The UK Government's failure to get former MI5 agent David Shayler extradited from France is a blow to its efforts to keep Official Secrets secret. It is the latest in a line of high-profile cases in which the government's will has been thwarted.

The 1985 Ponting case was in some ways the landmark Official Secrets case. Clive Ponting, who had worked at the Ministry of Defence, walked free from court after a jury cleared him of breaking the Official Secrets Act. It was hailed as a victory for the jury system. The judge had indicated that the jury should convict him. Ponting had been charged with leaking an internal MoD document concerning the General Belgrano, the Argentinian cruiser which British forces sank during the 1982 Falklands War, killing 360 people.

The Official Secrets Act was drawn into further controversy in 1985. Former MI5 officer Cathy Massiter told a Channel 4 television documentary that MI5 had been illegally bugging the telephones of politicians, human rights campaigners, and pressure groups like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Peter Wright's allegations dated back to the 60s The high water mark of Lady Thatcher's Official Secrets' battle came in 1987 with the publication of Spycatcher by former MI5 officer Peter Wright. The book alleged that in the 1960s, MI5 conspired to discredit Labour prime minister Harold Wilson.

Former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson was sentenced to a year in prison in 1997 for passing secrets to an Australian publisher. He was released after six months and went to his native New Zealand. Earlier this year he was arrested in Paris with David Shayler, but was released because of insufficient evidence. An injunction was placed on Tomlinson preventing him from further breaching the Act. He says he intends to write a book on MI6 which would be a "much better read than Spycatcher".

However a rare success for government enforcement of the Official Secrets Act was the conviction of Sarah Tisdall . The young Foreign Office clerk leaked to The Guardian newspaper details of when controversial American cruise missiles would be arriving on British soil. She was found guilty and sentenced to six months, although she only served three.
(full text)

MI6 plot against Gaddafi "cost other lives"
By Richard Norton-Taylor in London ---
The Sidney Morning Herald, 07/08/98

An attempt by Britain's foreign intelligence service, MI6, to kill Libya's leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, two years ago led to the deaths of several bystanders, it has been claimed.

The allegation was made by Mr David Shayler, the former intelligence officer who is being held in a Paris jail pending extradition to Britain to face charges under the Official Secrets Act. The claim was reported in Wednesday's New York Times.    (full text)

BBC, Timeline ---

SHAYLERGATE Ex MI5 officer David Shayler's website

Paris, Nov. 18, 1998 -- A French court Wednesday freed former British spy David Shayler from a Paris prison after ruling he should not be extradited to London to face charges of divulging information about Britain's secret services. London had asked France three months ago to return Shayler to Britain, where he has been accused of violating the Official Secrets Act by disclosing secrets about the MI5 counter-intelligence security service in media interviews.
The appeals court said it opposed Shayler's extradition because his legal woes in Britain were motivated by politics, an improper motivation under French law.
Shayler has accused Britain of supporting a botched plot to kill Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in February 1996 with a car bomb. He said Muslim extremists placed the device under the wrong car, killing several bystanders. Britain has denied the charge.
Shayler has also alleged that three Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombings on the British mainland could have been prevented if his former bosses had been less bureaucratic. He further embarrassed Britain by alleging that MI5 was tipped off in advance about a 1994 bomb attack on the Israeli embassy in London in which 13 people were wounded, but did nothing to try to prevent it.
Both the MI5 and Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, popularly known as MI6, have recently been embarrassed by alleged revelations about their shortcomings by former agents.
(full text)

OTTAWA - An intelligence officer has been fired from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service after her lesbian lover revealed classified details to the media about what she claimed was the spy agency's role in harbouring an alleged Middle-East terrorist.
Chantal-Annick Tremblay, 34, a 10-year veteran CSIS officer based in Quebec City, was fired on Wednesday after an internal investigation concluded that she could not be trusted to handle secret information and had failed to prevent her partner, Mona Naess, from talking to the media.
Ms. Naess spoke to the National Post and Radio Canada in May about an Arab woman she said had been a terrorist and had recently acted as a covert agent for German intelligence
In a letter of dismissal, Ward Elcock, the CSIS director, accused Ms. Tremblay of co-operating with Ms. Naess, a Quebec City real estate agent and mother of three children.
"The inquiry revealed that you did not take your responsibility to avoid revealing operational information of a delicate nature. In consequence, you put in peril the security of a person," Mr. Elcock wrote. "By being implicated in this affair, you did not respect your oath. I doubt seriously your attitude to being responsible for classified documents. Therefore I am revoking your security clearance . . . and, in consequence, you are fired."
Ms. Tremblay was given $5,563.86 in severance pay.     (Full text)

Two Australian aid workers and a Yugoslav colleague have been convicted of espionage by a Belgrade court and sentenced to jail terms of between four and 12 years. The sentences, including 12 years for Steve Pratt, are subject to appeal. Standing in the front row of the court between black-bereted military police, the three men were sentenced to prison by the court which found them all guilty of spying.
Steve Pratt received a sentence of 12 years, Branko Jelen, a Yugoslav employee of CARE Australia got six years and Peter Wallace four years. However, there was an amendment to the charges because the prosecution failed to prove that Steve Pratt was the organiser of an intelligence operation.

For that reason, Australia's ambassador Chris Lamb says he found the sentence of 12 years against Mr Pratt very harsh.
The presiding judge said that the reason why the men were convicted was that even though they were not involved in a spy network, the information they collected and submitted to CARE Australia included military secrets.
    (Full text)

Senior intelligence officials tell NEWSWEEK that last week Clinton issued a "finding," a highly classified document authorizing the spy agency to begin secret efforts "to find other ways to get at Milosevic," in the words of one official. Two weeks ago Berger secretly briefed members of the House and Senate Intelligence committees about the details of the two-part plan. According to sources who have read the finding, the CIA will train Kosovar rebels in sabotage—age-old tricks like cutting telephone lines, blowing up buildings, fouling gasoline reserves and pilfering food supplies—in an effort to undermine public support for the Serbian leader and damage Yugoslav targets that can't be reached from the air. That much is unsurprising. But the CIA has also been instructed to conduct a cyberwar against Milosevic, using government hackers to tap into foreign banks and, in the words of one U.S. official, "diddle with Milosevic's bank accounts."     (Full text)

LATEST SABOTAGE NEWS    LATEST HACKER NEWS

From Ben Macintyre in Washington
May 11 1999
The Times

President Clinton apologised publicly to China yesterday for the bombing of its Belgrade embassy, but insisted that an "isolated tragic mistake" caused by faulty CIA information should be set against deliberate "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo.

Critics pointed out that the CIA's lack of information on Belgrade stands in sharp contrast to evidence that Chinese spies have been plundering American nuclear secrets for more than a decade. The US has long expressed concern that China has provided nuclear weapons or missile technology to Pakistan and Iran, fears compounded by China's suspension of diplomatic relations on arms control and international security after the embassy bombing.     (Full text)

SEE ALSO: Smart bombs and targets

Chinese Espionage: A Growing Scandal
May 13, 1999, © APB Multimedia, Inc.
The recently uncovered theft of top-secret nuclear information by a Communist Chinese operative is just one small piece of a decades-old intelligence scheme by Beijing, say experts. An APBNews.com multimedia Special Report explores what may have been stolen, how those thefts happened and who made them possible. Plus: Interactive timeline, photo essay and inventory of China's arsenal.     (Full text)

Washington: Jack G. Downing, a noted intelligence operative who served as CIA station chief in Beijing and Moscow, will step down in July as deputy director for operations after spending the last two years trying to rebuild the CIA's deeply troubled clandestine service.
Intelligence sources disclosed Downing's impending retirement and described it as part of an orderly transfer of power at the Directorate of Operations, where he will be replaced by his deputy, James L. Pavitt.
Having served two tours of duty in Moscow and Beijing, Downing, 59, first retired from the agency in 1995 but was talked out of retirement by Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet in August 1997. At the time, Downing committed to staying for two years, officials said.

Pavitt, 53, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Missouri, joined the CIA in 1973 as a career trainee and served as a clandestine case officer and Directorate of Operations official in Europe, Asia and at CIA headquarters. His current title is associate deputy director for operations. Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Washington Post     (Full text)

      Washington, 4. April, 1999 - One senior U.S. official said spy satellites, after focusing almost exclusively on Yugoslav air defenses and other military targets, are now helping to document village atrocities and the movement of refugees in Kosovo. Another official said a U.S. interagency task force is being briefed at the start of each day by intelligence officials using satellite imagery to estimate the mounting refugee crisis inside Kosovo and along its borders.
      If concentration camps have been set up inside Kosovo, intelligence experts said, KH-11 spy satellites, U-2 spy planes and Predator drones would have no trouble capturing such images. Indeed, KH-11 satellites are reported to be capable of distinguishing objects as small as six inches wide, meaning they are easily capable of photographing large and relatively small clusters of people.
      Patrick Eddington, a former CIA photo interpreter, said he had no doubt that U.S. intelligence was busy ''trying to get a sense of how many villages have been torched throughout Kosovo - they'll certainly be able to do it in the next couple of days, given the weather.''     (Full text)

NEW YORK (AP) - An upcoming book by a former arms inspector says American spies were placed on U.N. weapons inspection teams in Iraq a year after the Persian Gulf war, The New York Times reported today.
The book by former arms inspector Scott Ritter, due out in April, concurs with Iraqi allegations that the early inspection teams were rife with U.S. spies. It says the CIA worked with the United Nations to coordinate the inspections.

January 8, 1999

PARIS (Reuters) - United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq had intelligence-sharing deals with five nations including the United States but not France or Russia, former inspector Scott Ritter was quoted as saying Friday. Ritter told the French daily Liberation the United Nations Special Commission charged with eliminating Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction had made agreements to provide the five countries with information it collected in return for the sharing of their own intelligence. (full text)

FOX NEWS January 6, 1999

WASHINGTON — Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter Wednesday defended U.N. Special Commission chief Richard Butler and rejected published reports that U.S intelligence agents used the U.N. body to spy on Iraq.
Asked to comment on two U.S. newspaper reports that U.S. intelligence agencies had used UNSCOM, Ritter said: "Absolutely not. Our job was to find out how (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction — and let's remember he has weapons of mass destruction (and) he is not turning them over to the United Nations — and the executive chairman Richard Butler authorized me and other inspectors to carry out operations to find these weapons.'' (full text)

LONDON - The man accused of orchestrating the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa operates a terrorist network out of Albania that has infiltrated other parts of Europe, The Sunday Times reported. The newspaper quoted Fatos Klosi, the head of the Albanian intelligence service, as saying a network run by Saudi exile Osama Bin Laden sent units to fight in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Bin Laden is believed to have established an Albanian operation in 1994 after telling the government he headed a wealthy Saudi humanitarian agency wanting to help Albania, the newspaper reported.

Klosi said he believed terrorists had already infiltrated other parts of Europe from bases in Albania. Interpol believes more than 100,000 blank Albanian passports were stolen in riots last year, providing ample opportunity for terrorists to acquire false papers, the newspaper said.
(full text)

For nearly a decade it has been admired as one of the greatest coups of Cold War espionage: the secreting away to the West, sometime after 1989, of the complete original files from East Germany's foreign spy operations, including the true identities of its thousands of agents, most in West Germany and other NATO countries.

While the contents of individual files have surfaced over the years in the media and court cases, their location and the tight control over them have remained a mystery.

Earlier this month, the German government asked the United States government to return the files, arguing that they are German property. It is a request that Berlin has made before. Unofficially, U.S. government sources confirmed that the files are in the possession of the Central Intelligence Agency and are stored at the agency's Langley headquarters.
(full text) (Boston Globe about that)

Search the WWW for related documents:
Harold J. Nicholson Aldrich H. Ames Larry Wu-Tai Chin	Edward Lee Howard Sharon Scranage David H. Barnett

Late last Tuesday evening, a plane departed from Washington with an unusual passenger list: two high-level officials from the CIA bound for Moscow. The delegation's mission was straightforward if somewhat naive: give Russian authorities a chance to limit the diplomatic fallout caused by the arrest of Aldrich Ames, the American accused of spying for Moscow. To do that, the CIA officials insisted, the Russians must honor a previous promise to cut the number of their spies operating in the U.S. by half and identify their top intelligence officers in New York City and San Francisco. Most important, Moscow would have to recall Alexander Lysenko, its chief spook in Washington, voluntarily.

When the delegation returned with word that the Russians had absolutely no intention of cooperating, the Clinton Administration's response was equally straightforward. Sometime this week, another plane will leave Washington with an unusual addition to its passenger list: Lysenko, who was declared persona non grata last Friday and told he had seven days to leave the country.

If such a diplomatic dance seems familiar, that is because last week's theatrics evoked the old mutual acrimony, suspicion and rivalry that divided Russia and America for nearly 45 years. The dispute illustrates how fragile relations still remain between the cold-war rivals - and how simple it would be for those relations to devolve into an equally cold peace. To the extent that it has dramatically underscored the delicacy of the new relationship, the Ames scandal could probably not have come at a worse time for the Clinton Administration: the furor has galvanized opposition to the President's unstinting support for Russian reform at a moment when there are disturbing signs that the bulwark behind that reform, Boris Yeltsin, may be buckling under pressure from hard-line forces. (full text)

Cook gags MI6
in arms probe
The Sunday Times, London --- November 8 1998
Cook gags MI6 in arms probe The head of MI6 has been barred by Robin Cook the foreign secretary from answering questions by MPs over the arms-to-Africa affair writes Nicholas Rufford In a move that has generated accusations.

Second spy silenced
Britain has moved to silence a former secret agent, only days after an exiled MI5 officer was arrested. Richard Tomlinson was served with a High Court injunction on his arrival in New Zealand. It prohibits him from saying anything of his work with MI6, Britain's external intelligence agency. The injunction was jointly applied for by the British and New Zealand Governments. The Foreign Office in London said the measure was intended to prevent Mr Tomlinson from making "damaging disclosures." (full text)

Related BBC Stories 03 Aug 98 | UK Politics Shayler case recalls 'Spycatcher' farce 03 Aug 98 | Talking Point Do we need official secrets? 03 Aug 98 | UK Shayler's lawyer vows to fight extradition

02 Aug 98 | UK Spy lawyer calls for Web protection 01 Aug 98 | UK Former MI5 agent arrested 02 Aug 98 | UK The spy who loved attention 29 Jul 98 | Sci/Tech MI5 site - the secret's out!

CIA head fought Pollard's release
The Record Online - New Jersey --- CIA head fought Pollard s release Thursday November 12 1998 By John Diamond, The Associated Press, Washington, -- CIA Director George Tenet vehemently opposed the release of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.

By Michael J. Sniffen, AP Writer, Oct. 13, 1998, © 1998 AP

Washington (AP) -- The FBI charged a former analyst with the Pentagon's supersecret National Security Agency with selling top defense secrets, including targets for U.S. nuclear weapons, to the Soviet Union during 1988-1991 for $60,000.
The government said the information he delivered to a Soviet KGB agent he knew as "Igor'' included details of U.S. targeting of tactical nuclear weapons in case of a Soviet nuclear attack and of the U.S. military's interception of signals intelligence, the Justice Department said.
The weapons targeting data were in the top-secret U.S. Signals Intelligence Directive 514, dated May 6, 1988, which the government said Boone gave a copy of to the Soviets. It included information on "the targeting of U.S. nuclear weapons against Soviet targets,'' the government quoted Boone as saying.
In addition, he provided the Soviets with U.S. documents describing the movement and capabilities of Soviet forces and about Soviet tactical nuclear weapons, the government said. This included data designated "top secret'' and the even-more-secret "sensitive compartmented information,'' which the government said "could potentially cause grave harm to the national security of the United States.''

The Justice Department gave this account:
Boone volunteered to spy for the Soviets when he walked into their embassy here in 1988. At that time, he got $300 from them in return for a classified document he had written based on decoded NSA intercepts of electronic transmissions by a foreign government.
He arranged to continue spying while he was assigned as a cryptoanalyst for the Army in Augsberg, Germany, during 1988-1991, when he left the service. During those years, he met about four times a year with Igor and was paid $5,000 to $7,000 at each meeting, for a total of more than $60,000.
Before his assignment to Germany, he spent three years as a senior cryptologic traffic analyst at the NSA's headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., in the Washington suburbs.
Boone spent most of his Army service as a signals intelligence analyst, dissecting foreign electronic communications overheard abroad and decoded by the NSA. He had joined the Army in October 1970 and got top-secret clearance within months. He was trained to handle sensitive compartmented information in 1976.

On Sept. 5 of this year, an individual cooperating with the FBI telephoned Boone at his home in Germany and posed as a spy for the SVRR, the Russian successor to the Soviet KGB spy agency. The phony Russian spy said he wanted Boone to resume spying and set up a meeting with him in London on Sept. 12. The government said that at the London meeting, Boone recounted his career as a spy for the KGB, accepted $9,000 cash and agreed to meet again in Virginia this month. (full text)

Washington -- The FBI on Tuesday charged a former analyst at the Pentagon's supersecret National Security Agency with selling top defense secrets, including targets for U.S. nuclear weapons, to the Soviet Union during 1988 to 1991 for $60,000.
    The former employee of the government's top eavesdropping and code-breaking agency, David Sheldon Boone, 46, who has been living in Germany, was arrested after being lured here by an FBI sting in which agents posed as spies for Russia trying to get him to resume spying, the Justice Department said.
    Boone was charged with espionage, which carries a top penalty of life in prison, or death if certain conditions are met.
    The government said the information he delivered to a Soviet KGB agent he knew as ``Igor'' included details of U.S. targeting of tactical nuclear weapons in case of a Soviet nuclear attack and of the U.S. military's interception of signals intelligence, the Justice Department said. (full text)

Related stories: David S. Boone (AP sketch)

Ex-intelligence analyst charged with spying for Soviets - October 13, 1998 FBI agent used sting operation to catch Cold War spy - October 8, 1998 Sources: Former CIA employee charged with espionage - April 3, 1998 CIA turncoat sentenced to 23 years in prison - June 5, 1997 CIA spy pleads not guilty to espionage charges - December 20, 1996 Accused CIA spy pleads not guilty - November 27, 1996

Bloody Strike 'spured me to spy for West
www.novedades.com --- México City May 4 1998, Associated Press, Gdansk Poland -- Former CIA spy Ryszard Kuklinski said Sunday that the military s bloody crackdown on an anti-Communist strike in Poland inspired him to spy for West.
Fired CIA spy accused of
giving secrets to foreign governments
The Detroit News - Apr. 4, 1998

    Washington -- A disgruntled spy fired by the CIA was charged with espionage and extortion Friday, accused of giving highly sensitive information to two foreign governments after the United States refused to pay him more than a half-million dollars. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

    Douglas Fred Groat was accused of having told the governments last spring that U.S. intelligence had broken their secret codes. In 1996, months before he was fired, he had threatened to tell unspecified foreigners what he knew unless he was given the money, according to a federal indictment unsealed Friday.
    Tenet said in a separate statement Friday that Groat last had access to classified information in 1993. The director referred to Groat's "attempted" extortion, and officials familiar with the investigation said the CIA never paid any of the money.
    "The full extent of any damage to U.S. national security has yet to be determined," Tenet said. The arrest, he said, "demonstrates that the U.S. government will not rest in our efforts against those who would commit espionage against the United States nor will we be intimidated by threats of blackmail."
    The code-breaking information alleged to have been disclosed by Groat represents "probably the single most important thing that our intelligence agencies do," said Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, a group that follows the CIA. "Compromising that activity to foreign governments would mean a grievous blow to U.S. intelligence. This is not just a document or a piece of information, this is two entire intelligence enterprises that have been shut down."
    "This case involves highly sensitive classified information that could have a serious impact on the national security of the United States," U.S. Attorney Wilma Lewis said in a statement outside the U.S. Courthouse in Washington.
    Lewis said Groat "participated in classified covert operations aimed at the penetration of cryptographic systems of foreign governments" -- the codes governments use to protect their secret communications. (full text)

The government was sticking to its guns yesterday, insisting it would not bow to Israeli pressure to send home two Israelis being held on suspicion of spying against the National Guard.
"They may be playing their tune, but we will continue with our own. We have laws here, and everyone has to obey them," Justice Minister Nicos Koshis stated.
On Saturday, Israeli nationals Ig'al Damari, 49, and Udi Argov, 37, were remanded in custody for eight days after a police raid of their holiday flat in Zygi uncovered "suspect" documents and scanner devices.
The arrest of Argov and Damari, three days after Weizman had ended an official visit to the island, is developing into a diplomatic incident putting a strain on rocky Cyprus-Israel relations. Defence Minister Yiannakis Omirou has expressed concern over the incident, saying it was "worrying", especially in the context of the Israel-Turkey military pact that provides for exchange of military intelligence. Local daily Philelephtheros yesterday suggested the scanner equipment police had found in the possession of the two suspects was third generation surveillance equipment, adding that this lent weight to claims the two men were Mossad agents. Tel Aviv has not denied that Argov and Damari are Mossad men. Stylianides yesterday said the government was monitoring foreign media reports suggesting the island was "awash" with spies. (full text)

How Israel treated a Cypriot spy
Hellenic Resource Network --- Cyprus Mail News Articles in English 98-11-11 Directory - - From The Cyprus Mail at < > Wednesday November 11 1998. y Martin Hellicar
Friction between Cyprus and Israel over spying suspects is nothing new. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that he believes Cyprus should hand over two Israelis arrested in Zygi four days ago on suspicion of spying against the National Guard. But 20 years ago, Israel turned a deaf ear to pleas from the Cyprus government on behalf of a Cypriot journalist arrested in Israel on suspicion of spying for the Palestinians. The Cyprus government has given no indication it intends to treat Netanyahu's moves any differently now the shoe is on the other foot. Israelis Udi Hargov, 37, and Ig'al Damari, 49, have been remanded in police custody following a Saturday morning police raid on their Zygi holiday flat, which unearthed suspect documents and scanner equipment police believe was used for espionage purposes. In 1978, Cypriot photo-journalist Panayiotis Paschalis, who today works for local paper Haravghi, was found guilty on spying charges by an Israeli court on the basis of seemingly much flimsier evidence.
The journalist believes he was arrested and convicted on trumped-up spying charges because his footage of disturbances in Israel cast the country, and its treatment of the Palestinian minority, in a bad light abroad. Repeated representations from the Cyprus government and a series of demonstrations outside the Israeli embassy in Nicosia did nothing for Paschalis's case.
Paschalis, 38 at the time, spent the first six months of his sentence in solitary confinement in a minute cell in Tel Aviv's Petah-Tiqukea (The Gates of Hope) prison. "The prison director told me there might be a plot to kill me so I was being put in solitary for my own safety, supposedly," he said. (full text)

Netanyahu vows to bring spies home
Cyprus vows no cover-up
Hellenic Resource Network --- Cyprus Mail News Articles in English 98-11-10

The act of monitoring an agreement is an objective and quantitative process that assesses policy developments; the art of verification is subjective and judgmental and places the CIA in a policy role that traditionally and properly belongs to the State Department or the National Security Council (NSC). CIA clandestine officers will assume a function for which they have no experience or training, arbitrating differences between Israelis and Palestinians who despise and distrust each other.
In assessing the role of the CIA, two basic questions must be answered. Will CIA officers in the West Bank and Gaza collect intelligence that could undermine White House policy? Will CIA intelligence be politicized or skewed before delivery to the White House? The answer to both is almost certainly.
The same CIA officers who will be verifying the Wye agreement also will be responsible for collecting intelligence on both Israeli and Palestinian actions that is critical to the success of U.S. policy. Former Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman David Boren (D-OK) has acknowledged that "there's a trade-off in giving up some protection of our intelligence sources, methods and technical means." In other words, will CIA clandestine officers be able to conduct electronic surveillance against Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) at the same time the agency is trying to establish itself as an independent arbiter of the peace agreement? (full text)

Perhaps, what the City Hall needs, if it is really serious about containing criminality in the city, is to get one or two consultants from the ranks of retired military intelligence experts. It should get them to help organize and implement the program without any fanfare, with the utmost discretion and secrecy, which I think is the true feature of serious espionage anyway, not just a moro-moro sort of, undertaken to get hold of funds which need only superficial accounting. Many years back, when I was still a newspaperman in Manila, a chance acquaintance who was an officer in the joint RP-US intelligence operation against the Huks, had told me how their funds was free of any auditing control; that it was provided based on the perceived requirements of a particular mission.

Truth is, to the professional intelligence ope-rators, expense is of no moment. What is primordial is getting the information desired at any cost. Any spy, therefore, who broadcast his mission and proclaim his identity, is not only being amateurish and bound to be ineffective, but is also in danger of falling into harm's way. Intelligence gathering is no game for the cocky and humbug. It demands a low profile on the part of the players, a sharp, observant eye, and a very analytical mind. The city would certainly be better off if it has such operation, but it could be politically misused in the long haul. (full text)

Colombia Fires Air Force Officers
Waco Tribune-Herald --- Bogota Colombia AP --Five members of the Colombian air force were arrested Thursday after U S authorities seized a government plane in Florida carrying more than 1 600 pounds of cocaine.
Cocaine-laden plane:
a new stain on Colombia
www.tampabayonline.net --- Bogota Colombia AP - Colombia s air force finds itself weathering another drug-trafficking scandal following this week s seizure in Florida of an air force cargo plane.

Large cocaine cache found on Colombian air force plane 11 11 98Associated Press Bogota Colombia - U S Customs authorities in Florida have seized a Colombian air force cargo plane carrying at least 1 200 pounds of cocaine the Colombian air force.

Primakov was a protégé of Mikhail Gorbachev, who became General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985, that Primakov really came into his own. He was a member of the central committee and in 1989-1990 was an alternate (non-voting) member of the politburo. Gorbachev appointed him deputy head of the KGB's first directorate, responsible for foreign intelligence, then made him director of the foreign intelligence service (earning him the "spymaster" sobriquet that dogs him to this day.)
Gorbachev also called on Primakov to assist in the implementation of perestroika, and when things turned sour, Primakov demonstrated his loyalty by defending the embattled leader during the August 1991 coup.

But Primakov is a political survivor of the first rank because he knows when to rethink his loyalties. Georgi Mirksy, a senior research fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Affairs, who has known Primakov since their student days, says of him:
``He's pragmatic, not ideological, and he is very loyal. And he is very good at changing his loyalties to match the powers that be.''
So when Gorbachev's star began to wane, Primakov established himself among the ranks of the Yeltsin loyalists. (full text)

--- Elections Hoover attacked FBI s handling of Oswald Memo contains remarks on bungled case 11 10 98Associated Press Washington, - After President Kennedy s assassination an angry J Edgar Hoover scribbled stinging remarks on an FBI memo detailing

-- Entertainment University agreed with the assessment saying that just using the n-word doesn t necessarily make it a hate crime But two civil rights groups that have closely watched the case believe race was a factor when Cressell and Louis