INTELLIGENCE ISSN 1245-2122 N. 376, 11 December 2000 Every Two to Three Weeks Next Issue on 8 January 2001 Publishing since 1980 Editor Olivier Schmidt (email intelligence-adi@wanadoo.fr; web http://www.blythe.org/Intelligence) TABLE OF CONTENTS, N. 376, 11 December 2000 FRONT PAGE PALESTINE - ISRAEL ENTERS A WAR IT CAN'T WIN & KNOWS IT p.1 TECHNOLOGY AND TECHNIQUES STRANGE DOINGS IN SPY SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY p.2 LIE DETECTOR "JUNK SCIENCE" p.3 SCOTS PREFER CENTRAL TECH UNIT INSTEAD OF AN "FBI" p.4 IRISH COPS & ROBBERS COMPUTER TECH PROBLEMS p.5 SMOKE SCREENS - Low-tech Anti-"Smart" Bomb Defense. p.6 PEOPLE USA - STAPLETON ROY p.7 - John Eric Larson. p.8 CANADA - "Mafiaboy". p.9 CANADA/CHINA - Lai Changxing. p.10 GREAT BRITAIN - PHILIP CAMPBELL SMITH p.11 NORTHERN IRELAND -- ERIC ANDERSON p.12 EGYPT/ISRAEL - Shereef Fawzi Mohammed Falali. p.13 AGENDA COMING EVENTS THROUGH 15 FEBRUARY 2001 p.14 INTELLIGENCE AROUND THE WORLD USA - "SECURICRATS" STILL OUT TO "GET DEUTCH" p.15 - CIA'S CHILE ARCHIVES, CHAT ROOM & NEXT CHIEF p.16 - CARNIVORE EATING UP THE FBI & OTHER NEWS p.17 - Vernon Loeb Reexamines Congressional NRO Report. p.18 - DOE Security Mails Out Its Secrets. p.19 GREAT BRITAIN - PLANS TO INTERCEPT ALL COMMUNICATIONS p.20 - GAGGING ORDERS TO BE CHALLENGED p.21 - MOD'S CHINOOK INVESTIGATION CRASHES TOO p.22 NORTHERN IRELAND - ULSTER DEMILITARIZATION CONCERNS p.23 - "WHISTLE-BLOWER" INVESTIGATION ENDS p.24 FRANCE - SPIES, POLITICS & SCANDAL WITH CHIRAC & ROUSSIN p.25 NETHERLANDS - ROLLING-UP THE "WHEELERS & DEALERS" p.26 GERMANY - RECYCLING OLD EASTERN SPIES & FILES p.27 BELORUS - Lukashenko Tighten the Noose Around His Neck. p.28 RUSSIA - "Kursk" Continues to Resurface. p.29 COLOMBIA - DEA Involved with Death Squads. p.30 BRAZIL - ABIN REPLACES SIN & A WOMAN TAKES OVER p.31 PERU - PRESS & CIA RING OUT THE OLD & RING IN THE NEW p.32 SOUTH AFRICA - ALLEGED ARMS PROCUREMENT CORRUPTION INQUIRY p.33 SIERRA LEONE - BRITS ALLEGEDLY ARMED BOTH SIDES p.34 PAKISTAN - INQUIRY CALL INTO IRISH CONSUL REJECTED p.35 INDONESIA - Changes Finally Come for Intelligence. p.36 AUSTRALIA - Jenkins Suicide Report & the DFAT. p.37 --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 376, 11 December 2000, p. 1 PALESTINE ISRAEL ENTERS A WAR IT CAN'T WIN & KNOWS IT Strangely enough, the new Intifada in Palestine and Israel has almost all specialists agreeing: Israel's nuclear weapons and regional military dominance are not going to keep it from losing the war its has now let take place. Its Arab neighbors, instead of traditional saber-rattling and preparations for war, are just going to sit back and watch Israel exhaust itself in a guerrilla war it can't win and quietly resupply the Palestinians with small arms and explosives they need for armed conflict. It's a "Win Win" situation for Arab nations and the United States is losing its credibility as it has to keep Israel from starting a "hot war" ... as long as Israel's neighbors don't get their armed forces directly involved. Russia is, therefore, back on the Middle East scene as a recognized authority and credible negotiator, a situation the US had so far avoided. When we say "almost all specialists", that includes Israeli intelligence specialists. Listen to former Shin Bet director, Ami Ayalon, quoted by "Ma'ariv" on 5 December, speaking at a conference in memory of Finance Ministry budget division Yom Kippur War dead: "The Palestinians learned that Israel only understands force ... The Palestinians believe that this is the only way they can realize their political goals, the foremost of which is to found a state ... The things a Palestinian has to endure, simply coming to work in the morning, is a long and continuous nightmare that includes humiliation bordering on despair ... But in the last seven years he has discovered that there is another way. They learned this from Hezbollah and from us." ...(cut)... In more ways than one, Sharon is "the man of the situation", who splits the Israeli establishment and the Palestinian movement. Half of the Israeli establishment sees him as the only possible "savior", the Israeli Milosevic of a "Greater Israel", while the other half fears exactly that, a leader who will turn Israel into Milosevic's Serbia. The Palestinian movement knows it will win ... if it can keep Sharon -- who single-handedly restarted the Intifada in late September -- from "rocking the boat" and causing a major regional war. This leaves the Palestinian movement divided between those who, under no circumstances, will deal with a "Sharon Israel" and those who would. But Israel is not Serbia and Sharon is not Milosevic since the latter had at least some friends abroad ... including Russia. Sharon does not. --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 376, 11 December 2000, p. 6 SMOKE SCREENS - Low-tech Anti-"Smart" Bomb Defense. The British Ministry of Defence's (MoD) Defence Evaluation Research Agency (DERA) is expected to demonstrate to potential Middle East customers the latest device against hostile laser-guided bombs (LGB) at the IDEX meeting to be held in Abu Dhabi next March. It is based on the "low-tech" World War 1 smoke screen and an analysis of the failure of NATO's LGB assault in Kosovo and Serbia where low clouds, fog and mist often obscured strategic targets. The DERA's Large Area Smoke Screen (LASS) is a lightweight smoke generator, linked to a laser warning system which can detect a laser designator aimed at a strategic target, and can obscure the area without using artillery shells. The LASS -- designed and produced by Somerwest Technical Services in Britain under licence to the DERA -- uses gas turbine exhaust into which a vegetable oil-based fluid is injected to produce a continuous volume of thick smoke. The device can simultaneously distribute black smoke to confuse visual spectrum and infra-red sensors and white smoke to disrupt thermal image system surveillance. Linked to radar, the system could provide effective protection against missiles using electro-optical sensors for terminal guidance, according to DERA business group manager, Paul Winstanley. Four to six LASS units, each producing smoke using 50 liters of fuel per hour, could cover a military airfield in five to 20 seconds, according to the DERA, which expects the "simple but effective user-friendly system" (unlike conventional systems which use phosphates and other hazardous substances) to generate wide- spread interest among Arab states. --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 376, 11 December 2000, p. 15 USA "SECURICRATS" STILL OUT TO "GET DEUTCH" ...(cut)... COMMENT -- With the continuing attack on Deutch, there seem to be two basic aspects conveniently forgotten by the US security establishment and the press. First, "the shift in the political climate that has taken place" mentioned above by Aftergood is a nice way of saying "highly partisan politics" characterized by conservative Republican vendetta against the Clinton administration. And the Deutch "case" has been used in this context as one more "weak-on-security" battering ram (see "USA - Deutch-CIA Case Turns into Partisan Minefield", INT, n. 362 20; "USA - Partisan Politics behind Deutch 'Double Standard'", INT, n. 372 14). Second, just like the failed impeachment procedure against President Clinton which run up one of the highest legal bills even paid by US taxpayers, Washington "securicrats" and their conservative politician colleagues have put a lot of money into a long investigation where no damage has been reported. The Pentagon inspector general report does not provide a damage assessment, but condemns "Dr. Deutch's practice of using computers in this manner [which] was extremely risky". The money spent on unproductive or even disastrous security investigations would receive much wider public approval if it were spent on "catching spies" instead of hounding and reprimanding some of the United States' top officials. In short, "cost efficiency" has still not swept out the Cold War mentality of the US security establishment. --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 376, 11 December 2000, p. 22 GREAT BRITAIN MOD'S CHINOOK INVESTIGATION CRASHES TOO The British government has ruled out a new inquiry into the crash of an RAF Chinook Mark 2 helicopter into the Mull of Kintyre, south-west Scotland, on 2 June 1994, despite harsh criticism of accident investigative practices in an all-party parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report, published on 30 November. It has been described as "one of the most damning attacks on the integrity of a Whitehall department", in this case the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which MPs accuse of "unwarrantable arrogance" and using "shocking aircraft test procedures". ...(cut)... --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 376, 11 December 2000, p. 25 FRANCE SPIES, POLITICS & SCANDAL WITH CHIRAC & ROUSSIN On 4 December, a mounting corruption scandal put new pressure on President Jacques Chirac to declare whether he knew about kickbacks that allegedly benefitted political parties on the Left and the Right. Even members of his own RPR conservative party have joined the call for Chirac to address the nation about suspicions that he knew of such a scheme. Socialist lawmaker, Arnaud Montebourg, went further and demanded that Chirac be formally designated as a suspect. But that is politics and mostly "business as usual". The truly interesting person in the center of the scandal is Michel Roussin, Chirac's former chief of staff and also chief of staff for four years to Alexandre de Marenches, the head of French foreign intelligence when it was known as the SDECE. ...(cut)... --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 376, 11 December 2000, p. 27 GERMANY RECYCLING OLD EASTERN SPIES & FILES An interesting situation exists in Germany where former Eastern European intelligence professionals are being recycled as NATO- approved agents and Stasi archives, stolen and/or purchased by the CIA during Operation Rosewood, come back to life. In the Kleber Casern in Kaiserslautern, a group of 100 counter- espionage recruits recently went through ten-days' training during the Unified Blade 2000 exercise under the direction of Lt. Col. Carl Burrell of the Allied Command Europe Counterintelligence Activity. Participants included officials from Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. One of the ground rules was that no nation in the exercise could collect intelligence on any other participating nation. No one was kick out but ... one nation or person was "warned". ...(cut)... --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 376, 11 December 2000, p. 34 SIERRA LEONE BRITS ALLEGEDLY ARMED BOTH SIDES Tim Spicer, the former chief executive of the British mercenary company, Sandline International, which broke a UN arms embargo when it shipped 30 tons of weapons to Sierra Leone in 1998, has dismissed as "absolute rubbish" allegations made by a former South African military intelligence officer, Johan van Zyl, that the security firm for which van Zyl worked, Lifeguard, had supplied weapons, (including rocket-propelled grenades, mortar bombs, and mines) to Sierra Leone rebel organizations. Lifeguard, which was contracted by the British mining company, Branch Energy, to provide protection for its diamond mining operations in the West African country, is a sister company of Sandline. If Mr. van Zyl's allegations are correct, it means that two British-registered companies in the "security business", which shared a suite of offices on the fashionable King's Road in Chelsea, west London, armed both sides in the Sierra Leone civil war. Sandline claims it had full support from the British government to help the ousted regime stage a counter-coup against the RUF/AFRC rebel alliance, while van Zyl, who was killed in November 1999 in a traffic accident on the main Johanesburg-Pretoria road, told friends that the rebels had been armed by Lifeguard, in July 1997, as part of a deal which would allow Branch Energy to continue mining without being attacked. ...(cut)... ---------------------------------------------