INTELLIGENCE ISSN 1245-2122 N. 67 New Series, 22 September 1997 Publishing since 1980 Editor Olivier Schmidt (email intelligence-adi@wanadoo.fr; web http://www.blythe.org/Intelligence) TABLE OF CONTENTS, N. 67, 22 September 1997 FRONTPAGE IRAN - KHATAMI PUSHED TO SHUT DOWN RADICALS' A-BOMB p.1 TECHNOLOGY AND TECHNIQUES RANK XEROX-CIA SPY PHOTOCOPIER FOR SOVIETS & FRIENDS p.2 COLD WAR CLOUD-SEEDING EXPERIMENTS DISCLOSED p.3 DIVING DEEPER AND DEEPER WITH STRANGE MIXTURES p.4 SANDIA - From Radar Images to Rubber Maps. p.5 SATELLITES - New Radar and SIGINT Technology. p.6 INFOWAR - New Kind of "Non-Profit" Information Warfare. p.7 AIRSHIPS - "Easy Target" and Psychological Warfare. p.8 CHIPS - Fingerprint "Key" Smart Chip. p.9 VIRUSES - Infected Word Document Files. p.10 PROLIFERATION - Vela & "The One That Didn't Get Away". p.11 PEOPLE U.S.A. - WILLIAM J. ESPOSITO p.12 NORTHERN IRELAND - JOHN SEMPLE p.13 BULGARIA - AHMED "SAVA" DOGAN p.14 SOUTH AFRICA - MARTHINUS VAN SCHALKWYK p.15 U.S.A. - Ian Oxman. p.16 U.S.A. - Theodore Hall. p.17 ROMANIA - Pavel Abraham. p.18 AZERBAIJAN - Tengiz Suleymanov. p.19 KAZAKHSTAN - Akezhan Kazhegeldin. p.20 PERU - Leonor La Rosa Bustamante. p.21 AGENDA COMING EVENTS THROUGH 25 OCTOBER 1997 p.22 INTELLIGENCE AROUND THE WORLD U.S.A. - CIA50 A LONG TIME COMING p.23 CONGRESS BARELY AVOIDS BLOODY CODE SHOWDOWN p.24 "Military Coup" at AFIO. p.25 Record Economic Espionage Case. p.26 Charges Dropped against Khobar Towers Suspect. p.27 Moving Desks at NSA, DIA & State. p.28 GREAT BRITAIN - GUNS INTO PLOUGHSHARES NOT JUST NOW p.29 Antenna Growth at Menwith Hill. p.30 NORTHERN IRELAND - INFORMERS OUT IN THE COLD p.31 FEAR OF WORDS p.32 IRELAND - EXTRADITION PACKAGE FOR THE WAREHOUSE MAN p.33 FRANCE - SPY CHIEF NAMES IN THE PRESS ... OR NOT p.34 Something Wrong with "Elephant". p.35 DGSE Finds New Lodgings & New Jobs. p.36 GERMANY - HAVING YOUR CAKE & EATING IT WITH HELIOS p.37 NETHERLANDS - U.S. SECRET SERVICE KEPT IN THE DARK p.38 WESTERN EUROPE - INVESTIGATION OF BRITISH POLICE p.39 CZECH REPUBLIC - Hard Times at the UZSI. p.40 BULGARIA - Multigroup Branches Out. p.41 GUATEMALA - Security Comes & Goes. p.42 VENEZUELA - "Official" Terror Attacks. p.43 ANGOLA - UNITA's Position Deteroriates Further. p.44 SOUTH AFRICA/SUDAN - Arms Turn Up Elsewhere. p.45 ISRAEL - FLOTILLA 13 TEAM TAKES THE DEEP SIX p.46 All The Bad Guys Aren't Arabs. p.47 LEBANON - Hezbollah's New Outreach Program. p.48 CHINA - Triads & Intelligence Mix Well. p.49 --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 67, 22 September 1997, p. 4 DIVING DEEPER AND DEEPER WITH STRANGE MIXTURES On 9 September, the South Korean navy proudly announced that a seven-man team of military divers had established a record during a rescue training exercise with a 300-meter dive, spending five minutes at that depth in the East Sea. The feat was made possible by "new technology" incorporated in a "Deep Diving System" involving 40 hours accustoming to pressures in a "Deck Decompression Chamber" (DDC) before being transferred (always under pressure) to a "personal transfer capsule" which is lowered by crane to a depth of 300 meters. Divers cannot work for long at that depth -- usually not more than 15 minutes -- before being obliged to reenter the "personal transfer capsule" to be hoisted (under pressure) and put back in the DDC for lengthy decompression. The whole operation takes 13 days, meaning that it is only viable for the military and operations involving "national security" which are not limited by cost- efficiency considerations. Indeed, the world's military -- and associated scientists -- are about the only institution involved in deep diving, and the South Korean announcement is not entirely true. In April last year, we announced that the Russian Joint Stock Company Stampo, in Orekhovo-Zuyevo, near Moscow, had developed a diving suit with a special compression vest which neutralizes hydrostatic pressure, allowing a diver to work at ease at depths of 500 meters (INT, n. 34 11). The U.S. and French military don't seem to like to make public announcements, but they have been working together and are far ahead of the Russians and the South Koreans. They discovered "rapture of the deep" or narcosis in the 1930s when diving below 40 meters with only compressed air. The U.S. Navy added helium to the mix and its divers reached 150 meters in the 1960s and discovered the High-Pressure Nervous Syndrome (HPNS) which is more or less the inverse of narcosis and involves serious reduction of nerve activity and stupor. This threshold was crossed in the 1970s at Duke University Medical Center using "Trimix" with 5-10 percent nitrogen and an oxygen-helium mixture. In 1981 with Trimix, divers reached a pressure equivalent to 686 meters at Duke in an experimental chamber. Then complications developed due to the great density of gas at that pressure which renders breathing difficult. That is when the U.S. Navy and the French "Royale" (navy) got together, with the French company Comex, to replaced nitrogen in Trimix with hydrogen. During that period, secret French underwater deep diving experiments in the South Pacific were "shadowed" by Greenpeace's flagship, the "Rainbow Warrior", thus contributing to French intelligence's suspicion concerning that ship. Later, in 1989, French military divers were able to dive to 500 meters, then 520 and 534 meters in the ocean using the new mixture. In 1993, a world-record depth in an experimental chamber was established at 701 meters. Of course, none of this scientific and military activity is economically "viable" since, at such great depths, divers can only operate slowly and just for a few minutes. Besides this restriction on activity, one must add seven days' compression before the dive and 30 days' decompression after the dive. Few private companies are going to pay an expensive specialists to "sit in the tank" for 37 days in exchange for a few minutes work. Moreover, few firms have access to the "dual-technology" equipment necessary for such dives which is sold under very strict conditions by the U.S. company;, Viking, suppliers of the U.S. Special Forces, or by the French company, Realisations et Conseils Hyperbares (CRH), which furnishes the French "Nageurs de Combat". --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 67, 22 September 1997, p. 25 U.S.A. - "Military Coup" at AFIO. "Intelligence" has often mentioned the encroachment of Pentagon military services on formerly CIA prerogatives including imagery intelligence and human intelligence. The latest "military coup" seems to have been at the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), traditionally dominated by the CIA "old boy" network. "Intelligence" has learned that the AFIO is getting a new executive director "because the board is going in a new direction". In clear, this means Roy Jonkers, a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force, will replace David D. Whipple, a former CIA chief of station and covert operations specialist. The "hail & farewell" ceremony will take place after the AFIO convention on 16-18 October in Falls Church, Virginia. --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 67, 22 September 1997, p. 34 FRANCE SPY CHIEF NAMES IN THE PRESS ... OR NOT A few specialists, who read "Intelligence" carefully, noticed the error in the title of our article on the new director of French DST internal security, Jean-Jacques Pascal (see "France - Jean-Jacques Lionel"; INT, n. 66 12). The fact that Mr. Pascal is known for his French Socialist Party sympathies, and that he was appointed by the cabinet of Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, led these few careful readers to the conclusion that they had discovered either an "insider joke" or a wonderful Freudian slip. To no avail "Intelligence" has explained that it was an unintentional layout error, and we hope Mr. Pascal has no hard feelings about our mistake. Nonetheless, we are sure that his "Socialist" career will not suffer because of our error. And now that the new Socialist government is back from summer vacation and thoroughly in control, one can legitimately ask why the name of another senior intelligence and security official with "Socialist" experience, Yves Barbot, hasn't surfaced in the press or circulated in halls of government. The last time we mentioned Mr. Barbot was in November 1996 when, under the previous conservative government, he had a cushy job, since 1993, as boss of the French Office Francais d'Exportation de Material Aeronautique (OFEMA) military aviation export agency (INT, n. 48 39). In September 1996, he had also become head of the Societe Francaise de Materiels d'Armement (SOFMA) land armament export agency as part of a plan to "rationalize" the OFEMA and SOFMA into one organization. But Mr. Barbot's appetite went beyond that and he also wanted to swallow up the Interior Ministry's Societe Francaise d'Exportation de Materiels et Services du Ministere de l'Interieur (SOFREMI; INT, n. 25 2) which exports French police equipment and expertise. In the past, Barbot was head of Interpol in 1991-1992 and Prefect of the Poitou-Charentes district at the same time. He was supposed to become security advisor to Prime Minister Edith Cresson in May 1991 but lost the job to faithful Socialist Gerard Cureau because Barbot's name was still associated with that of former right-wing interior minister, Charles Pasqua, who had appointed Barbot head of the French Police Nationale in 1987. But then, a few months later, his Socialist credentials must have improved immensely, since he replaced Cureau as the prime minister's security advisor. It seems that Ms. Cresson didn't get along with Cureau and personally imposed the choice of Barbot who was prefect of the district she represented as an MP. Barbot kept that job for only a few months, and by the summer of 1992 had been appointed to the cushy job of president of the Societe du Tunnel sous le Mont Blanc which is reserved for those who have "served the State well". He left Interpol in December 1992. With a new "Socialist" director at the DST, it would be appropriate to have a "Socialist" director of French DGSE foreign intelligence, particularly since a search for someone to replace Jacques Dewatre has been on for well over a year (INT; n. 40 1, n. 47 38, & n. 66 12). But there is a major problem: a new DGSE director must have both Socialist and conservative credentials. A "logical" solution to this problem would seem to be Mr. Barbot, but apparently the French mainstream press has been warned away from mentioning that possibility. It seems that Mr. Barbot's "potential" candidacy as DGSE director may have run into serious problems related to his nonchalant handling of highly classified documents about which no one wants to talk. --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 67, 22 September 1997, p. 46 ISRAEL FLOTILLA 13 TEAM TAKES THE DEEP SIX We have previously warned that the Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon had "graduated" to the status of a true guerrilla warfare organization, the first such Arab group in the Middle East (see "Hezbollah First Real Arab Guerrillas"; INT, n. 60 38). The meaning of that warning became clear on 5 September when a team of the elite Israeli Flotilla 13 naval commando unit was decimated in a well-laid Hezbollah trap. At least 11 Israeli Flotilla 13 members were killed and another is missing following the predawn raid and ensuing three-hour fire-fight near the hilltop village of Insariyeh, about halfway between the southern ports of Sidon and Tyre. It is the biggest Israeli military death toll in more than a decade and will definitely cause devastating "blow back" within the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his "hothead" counselors who recommended such an attack. The Israeli operation came about nine hours after a triple suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed seven people, including the bombers, and injured about 200 others. Although Hamas claimed responsibility for the suicide attack, the Israeli attack reportedly targeted a Hezbollah leader and may have been planned beforehand. According to local Lebanese press reports, the Hezbollah carefully laid the trap by having one of its leaders pay a visit to the area, knowing that Israeli intelligence would soon learn of his presence. Although he is closer to the Amal militia, the deputy spiritual leader of Lebanon's 1.2 million Shiite Muslims, sheik Abdul-Amir Kabalan, has a house in Insariyeh, according to the local media, and may have been the target of the raid. Apparently Israeli intelligence was able to verify that the targeted leader was on the spot to within an hour or two of the arrival of the Flotilla 13 team. What Israeli intelligence didn't or couldn't verify was that Hezbollah and the local Amal group were lying in wait and had prepared a minefield into which the Flotilla 13 team walked. Once cornered, the team called in Israeli helicopter gunships and gunboats but to no avail. The Lebanese army was apparently on the spot and ready for action. It lit up the helicopters with night flares and attacked the Israelis with heavy machinegun fire. COMMENT -- Not only was the operation a total military failure with the complete loss of the commando unit. It also reveals that Hezbollah, Amal and Lebanese intelligence are able to coordinate without Mossad knowing what's happening. In also means, at least in this case, that the three Arab services probably knew who was informing the Israelis on the presence of the Hezbollah chief, used that trusted Israeli agent to intoxicate Mossad and caused a major military setback for Israel. With such insecurity floating over possible Israeli actions in Lebanon, it would be very improbably that Israel resorts to such operations again in the near future. This also means that the Netanyahu government is deprived of its most highly-prized form of reprisal against Palestinians: deadly commando raids. Finally, this means that next fire-fights will probably be in the cabinet of the prime minister itself and in the Israeli intelligence services as "scores are evened". --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 67, 22 September 1997, p. 49 CHINA - Triads & Intelligence Mix Well. Wong Man-Fong, a former secretary general at the New China News Agency (Xinhua), which served as a Chinese intelligence station in Hong Kong, stated in May that Xinhua officials had established contact with the main Triads, such as the Sun Yee On, the 14 K, the Wo Shing Wo and the Wo Hop To, and asked them not to stir up trouble during the handover of Hong Kong. Some Western intelligence analysts expected the Triads to flee Hong Kong before the handover, but they must not have been aware the "mellow mixture" Triads and Chinese intelligence have developed over the years. In exchange for the monopoly on illegal immigration and other traffic, the Triads can efficiently "police" the back streets of cities and expanding slums. But by bestowing even this slight mantel of legitimacy on the Triads, Chinese authorities, and especially security and intelligence, will be increasingly exposed to and confronted with corruption in their own ranks. Once corruption has a foothold, foreign investments will flee and China will have lost its Hong Kong bet. Earlier this month, the Gonganbu public security ministry warned against the spread of the Triads to Beijing, not to mention other major Chinese cities, the Central Committee's Zhongyan Diaochabu investigations bureau and State Security's Guoanbu Waiguoju international department. ---------------------------------------------