claim would become a crucial justification for the invasion of Iraq that began less than two months later. When occupying troops found no nuclear program, the 16 words and how they came to be in the speech became a focus for critics in Washington and foreign capitals to press the case that the White House manipulated facts to take the United States to war.

Dozens of interviews with current and former intelligence officials and policymakers in the United States, Britain, France and Italy show that the Bush administration disregarded key information available at the time showing that the Iraq-Niger claim was highly questionable.

In February 2002, the CIA received the verbatim text of one of the documents, filled with errors easily identifiable through a simple Internet search, the interviews show. Many low- and mid-level intelligence officials were already skeptical that Iraq was in pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The interviews also showed that France, berated by the Bush administration for opposing the Iraq war, honored a U.S. intelligence request to investigate the uranium claim. It determined that its former colony had not sold uranium to Iraq.

Burba, who had no special expertise in Africa or nuclear technology, was able to quickly unravel the fraud. Yet the claims clung to life within the Bush administration for months, eventually finding their way into the State of the Union address.

As a result of the CIA's failure to firmly discredit the document text it received in February 2002, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was called in to investigate the claim. That decision eventually led to the special counsel's investigation that exposed inner workings of the White House and ended with the criminal conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was forced to resign as chief of staff to Vice President Cheney.

"You know I feel bad about it," Burba said later, discussing her frustrations about her role in giving the dossier to the Americans. "You know the fact is that my documents, with the documents I brought to them, they justified the war."

The Tip

In early October of 2002, a man mysteriously contacted Elisabetta Burba at her Milan office.

"Do you remember me?" the deep voice said, without identifying himself outright. It was Rocco Martino, an old source who had proved reliable in the past. He was once again trying to sell her information.

Martino said he had some very interesting documents to show her, and asked whether she could fly down to Rome right away.

They met at a restaurant in Rome on Oct. 7, where Martino showed Burba a folder filled with documents, most of them in French. One of the documents was purportedly sent by the president of Niger to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, confirming a deal to sell 500 tons of uranium to Iraq annually. This was the smoking gun in the package, claiming to show the formal approval of Niger's president to supply Iraq with a commodity that would in all likelihood only be used for a nuclear weapons program: Iraq had no nuclear power plants.

Though the document was in French it would later come to be known as "The Italian Letter." It was written in all capital letters, in the form of an old telex, and bore the letterhead of the Republic of Niger. The letter was dated July 27, 2000, and included an odd shield on the top, a shining sun surrounded by a horned animal head, a star and a bird. The letter was stamped Confidential and Urgent.

The letter said that "500 tons of pure uranium per year will be delivered in two phases." A seal at the bottom of the page read "The Office of the President of the Republic of Niger." Superimposed over the seal was a barely legible signature bearing the name of the president of Niger, Mamadou Tandja.

Burba listened without saying much as she took a first look at the documents. She recognized right away that the material was hot, if authentic. But confirming the origin would be difficult, she recalled thinking at the time. She didn't want to fall into a trap.

Burba and Martino made an agreement; she would take the documents, and if they checked out as authentic, then they could talk about money.

'Let's Go to the Americans'

Back in her magazine's Milan newsroom, Burba told her editors she thought it would make sense to fly to Niger and check around for confirmation. The editor of the magazine, Carlo Rossella, agreed. He then suggested they simultaneously pursue another tack.

"Let's go to the Americans," Rossella said, "because they are focused on looking for weapons of mass destruction more than anyone else. Let's see if they can authenticate the documents." Rossella called the U.S. Embassy in Rome and alerted officials to expect a visit from Burba.

On Wednesday morning, Oct. 9, Burba returned to Rome and took a cab to the U.S. Embassy, which is housed at the old Palazzo Margherita.

Burba came to a security gate and walked through a magnetometer, where an Italian employee of the embassy press department came down to meet her.

After a few formalities, an Italian aide introduced her to Ian Kelly, the embassy press spokesman. Kelly and Burba walked across the embassy's walled grounds and sat down for a cup of coffee in the cafeteria.

Burba told Kelly that she had some documents about Iraq and uranium shipments and needed help in confirming their authenticity and accuracy.

Kelly interrupted her, realizing he needed help. He made a phone call summoning someone else from his staff as well as a political officer. Burba recalled a third person being invited, possibly a U.S. military attache. She didn't get their names.

"Let's go to my office," Kelly said. They walked past antiquities, a tranquil fountain, steps and pieces of marble, all set in a tree-lined patio garden.

The Italian journalist's chat with Kelly and his colleagues was brief. She handed over the papers; Kelly told her the embassy would look into the matter. But Kelly had not been briefed on what others in the embassy knew.

CIA Role

One person who refused to meet with Burba was the CIA chief of station. A few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, Sismi, the Italian intelligence agency, had sent along information about the alleged sale of uranium to Iraq. The station chief asked for more information and would later consider it far-fetched.

On Oct. 15, 2001, the CIA reports officer at the embassy wrote a brief summary based on the Sismi intelligence, signed and dated it, and routed it to CIA's Operations Directorate in Langley, with copies going to the clandestine service's European and Near East divisions. The reports officer had limited its distribution because the intelligence was uncorroborated; she was aware of Sismi's questionable track record and did not believe the report merited wider dissemination.

The Operations Directorate then passed the raw intelligence to the CIA's Intelligence Directorate and to sister agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency. A more polished document, called a Senior Executive Intelligence Brief, was written at Langley three days later in which the CIA mentioned the new intelligence but added important caveats. The classified document, whose distribution was limited to senior policymakers and the congressional intelligence committees, said there was no corroboration and noted that Iraq had "no known facilities for processing or enriching the material."

Pushing the Africa Claim

Almost four months later, on Feb. 5, 2002, the CIA received more information from Sismi, including the verbatim text of one of the documents. The CIA failed to recognize that it was riddled with errors, including misspellings and the wrong names for key officials. But it was a separate DIA report about the claims that would lead Cheney to demand further investigation. In response, the CIA dispatched Wilson to Niger.

Martino's approach to Burba eight months later with the Italian letter coincided with accelerating U.S. preparations for war. On Oct. 7, 2002, the same day Martino gave Burba the dossier, President Bush launched a new hard-line PR campaign on Iraq. In a speech in Cincinnati, he declared that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a "grave threat" to U.S. national security.

"It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons," the president warned.

CIA Director George J. Tenet had vetted the text of Bush's speech and was able to persuade the White House to drop one questionable claim: that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa. The information was too fishy, Tenet explained to the National Security Council and Bush's speechwriters.

Bush dropped the shopping-for-uranium claim, but ratcheted up the bomb threat. He said in Cincinnati that if Hussein obtained bomb-grade uranium the size of a softball, he would have a nuclear bomb within a year. This particular doomsday scenario had first been unveiled several weeks earlier, on Aug. 26, by Cheney. In a speech in Nashville to the 103rd national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he declared with no equivocation that Hussein had "resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons."

On Oct. 16, Burba sat on a plane on her way to Niger, while in Washington, copies of the Italian letter and the accompanying dossier were placed on the table at an interagency nuclear proliferation meeting hosted by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

At this point, State Department analysts had determined the documents were phony, and had produced by far the most accurate assessment of Iraq's weapons program of the 16 agencies that make up the intelligence community. But the department's small intelligence unit operated in a bubble. Few administration officials -- not even Secretary of State Colin L. Powell -- paid much attention to its analytical product, much of which clashed with the White House's assumptions.

The State Department bureau, nevertheless, shared the bogus documents with those intelligence officials attending the meeting, including representatives of the Energy Department, National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency. Four CIA officials attended, but only one, a clandestine service officer, bothered to take a copy of the Italian letter.

He returned to his office, filed the material in a safe and forgot about it.

The Niger uranium matter was not uppermost in the minds of the CIA analysts. Some of them had to deal with the issue in any case, largely because Cheney, his aide Libby and some aides at the National Security Council had repeatedly demanded more information and more analysis.

A Fraud Unravels

Burba arrived in Niamey, Niger's capital, on Oct. 17 and began tracking down leads on the Italian letter. Burba's investigation followed a series of similar inquiries by Wilson, the former ambassador, who investigated on behalf of the CIA eight months earlier. It became clear that Niger was not capable of secretly shipping yellowcake uranium to Iraq or anywhere else.

Burba found that a French company controlled the uranium trade, and any shipment of uranium would have been noticed. If a uranium sale had taken place, the logistics would have been daunting. "They would have needed hundreds of trucks," she said -- a large percentage of all the trucks in Niger. It would have been impossible to conceal.

Burba returned to Milan and reported her findings to her bosses in detail. She didn't believe the evidence provided by Martino; it was impossible. Her editors agreed. There was no story.

Five months later, on March 7, 2003, as preparations for the Iraq invasion were in their final stages, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, told the U.N. Security Council that the report that Iraq had been shopping for uranium in Niger was based on forged documents. The agency had received the document from the United States a few weeks earlier.

Not long after the invasion, other news media in Italy, elsewhere in Europe and then in the United States reported that the source of the information about a Niger yellowcake uranium deal had been a batch of bogus letters and other documents passed along several months earlier to an unnamed Italian reporter, who in turn handed the information over to the United States.

Although Burba knew that the Bush administration had also received information about the forged documents from Italian intelligence, she wished she could have acted earlier to reveal the fraud.

It remains unclear who fabricated the documents. Intelligence officials say most likely it was rogue elements in Sismi who wanted to make money selling them.

April 6, 2007 at 04:14 PM in Iraq, US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Pentagon Sees Move in Somalia as Blueprint

Pentagon Sees Move in Somalia as Blueprint - New York Times

By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: January 13, 2007

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 — Military operations in Somalia by American commandos, and the use of the Ethiopian Army as a surrogate force to root out operatives for Al Qaeda in the country, are a blueprint that Pentagon strategists say they hope to use more frequently in counterterrorism missions around the globe.

Military officials said the strike by an American gunship on terrorism suspects in southern Somalia on Sunday showed that even with the departure of Donald H. Rumsfeld from the Pentagon, Special Operations troops intended to take advantage of the directive given to them by Mr. Rumsfeld in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks.

American officials said the recent military operations have been carried by the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, which directs the military’s most secretive and elite units, like the Army’s Delta Force.

The Pentagon established a desolate outpost in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti in 2002 in part to serve as a hub for Special Operations missions to capture or kill senior Qaeda leaders in the region.

Few such “high value” targets have materialized, and the Pentagon has gradually relocated members of the covert Special Operations units to more urgent missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But officials in Washington said this week that the joint command had quietly been returning troops and weaponry to the region in recent weeks in anticipation of a mission against members of a Qaeda cell believed to be hiding in Somalia.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told members of Congress on Friday that the strike in Somalia was executed under the Pentagon’s authority to hunt and kill terrorism suspects around the globe, a power the White House gave it shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

It was this authority that Mr. Rumsfeld used to order commanders to develop plans for using American Special Operations troops for missions within countries that had not been declared war zones.

But since the retreat of the Taliban in 2001, when American Special Forces worked with Afghan militias, Mr. Rumsfeld’s ambitious agenda for Special Operations troops has been slow to materialize.

The problem has partly been a shortage of valuable intelligence on the whereabouts of top terrorism suspects. Mr. Rumsfeld also dispatched teams of Special Operations forces to work in American embassies to collect intelligence and to develop war plans for future operations.

Pentagon officials said it is still not known whether any senior Qaeda suspects or their allies were killed in the airstrike on Sunday, carried out by an AC-130 gunship. A small team of American Special Operations troops has been to the scene of the airstrike, in a remote stretch near the Kenya border, to collect forensic evidence in the effort to identify the victims.

Some critics of the Pentagon’s aggressive use of Special Operations troops, including some Democratic members of Congress, have argued that using American forces outside of declared combat zones gives the Pentagon too much authority in sovereign nations and blurs the lines between soldiers and spies.

The State Department and Pentagon took control of Somalia policy in the summer, after a failed effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to use Somali warlords as proxies to hunt down the Qaeda suspects.

The trail of the terrorism suspects in Somalia, blamed for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, had long gone cold. But American military and intelligence officials said that the Ethiopian offensive against the Islamist forces who ruled Mogadishu and much of Somalia until last month flushed the Qaeda suspects from their hide-outs and gave American intelligence operatives fresh information about their whereabouts.

The Bush administration has all but officially endorsed the Ethiopian offensive, and Washington officials have said that Ethiopia’s move into Somalia was a response to “aggression” by the Islamists in Mogadishu.

In the weeks before the military campaign began, State Department and Pentagon officials said that they had some concerns about the impending Ethiopian government’s offensive in Somalia.

But as the Ethiopian’s march toward war looked more likely, Americans began providing Ethiopian troops with up-to-date intelligence on the military positions of the Islamist fighters in Somalia, Pentagon and counterterrorism officials said.

According to a Pentagon consultant with knowledge about Special Operations, small teams of American advisers crossed the border into Somalia with the advancing Ethiopian army.

“You’re not talking lots of guys,” the Pentagon consultant said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “You’re talking onesies and twosies.”

January 13, 2007 at 09:08 AM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian

Baker Institute - Biography -

Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian, the Founding Director of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, is one of the United States’ most distinguished diplomats, credited with a career spanning the administrations of eight U.S. presidents. Ambassador Djerejian, who is also the Janice and Robert McNair Chair in Public Policy and the Edward A. and Hermena Hancock Kelly University Chair for Senior Scholars at the institute, is a leading expert on the complex political, security, economic, religious, and ethnic issues of the Middle East. Ambassador Djerejian has played key roles in the Arab-Israeli peace process, the U.S.-led coalition against Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, successful efforts to end the civil war in Lebanon, the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon, and the establishment of collective and bilateral security arrangements in the Persian Gulf.

Prior to his nomination by President Clinton as U.S. ambassador to Israel, he served both President Bush and President Clinton as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs and President Reagan and President Bush as U.S. ambassador to the Syrian Arab Republic. Ambassador Djerejian has also served as deputy assistant secretary of Near Eastern and South Asian affairs, as deputy chief of the U.S. mission to the Kingdom of Jordan, and as special assistant to President Reagan and deputy press secretary for foreign affairs in the White House.

Ambassador Djerejian joined the Foreign Service in 1962, and his assignments included political officer in Beirut, Lebanon, and Casablanca, Morocco; he also was consul general in Bordeaux, France. He headed the political section in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow during the critical period in U.S.-Soviet relations marked by the invasion of Afghanistan. He served in the United States Army as a first lieutenant in the Republic of Korea following his graduation from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He holds a bachelor’s of science and an honorary doctorate in humanities from Georgetown University, and a doctor of laws, honoris causa, from Middlebury College. He speaks Arabic, Russian, French, and Armenian.

Ambassador Djerejian has been awarded the Presidential Distinguished Service Award, the Department of State's Distinguished Honor Award, the President's Meritorious Service Award, the Anti-Defamation League’s Moral Statesman Award, and the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

Ambassador Djerejian was asked by Secretary of State Colin Powell to chair a congressionally mandated Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World. The advisory group published its report October 1, 2003.

Since March 2006, Ambassador Djerejian has served as senior advisor to the Iraq Study Group (ISG), a bipartisan, blue-ribbon panel mandated by the Congress to assess the current and prospective situation in Iraq. The Baker Institute is an organizing sponsor of the ISG.

He is managing partner of Djerejian Global Consultancies, LLP, and is also on several public and nonprofit boards. Recently, former President Bill Clinton invited him to serve as an Advisory Board member of the Clinton Global Initiative’s working group on Mitigating Religious and Ethnic Conflict.

Ambassador Djerejian is married to the former Françoise Andrée Liliane Marie Haelters. They have a son, Gregory Peter Djerejian, and a daughter, Francesca Natalia Djerejian.
Select Publications, Presentations and Speeches

* Ambassador Djerejian’s essay, "From Conflict Management to Conflict Resolution," on the opportunity to produce a comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace settlement following the recent armed conflict appears in the November/December 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, www.foreignaffairs.org. View: [PDF]
* Guest Blog: Djerejian on Public Diplomacy, Belgravia Dispatch, November 9, 2005.
* Press Release: Rice University's Baker Institute issues 'Trilateral Action Plan for Road Map Phase I Implementation'
* Policy Recommendation Paper: Trilateral Action Plan for Road Map Phase I Implementation
* Policy Recommendation Paper: Creating a Roadmap Implementation Process Under U.S. Leadership
* Policy Recommendation Paper: Changing Minds Winning Peace: Congressional Report of the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy
* Congressional Testimony: The Honorable Edward P. Djerejian, Chairman, Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World, testimony before the House Subcommittee on the Departments of Commerce, Justice and State, the Judiciary and Related Agencies.
* Speech: June 25, 2005: Future Prospects for Armenia
* OP-ED: A Simple Plan for America's Mideast Diplomacy, The Financial Times, July 14, 2004.

Select Appearances and News Articles

* CNBC Television Appearance regarding Iran, January 17, 2006.
* CNN Television Appearance regarding Ariel Sharon, January 6, 2006.
* FOX News Television Appearance regarding Ariel Sharon, January 5, 2006.
* It's the Policy Choices, The Washington Post, October 2, 2005 Sunday, Final Edition, Editorial; B06.
* On Mideast 'Listening Tour,' the Question Is Who's Hearing, The New York Times, September 30, 2005 Friday, Late Edition - Final, Section A; Column 1; Foreign Desk; Diplomatic Memo.
* Remembering 9/ 11, The Houston Chronicle, September 12, 2005, Monday, 3 STAR EDITION, B.
* Values war rages, says diplomat, Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City), April 8, 2005.
* Al Hurra makes slow gains in Arab world, UPI, March 17, 2005.
* Edward Djerejian discusses Syria, National Public Radio (NPR), SHOW: Morning Edition 10:00 AM EST NPR, February 28, 2005 Monday.
* Baker Institute offers 'street map' for Mideast peace; U.S. leadership is essential for lasting stability in turbulent area, report contends, The Houston Chronicle, February 04, 2005, Friday, 3 STAR EDITION, A;, Pg. 17.

Last Updated: December 2006

Candidates Who Passed
The July 2000 NYS Bar Exam

DJEREJIAN, GREGORY PETER

December 26, 2006 at 03:47 AM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Gates May Rein In Pentagon Activities

Gates May Rein In Pentagon Activities - washingtonpost.com

Nominee Has Opposed Defense Department's Dominance in Intelligence Efforts

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 14, 2006; Page A12

The nomination of Robert M. Gates as secretary of defense has begun to ease concerns in the intelligence community about the rapid growth of Pentagon intelligence activities since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, said experts inside and outside the government and on Capitol Hill.

Gates, a former CIA director, has a long history of opposing expansive Pentagon intelligence activities. He has voiced unease about roles being taken over by Pentagon personnel, in part because more than 80 percent of all intelligence spending is now done by Defense Department agencies.

Donald H. Rumsfeld, the outgoing defense secretary, has vastly expanded Pentagon intelligence activities, increasing operations overseas and creating a new position and a new agency to handle military intelligence.

In 1991, after being confirmed for the dual role of director of central intelligence and CIA director, Gates tried to rein in Pentagon activities by getting a White House directive from then-President George H.W. Bush that created the Community Management Staff to help oversee all intelligence activities. A CIA history of that period says Gates, whose background was as an analyst, saw the Defense Intelligence Agency "as 'feeling [its] oats' and 'moving to expand in every direction,' including pushing some 'crazy ideas' " on the collection of human intelligence.

Gates's 1991 initiative "caused some heartburn in DOD, partly because he used the word 'management,' " requiring him to send out an explanatory joint statement signed by himself and then-Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney.

More recently, Gates watched Rumsfeld create the position of undersecretary of defense for intelligence, whose role is to coordinate and expand worldwide military intelligence activities in the post-Sept. 11 world. In an op-ed piece in The Washington Post in May, Gates wrote that he and other CIA veterans were "unhappy about the dominance of the Defense Department in the intelligence arena" at a time when "close cooperation between the military and the CIA in both clandestine and intelligence collection is essential."

The article supported Gen. Michael V. Hayden becoming CIA director in part because Hayden, while director of the National Security Agency, opposed Rumsfeld keeping control of the NSA instead of having it move to the new director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte. Gates went on to say that the combination of Negroponte and Hayden would establish "a strong civilian institutional counterbalance and alternative strategic intelligence perspective to the historically strong Defense Department intelligence arm."

John E. McLaughlin, a former acting CIA director, said yesterday that Gates "understands more than anyone the appropriate balance between the military and civilian intelligence agencies."

One quick indication of how Gates will deal with interagency tensions will be whether Rumsfeld's undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Stephen A. Cambone, and his top deputy, Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, remain in their current positions. They have backed the growth of the Counterintelligence Field Activity, the controversial new agency that in three years has spent nearly $1 billion to gather data to be used in the protection of defense facilities at home and abroad.

Both have supported the increased roles for the military in sending Pentagon intelligence collectors abroad to gather information that could be needed if military operations against terrorists were initiated in various countries. Some conflicts arose in past years when Defense agents turned up in countries without notice to U.S. ambassadors and CIA chiefs of station.

A Pentagon spokesman said Cambone had no comment on the Gates nomination. Spokesmen for Negroponte and Hayden said neither would discuss the impact that Gates may have on the intelligence community.

McLaughlin noted yesterday that Negroponte's office has taken steps to create a system of transparency, easing some of the tensions. Gates "understands better than anyone that confusion overseas has to be stopped," he said, adding that the Pentagon "is not an alien world to him."

Another former senior intelligence official, who has worked closely with Gates, said that from his experience, Gates knows what the military needs in human intelligence and analysis as well as the best way to obtain it. Having come from the analytic side of the CIA, Gates is a great believer "in established clear lanes in the road, where each agency has its own responsibilities and knows the 'crosswalks' where there is a need to work together," the official said.

November 15, 2006 at 12:09 AM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Select Controls for the Information Security of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Communications Network

Hacker's delight | thebulletin.org

n testimony to the Senate on May 10, 2006, Lt. Gen. Henry "Trey" Obering, head of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), spoke glowingly about the communications network being established for the system tasked with protecting the U.S. mainland against an intercontinental ballistic missile attack. According to Obering, "The global command and control foundation that we've established is unmatched in the world." But the Defense Department's own Office of Inspector General (IG) would probably disagree. Just three months before Obering's boasts, the IG took the defense system's command and control network to task.

The ground-based midcourse defense (GMD) system is an ambitious long-term project that consists of interceptors in Alaska and California; sensors in California and the Pacific Ocean (and soon in Fylingdales, Britain, and Thule, Greenland); and several command centers across the continental United States, as well as Alaska and Hawaii. Eventually, it will have a dedicated satellite network. The system crosses over 11 time zones, through three combat commands, and includes three branches of the military. The GMD Communications Network (GCN) must link all these elements together--an incredibly complex, and essential, task.

Given that the GCN controls the Bush administration's missile defense system, the flagship of its national security plan, one might think that the network itself would be secure. But indeed just the opposite appears to be true. In its audit, the inspector general revealed that MDA officials "had not fully implemented information assurance controls required to protect the integrity, availability, and confidentiality of the information in the GCN." As a result, "Missile Defense Agency officials may not be able to reduce the risk and extent of harm resulting from misuse or unauthorized access to or modification of information of the GCN and ensure the continuity of the network in case of an interruption." In other words, the system could be hacked--outsiders could enter into the network, change or delete data, and/or share classified information--and MDA would not know about it, be able to respond effectively, or apparently prevent it from happening again.

The report attributes these failings to a cascade of human errors. The GCN was officially intended to be built to meet information security standards dating from 1985. As if aiming for standards created years before the information revolution took place wasn't bad enough, MDA implemented a set of standards from an entirely different directive. Contractors for the GCN told auditors that it would have been too costly to go back and modify the system. To this, the report rather acidly noted, "Security requirements cannot simply be waived based on cost."

Further degrading the stability and security of the network, the GCN's two types of equipment--encrypted and unencrypted--were built by two different contractors who apparently worked at cross-purposes and did not follow a common set of security procedures. "Information assurance" (IA) officers were often unaware of their responsibilities or even that they had special duties. IA officers are charged with making sure that users of the system have the correct level of clearance, that those accessing the system actually have a need to do so, and that the users are aware of network security standards. Curiously, many of the officers were unaware of their IA responsibilities until MDA started developing IA policies in June 2005, after the National Security Agency had completed its own audit of the system, but well after the GCN's creation in January 2001.

The GCN is supposed to have an automated audit of its network--a security feature that most basic office networks have. However, MDA officials told the investigation team that their equipment was incapable of supporting an automated audit. Instead, they claimed that their contractors did weekly manual exams. But the contractors complained that manual audits were so "cumbersome and time-consuming" that they rarely did them--and even then, the contractors acknowledged that such audits were not guaranteed to detect all security violations.

An undated draft version of the IG's audit was far more scathing than the final report, noting that the system had category I deficiencies (defined as problems which "must be corrected before the system can become operational or continue to operate") and category II deficiencies (those which "must be corrected within a specified time period in order to continue system operations"). "MDA officials should immediately cease operations until all category I and category II issues are mitigated," the draft report advised, and prepare a plan of action "to identify the solution, schedule, security actions, and milestones necessary to correct the security weaknesses."

Overall, the two reports came to the same conclusions, but the draft version was more specific in its criticisms and more drastic in its suggested plan of action to deal with the network security vulnerabilities. By contrast, the final version of the report simply warns that hackers could defeat the GCN and that the MDA cannot ensure the sanctity of the GMD information and systems. This is not unexpected, as the draft version may have been deemed a little too sensitive for public consumption. Or perhaps there are those in the Pentagon who would prefer softer criticism of a program already plagued by technical delays and cost overruns. Even so, the final watered-down assessment raised some eyebrows. Federal Computer Weekly ran a story on the report on Thursday, March 16, 2006. By the following Monday, the IG issued a statement: "The Missile Defense Agency requested that we remove this report from our website pending a security review." The report is now back on the IG's website, but its temporary absence speaks to the gravity of the network's security vulnerabilities.

The IG's report, while perhaps embarrassing to the MDA, could not have been much of a surprise. As early as April 2003, the MDA recognized that there were weaknesses in its software network. In a report to the MDA Southeastern Software Engineering Conference, then-Brigadier General Obering briefed the audience about the MDA's experience with excessive schedule pressure, changing requirements, inadequate test specifications, and insufficient engineering. Obering spoke specifically about a limited understanding of the software and the absence of a software architect. He even presented ways in which he said the MDA was fixing the problems. If the MDA had followed through with those fixes, the IG's office might very well have come to a different set of conclusions.

But in the problem-plagued quest for national missile defense, securing the GCN from external meddling is not even the sole issue--or even the most troublesome--facing the MDA. The final IG report underlines the importance of password control in noting that MDA officials believed "the greatest risk to the GCN system was the insider threat." Unfortunately, if the MDA's track record in network security is anything to judge by, it's far from certain that GCN will be secure either from the inside or the outside.

October 12, 2006 at 06:24 PM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Combatting terrorism 2006

National Strategy For Combating Terrorism

September 2006
Image of the Front Cover - National Strategy for Combating Terrorism

Link to Full PDF Document Full PDF Document (1.64 MB)

1. Overview of America’s National Strategy for Combating Terrorism
2. Today’s Realities in the War on Terror
* Successes
* Challenges
3. Today’s Terrorist Enemy
4. Strategic Vision for the War on Terror
5. Strategy for Winning the War on Terror
* Long-term approach: Advancing effective democracy
* Over the short term: Four priorities of action
o Prevent attacks by terrorist networks
o Deny WMD to rogue states and terrorist allies who seek to use them
o Deny terrorists the support and sanctuary of rogue states
o Deny terrorists control of any nation they would use as a base and launching pad for terror
6. Institutionalizing Our Strategy for Long-term Success
7. Conclusion

September 6, 2006 at 02:24 AM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

US National Security Strategy March 2006

The National Security Strategy of the United States of America

The National Security Strategy of the United States of America

Remarks by National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley to the United States Institute of Peace on the President's National Security Strategy
Renaissance Mayflower Hotel
Washington, D.C.

MR. HADLEY: Thank you very much, Robin. I'd also like to thank Ambassador Dick Solomon for being here and for inviting me to speak to you today. I am honored to be here with so many members of the diplomatic corps and other distinguished guests who have joined us today, and I appreciate the opportunity to visit with you and to discuss the President's National Security Strategy.

I want to begin by thanking the Institute for your hard work, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq. Your support of those drafting the Afghan constitution has helped create a society rooted in the rule of law that respects the rights of all Afghans. Your work in Iraq is bringing different Iraqi groups together to discuss their common future. The Institute is making a difference, bringing the hope of peace and freedom to both countries. And we are very grateful for that work.

Today, we released the President's National Security Strategy, which explains the strategic underpinning of his foreign policy. As the President has said, America's policy -- and its purpose -- is to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

The National Security Strategy lays out the President's vision of how to achieve this goal -- and today I want to draw your attention to five important themes in the strategy. First, America must be strong and secure. We are at war, and defeating the terrorists is America's most immediate challenge. Second, our strategy is to defeat -- our strategy to defeat the terrorists must include a strategy to defeat their hateful ideology. We do this by promoting a positive vision -- the promise of freedom and democracy. Third, freedom and democracy are more than just a means to an end. Our nation has long promoted freedom as the birthright of every human being. We champion effective democracy as the best way for nations to secure the freedom of their citizens, as well as their prosperity and security. Fourth, security and effective democracy can enable the pursuit of a smart development strategy that can improve the lives of people everywhere. Fifth, a community of effective democracies can best address the regional and global challenges of our time.

The President's strategy begins with the recognition that America is at war. Protecting the American people remains the first duty of the President of the United States. The President's strategy renews his commitment to maintain an American military without peer that can dissuade, deter, and defeat a wide variety of potential threats.

The President continues to mobilize all elements of America's national power to defeat the terrorist threat. To do that, he believes we must stay on the offense: We must defeat the terrorists abroad so we do not need to face them here at home. The strategy reaffirms the doctrine the President has set forth so clearly, that America makes no distinction between the terrorists, and the countries that harbor them. And the President believes that we must remember the clearest lesson of September 11th -- that the United States of America must confront threats before they fully materialize.

The President's strategy affirms that the doctrine of preemption remains sound and must remain an integral part of our National Security Strategy. If necessary," the strategy states, "...under longstanding principles of self-defense, we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. Terrorist attacks in London, Madrid, Amman, Samarra, Bali, Riyadh and many other cities since September 11th are grim reminders of just how lethal and determined the terrorists remain.

At the same time, the United States, with its partners and allies, is making progress in the war on terror. From the terrorists' point of view, they have lost their home base in Afghanistan, many of their leaders are dead or in custody, countries that once allowed them free rein are now moving against them, their efforts to divide their opponents have largely failed and the terrorists' strategy of attacking innocent Muslims is beginning to backfire and expose them for what they are: enemies of all humanity with no respect for human life and dignity.

Two weeks ago I was with the President in Kabul, and we witnessed the enormous transformation that has taken place in Afghanistan. Before September 11th, 2001, Afghanistan was ruled by a cruel regime that oppressed its people, brutalized women, and gave safe haven to the terrorists who attacked America. Today, the terror camps have been shut down, women are free to work if they choose, boys and girls are back in school -- and 25 million people now enjoy freedom.

This week will mark the three-year anniversary of the liberation of Iraq. In that time, the Iraqi people have gone from suffering under a brutal tyrant to liberation, to sovereignty, to free elections, to a constitutional referendum, and, last December, to elections for a fully constitutional government. In those December elections, over 11 million Iraqis -- more than 75 percent of the Iraqi voting age population -- defied the terrorists to cast their ballots.

Yet in recent weeks our memories of purple-ink-stained fingers have been replaced by images of events much more violent -- a ruined house of worship, mass protests in response to provocation, reprisal attacks by armed militias, and sectarian violence that has taken the lives of hundreds of Iraqi citizens.

The sectarian tensions that are fueling this violence were exacerbated for many years by Saddam Hussein's tyranny. Saddam ruled through brutal suppression of dissent, through murder and genocide, and his Iraq became a nation of deeply repressed sectarian divides. It should surprise no one that freedom has allowed the expression of sectarian identity, and the surfacing of sectarian grievances. And it should surprise no one that terrorists like Zarqawi would seek to exploit these divisions.

But freedom and democracy have also empowered and legitimized leaders who exerted their influence over the last two weeks to dampen the violence and draw their nation back from the brink of sectarian warfare. As the President said, the Iraqi people "looked into the abyss and did not like what they saw." The vast majority of the Iraqi people clearly do not want civil war. They do not want sectarian violence to rob all Iraqis of the hope of a common future. And their elected leaders are doing the difficult work of binding the nation together and forming a national unity government.

That work goes on as we speak. Before coming here I spoke with Ambassador Khalilzad, as I do every couple days, for a status report. The leaders of all the various parties and factions are in Baghdad; they are meeting daily to form a unity government. They announced to the Iraqi people two days ago that they would seek to do that by the end of the month. They are working on a structure of government, the personnel to go in position, and a common program that can bind the government and the country together.

The process is going forward. The legislative assembly met today -- that meeting went well -- and the leaders group is resuming their discussions tomorrow. We are supporting that effort strongly. The government that emerges will be an Iraqi government. But we and the Iraqi leaders agreed that the next step for Iraq needs to be a unity government, and needs to be a unity government soon.

Violence remains a challenge in Iraq, and it remains a challenge in Afghanistan. But this challenge is being met by leaders, empowered by the ballot, who offer their people a new hope rooted in freedom and democracy.

The President's strategy recognizes that the global war on terror is both a battle of arms and a battle of ideas. In the battle of ideas, freedom and democracy directly counter the ideology of the terrorists. The terrorists exploit feelings of alienation, while freedom and democracy offer a stake in society, and a chance to shape one's own future. The terrorists exploit historical grievances, while freedom and democracy offer institutions that promote peaceful resolution of disputes. The terrorists exploit misinformation, prejudices, and propaganda, while freedom and democracy offer independent media and the marketplace of ideas. And while the terrorists exploit a religion to justify murder, freedom and democracy offer respect for human dignity and rejection of the deliberate destruction of innocent lives.

For the vast majority of Afghans and Iraqis, the choice between these two visions is clear, and they have chosen democracy. Yet freedom and democracy are not merely means to an end in the war on terror; they are noble purposes our nation promotes because of our history and our founding principles.

The President expressed this calling most clearly in his second inaugural address. He said, "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this Earth has rights and dignity and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of heaven and Earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time."

Human freedom and human rights are released by the defeat of tyranny, but they are secured by the creation of effective democracies. Effective democracies play a central role in American foreign policy, because they are our natural allies and the anchors of stability in the international system. We seek to help newly free nations build effective democracies, and to partner with effective democracies to address global challenges.

Effective democracies uphold basic human rights, including freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press. Effective democracies submit to the will of the people, especially when the people vote to change their government. Effective democracies exercise sovereignty, maintain order, and establish the rule of law within their own borders -- and fight corruption. Effective democracies protect institutions of civil society such as the family, religious communities, voluntary associations, private property and independent businesses. And effective democracies foster a vibrant civic culture that limits the power of the state through an independent media, opposition political parties, and a system of institutional checks and balances.

The President's strategy recognizes that the journey to effective democracy is long, and it highlights practical ways America supports countries as they make this journey. While free elections are the most visible sign of a free society, they are only the start of the process. Time and patience are required to build the institutions and practices of effective democracy. But free elections can be catalysts for change, by building popular demand for the other democratic institutions necessary to sustain freedom. Some have argued that holding elections before these institutions are in place is premature. But we know that tyrannies are generally poor incubators of free institutions. Generally, it is elected leaders who have the legitimacy to lead a nation -- with the sustained support of other effective democracies -- along the path of democratic success.

As nations find their way in building the institutions of effective democracy, they create opportunities for their people to prosper and build better lives. Creating global prosperity is another vital element of the President's National Security Strategy. The President recognizes that economic freedom and political freedom cannot be long separated. As people experience the freedom to buy, to sell, and to produce, it is only a matter of time until they will demand the freedom to assemble, to speak, and to worship.

For developing nations, the President has promoted economic freedom through an innovative global development strategy, the Millennium Challenge Account program. The President believes that each nation bears the responsibility for its own development, and that success will go to those nations that govern justly, fight corruption, invest in the health and education of their people, and are open to the power of free markets and free trade to lift people out of poverty. Nations that make these choices deserve the active support of the developed world.

The Millennium Challenge Account program is only part of the President's development strategy. He continues to support reducing debt burdens that cripple many nations in the developing world, and opening access to private capital markets. He recognizes the importance of the international private sector in development, as well as a nation's own entrepreneurs. He believes in the dignity of every human life and, therefore, has led unprecedented efforts to address deadly diseases such as AIDS and malaria. Together, these initiatives are creating an alternative to the failed model of corruption and permanent dependency that has been so prevalent in the past.

The President's strategy promotes economic freedom on a global scale, through a free trade agenda to foster prosperity among both developing and developed nations. The President supports open markets, a stable financial system, and the integration of the global economy -- because each of these helps create better lives for all people and a more secure world. The President's free trade agenda includes ambitious proposals put forward in the Doha Development Agenda negotiations of the World Trade Organization. Lowering trade barriers worldwide in agriculture, manufacturing, and services is the best opportunity in a generation to lift millions of people out of poverty and enhance economic opportunity for all people.

Effective democracies provide stability, accountability, and opportunity for their people. Mobilizing effective democracies is also the best hope for addressing the serious challenges we face in our world.

And the challenges we face are enormous. We face public health challenges such as AIDS and avian flu. We face environmental challenges, some of which have been created by human beings, some of which have destroyed human beings through horrific natural disasters. We face energy challenges caused by dependence on old fuels and old technologies. We face the challenges of terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. We face the challenges of the global drug trade, organized crime, and the detestable trade of human beings for sex and for slavery.

We face the challenge of oppression and violations of basic human rights. The President is personally offended by the profound oppression and suffering in Darfur, Sudan, as well as in Burma, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Iran, Belarus, and other countries. Oppression occurs often on a massive scale, often as a tool of government control. The perpetrators of these horrors brazenly proclaim their indifference to human rights standards

-- so we in the international community must be equally bold in condemning their outrageous conduct.

Effective democracies can improve human rights, address other global challenges, and create a better world -- if we all work together. The President's strategy highlights ways in which effective democracies can cooperate for the greater good. But we must think differently and organize ourselves more creatively if we are to be effective.

The President believes that new international partnerships and arrangements among willing nations offer the possibility of quick and measurable results. The Proliferation Security Initiative, for example, has no governing council, no executive secretariat -- but it has created a community of nations voluntarily committed to acting together to keep dangerous weapons from rogue states and terrorist groups. The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Development and Climate is a group of states working to enhance energy security, reduce poverty, and lower pollution levels through accelerated development of clean technologies. The ad hoc Core Group led multinational efforts to respond to the devastating tsunami of 2004, and filled a critical gap until more traditional relief organizations could begin operations.

The President values these partnerships and arrangements, and his strategy anticipates replicating these and other innovative models to address future challenges. Measurable outcomes, not endless process, should define our international partnerships going forward.

I've only mentioned some of the principal elements of the President's National Security Strategy. But all of the President's foreign policy initiatives are united by his conviction that we are living in a moment of choosing, for our nation and for the world. America can choose a path of fear, leading to isolationism and protectionism, or a path of confidence, leading to international engagement and the expansion of freedom and democracy.

The President's National Security Strategy charts the way forward along the path of confidence. It is a strategy of leadership. It is a strategy of partnership. It is a strategy that protects America's vital interests, reflects America's history, and promotes America's highest ideals.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

END

April 9, 2006 at 03:46 PM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Remarks at BBC Today-Chatham House Lecture p Condaleeza Rice

Remarks at BBC Today-Chatham House Lecture

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Ewood Park
Blackburn, United Kingdom
March 31, 2006

U.S. Secretary Of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw smile during the House Audience held at the Ewood Park stadium in Blackburn, England, Friday March 31, 2006. [U.S. Embassy Picture/Richard Lewis]SECRETARY RICE: Thank you very much. Well, listening to Jack, I'm sure you understand why I value his counsel and his friendship and why the people of the United States are so pleased that we have such a good friend in the Foreign Secretary here in the United Kingdom. The partnership that we forged over this past year, I think is a reflection of our nations’ historic alliances, but more than that is a reflection of the values that we share as peoples, because ultimately the work of governments cannot be sustained, particularly democratic governments if there is not a deep bond between their peoples. And the peoples of Great Britain and of the United States, of course, have that historic bond.

Today, on behalf of President Bush, I would like to thank the citizens and the government of Great Britain for the willingness to share in the sacrifices for freedom, no more so than in the last several years since the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and on the Pentagon really revealed again to America in ways that we had not seen for a very, very long time in our history, our own vulnerability to outside attack and to the forces of hostility to democratic values. And, of course, on July 7th when Britain also experienced that hostility, I hope that Britain felt the support of the United States in our joint desire to defeat those forces that are so hostile to our democratic principles.

I also want to thank Jack for inviting me here to Blackburn and for allowing me to share the stage with Jim Naughtie. Thank you very much for the work of the BBC in this and I am really honored that Lord Hurd would be here, a great public servant whom we've all admired for many years. Thank you very much for being here. Jack invited me to see a different side of British society, one that's not normally seen by Secretaries of State and already I have seen how this old cotton city is finding new prosperity and building airplanes and a knowledge-based economy. And of course, I've just had the opportunity to walk around the "pitch" – is that right? -- of the Blackburn Rovers football club. And, Jack, if Blackburn is "the center of the world," then I suspect that this stadium is the center of the center of the center of the world. (Laughter.)

UU.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as she delivers her speech to guests during the Chatham House Audience held at the Ewood Park stadium in Blackburn, England, Friday March 31, 2006. [U.S. Embassy Picture/Richard Lewis]When Jack was in Birmingham last October, I took him to, as he said, a University of Alabama football game. Now, unless you've experienced American college football in the Southeastern Conference, you just don't know what that means. I think it's safe to say, though, that even though Jack loved the experience, I'm not absolutely certain that he knew what was going on. (Laughter.) Had I had the opportunity to watch Blackburn play Wigan here next week, I'm certain that I would have been just as clueless. And it is true that the European stereotype of America -- Americans that we do not have the attention span for a 90-minute game that doesn't have that much scoring and where there isn't full contact. Yeah, it's true. (Laughter.) But I would remind you that the man who keeps the ball out of the Rovers’ goal is an American, Brad Friedel. (Applause.)

I'm delighted to be here to deliver this lecture. As a professor myself, I like to take every opportunity to put on my academic hat, to reflect broadly on the issues of the day. So this afternoon, I want to talk about an idea -- an idea that has defined the modern era since the dawn of the Enlightenment, an idea that has now captured the imagination of a majority of humanity, and made our world more secure as a result, so that idea is liberal democracy.

What do I mean by "liberal" democracy? Well, first of all, I mean capital "L" in Liberal, as in Liberalism, the theory of politics that took shape in the minds of Englishmen like Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, and even a Scot or two, like Adam Smith. The ideas of Liberalism were, of course, later refined and applied and written into the American Constitution by men like Hamilton, and Jefferson and Madison. And all of these individuals were trying, in their own way, to solve one of history's oldest quandaries: How can individuals with different interests, and different backgrounds, and different religious beliefs, live together peacefully and avoid the evil extremes of politics: civil war and tyranny, or as they would have said, the state of nature or the oppression of the state?

In their answer to this question, the theorists of Liberalism transformed politics forever. They declared that all human beings possessed equal dignity and certain natural rights -- among these, the right to live in liberty, to enjoy security, to own property and to worship as they pleased. These universal rights, established and embodied in institutions and enshrined in law, would then establish the principled limits on state power. But that was not all. They had another equally bold idea: For government to be truly legitimate, they argued, it had to be blessed by the consent of the governed.

Now, those were truly revolutionary ideas, and not surprisingly, they inspired revolutions. You made yours here in Britain in 1688. We made ours, after a few false starts, in 1776 and 1789. And I do not, therefore, mean to imply that there is only one model of liberal democracy. There is not. Even two countries as similar as Britain and the United States embraced liberal democracy on our own terms, according to our own traditions and our cultures and our experiences. That has been the case for every country and every people that has begun the modest quest for justice and freedom -- whether it was France in 1789; or Germany and Japan after World War II; or nations across Asia, and Africa, and Latin America during these past decades; or in countries like Ukraine, and Afghanistan, and Iraq today.

The appeal of liberal democracy is desirable, but its progress has not been even nor inevitable and there's a reason for that. The challenge of liberal democracy is always two-fold: to ensure majority rule and to respect minority rights, to strengthen communities and to liberate individuals, to empower government and to limit that power at the same time. And for societies accustomed to thinking in zero-sum terms, or for diverse communities that have never shared power among themselves, liberal democracy can seem difficult and frustrating and even threatening, and that feeling is entirely understandable.

Too often, we forget how long and hard liberal democracy has been for us. At times in our history and cities like Blackburn and Birmingham for that matter, the challenge of liberal democracy seemed so severe that it would split societies in two.

Once the cotton business moved out of this city, inequality and alienation were so rampant that many thought a revolution was not just likely, but inevitable. In my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, the legacy and the birthmark of slavery persisted for a century in the brutal and dehumanizing form of segregation. I spent the first 13 years of my life without a white classmate. It was when we moved to Denver, Colorado, that I had my first white classmate. And one Sunday morning in 1963, four little girls, including my good friend Denise McNair, were murdered in church by a terrorist bomb.

So even today, we know that we are still wrestling with the two-fold challenges of liberal democracy. Consider, for example, our efforts to strengthen national security and to protect civil liberties at the same time. In the attacks of 9/11 or 7/7 here in Britain, the United States and Britain saw the true threat of global terrorism. No matter of just police work of course, because if we wait for terrorists to attack, then 3,000 people die on one September morning or dozens are murdered on their commute to work. This forces us to think anew about how we will keep our societies both open and safe at the same time and that is no easy task, and we're all finding our own solutions within our own democratic systems.

I know that there is a lot concern in Britain as well as in Europe and in other parts of the world, that the United States is not adequately guaranteeing both our need for security and our respect for the law. We in America welcome the free exchange of opinions with our allies about this issue, especially here in place like Britain. But I also want to say that no one should ever doubt America’s commitment to justice and the rule of law. President Bush has stated unequivocally, as have I that the United States is a nation of laws and we do not tolerate any American, at home or abroad, engaging in acts of torture. We also have no desire to be the world’s jailer. We want the terrorists that we captured to stand trial for their crimes. But we also recognize that we are fighting a new kind of war, and that our citizens will judge us harshly if we release a captured terrorist before we are absolutely certain that he does not possess information that could prevent a future attack, or even worst, if we meet that terrorist again on the battlefield.

Now, these difficult issues, still for us affirm the value of liberal democracy. But from our present and past experience, we know that liberal democracy is no panacea. It is a living regime, a never-ending conversation, a perpetual struggle to balance democratic demands within the limitations of Liberalism. This is genuine liberal democracy and this is its genius, its flexibility and its dynamism, how it helps diverse societies and diverse peoples reconcile their differences peacefully. Even for mature liberal democracies like ours, with centuries of experience, these balancing acts are often painstaking and time-consuming and frustrating. So when we talk about young democracies, like those emerging in the Broader Middle East today, we must do so with great humility and with great patience and with great sympathy for their historic undertaking.

Too often, I think, we forget this perspective. Recent elections in places like Egypt and the Palestinian territories -- the freest by far in both of those places -- have led some to argue that our policy of supporting democratic change in this region is creating not liberal democracy, but illiberal democracy: elected governments that view no inherent limitations to state power. Some American and European commentators even argue that democracy is impossible in the Middle East, and that perhaps it should not be tried for fear of its consequences in destabilizing the Middle East. Now, this criticism seems to assume that our support for democratic reform in the Middle East is disrupting somehow a stable status quo there. But do we really think that this was the case?

Does anyone think that the Lebanese people were better off under the boot of Syria? Does anyone think that Yasser Arafat pretending to make peace while supporting terrorism was better for the Palestinian people? Does anyone think that the Middle East was more secure when Saddam Hussein was massacring the Iraqi people, invading his neighbors, using weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors and his people, funding terrorism, pursuing weapons of mass destruction and exploiting a failed sanctions regime for billions of dollars? And who today would honestly defend Arab authoritarianism, which has created a sense of despair and hopelessness so desperate that it feeds an ideology of hatred that leads people to strap bombs to their bodies and fly airplanes into building? The old status quo was unstable. Any sense of stability was a false sense of stability. It was not serving any interest and democratic reform had to begin.

It's hard to imagine, as some do, how this process of reform -- it's hard to imagine for some critics how this process of reform might go forward in the Broader Middle East. But I can tell you this; it cannot go forward in the Middle East without freeing its citizens to voice their choices. For decades, authoritarian regimes in this region have completely closed off the political space of their countries. If things remain as they are, it is not very likely that a vibrant civil society is somehow going to emerge under the heel of authoritarianism. Real change will begin and is beginning in the Middle East when citizens -- men and women -- are free to make demands of their government. It would be illiberal in the extreme to think that disagreeing with a people’s free choice means that we should deny them the freedom to choose altogether.

Elections are the beginning of every democracy, but of course they are not the end. Effective institutions are essential to the success of all liberal democracies. And by institutions I mean pluralistic parties, transparent and accountable legislatures, independent judiciaries, free press, active civil society, market economies and, of course, a monopoly for the state on the means of violence. One cannot have one foot in terrorism and one foot in politics. Now, if these institutions that transform a government of imperfect citizens -- it is these institutions that transform a government of imperfect citizens into a government of enduring laws.

I think that we in the West need to reflect long and hard before we write off entire societies as inherently despotic because of some notion of their cultures. Remember, cultural determinists were once so certain that democracy would never work in Asia because of "Asian values," or in Africa because of tribalism, or in Latin America because of its military juntas. It was even said, in my own lifetime, that blacks in America were "unfit" for democracy -- too "childlike," too "unready," too "incapable," too "unwanting" of self-government.

The criticism assumes that human beings are slaves to their culture, not the authors of it. Liberal democracy is unique because it is both principle and process, an end toward which people strive, and the means by which they do so. The daily work of negotiation, and cooperation, and compromise, the constant struggle to balance majority rule with individual rights -- this democratic process is how people create a democratic culture.

All too often, cultural determinists misunderstand culture in many places in the world. But we've seen it most especially lately in Iraq. It is certainly true that Iraq rests on the major fault lines of ethnicity and religion in the Middle East. It is also true that, for many centuries, Iraqis have settled their differences through coercion and violence, rather than compromise and politics.

But in the past two generations, it was Saddam Hussein who took a society that was already rife with sectarian and religious divisions and drove it to the brink of the state of nature. He committed genocide and filled mass graves with 300,000 souls. He slaughtered entire villages of Shia and Kurds. And he carried out a nationwide policy of ethnic cleansing to make Iraq’s Sunni minority dominant throughout the country. To be certain, he repressed a good number of Sunnis, too. So when we look at Iraq today, we must take care to separate the culture of its people from the near-term legacy of a tyrant. And we must support the millions of Iraqi patriots who are striving nobly to redeem their country.

This is an incredibly difficult endeavor, but the Iraqis are moving forward. In just three years, the people of Iraq have regained sovereignty and voted in free elections. They've written and ratified a constitution, then voted again, and their elected leaders are now working to form a national government. This steady progress has occurred in the face of truly horrific violence. Terrorist attacks, like the one that destroyed the Golden Mosque in Samarra, seek to inflame Iraq’s divisions and tear the country apart. But in response to that, some Iraqis have given into the temptation to take justice into their own hands, to engage in reprisal killings.

Yet, at the same time, we are witnessing something else, something very hopeful. After the Samarra mosque bombing, Iraq’s new democratic institutions helped to contain popular passions. Iraq’s leaders joined together to stay the hand of vengeance and violence in their communities. In these actions and events, we see the early contours of a democratic culture, forged in cooperation and strengthened by compromise.

The majority of Iraqis are formulating their own democratic answer to the question that first inspired the Enlightenment four centuries ago: How can different individuals and communities live together in peace, avoiding both the state of nature and the tyranny of the state? With time, with painstaking effort, and with our steadfast support, Iraqis will build up their fragile democratic culture, and eventually, many decades from now, people will take it for granted; that that democratic culture was always to be, just as we in America and Britain now take for granted our democratic culture.

In a tale of two cities, that the Secretary and I have now visited, Birmingham and Blackburn, Britain and the United States have seen how the impossible dreams of yesterday can become the inevitable facts of today. Who would have imagined, fifty years ago, that Birmingham would have been a thriving and desegregated capital of the New South? Or that Blackburn today would be revitalizing and modernizing and growing into a hub of enterprise for Northwest England and beyond?

Someday, people in Baghdad and Beirut and Cairo and, yes, in Tehran will say the same thing about their great cities. They will wonder how anyone could ever have doubted the future of liberal democracy in their countries. But most of all, they will remember fondly those fellow democracies, like Britain and the United States, and dozens of others, who stood with them in their time of need – believing that advancing the cause of freedom is the greatest hope for peace in our time.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

QUESTION: Rosemary Hollis. I'm Director of Research at Chatham House, and not only from there but in general, myself personally, welcome this opportunity to have access to you. Now, I wonder if I could point something out and base my question on that. Whilst it is a very, very close alliance and British commitment to the United States in the last three, four years is probably without parallel, that not only means that we know we are in a sense junior partner, but we also feel that we're not always sure where you're going to lead. I wonder if you could give us some reassurance to the effect that some lessons have been learned from some of the mistakes made over the last three years which will be used to judge situations going forward.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, thank you. And first of all, I'm delighted you are at Chatham House, which is a fantastic institution, and I have from time to time been able to take advantage of the work of Chatham House, so thank you for that and thank you, Lord Hurd, for that.

First of all, we have partners in the world and I don't think of it in terms of junior partners and subordinate partners. We have partners in the world. And it starts from shared common values that those partnerships exist. You then, of course, have goals in common and you can sometimes then have disagreements about tactics. There's no doubt about that. And the only way to overcome those differences is through constant dialogue and constant discussion. And I think if you look back over the record of the last three-plus years, you would see that there's been extraordinary consultation, discussion, problem-solving, between the United States and Great Britain -- how often the Prime Minister and the President have met, how often Jack Straw and first Colin Powell and now I have talked. And I can assure you, these are not conversations in which I say, "Here's what the United States is going to do. Would you like to come along?" That's not the way that it goes. It really is a discussion about how we are going to jointly move forward.

Now, as to whether you learn, of course, you learn lessons. If you are impervious to the lessons of the period that you've been just been out of, you're really rather brain dead; you're not thinking. Of course, you're trying to trying to learn lessons. I've often said that one question that often comes to me is, well, tell me about the mistakes you've made. And I've said many, many times I am quite certain that there are going to be dissertations written about the mistakes of the Bush Administration and I will probably even oversee some of them when I go back to Stanford. But one of the things that's very difficult to tell in the midst of big historic change is what was actually a good decision and what was a bad decision. And I will tell you that decisions, when you look at them in historical perspective that were thought at the time to be brilliant, turn out to have been really rather bad, and vice versa.

And so I think what you have to do is to make certain that you've got the right strategic choices and the right strategic decisions, and you're going to make a host of tactical mistakes along the way. I believe strongly that it was the right strategic decision that Saddam Hussein had been a threat to the international community long enough that it was time to deal with that threat, that you were not going to have a different kind of Middle East with Saddam Hussein at the center of it, and that it was best, once having overthrown that dictator, to set on a course of democratic development in Iraq.

You know, there were people at the time of the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein who actually said, oh, yes, you should get rid of Saddam Hussein but your goal shouldn't be democracy in Iraq; your goal should be to find another strongman for Iraq because Iraqis will never be able to self-govern. Now, that would have been a tactical decision that I think would have been a huge mistake. But as we're in the midst of this in Iraq, are there people who probably think, yeah, it would have been a better idea to put a strongman in his place? I just don't agree.

So my point to you is that yes, I know we've made tactical errors -- thousands of them, I'm sure. This could have gone that way or that could have gone that way. But when you look back in history, what will be judged is did you make the right strategic decisions. And if you spend all of your time trying to judge this tactical issue or that tactical issue, I think you miss the larger sweep.

Now, absolutely we think all the time about what can be done better, what needs to be adjusted. But I think I just think of it a little bit differently than trying now to catalogue every "mistake" and react to it.

QUESTION: Robin Oakley, CNN. Secretary of State, you have expressed your sympathy this morning for Iran over the earthquakes, but politics must go on. And before you came to the center of the world, you were on the continent of Europe discussing with the P-5 and Germany what next steps could be taken to persuade the Iranians to pull back from the uranium enrichment program. Aren't you worried that the tactics being adopted by the P-5 and others so far are enabling the manipulators of an imperfect democracy in Iran to build up sympathy with the Iranian people?

And in discussing those next steps, can you tell us what next practical steps you can see? It's quite obvious that the difficulties you had in getting an anodyne statement out of the Security Council just to toss the issue back to the IAEA for 30 days hasn't impressed the Iranians at all. So what can be done to put real pressure on them? Do you agree with your host here in Blackburn, Jack Straw, that sanctions could be involved? Do you see the slightest chance of getting Russia or China to agree to sanctions?

And if you could clear up one other point, Jack Straw keeps telling us that he talks to people in the U.S. Administration and they share his view that military action will never be used. But your President keeps telling us that all options remain on the table, which must include military action. Can you tell us which is right?

SECRETARY RICE: Let me try a few of them. First of all, one can express and deeply mean sympathy for and willingness to help the Iranian people without endorsing what I would not even call an imperfect democracy. I think when you have a Guardian Council that chooses a thousand people who can run, I don't really find the use of the word "democracy" in that sentence. It's rather like there used to be a Democratic Republic of Germany and there used to be a -- there still is a Democratic Republic of Korea. So we have to be careful about the use of the term.

As to whether or not people are being driven toward their government, I do think it's immensely important and it's not easy to do, it's not an easy point to break through, that we have no quarrel with the Iranian people. The United States doesn't. Great Britain doesn't. Germany doesn't. None of us have a quarrel with the Iranian people. In fact, the Iranian regime is having an unaccountable few who are frustrating the good wishes, the good aspirations, of the Iranian people, who over time have demonstrated that they would like a truly democratic society.

And in this nuclear matter, it is enormously important that we get the message through to the Iranian people that it is not the international community that is isolating Iran; it is the Iranian regime that is isolating Iran. No one is saying that Iran should not have civil nuclear power. We accept that Iran may need civil nuclear power. But given the behavior of the Iranian regime over the last 18 years with the IAEA, it isn't possible to conceive of the use of the technologies of reprocessing and enrichment on Iranian territory. And again, we have to make that argument in a way that shows that there is a proper choice for the Iranian regime that would not result in its isolation.

So I would hope that rather than looking at the P-5 and saying, well, the P-5 is out to make it difficult for the Iranian people, that the only reason the Iranian -- that the P-5 would make it difficult for Iran is if the Iranian regime does not respond to the just demands of the international system.

As to what will happen in the future, I warn all the time that it's very easy in diplomacy to read the latest headline and say, oh, well, that's a failed diplomatic effort. I can remember that we were also never going to get this issue to the Security Council because several months ago there was some sense that Russia would never permit it to go to the Security Council. Well, we're now in the Security Council. I can remember when I first became Secretary, I came to Europe -- I was actually here first in Britain -- and people said, oh, the United States and its European allies are split and Europe is trying to mediate between Iran and the United States. We're far past that.

So diplomacy, as Lord Hurd said, takes time. It takes some patience. It takes working through issues. Sometimes you agree, sometimes you don't. When we did the presidential statement, yes, we changed some language that we would like, Russia changed some language that it would have liked. So this is a process and where we end up in this process in terms of the potential for sanctions, which I do agree with the Foreign Secretary have to be on the agenda, I think will be, in part, dependent on whether the Iranian regime decides to respond to the just demands of the international system.

And as to military force, the American President never takes any option off the table. You don't want the American President to take any option off the table. But we also recognize that that is not what is on the agenda now. We are in a process that we believe can work diplomatically. I do think the Iranians are worried. And for all of the bravado about they're not really worried, it's very interesting that every time we get close to the Security Council, they suddenly become interested in the Russian proposal or the EU proposal. I think they actually do worry quite a lot about isolation.

QUESTION: I'm a local business person. I very much enjoyed your lecture, Secretary of State. To promote global harmony, would you consider setting up a liaison committee with membership from the USA, UK and Australia?

SECRETARY RICE: I'm sorry, a liaison committee for?

QUESTION: A specific liaison committee with membership from the USA, UK and Australia.

MR. NAUGHTIE: To do what?

QUESTION: To promote global harmony.

SECRETARY RICE: Oh. Well, we obviously have, Jack and I, a relationship with our counterpart in Australia, Alexander Downer. I was just there. And I would have a suggestion. I actually think that there are some tasks, some issues that are actually better taken on not by government but rather by people. One of the strengths that we see is when populations, people-to-people, decide. Either the business community decides that it wishes to get together or academics, universities, decide. Chatham House is a fine place where academics from all over the world come together. That youth get together. And it doesn't always have to be the government that pursues those things and so -- global harmony is quite important. I'm not actually sure that the governments are the best to pursue it, but rather that people-to-people ties might work better.

QUESTION: On a related question, given what Lord Hurd said about institution building after World War II, and perhaps a decision not to go down that road for reasons that we can understand in the early '90s, do you think that was a missed opportunity?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I've thought a lot about that because, actually, my academic work is on institutions and how they govern -- the state of nation matrix, so to speak. I agree with Lord Hurd that we didn't create new big international institutions, but there has been a significant evolution of some of those institutions; for instance, NATO. I remember after the Cold War ended -- I was, by the way, a specialist on the Warsaw Pact, which shows what a dinosaur I am -- and there were people who said, well, the Warsaw Pact has gone out of business, it won't be long before NATO follows. Rather, NATO has transformed itself consistent with its purposes of creating an environment under which democracies can pursue peace. It's transformed itself into a real magnet for the newly democratizing states of Eastern Europe. So NATO is now at 26. It has at the table Poland and Romania and Lithuania and Latvia. This is an enormous transformation.

NATO, of course, has also no longer any arguments about what's out of area. NATO is supporting African Union forces in Sudan. NATO is in Afghanistan. It is training Iraqi military forces. And so there's been such an evolution of that institution that I think you could argue it has become, in a sense, anew.

And if I could make just one other point, I'm a major advocate of United Nations reform. I do think that the reform agenda is extremely important so that the United Nations can be revitalized and made to be relevant to the 21st century. We're in that process.

One thing that is sometimes not seen also is the growth of institutions in other parts of the world that perhaps are not so focused on here in Europe. So part of the United States institution building is in strengthening ASEAN, for instance, among Southeast Asian countries, the Asia-Pacific Economic Council, which has all of the Pacific Rim countries involved in it. And so there is a lot of -- the Organization of American States, where we spend a lot of effort. So one of the answers to new institutions is that it's happening in new regions of the world on a regional basis rather than on a global one.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) Chatham House. The new conservative guru, Professor John Mearsheimer of University of Chicago, argues that war between the United States and China is inevitable. Do you agree? And if you don't, do you think China's rise is a threat to regional or world peace?

SECRETARY RICE: I do not see events of this -- really, any human event is inevitable. We make choices that lead us to conflict or lead us to peace. And with China, we are seeing the rise of an important state that is going to be influential one way or another, and it has been the goal and the policy of the United States to try and help create the circumstances under which the rise of China will be beneficial to the international system and will be peaceful.

Part of the way that we've tried to do that is to be very strong advocates of the integration of China into world institutions that are rules-based, like the World Trade Organization. Because with this huge economy in China, it has to be operating on a rules basis or it will be a problem for the international economy.

We have been very active in trying to manage what is currently the biggest security threat in Northeast Asia, which is the North Korean nuclear program, with China really at the center of the six-party talks.

We have our differences with China on human rights. We have our differences with China on some economic issues and trade issues. We have had our differences with China on a number of other questions. But it is a good relationship, it's a sound relationship, and it's one that while recognizing and talking openly about those differences I think is very much on track to see the peaceful integration of China into the international system. I think it's entirely possible to do it.

It will depend on choices that China makes and we have tried to help create circumstances in which those choices will be peaceful ones.

QUESTION: Not all of us share your optimism about freedom and peace, democracy in Iraq. I just wonder, looking back to the Vietnam War, and that was also a fight for democracy, pushing back the boundary of communism, whether this is a fight for democracy that America should be out of. And I wonder what -- how worse it's got to be in Iraq before America withdraws its troops, and equally the British troops as well, but in particular yourself. Thank you.

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you. Well, we could spend a long time on the differences between Vietnam and Iraq, including questions of the nature of the Middle East at this point and the relationship of a different Middle East to the core security interests of the United States, or for that matter Great Britain. But we could perhaps have that debate sometime.

Let me just -- let me address the question of how long the United States feels that it needs to be there. We are there at the request of this, first the interim government, and we'll see -- I assume at the request of the national unity government when it is formed. We're there under UN mandate. We're there to try to train Iraqi forces so that they themselves can do the security tasks before them.

But I think it would be