SUMMARY VERSION INTELLIGENCE ISSN 1245-2122 N. 96 New Series, 5 April 1999 Every Two to Three Weeks Next Issue on 19 April 1999 Publishing since 1980 Editor Olivier Schmidt (email intelligence-adi@wanadoo.fr; web http://www.blythe.org/Intelligence) TABLE OF CONTENTS, N. 96, 5 April 1999 FRONT PAGE KOSOVO - THE WEST'S OWN BIG "LITTLE WAR" p.1 TECHNOLOGY AND TECHNIQUES MELISSA'S INTERNET SECURITY WAKE-UP CALL p.2 REAL OR VIRTUAL HACKER ATTACK ON BRIT SATELLITE p.3 TECHNOLOGY & TECHNIQUES - Open Source Intelligence. p.4 HACKERS, POLICE, SECRECY. PEOPLE USA - KEVIN MITNICK p.5 GREAT BRITAIN - DAVID LOWRY p.6 NORTHERN IRELAND - GERRY ADAMS p.7 PEOPLE - Open Source Intelligence. p.8 USA, SLOVENIA, RUSSIA, ISRAEL, LEBANON. AGENDA COMING EVENTS THROUGH 15 MAY 1999 p.9 INTELLIGENCE AROUND THE WORLD USA - CHINA SPY FRENZY WINDS DOWN TO HARD WORK p.10 USA - Open Source Intelligence. p.11 CODES, CIA, FBI, SECRET SERVICE, PENTAGON, STATE DEPARTMENT, INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE, BORDER PATROL, DRUGS. GREAT BRITAIN - TROUBLES WITH BOOKS ON THE "TROUBLES" p.12 NORTHERN IRELAND - LOYALIST FRAGMENTATION & COLLUSION p.13 FRANCE - SOCIOLOGY OF DIPLOMATIC ESPIONAGE p.14 WESTERN EUROPE - Open Source Intelligence. p.15 GREAT BRITAIN, IRELAND, GERMANY, NETHERLANDS, ITALY, SPAIN, WESTERN EUROPE. RUSSIA - A "Media Op" Against Primakov. p.16 RUSSIA - Leveling Swiss Accounts. p.17 EASTERN EUROPE - Open Source Intelligence. p.18 HUNGARY, SLOVAKIA, RUSSIA, CHECHENIA, AZERBAIJAN. LATIN AMERICA - Open Source Intelligence. p.19 MEXICO, GUATEMALA, PANAMA, COLOMBIA, PARAGUAY, ARGENTINA. CONGO - BRITS OUT (BUT NOT DOWN) IN CENTRAL AFRICA p.20 SOUTH AFRICA - UN AGAINST CRIMINAL INTEL "BRAIN DRAIN" p.21 ZIMBABWE - US "MISSIONARIES" ARMED TO THE TEETH p.22 AFRICA - Open Source Intelligence. p.23 SOUTH AFRICA, KENYA, NIGERIA. MIDDLE EAST - Open Source Intelligence. p.24 TURKEY, EGYPT, PALESTINE, ISRAEL, LEBANON, IRAQ, IRAN. AUSTRALIA - ASIO'S 2000 OLYMPICS "WISH LIST" p.25 ASIA - Open Source Intelligence. p.26 INDIA, CHINA, JAPAN, NORTH KOREA, TAIWAN, PHILIPPINES, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND. --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 96, 5 April 1999, p. 1 KOSOVO THE WEST'S OWN BIG "LITTLE WAR" What a welcome to NATO's first Eastern European members -- Poland, the Czech Republic & Hungary -- getting them immediately involved in a war against a recent ally and, for Hungary, a next door neighbor. The only tougher "initiation ceremony" one could think of would be a war on their own soil. This time it's in Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo. ...(cut)... As usual during a war, there have been threats and "media ops". The press has speculated that Serbia could invade Macedonia, and British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, warned Serbia against trying to foment a coup in Montenegro against moderate President, Milo Djukanovic. Russia, of course, is no "green- horn" in this field. Russian Duma Chairman, Gennadii Seleznev, stated, on 26 March, that he was "sure that [Russia] would offer military assistance to Yugoslavia." Neither the Russian nor foreign media took this claim seriously. Nonetheless, the office of Liberal Democratic Party leader, Vladimir Zhirinovskii, who had announced earlier that he was ordering charter flights to dispatch volunteers to Serbia, has been converted into a mini-recruitment center for Russian citizens wanting to volunteer to fight NATO. General Anatolii Kvashnin, Russian Armed Forces Chief of Staff, stated that Russia is prepared to exchange intelligence data with the Serbs at their request. According to Russian reports, instructors in combat, reconnaissance and sabotage training from Chechnya have recently moved to Kosovo to train the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and combat the Serbs. According to the Russian reports, the Kosovo conflict is not essentially a religious one since Albanians are both Christian and Muslim. The Chechen participation is a continuation of the fight against Russia and its traditional ally, Serbia. According to the US Department of State, neither the KLA nor any of the Chechen groups are considered to be terrorist organizations. ...(cut)... --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 96, 5 April 1999, p. 3 REAL OR VIRTUAL HACKER ATTACK ON BRIT SATELLITE Officers from the Scotland Yard Computer Crimes Unit (CCU), assisted by specialists from the Communications Electronic Security Group (CESG), the vetting division of Britian's Cheltenham-based SIGINT organization, GCHQ, are investigating the activities of a group of computer hackers in the south of England who allegedly hijacked one of Britain's Skynet military communications satellites controlled by the Royal Air Force (RAF) from ground stations in Great Britain. According to USAF sources, the hackers breached the ground station link to a geostationary satellite over Scandanavia in late January and reprogrammed the control system, effecting instructions from ground control and altering channels used by Skynet which provides raw intelligence data from global conflicts ranging from Kosovo to central Africa. ...(cut)... --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 96, 5 April 1999, p. 6 GREAT BRITAIN - DAVID LOWRY A former high-profile member of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in the late 1960s, Liverpool-born Professor David Lowry was arrested following a raid on the offices of his international telemarketing company, Paramount Portugal Consulting, but he was acting as an undercover agent in the FBI investigation of serious international crime, according to two former FBI agents, Craig Heesch and Don Rogers. Both worked closely with Prof. Lowry and have testified on his behalf. Following his arrest, Prof. Lowry, who studied law at Queen's University in Belfast and later taught international banking and company law at Harvard University, was held without charge or bail for a year in Lisbon's Caxias Prison, once the base of former dictator Antonio Salazar's PIDE secret police. ...(cut)... --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 96, 5 April 1999, p. 10 USA CHINA SPY FRENZY WINDS DOWN TO HARD WORK In our preceding issue, we mentioned that Republicans are politically savvy and know that the American public prefers Clinton to Republicans on domestic issues but prefers Republicans to Clinton on foreign issues. So away with Monica Lewinsky and "Zippergate" and in with a diabolic China nuclearized by the Clinton administration (see "USA - Anti- China Nuclear Frenzy Replaces Monica Headlines", INT, n. 95 10). The "frenzy" has died down and has also been pushed off the front pages by the war in the Balkans. Nonetheless, it remains a "live and active" issue. ...(cut)... Some specialists, such as Gary Samore, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Nonproliferation and Export Controls at the National Security Council, are worried that if China acquired designs of the W-88 miniature nuclear warhead, as suggested by press reports, the resulting Chinese warhead development (achieving similar yields at lower weights) could substantially aid its nuclear weapons modernization program. Samore express this view during a 17 March briefing at the Carnegie Endowment Center. But despite national media focus on security at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico Republican Senator, Pete Domenici, stated, on 24 March, that it's still not known how, or where, China might have obtained American nuclear-weapons secrets. Moreover Domenici questioned how useful W-88 design information would be to China's still- developing nuclear weapons program, stating that "the W-88 is extremely advanced, the product of 50 years of our best scientific and engineering know-how." According to Domenici, "in many ways, China's nuclear-weapons program is not capable of utilizing the W-88 design." Although Domenici raises some interesting points, one should note, in all fairness, that he is senator for the state in which the Los Alamos lab is located and doesn't want to lose any votes. ...(cut)... --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 96, 5 April 1999, p. 12 GREAT BRITAIN TROUBLES WITH BOOKS ON THE "TROUBLES" Once again the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) has issued a "D Notice" to prevent the publication of a book about Military Intelligence in Ireland and the role of 14th Int. agent, Brian Nelson, in the murder of Belfast solicitor, Patrick Finucane, in February 1989. The book by former "Daily Mirror" journalist, Nicholas Davies, is entitled "Ten Thirty Three" (Nelson's army intelligence code). The MoD has refused to answer questions from "Intelligence" explaining why the book was banned, although we had learned from other sources that the army personnel identified in the book as being part of the conspiracy, have been named in the British/Irish Rights Watch report on Mr. Finucane's murder, copies of which were given to the Dublin and London governments last February. Major Michael Devlin, MoD spokesman, confirmed that the injunction "came into effect on 23 February 1998 and was replaced on 10 December 1998 by permanent undertakings given by Nicholas Davies not to disclose information without express prior written consent" of the MoD. ...(cut)... --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 96, 5 April 1999, p. 14 FRANCE SOCIOLOGY OF DIPLOMATIC ESPIONAGE Doctoral theses in sociology are usually rather boring works that interest only a few specialists active in a particular field. That is not the case with Meredith Kingston de Leusse's 1996 thesis on the sociology of ambassadors and diplomacy, "Etre Diplomate - Elements pour une Etude de l'Activite d'Ambassadeur" (Universite Paris I). She recently published a book, "Diplomate - Une Sociologie des Ambassadeurs" (1998, L'Harmattan, Paris, isbn 2 7384 7119 6, 231 pp.), based on her thesis. The first chapter is a historical review of the development of the role of diplomat. The second chapter describes the institution of modern diplomacy. The third chapter concerns diplomatic formalities and "professional sociability". The fourth chapter examines the diplomatic personality and its relationship to the duties of a diplomat. The fifth chapter describes the recent decline of the role of diplomats. The final sixth chapter deals with the limits of diplomatic authority, the weakness of diplomatic immunity and the perils of being a diplomat. ...(cut)... --------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 96, 5 April 1999, p. 16 RUSSIA - A "Media Op" Against Primakov. Just when Russian Prime Minister, Yevgeny Primakov, got ready to show Russian support for Serbia, a well-known US reporter with good US intelligence community contacts, Seymour Hersh, published a damaging story about Primakov in the weekly, "New Yorker". Unsubstantiated claims by Hersh coming from US intelligence haven't always "washed out", as, for example, in his recent book on the Kennedy administration. It is therefore difficult to believe his 28 March claim that high-level American intelligence sources have proof that Primakov took a payoff from Iraq in exchange for strategic materials from Moscow to build up its nuclear weapons stockpile. Supposedly, Primakov received a $800,000 wire transfer in November 1997, according to a British GCHQ electronic intercept. One should remember that Primakov, before becoming prime minister, was foreign minister, and, before that, was head of Russian SVR foreign intelligence and is an old KGB hand. It is extremely unlikely that an intelligence specialist such as Primakov, probably quite familiar with GCHQ, NSA and CIA capabilities, would ever let a large sum of money be explicitly sent to him. ...(cut)... --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 96, 5 April 1999, p. 20 CONGO BRITS OUT (BUT NOT DOWN) IN CENTRAL AFRICA The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has "totally rejected allegations" that five British military and diplomatic officials, expelled from the Democratic Republic of Congo in mid-March, were spies. The FCO maintains the myth that the men were simply reviewing arrangements for the evacuation of British embassy personnel and between 100 and 200 British nationals, in the event of a total breakdown of law and order. According to the Kinshasa newspaper, "Le Phare", the group of five were arrested near Ndolo military airbase, carrying maps with troop locations circled and main routes marked. Local sources also claim the men had illegally entered a Congolese army camp carrying "sophisticated photographic equipment" which was also confiscated after the arrest. ...(cut)... --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 96, 5 April 1999, p. 21 SOUTH AFRICA UN AGAINST CRIMINAL INTEL "BRAIN DRAIN" South Africa had the dubious honor of being recently ranked the 14th most risky place to do business in the world, according to the London-based Merchant International Group study of 45 emerging markets focused on crime, corruption, fraud and extremism. According to press reports, the country will likely become even more risky because of a recent rash of resignations by Justice Ministry whites who fear they have no future under a black government. Already, the prosecution of top commercial crooks has virtually collapsed because of the departures of senior investigators and lawyers quitting for better pay in the private sector and from fear of affirmative action that has left cases involving billions of rand untried. The government reportedly knows about the problem and is busy recruiting replacements. Jan Swanepoel, head of the fraud squad, stated that his department had suffered a hemorrhage of experienced lawyers that has made it extremely difficult to bring the most important cases to court. The unit's staff of 41 lawyers has dwindled to 17 and the new staff must still be trained before taking on serious cases. "Last year we lost eight police officers from the Pretoria team and four lawyers, three of whom each had 20 years experience ... you cannot replace that experience", according to Swanepoel. ...(cut)... --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 96, 5 April 1999, p. 22 ZIMBABWE US "MISSIONARIES" ARMED TO THE TEETH The local press made no qualms about stating that "American 'men of cloth' turn out to be mercenaries" concerning the three US citizens recently arrested in Zimbabwe (INT, n. 95 23). As fighting in Congo's eight-month civil war intensified, the three solidly-built Americans, who call themselves Christian missionaries, loaded their pickup and headed south from the Congo to Zimbabwe where they had rented a house in Harare. Arriving at the airport in Harare, they parked their green-and- white GM Sierra before lining up to board a flight to Switzerland en route home to their sect, the Harvestfield Ministries, in Indianapolis, Indiana. But a metal detector spoiled the missionaries' trip by going off and spotting a handgun in a coat pocket. The police soon found more guns in the luggage and two semi-automatic assault rifles, 10 disassembled shotguns and sniper rifles, one machine gun, 19 handguns, 70 knives, silencers, telescopic sights, ammunition, camouflage paint and two-way radios in secret compartments of the pickup. ...(cut)... --------------------------------------------- Intelligence, N. 96, 5 April 1999, p. 25 AUSTRALIA ASIO'S 2000 OLYMPICS "WISH LIST" The timing seemed important: Just a week before parliament was to consider a bill seriously expanding surveillance powers of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) internal security service, the press announced that "according to an Australian intelligence organization [the Defense Signals Directorate (DSD) electronic surveillance service], the computer networks controlling Australia's vital services are vulnerable to attack by hackers, terrorists and foreign powers." The first such warning from Australian intelligence reportedly came in 1997, but now -- the timing is important -- the Sydney 2000 Olympics are looming and the Australian government wants to minimize risks. Of course, the DSD report was classified, but the published summary was all that was needed for the press and the Australian government to move into action. ...(cut)... ---------------------------------------------