JERUSALEM — When President Obama lands here on Wednesday, he may encounter some Israelis staging a hunger strike in support of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the American serving a life term in a North Carolina prison for spying for Israel.

But the call for Mr. Pollard’s release will not be restricted to the strident, right-wing protests that have previously greeted American officials.

Instead, it will come from Israel’s dovish president, Shimon Peres, and some of the country’s most respected public figures: Nobel Prize-winning scientists, retired generals, celebrated authors and intellectuals who have signed, along with more than 175,000 other citizens, an online petition appealing for clemency for Mr. Pollard.

After years of being viewed as a somewhat marginal and divisive issue here, the campaign to free Mr. Pollard has become a mainstream crusade. Prominent Israelis are shedding the shame long felt over the affair, one of the most damaging, painful episodes in the annals of the American-Israeli relationship, and recasting it as a humanitarian issue ready to be resolved.

The effort has gathered momentum, and many Israelis consider Mr. Obama’s visit to be the perfect opportunity for a gesture of good will.

“I will sum it up in three words: enough is enough,” said Amnon Rubinstein, a law professor at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, and a former minister of education. “It is not humane to keep him in jail any longer.”

A main factor behind the shift, Israelis supporting the campaign say, is the time that Mr. Pollard, 58, who is said to be ailing, has already served — 28 years. Advocates for his release say that is unprecedented among Americans convicted of spying for an ally.

Another factor is the growing number of former officials in the United States who have called for clemency in recent years, including two former secretaries of state, George P. Shultz and Henry A. Kissinger, and a former director of the C.I.A., R. James Woolsey.

Mr. Woolsey, who has firsthand knowledge of the case and strongly opposed clemency for Mr. Pollard during his tenure at the C.I.A., told Israel’s Army Radio last week that three other spies for friendly countries who were tried and convicted in the United States were each sentenced to less than five years in prison.

Such voices have given the advocates for Mr. Pollard a new level of respectability and have allowed more Israelis to speak out.

Amos Yadlin, the former director of Israeli military intelligence who now runs the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, recently appeared on Israeli television to appeal for Mr. Pollard’s release.

“Clemency for Pollard, given his health situation, is a humanitarian issue that we can put behind us as our two countries face extraordinary challenges in 2013,” Mr. Yadlin said.

Yair Lapid, the new centrist force in Israeli politics, also signed the petition, as did Gilad Shalit, a former soldier who was held captive by Hamas militants for five years. Veteran campaigners have also changed their tone. After Israel refused to recognize Mr. Pollard as a “prisoner of Zion” in 2005, his wife, Esther, called the government’s attitude “petty and meanspirited.”

Now, Mrs. Pollard is taking a more stately approach. Lawrence J. Korb, who was an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and is now pushing for clemency for Mr. Pollard, has accompanied Mrs. Pollard to meetings with Israeli leaders in recent years.

Last week on Israeli television, Mrs. Pollard said that she and her husband felt “profound remorse and sorrow for what has happened” and begged Mr. Obama for mercy.

Mr. Pollard, a former United States Navy intelligence analyst, began spying for Israel after he approached an Israeli officer in 1984. When he was discovered 18 months later, he sought refuge in the Israeli Embassy in Washington but was refused entry. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.

At first, Israel disowned Mr. Pollard, saying that he was an actor in a rogue operation. But he was granted Israeli citizenship in 1995, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during his first term in office in the late 1990s, officially recognized Mr. Pollard as an Israeli agent.

Many details of the case remain classified. But recently declassified documents from a 1987 C.I.A. damage assessment stated that Mr. Pollard’s instructions were primarily to provide Israel with American intelligence on Israel’s Arab adversaries and the military support they received from the Soviet Union, including information on Arab chemical and biological weapons.

Mr. Pollard’s supporters note that he was not asked to spy on the United States per se.

Mr. Pollard delivered suitcases full of copies of classified documents to the Israelis every two weeks. The copious disclosures posed multiple risks to American intelligence sources and methods, and to American foreign policy interests, the C.I.A. assessment stated.

In the past, Mr. Netanyahu pushed for Mr. Pollard’s release to balance concessions he was being pressed to make in Middle East peace negotiations.

But Sallai Meridor, Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 2006 to 2009, said that a “strong nucleus of people” within the United States defense establishment had adamantly opposed Mr. Pollard’s release, “exerting a lot of influence over others.”

“None of us know all the details,” Mr. Meridor said. “But assuming he did something really bad, the very worst that you could anticipate in this realm, 28 years is more than enough.”

…

March 17, 2013
By ISABEL KERSHNER

Find this story at 17 March 2013

Copyright The New York Times Company

Ex-army officer Benjamin Pierce Bishop charged with communicating national defence information to Chinese woman

Benjamin Pierce Bishop, who works for a defence contractor at US Pacific Command in Oahu, Hawaii, was arrested on Friday . Photograph: Alamy

A US defence contractor in Hawaii has been arrested on charges of passing national military secrets, including classified information about nuclear weapons, to a Chinese woman with whom he was romantically involved, authorities have said.

Benjamin Pierce Bishop, 59, a former US army officer who works as a civilian employee of a defence contractor at US Pacific Command in Oahu, was arrested on Friday and made his first appearance in federal court on Monday, said the US attorney’s office for the District of Hawaii.

He is charged with one count of willfully communicating national defence information to a person not entitled to receive it and one count of unlawfully retaining documents related to national defence. If convicted Bishop faces a maximum of 20 years in prison.

Bishop met the woman – a 27-year-old Chinese national referred to as Person 1 – in Hawaii during a conference on international military defence issues, according to the affidavit.

He had allegedly been involved in a romantic relationship since June 2011 with the woman, who was living in the US on a visa and had no security clearance.

From May 2011 until December 2012 he allegedly passed national defence secrets to her including classified information about nuclear weapons and the planned deployment of US strategic nuclear systems.

…

Reuters
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 March 2013 07.13 GMT

Find this story at 19 March 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

A 15-month investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic reveals how retired US colonel James Steele, a veteran of American proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, played a key role in training and overseeing US-funded special police commandos who ran a network of torture centres in Iraq. Another special forces veteran, Colonel James Coffman, worked with Steele and reported directly to General David Petraeus, who had been sent into Iraq to organise the Iraqi security services

• Watch a five-minute edited version of this film narrated by Dearbhla Molloy

• Revealed: Pentagon’s link to Iraqi torture centres

Find this story at 6 March 2013

Exclusive: General David Petraeus and ‘dirty wars’ veteran behind commando units implicated in detainee abuse

The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the “dirty wars” in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq that set up secret detention and torture centres to get information from insurgents. These units conducted some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and accelerated the country’s descent into full-scale civil war.

Colonel James Steele was a 58-year-old retired special forces veteran when he was nominated by Donald Rumsfeld to help organise the paramilitaries in an attempt to quell a Sunni insurgency, an investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic shows.

After the Pentagon lifted a ban on Shia militias joining the security forces, the special police commando (SPC) membership was increasingly drawn from violent Shia groups such as the Badr brigades.

A second special adviser, retired Colonel James H Coffman, worked alongside Steele in detention centres that were set up with millions of dollars of US funding.

Coffman reported directly to General David Petraeus, sent to Iraq in June 2004 to organise and train the new Iraqi security forces. Steele, who was in Iraq from 2003 to 2005, and returned to the country in 2006, reported directly to Rumsfeld.

The allegations, made by US and Iraqi witnesses in the Guardian/BBC documentary, implicate US advisers for the first time in the human rights abuses committed by the commandos. It is also the first time that Petraeus – who last November was forced to resign as director of the CIA after a sex scandal – has been linked through an adviser to this abuse.

Coffman reported to Petraeus and described himself in an interview with the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes as Petraeus’s “eyes and ears out on the ground” in Iraq.

“They worked hand in hand,” said General Muntadher al-Samari, who worked with Steele and Coffman for a year while the commandos were being set up. “I never saw them apart in the 40 or 50 times I saw them inside the detention centres. They knew everything that was going on there … the torture, the most horrible kinds of torture.”

Additional Guardian reporting has confirmed more details of how the interrogation system worked. “Every single detention centre would have its own interrogation committee,” claimed Samari, talking for the first time in detail about the US role in the interrogation units.

“Each one was made up of an intelligence officer and eight interrogators. This committee will use all means of torture to make the detainee confess like using electricity or hanging him upside down, pulling out their nails, and beating them on sensitive parts.”

There is no evidence that Steele or Coffman tortured prisoners themselves, only that they were sometimes present in the detention centres where torture took place and were involved in the processing of thousands of detainees.

The Guardian/BBC Arabic investigation was sparked by the release of classified US military logs on WikiLeaks that detailed hundreds of incidents where US soldiers came across tortured detainees in a network of detention centres run by the police commandos across Iraq. Private Bradley Manning, 25, is facing a prison sentence of up to 20 years after he pleaded guilty to leaking the documents.

Samari claimed that torture was routine in the SPC-controlled detention centres. “I remember a 14-year-old who was tied to one of the library’s columns. And he was tied up, with his legs above his head. Tied up. His whole body was blue because of the impact of the cables with which he had been beaten.”

Gilles Peress, a photographer, came across Steele when he was on assignment for the New York Times, visiting one of the commando centres in the same library, in Samarra. “We were in a room in the library interviewing Steele and I’m looking around I see blood everywhere.”

The reporter Peter Maass was also there, working on the story with Peress. “And while this interview was going on with a Saudi jihadi with Jim Steele also in the room, there were these terrible screams, somebody shouting: ‘Allah, Allah, Allah!’ But it wasn’t kind of religious ecstasy or something like that, these were screams of pain and terror.”

The pattern in Iraq provides an eerie parallel to the well-documented human rights abuses committed by US-advised and funded paramilitary squads in Central America in the 1980s. Steele was head of a US team of special military advisers that trained units of El Salvador’s security forces in counterinsurgency. Petraeus visited El Salvador in 1986 while Steele was there and became a major advocate of counterinsurgency methods.

Steele has not responded to any questions from the Guardian and BBC Arabic about his role in El Salvador or Iraq. He has in the past denied any involvement in torture and said publicly he is “opposed to human rights abuses.” Coffman declined to comment.

An official speaking for Petraeus said: “During the course of his years in Iraq, General Petraeus did learn of allegations of Iraqi forces torturing detainees. In each incident, he shared information immediately with the US military chain of command, the US ambassador in Baghdad … and the relevant Iraqi leaders.”

The Guardian has learned that the SPC units’ involvement with torture entered the popular consciousness in Iraq when some of their victims were paraded in front of a TV audience on a programme called “Terrorism In The Hands of Justice.”

SPC detention centres bought video cameras, funded by the US military, which they used to film detainees for the show. When the show began to outrage the Iraqi public, Samari remembers being in the home of General Adnan Thabit – head of the special commandos – when a call came from Petraeus’s office demanding that they stop showing tortured men on TV.

“General Petraeus’s special translator, Sadi Othman, rang up to pass on a message from General Petraeus telling us not to show the prisoners on TV after they had been tortured,” said Samari. “Then 20 minutes later we got a call from the Iraqi ministry of interior telling us the same thing, that General Petraeus didn’t want the torture victims shown on TV.”

Othman, who now lives in New York, confirmed that he made the phone call on behalf of Petraeus to the head of the SPC to ask him to stop showing the tortured prisoners. “But General Petraeus does not agree with torture,” he added. “To suggest he does support torture is horseshit.”

Thabit is dismissive of the idea that the Americans he dealt with were unaware of what the commandos were doing. “Until I left, the Americans knew about everything I did; they knew what was going on in the interrogations and they knew the detainees. Even some of the intelligence about the detainees came to us from them – they are lying.”

Just before Petraeus and Steele left Iraq in September 2005, Jabr al-Solagh was appointed as the new minister of the interior. Under Solagh, who was closely associated with the violent Badr Brigades militia, allegations of torture and brutality by the commandos soared. It was also widely believed that the units had evolved into death squads.

The Guardian has learned that high-ranking Iraqis who worked with the US after the invasion warned Petraeus of the consequences of appointing Solagh but their pleas were ignored.

The long-term impact of funding and arming this paramilitary force was to unleash a deadly sectarian militia that terrorised the Sunni community and helped germinate a civil war that claimed tens of thousands of lives. At the height of that sectarian conflict, 3,000 bodies a month were strewn on the streets of Iraq.
CV: James Steele

Vietnam

Jim Steele’s first experience of war was in Vietnam, where from 1965 to 1975 US combat units were deployed against the communist North Vietnamese government and Viet Cong. 58,000 Americans were killed, dealing a blow to the nation’s self-esteem and leading to a change in military thinking for subsequent conflicts.

El Salvador

A 1979 military coup plunged the smallest country in Central America into civil war and drew in US training and funding on the side of the rightwing government. From 1984 to 1986 Steele – a “counterinsurgency specialist” – was head of the US MilGroup of US special forces advisers to frontline battalions of the Salvadorean military, which developed a fearsome international reputation for its death-squad activities. Prof Terry Karl, an expert at Stanford University on El Salvador’s civil war, said that Steele’s main aim was to shift the fight from so-called total war, which then meant the indiscriminate murder of thousands of civilians, to a more “discriminate” approach. One of his tasks was to put more emphasis on “human intelligence” and interrogation.

Nicaragua

…

Mona Mahmood, Maggie O’Kane, Chavala Madlena and Teresa Smith
The Guardian, Wednesday 6 March 2013 20.04 GMT

Find this story at 6 March 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

It was the U.S. military’s most notorious security contractor—but it may also have been a virtual extension of the CIA. Eli Lake reports.

Last month a three-year-long federal prosecution of Blackwater collapsed. The government’s 15-felony indictment—on such charges as conspiring to hide purchases of automatic rifles and other weapons from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives—could have led to years of jail time for Blackwater personnel. In the end, however, the government got only misdemeanor guilty pleas by two former executives, each of whom were sentenced to four months of house arrest, three years’ probation, and a fine of $5,000. Prosecutors dropped charges against three other executives named in the suit and abandoned the felony charges altogether.

via office of the King of Jordan

But the most noteworthy thing about the largely failed prosecution wasn’t the outcome. It was the tens of thousands of pages of documents—some declassified—that the litigation left in its wake. These documents illuminate Blackwater’s defense strategy—and it’s a fascinating one: to defeat the charges it was facing, Blackwater built a case not only that it worked with the CIA—which was already widely known—but that it was in many ways an extension of the agency itself.

Founded in 1997 by Erik Prince, heir to an auto-parts family fortune, Blackwater had proved especially useful to the CIA in the early 2000s. “You have to remember where the CIA was after 9/11,” says retired Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who served as the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 2004 to 2006 and later as the ranking member of the committee. “They were gutted in the 1990s. They were sending raw recruits into Afghanistan and other dangerous places. They were looking for skills and capabilities, and they had to go to outside contractors like Blackwater to make sure they could accomplish their mission.”

But according to the documents Blackwater submitted in its defense—as well as an email exchange I had recently with Prince—the contractor’s relationship with the CIA was far deeper than most observers thought. “Blackwater’s work with the CIA began when we provided specialized instructors and facilities that the Agency lacked,” Prince told me recently, in response to written questions. “In the years that followed, the company became a virtual extension of the CIA because we were asked time and again to carry out dangerous missions, which the Agency either could not or would not do in-house.”

A prime example of the close relationship appears to have unfolded on March 19, 2005. On that day, Prince and senior CIA officers joined King Abdullah of Jordan and his brothers on a trip to Blackwater headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina, according to lawyers for the company and former Blackwater officials. After traveling by private jet from Washington to the compound, Abdullah (a former Jordanian special-forces officer) and Prince (a former Navy SEAL) participated in a simulated ambush, drove vehicles on a high-speed racetrack, and raided one of the compound’s “shoot houses,” a specially built facility used to train warriors in close-quarters combat with live ammo, Prince recalls.

At the end of the day, company executives presented the king with two gifts: a modified Bushmaster AR-15 rifle and a Remington shotgun, both engraved with the Blackwater logo. They also presented three Blackwater-engraved Glock pistols to Abdullah’s brothers. According to Prince, the CIA asked Blackwater to give the guns to Abdullah “when people at the agency had forgotten to get gifts for him.”

Three years later, the ATF raided the Moyock compound. In itself, this wasn’t unusual; the ATF had been conducting routine inspections of the place since 2005, when Blackwater informed the government that two of its employees had stolen guns and sold them on the black market. Typically, agents would show up in street clothes, recalled Prince. “They knew our people and our processes.”

But the 2008 visit, according to Prince, was different. “ATF agents had guns drawn and wore tactical jackets festooned with the initials ATF. It was a cartoonish show of force,” he said. (Earl Woodham, a spokesman for the Charlotte field division of the ATF, disputes this characterization. “This was the execution of a federal search warrant that requires they be identified with the federal agency,” he says. “They had their firearms covered to execute a federal search warrant. To characterize this as anything other than a low-key execution of a federal search warrant is inaccurate.”)

During the raid, the ATF seized 17 Romanian AK-47s and 17 Bushmaster AR-13 rifles the bureau claimed were purchased illegally through the sheriff’s office in Camden County, North Carolina. It also alleged that Blackwater illegally shortened the barrels of rifles and then exported them to other countries in violation of federal gun laws. Meanwhile, in the process of trying to account for Blackwater’s guns, the ATF discovered that the rifles and pistols presented in 2005 to King Abdullah and his brothers were registered to Blackwater employees. Prosecutors would subsequently allege that Gary Jackson—the former president of Blackwater and one of the two people who would eventually plead guilty to a misdemeanor—had instructed employees to falsely claim on ATF forms that the guns were their own personal property and not in the possession of Jordanian royalty.

In all of these instances—the purchase of the rifles through the Camden County sheriff, the shipment of the guns to other countries, and the gifts to Abdullah—Blackwater argued that it was acting on behalf of the U.S. government and the CIA. All of these arguments, obviously, were very much in Blackwater’s legal interest. That said, it provided the court with classified emails, memoranda, contracts, and photos. It also obtained sealed depositions from top CIA executives from the Directorate of Operations, testifying that Blackwater provided training and weapons for agency operations. (A CIA spokesman declined to comment for this story.)

One document submitted by the defense names Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA chief of the Directorate of Operations, and Buzzy Krongard, the agency’s former executive director, as among those CIA officers who had direct knowledge of Blackwater’s activities, in a section that is still partially redacted. This document is the closest Blackwater has come to acknowledging that Prince himself was a CIA asset, something first reported in 2010 by Vanity Fair. One of the names on the list of CIA officers with knowledge of Blackwater’s work in the document is “Erik P”—with the remaining letters whited out.

This document made Blackwater’s defense clear: “the CIA routinely used Blackwater in missions throughout the world,” it said. “These efforts were made under written and unwritten contracts and through informal requests. On many occasions the CIA paid Blackwater nothing for its assistance. Blackwater also employed CIA officers and agents, and provided cover to CIA agents and officers operating in covert and clandestine assignments. In many respects, Blackwater, or at least portions of Blackwater, was an extension of the CIA.”

When I asked Prince why Blackwater would often work for free, he responded, “I agreed to provide some services gratis because, in the wake of 9/11, I felt it my patriotic duty. I knew that I had the tools and resources to help my country.”

Moreover, according to still-sealed testimony described to The Daily Beast, the agency had its own secure telephone line and a facility for handling classified information within Blackwater’s North Carolina headquarters. CIA officers trained there and used an area—fully shielded from view inside the rest of the Blackwater compound by 20-foot berms—to coordinate operations.

Sara D. Davis/AP

In the wake of the major charges being dropped, the U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case against Blackwater, Thomas Walker, told me that it would be wrong to dismiss the prosecution as a waste of time. “The company looks completely different now than before the investigation,” he said. “For example, in 2009, Erik Prince was the sole owner. This company now has a governing board that is accountable.”

In 2010 Prince sold Blackwater, which is now known as Academi, for an estimated $200 million. Prince retains control of numerous companies that were part of Blackwater before he sold it, but he told me that he had “ceased providing any services” to the U.S. government.

Walker would not discuss Blackwater’s relationship with the CIA. But he did say the defense that the company was acting for the government did not excuse any violations of federal law. “Our evidence showed there was a mentality at the company that they considered themselves above the law,” Walker said. “That is a slippery slope. There came a time when there had to be accountability at Blackwater.”

…

by Eli Lake Mar 14, 2013 4:45 AM EDT

Find this story at 14 March 2013

© 2013 The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company LLC

Ondanks de voorkennis omtrent gruwelijke misdragingen door veiligheidsagenten van Blackwater, ging het KLPD en de AIVD in 2009 voor een training van (geheim) agenten in zee met dit obscure Amerikaanse particuliere beveiligingsbedrijf.

“Op 17 november 2009 vertrok ik samen met de majoors Edwin en Mark naar Afghanistan. Wij maken deel uit van de nieuwe missie NTM-A” (Nato Training Mission – Afghanistan), schrijft Kees Poelma (Kmar) op zijn weblog.

“In mijn vorige functie had ik hele goede contacten opgebouwd met mensen van XE-Services (beter bekend als het voormalige Blackwater)”, zo vervolgt Poelma zijn relaas. “Misschien is ‘beter’ niet het juiste woord, maar daarvoor moet je Blackwater maar eens googelen. Sinds Irak zijn ze namelijk zodanig ‘verstoken van gunsten’ dat ze hun naam maar eens moesten veranderen. XE leidt de Afghan Border Police op en dat doen ze op vier verschillende trainingsites in Afghanistan.”

Poelma werd uitgenodigd door XE-Services om hun trainingsites te bekijken. Het bedrijf heeft haar naam ondertussen opnieuw gewijzigd in Academi. Zoals Poelma opmerkt is het bedrijf besmet. Het is dan ook opmerkelijk dat het Nederlandse leger en politie ‘hele goede contacten’ onderhouden met de ‘private contractor’.

Contract

Op 24 februari 2010 verklaarde de democratische voorzitter Carl Levin van de Armed Services Committee van de Amerikaanse Senaat dat de PEO STRI (Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation) van het Amerikaanse leger het volgende: “relied on a Dutch officer to act as a Technical Officer Representative to oversee the contract.”

Het contract waar Levin op duidt, betreft een afspraak met Paravant LLC, een dochteronderneming van XE-Services, voor de training van de Afghan National Army Troops. De hoorzitting vond plaats in verband met diefstal, moord en andere vergrijpen door medewerkers van Paravant in Afghanistan.

De Nederlandse officier zou werkzaam zijn geweest op het CSTC-A, de plaats waar de trainingen van de Afghaanse politie en het leger worden gecoördineerd. Welke rol de Nederlandse officier bij CSTC-A heeft gespeeld in het verwerven van het contract, en welke relatie de officier met Paravant/Blackwater had, is onduidelijk.

Blackwater werd in 1997 opgericht door oud Navy Seals man Erik Prince. Voorafgaande de oorlogen in Afghanistan en vooral Irak deed het bedrijf voornamelijk kruimelwerk. De invasie in Irak van 20 maart 2003 betekende een flinke boost voor het bedrijf. De private beveiligingsbedrijven die zowel persoons- als transportbeveiliging uitvoeren, misdroegen zich echter op grote schaal.

De onvrede onder De Irakese bevolking bouwde zich na de invasie in sneltreinvaart op en kwam tot uitbarsting bij de aanslag op vier medewerkers van Blackwater in Fallujah, maart 2004. De wereld beschuldigde meteen Al Qaeda of de rebellen van de lynchpartij, maar de aanslag was een reactie op het opereren van de ‘private contractors’.

Gewelddadig optreden

Hoe de medewerkers van Blackwater zich bijvoorbeeld gedroegen in Irak toont Harper’s Magazine met de publicatie The Warrior Class, geschreven door Charles Glass (april 2012). Het artikel is eigenlijk gebaseerd op een verzameling video’s die Glass van medewerkers van Blackwater heeft gekregen http://harpers.org/archive/2012/04/hbc-90008515. Op de beelden is te zien dat mensen worden overreden, auto’s van de weg worden gereden, er willekeurig wordt geschoten op voorbijgangers en auto’s, dat er wordt gescholden en dat de schending van alle basale rechten van Irakezen met voeten worden getreden.

Veel beelden waren er nog niet voorhanden, maar de verhalen van schandalig optreden wel degelijk. Februari 2005 schoot een beveiligingsteam van Blackwater machinegeweren leeg op een auto in Bagdad. Dit incident kwam naar buiten omdat Blackwater op dat moment een lid van het Amerikaanse State Department beveiligde. Veel incidenten komen niet aan het licht omdat medewerkers van Blackwater na een incident gewoon doorrijden, zoals de videobeelden laten zien.

De wetteloosheid van medewerkers van Blackwater vindt zijn dieptepunt op 16 september 2007 op het Nisour Square in Bagdad. Een beveiliger van het bedrijf schoot een bestuurder van een rijdende auto dood, die tengevolge niet tot stilstand kwam. Wat volgde was een bloedbad, waarbij de medewerkers van Blackwater op alles schoten wat bewoog. Bij deze slachting kwamen 17 mensen om het leven.

Het bedrijf ontkende dat zij verantwoordelijk was voor de moordpartij en dat de beveiligingsagenten slechts reageerden op schoten die op hen afgevuurd werden. De verdachten werden uiteindelijk Irak uit gesmokkeld. Naar aanleiding van de schietpartij op het Nisour Square schreef Jeremy Scahill Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (2007), een boek dat de aard, omvang en gedrag van het bedrijf uit de doeken doet.

Goede contacten

Kees Poelma van de Koninklijke Marechaussee beschrijft op zijn weblog de goede contacten die hij onderhoudt met ‘mensen van XE-Services’. Over welke contacten heeft hij het? Op 12 januari 2005 sluiten de ‘Dutch Special Forces’ en Blackwater USA een contract voor het gebruik van het Blackwater Training Center, tegenwoordig bekent onder de naam United States Training Center.

Minister Rosenthal beantwoordt op 14 december 2010 vragen van de Kamerleden Van Bommel en Van Dijk ten aanzien van Blackwater. “Het Korps Commando Troepen heeft van 10 t/m 23 februari 2005 met 60 personen getraind op het Blackwater trainingscomplex in North Carolina. Gedurende deze trainingsperiode is alleen gebruik gemaakt van faciliteiten. Trainingen zijn uitsluitend door eigen instructeurs verzorgd.”

Het contract vermeldt tevens: ‘Blackwater Training Center welcomes the opportunity to provide range rental for your continuing firearms training.’ Hoewel het Korps Commando Troepen zijn eigen instructeurs heeft meegenomen volgens de minister, wordt in proposal #226 wel een ‘number of personnel 57’ opgevoerd. Of dit slaat op de 60 mariniers is onduidelijk. Waarschijnlijk wel, maar het blijft onduidelijk of Blackwater geen instructeurs heeft geleverd.

De folder van Blackwater Training Center prijst haar eigen instructeurs op allerlei manieren aan. ‘On over 6000 acres of private land, we have trained and hosted over 50.000 Law Enforcement, Military and civilian personnel. […] Our instructors are ranked the best in the world and our facilities are second to none.’

De minister zegt dat de “trainingen uitsluitend door eigen instructeurs zijn verzorgd”, maar de aantallen, ook die voor de lunch en het diner, roepen vragen op over de aanwezigheid van Blackwater-instructeurs. ‘Lunch for 75 persons for 11 days and dinner for 75 persons for 11 days.’

De Sales Coordinator van Blackwater voegt daar op 12 januari 2005 nog aan toe dat ‘the houses are not intended to practice charge calculations. They are designed to practice techniques involved in breaching placement of charges, placement of shooters in relation to the charge and command and control and detonation the charge.’ Het schrijven van 12 januari 2005 lijkt op een set huisregels van Blackwater.

Voorkennis

De training vond in februari 2005 plaats, dezelfde maand waarin Blackwater-medewerkers een willekeurige auto in Bagdad onder vuur namen, waarvan het lot van de inzittenden onduidelijk is. Of het ministerie van Defensie op de hoogte was van dit incident valt te betwijfelen. In een voorblad zonder datum met de titel contract Blackwater wordt vermeld dat ‘het gerucht dat de firma Blackwater onder de USNAVY valt en dat het schietterrein van de USNAVY is wil ik bij deze ook heel snel ontkrachten.’

Het voorblad is opgesteld door de eerste verwerver, een kapitein van de C-Logistiek Brigade/Divisie Logistiek Commando uit Apeldoorn. Opvallend aan het voorblad is de expliciete vermelding dat er geen gebruik wordt gemaakt van instructeurs van de firma Blackwater. Dit wordt vermeld onder het kopje ‘marktverkenning’ dat begint met de zin ‘er is geen concurrentie mogelijk, het betreft hier een monopolist. Het betreft hier een privé onderneming op privéterrein. Wel dienen er vergunningen aangevraagd te worden, indien er gebruik wordt gemaakt van instructeurs van de firma Blackwater.’

De verwarring van de eerste verwerver over de relatie tussen Blackwater en de USNAVY viel misschien in 2005 nog te begrijpen, na het Nisour Square incident in september 2007 was dat niet langer mogelijk. De status en de rol van Blackwater was toen duidelijk. De kritiek op het bedrijf ook. Het is dan ook onbegrijpelijk dat ruim een jaar later er contact wordt opgenomen met Total Intelligence Solutions LLC voor het bestellen van een Mirror Image Training Program.

Daar tegenover kan worden opgemerkt dat de Department of Special Interventions (DSI) van het KLPD niet wist dat Total Intelligence Solutions LLC onderdeel uitmaakte van de Prince Group van Erik Prince, de toenmalige CEO van Blackwater, maar het adres in Arlington in de Verenigde Staten zal toch op zijn minst enkele bellen hebben doen rinkelen? Nu staat de DSI niet bekend om haar doortastendheid – zie de wijze waarop een belwinkel in Rotterdam op kerstavond 2010 werd vernield door leden van het team – maar enige background check van bedrijven die worden ingehuurd zou er toch moeten zijn.

Duidelijkheid

De Washington Post besteedde op 3 november 2007, twee maanden na de slachting op Nisour Square, een artikel aan Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS) onder de kop ‘Blackwaters Owner Has Spies for Hire’. Het is dus onwaarschijnlijk dat het de overheid is ontgaan dat er een contract met Blackwater werd afgesloten. En hoe staat een contract met Blackwater in verhouding met het principe van duurzaam inkopen dat de overheid hanteert?

In de overeenkomst met de KLPD die Total Intelligence Solutions LLC op 17 november 2008 opstuurt, worden dan ook naast TIS de bedrijven EP Investments LLC, Terrorism Research Center INC en Blackwater Lodge and Training Center INC vermeld. Het lijken aparte bedrijven, maar vallen allemaal onder Blackwater, later XE Services genoemd, zoals blijkt uit amendment no 1 van 8 juni 2009. In dat amendment is de naam van de Blackwater Lodge ondertussen ook gewijzigd in U.S. Training Center. Al met al was het duidelijk dat Blackwater in het spel was.

Ook de status van het bedrijf was duidelijk. Op 7 november 2007 beantwoordden de ministers van Defensie en Buitenlandse Zaken, Middelkoop en Verhagen, vragen van kamerlid Pechtold. De ministers verzekeren dat ‘Nederland nooit Blackwater in dienst heeft gehad. De ministeries van Buitenlandse Zaken en Defensie werken wel samen met andere particuliere beveiligingsbedrijven’.

In het antwoord van de regering komt het huren van de trainingsfaciliteiten van Blackwater door het Korps Commando Troepen niet aan de orde. Opvallend omdat voor de minister van Defensie toch duidelijk moet zijn geweest hoe gevoelig de zaak lag. Pechtold onderstreepte nota bene de onrust door de slachting op Nisour Square.

Een maand later beschreef de Adviesraad Internationale Vraagstukken in het rapport ‘De inhuur van private militaire bedrijven’ de zorgen over Blackwater. ‘De affaire Blackwater heeft de grote risico’s die aan de inzet van PMC’s zijn verbonden nog eens onderstreept. Het roekeloze en onverantwoordelijke optreden van sommige PMC’s, vooral de veiligheidsbedrijven onder hen, die in Irak immuniteit voor de lokale rechtsmacht genieten, brengt het winnen van de hearts and minds en daarmee zelfs van de hele counter-insurgency in gevaar.’

Het 59ste advies gaat verder door te stellen dat ‘het in opspraak gekomen Amerikaanse bedrijf Blackwater een negatieve uitstraling op de hele bedrijfstak heeft.’ Extra voorzichtig zijn dus bij het inhuren of gebruiken van diensten van het bedrijf.

Mirror Image Training

Een jaar later sluiten de Dienst Speciale interventies (DSI) en Blackwater een overeenkomst voor een Mirror Image Training, verzorgd door het Terrorism Research Center (TRC). TRC maakt deel uit van Total Intel, dat op haar beurt sinds februari 2007 weer onderdeel uitmaakt van Blackwater sinds februari 2007. Voorafgaande de overeenkomst had Blackater al een strategisch partnership met het centrum.

De Mirror Image Training was er op gericht om in de huid van de terrorist te kruipen. ‘Hierdoor is de deelnemer in staat om zichzelf ook daadwerkelijk als terrorist te zien en door diens ogen de zwakke punten binnen de eigen werkomgeving te herkennen en te begrijpen, die men zelf vaak over het hoofd ziet’, vermeldt de doelstelling van het reisverslag Mirror Image Training in Moyock, NC.

De laatste zin van de doelstelling is veelzeggend, gelet op het gedrag van Blackwater-medewerkers, maar ook dat van de DSI-medewerkers in gedachten: ‘Met deze inzichten op zak zijn deelnemers na het afronden van de training beter in staat te anticiperen, te voorkomen en te reageren op terroristische dreigingen.’

Om een beeld te krijgen waar de Nederlandse commando’s en leden van de KLPD en AIVD hun training hebben gekregen, hier een beschrijving van Moyock door Nathan Lodge. In zijn artikel Blackwater: Lawyers, guns and Money van 6 april 2007 probeert Lodge de omvang van het terrein te omschrijven. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/04/inside_the_bell/

Lodge: ‘It’s hard to understate how massive the Moyock facility is. The place has 34 shooting ranges, three driving tracks and an airfield. It boasts several ‘shoot houses’ (for indoor shooting drills), a maritime training facility (for hostile boarding practice) and a breaching facility (for breaking down doors), as well as a full armory. It’s like a military base – without the golf course.’

Mindset

De cursus voor de leden van de KLPD gaat over het creëren van een ‘mindset’ waarbij ‘de rol van de radicale islam van groot belang is. Dit komt onder andere naar voren tijdens de dagelijkse gebeden en de lessen over de geschiedenis van de islam. Daarnaast wordt ook inzicht geboden in vormen van westers terrorisme, waaronder de IRA.’

De mindset kan vertaald worden naar de ‘situatie in tal van regio’s, waaronder Afghanistan, Irak, Colombia, Gaza en de West Bank evenals stedelijke gebieden en verschillende terroristische groeperingen.’ De mindset wordt vooral bepaald door ‘contraterroristische technieken gebaseerd op Britse en Israëlische ervaringen’, vermeldt het reisverslag van de training.

Nu kan het zo zijn dat de Israëliërs veel ervaring hebben met de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten, maar tegelijkertijd roepen hun acties ook veel vragen op. De laatste operatie in de Gaza, Cast Lead, is door verschillende zijden veroordeeld. Ook de Europese Unie is zeer kritisch over de wijze waarop de Israëliërs regelmatig huishouden in de bezette gebieden.

De Britten zijn overigens ook weer niet het beste voorbeeld van omgang met de opstand in Noord-Ierland. De IRA pleegde regelmatig aanslagen, maar de Britten hebben in de loop van de strijd regelmatig zelf vele slachtoffers gemaakt door infiltratie, informanten, valse beschuldigingen en andere schendingen van mensenrechten.

Hoewel de training misschien interessant kan zijn, moet een land dat vaak zijn vingertje opsteekt over de mensenrechten in andere landen toch grote zorgvuldigheid in acht nemen als het gaat om samenwerking met bedrijven waar een zweem omheen hangt van strafbare feiten en onoorbaar optreden.

Laten we daarom nog even een andere mindset van het bedrijf Blackwater bekijken. Naast het wild om zich heen schieten, heeft het bedrijf ook een nogal verwrongen beeld van recht en orde. Het programma Countdown van MSNBC besteedt op 6 augustus 2009 aandacht aan het gebruik van hoeren door leden van Blackwater. http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2009/08/blackwater-provided-child-prostitutes-to-contractors-lawsuit/

‘Keith Olbermann (van MSNBC) quoted on Thursday from the employees sworn declarations that Blackwater was guilty of using child prostitutes at its compound in Baghdads fortified Green Zone. The declarations describe Blackwater as having young girls provide oral sex to Enterprise members in the Blackwater Man Camp in exchange for one American dollar.’

Nu is het zo dat het programma van MSNBC vier maanden na de training van de DSI werd uitgezonden, maar de mindset is wel degelijk belangrijk. Verantwoordelijken binnen de KLPD en als laatste verantwoordelijke, de minister van Veiligheid en Justitie, hadden gezien de status van het bedrijf vraagtekens moeten zetten bij een training door Blackwater.

Vraagtekens die al in de reactie van het ministerie van Defensie en Buitenlandse Zaken expliciet worden gezet in een reactie op het advies ‘Inhuur civiele dienstverleners in operatiegebieden’. Adviesraad Internationale Vraagstukken in april 2008. ‘De groei van de inzet van particuliere beveiligingsbedrijven in operatiegebieden is niet onomstreden. De recente ophef over het optreden van de firma Blackwater in Irak is aanleiding geweest voor vele kritische vragen.’

Lofuitingen

Terug naar de training. De DSI besloot om zich door personeel van Blackwater te laten opleiden. Waarschijnlijk werden ze op positieve wijze beïnvloed door het artikel van David Crane uit oktober 2003. Zijn verhaal ‘Blackwater Training Center Tactical Training For Professionals and Civilians’ in Defense Review is één grote loftuiting op de kwaliteiten van het bedrijf.

Rick Skwiot doet het in de PortFolio Weekly dunnetjes over onder de titel ‘On the Firing Line The Blackwater Training Center’. ‘The Blackwater Training Center in Moyock teaches soldiers, cops and ordinary citizens how to keep their edge in an increasingly dangerous world.’ En: ‘The most dangerous creatures lurking in The Great Dismal Swamp that spans the Virginia-North Carolina line are not the 600-pound black bears, rattlesnakes or water moccasins. Rather, they’re the men and women—soldiers, sailors, SWAT teams and civilians—taking aim with live ammo in the 5,200-acre Blackwater Training Center.’

De training van de DSI vond plaats van 27 maart 2009 tot en met 6 april 2009. Niet alleen de DSI doet aan de training mee. Volgens de minister gaat het om vijftien medewerkers van de KLPD. De dienstreizen formulieren die openbaar zijn gemaakt, vermelden vier leden van de DSI, twee leden van de DKDB, twee leden van de DSRT, twee leden van de DNR van de verschillende KLPD onderdelen en twee leden van de AIVD, de inlichtingendienst. Het totaal komt op twaalf.

Ook op het bestel-aanvraagformulier is sprake van twaalf tickets naar Norfolk in de Verenigde Staten, voor de overnachtingen betreft het twaalf personen. De DSI overnacht het langst, tien dagen, de medewerkers van de AIVD het kortst, twee dagen. Bij de vouchers voor de overnachtingen is het aantal van 27 maart 2009 tot en met 29 maart 2009 ook twaalf. De voucher-nummers van de overige overnachtingen zijn niet vrijgegeven.

De eerste trainingsdag van 27 maart werd besteed aan het ontwikkelen van het concept mirror image training. ‘Course to be conducted should be designed to replicate terrorism recruitment training, techniques and operational methodology in order to better prepare students to fight the War on Terror. Course of instruction should look towards placing students into simulated terrorist cells in order to receive insight into the mindset and rationale of the terrorist through hands on experience. Cells shall be comprised of approximately eight students per cell with an assigned instructor per cell. Instructors shall have strong backgrounds in unconventional warfare. For instructions and presentations addressing terrorism, contractor shall provide personnel who are high level experts in their field. (CIA, FBI, Department of State, etc…)’, schrijft agent Yvonne C. Frederico over een training van the Naval Special Warfare Group One in juni 2008.

William J. Henry van het National Guard Bureau is nog explicieter: ‘This training is an intensive, one week classroom and field training program, designed to realistically simulate terrorist recruiting, training techniques and operational tactics. This is a total-immersion course that places the student inside a terrorist organization in order to better teach him how to think and operate like a terrorist. This course includes lodging and meals tailored to simulate living as a terrorist cell.’

Celadviseur

De training van de DSI zal er niet zoveel van afwijken omdat de Nederlanders het terrein deelden met Belgische, Amerikaanse en Canadese militairen, politieambtenaren en leden van inlichtingendiensten. Het enige dat de minister van Veiligheid en Justitie los wil laten over die eerste dag is dat ‘na de les de cellen een celadviseur toegewezen krijgen en een operatie werd voorbereid.’

Op maandagochtend 28 maart werd de operatie uitgevoerd na ‘het ochtendgebed, gevolgd door een les over de geschiedenis van de islam en in het bijzonder de scheiding tussen de sjiieten en soennieten.’ Over de operatie laat de minister angstvallig niets los, maar wel over de lunch ‘bestaande uit een plat broodje, een plak kaas, een bakje humus, fruit en thee of water.’ Maandag stond voor de rest in het teken van HUMINT ‘human intelligence’, informanten en infiltranten en werd ‘de mindset binnen een terroristische cel’ besproken waar ‘bij nieuwe leden van een cel op wordt gelet.’

Evan Wright beschrijft in ‘Camp Jihad, A ragtag army of cops, soldiers, and G.I. Joe wannabes play terrorist for a week in a counterintuitive counterterrorism program’ (New York Magazine, 21 mei 2005) om wat voor operaties het zou kunnen gaan. De gespeelde cel waar Wright deel van uitmaakte moet een ongelovige vrouw ontvoeren. ‘When I spot the approaching SUVs, I frantically signal LDR. Gunshots start to crackle. A Marine in our cell charges the lead SUV, screaming, Allah akbar!’

De cel van Wright slaagde in haar opzet, misschien ook de Nederlandse DSI/AIVD terroristencel, want dinsdagochtend ‘volgde een presentatie over middelen tot overwinning.’ De rest van de dag stond in het teken van interne veiligheid en de financiering van de terreur. Na het avondeten kwam een gastspreker een lezing houden.

De Nederlanders hebben de ontvoering ook nagespeeld, want laat die avond werd er gesproken over losgeld. ‘De groepering die hem had ontvoerd, wilde losgeld van de […] Geld was ook het motief van deze ontvoering. Er was geen sprake van een religieus uitgangspunt’, vermeldt pagina 8 van het dossier dat de minister van Veiligheid en Justitie openbaar heeft gemaakt.

Woensdag 1 april is ‘net als voorgaande dagen’, vermeldt het verslag. ‘Ochtendgebed, les in de Arabische taal en …’ iets dat geheim blijft. Wright die de training heeft meegemaakt, beschrijft in zijn artikel Camp Jihad dat deze leek op een ‘Renaissance Faire’, zoals de Elf Fantasy Fair in slot Haarzuilens bij Utrecht.

Wright: ‘Whether a week spent wearing Arab head garb and shooting AK-47s will actually help cops and soldiers plumb the complexities of our enemies’ hearts and minds is an open question. […] But when I first witness my fellow students donning their scarves, some of them shouting, for comic effect, ‘Praise Allah!’ in their best Ali G accents, I momentarily feel as if I’ve entered a weird, terrorist-camp version of a suburban Renaissance Faire.’

Andrew Garfield

De training had echter niet alleen een speels karakter, er moest de deelnemers ook wat bijgebracht worden. Naast de lezing op dinsdagavond volgde woensdagmiddag een gedragswetenschapper die een lezing hield over de ‘mindset in het Midden-Oosten’. De minister schrijft, in antwoord op een bezwaarprocedure in het kader van de Wet Openbaarheid van Bestuur (Wob), dat de naam van deze wetenschapper niet meer te achterhalen valt.

Gedurende de training waar Wright echter aan deelnam, kwam Andrew Garfield, een oud Britse inlichtingenfunctionaris, als spreker opdraven die in het kader van de Terrorist Fair leuk meespeelde in de creatie van het cel-denken. ‘Our Jihad is succeeding beyond our wildest expectations. Look at how the Americans are blundering around in Iraq, filling our ranks with new recruits.’

Garfield duidde in zijn rol als ‘terroristen-expert’ op het lompe gedrag van de Amerikanen in Afghanistan, Irak en elders. De boodschap van Garfield bij de Mirror Image training was enigszins surrealistisch. Zo zei hij tegen Wright dat ‘killing terrorists or insurgents will not kill the movement.’ Waarom is de training er dan opgericht om terroristen nader te begrijpen om hen te bestrijden?

Gezien het respectloze gedrag van Blackwater-medewerkers in Irak en Afghanistan, waarbij slachtoffers vielen, is de grote vraag of het bedrijf überhaupt wel in staat is om de ‘mindset in het Midden-Oosten’ te beschrijven. Het kan al niet eens normaal omgaan met burgers, zoals blijkt uit de films die Harper’s Magazine online heeft geplaatst.

Het feit dat het bedrijf in de afgelopen jaren talrijke naamsveranderingen heeft ondergaan – Blackwater, Xe Services, Paravant LLC, Greystone Limited, XPG, Raven, Constellation, Total Intelligence Solutions, EP Investments, US Training Center, GSD manufacturing, Presidenial Airlines, Select PTC, Academi, R2, Reflex Responses etc. – duidt er tevens op dat het haar naam niet wil verbeteren, maar de aandacht wil afleiden van de vele mensenrechtenschendingen en andere vergrijpen van haar medewerkers. De mindset van Blackwater is het probleem, en daarmee de Mirror Image training.

De een na laatste dag van de training stond in het teken van de finale. Woensdagavond werd het ‘plan voorgelegd aan een militaire raad’ en donderdag was ‘het de bedoeling om het getrainde in wedstrijdvorm in praktijk te brengen.’ Die dag verliep een beetje rommelig, want naast de wedstrijd gaat het ook over de ‘zelfmoordaanslagen in de metro van Londen op 7 juli 2005’, ‘de politieactie van 22 juli 2005 op metrostation Stockwell’ (het doodschieten van de Braziliaan Jean Charles de Menezes), ‘een blik op de toekomst’, de ‘documentaire Meeting Resistance’ en als afsluiting het ‘martelaarsfeest’.

Geheime conclusies

Veel informatie werd via de Wob-procedure niet vrij gekregen omdat er anders er een mirror mirror image training kon worden georganiseerd om de training van de KLPD’ers en de AIVD’ers te spiegelen. De conclusies worden ons volledig onthouden, maar het beeld van de training dat op basis van verschillende artikelen boven komt drijven, is dat van het spel ‘vlag veroveren plus’, met veel testosteron.

Misschien verklaart de training wel de aanpak van de inval van het belhuis in Rotterdam op Kerstavond 2010. Vraag is alleen of dit iets te maken heeft met het winnen van hearts and minds of het slechten van de oorlog tegen de terreur. Misschien is dat laatste echter in het geheel niet de bedoeling.

Wright sprak een van de mirror image trainers Frank Willoughby, specialist in hinderlagen en Improvised Explosive Devices, geïmproviseerde bommen. Willoughby staat symbool voor de vercommercialisering van oorlog. ‘The prospect of mounting chaos seems, frankly, to excite some instructors. At times, Frank Willoughby is unable to conceal how glad he is that the war on terrorism promises to be endless. […] Punching his fist into his hand, he adds, ‘Soon as they hit us 9/11’, I told my wife, ‘the game is on!’, schrijft Wright in Camp Jihad.

Blackwater’s verderfelijke reputatie is een reden om niet met het bedrijf in zee te gaan. Maar een belangrijkere conclusie van dit verhaal is dat de belangen van de private sector niet gericht zijn op vrede. Zij willen oorlog en chaos creëren, omdat dat nu eenmaal de voorwaarden zijn om geld mee te verdienen. Een politiedienst die in deze voetsporen treedt, roept bij elke deur die nutteloos wordt opengetrapt, net als Willoughby, the game is on.

Find this story at 19 June 2012

boek van Bob Drogin
Ook verschenen in het Nederland als Codenaam Curveball

Erg Amerikaans boek, de tekst schreeuwt je tegemoet wat gaandeweg begint tegen te staan. Toch is het een verdienstelijk boek. Minutieus brengt Drogin het functioneren van geheime diensten in beeld tegen het licht van een menselijke bron. Curveball is de man die de bron was van de informatie over de chemische fabrieken op wielen van Saddam Hussein. De hele wereld kreeg ze te zien toen Colin Powell beelden van deze diepladers tijdens een praatje bij de Veiligheidsraad vertoonde. Ze bleken echter niet te bestaan. De informant of beter gezegd overloper, Curveball, wordt afgeschilderd als een leugenaar, maar eigenlijk is hij een klokkenluider. Geheime diensten deugen niet doordat alles geheim is en daarmee ook te manipuleren. Het boek van Drogin geeft inzicht in het gebrek aan samenwerking tussen diverse geheime diensten zowel nationaal als internationaal, de politieke sturing van diensten, de tunnelvisie en het wishful thinking.
Curveball is een voormalig taxichauffeur uit Irak die in Duitsland asiel aanvraagt. Hij presenteert zich als een politiek vluchteling die aan een super geheim biologisch wapenprogramma in Irak heeft meegewerkt. Bij zijn asielaanvraag zegt hij niet direct dat hij dat werk deed, maar in de loop der tijd spint hij een verhaal met behulp van informatie die hij vindt op het internet. De BND, de Duitse geheime dienst voor buitenlandse aangelegenheden, wordt volledig om de tuin geleid, hoewel zij twijfels blijven houden omdat ze zijn verhaal niet kunnen checken. De Engelsen voegen er wat feiten aan toe en een van de vele inlichtingen en veiligheidsdiensten in de Verenigde Staten denken de bron te hebben gevonden voor het bestaan van het biologische en chemische wapenprogramma van Saddam Hussein. De stunt van Curveball is hilarisch, maar ook tragisch. De oorlog in Irak was er misschien ook zonder hem wel gekomen, maar hij heeft het een schijn van legitimatie gegeven. Men dacht dat Irak chemische en biologische wapen had, wat ook logisch was, want ongeveer alle apparatuur en grondstoffen waren door het Westen geleverd en Saddam Hussein had ze tot twee keer toe gebruikt. Na de eerste wapeninspectie ronde, waarbij een groot deel van deze wapens waren vernietigd begin jaren negentig, bleef vooral de Verenigde Staten, maar ook andere staten Irak hardnekkig beschuldigen van de productie van biologische en chemische wapens. Het bewijs ontbrak echter. Curveball stapte begin 1999 in deze status quo en reconstrueerde met behulp van de rapporten van de wapeninspecties van Verenigde Naties die hij van het internet plukte een verhaal van mobiele laboratoria. Bij zijn verhaal gebruikte hij zowel feiten als fictie, maar doordat het verhaal aansloot bij de veronderstelling van veel diensten dat Irak over faciliteiten beschikte, kon het wortel schieten in de inlichtingen gemeenschap. Alle feiten die zijn verhaal tegenspraken werden gaandeweg weggemoffeld en het bestaan van mobiele laboratoria was een vaststaand feit. Zoals bij de Schiedammer parkmoord tunnelvisie leidde tot de veroordeling van een onschuldige werd mede door toedoen van Curveball Irak in een tunnelvisie ervan beticht chemische en biologische wapens te produceren. Niet dat het Irakese regime nu een stel lieverdjes waren, maar de beschuldigingen waren ongegrond. Er moest worden ingegrepen. Een tunnelvisie die leidde tot een straf, maar niet alleen voor Hussein en zijn staf. Het gehele Irakese volk moest boeten. De oorlog heeft op dit moment het leven gekost van tussen de 80.000 en de 400.000 Irakezen en een ware exodus ontketend. En zullen de schuldigen van dit drama terecht staan? Nee, dat past niet in een rechtstaat die beweert het altijd bij het rechte eind te hebben. Saddam Hussein was een wrede dictator die hoe dan ook een keer weg moest. Met of zonder Curveball.

Find this story at 2 April 2008

BBC’s Panorama reveals fresh evidence that agencies dismissed intelligence from Iraqi foreign minister and spy chief

Tony Blair’s claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are challenged again in Monday’s Panorama. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Fresh evidence has been revealed about how MI6 and the CIA were told through secret channels by Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction.

Tony Blair told parliament before the war that intelligence showed Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme was “active”, “growing” and “up and running”.

A special BBC Panorama programme aired on Monday night details how British and US intelligence agencies were informed by top sources months before the invasion that Iraq had no active WMD programme, and that the information was not passed to subsequent inquiries.

It describes how Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, told the CIA’s station chief in Paris at the time, Bill Murray, through an intermediary that Iraq had “virtually nothing” in terms of WMD.

Sabri said in a statement that the Panorama story was “totally fabricated”.

However, Panorama confirms that three months before the war an MI6 officer met Iraq’s head of intelligence, Tahir Habbush al-Tikriti, who also said that Saddam had no active WMD. The meeting in the Jordanian capital, Amman, took place days before the British government published its now widely discredited Iraqi weapons dossier in September 2002.

Lord Butler, the former cabinet secretary who led an inquiry into the use of intelligence in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, tells the programme that he was not told about Sabri’s comments, and that he should have been.

Butler says of the use of intelligence: “There were ways in which people were misled or misled themselves at all stages.”

When it was suggested to him that the body that probably felt most misled of all was the British public, Butler replied: “Yes, I think they’re, they’re, they got every reason think that.”

The programme shows how the then chief of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, responded to information from Iraqi sources later acknowledged to be unreliable.

…

• The Spies Who Fooled the World, BBC Panorama Special, BBC1, Monday, 18 March, 10.35pm

Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 March 2013 06.00 GMT

Find this story at 18 March 2013 
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

The lies of two Iraqi spies were central to the claim – at the heart of the UK and US decision to go to war in Iraq – that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But even before the fighting started, intelligence from highly-placed sources was available suggesting he did not, Panorama has learned.

Six months before the invasion, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair warned the country about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

“The programme is not shut down,” he said. “It is up and running now.” Mr Blair used the intelligence on WMD to justify the war.

That same day, 24 September 2002, the government published its controversial dossier on the former Iraqi leader’s WMD.

The BBC has learned that two key pieces of intelligence, which could have prevented the Iraq war, were either dismissed or used selectively

Designed for public consumption, it had a personal foreword by Mr Blair, who assured readers Saddam Hussein had continued to produce WMD “beyond doubt”.

But, while it was never mentioned in the dossier, there was doubt. The original intelligence from MI6 and other agencies, on which the dossier was based, was clearly qualified.

The intelligence was, as the Joint Intelligence Committee noted in its original assessments, “sporadic and patchy” and “remains limited”.

The exclusion of these qualifications gave the dossier a certainty that was never warranted.
Intelligence failure

Much of the key intelligence used by Downing Street and the White House was based on fabrication, wishful thinking and lies.

Lord Butler says he was unaware of some intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have WMD

As Gen Sir Mike Jackson, then head of the British Army, says, “what appeared to be gold in terms of intelligence turned out to be fool’s gold, because it looked like gold, but it wasn’t”.

There was other intelligence, but it was less alarming.

Lord Butler, who after the war, conducted the first government inquiry into WMD intelligence, says Mr Blair and the intelligence community “misled themselves”.

Lord Butler and Sir Mike agree Mr Blair did not lie, because they say he genuinely believed Saddam Hussein had WMD.

The most notorious spy who fooled the world was the Iraqi defector, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi.

His fabrications and lies were a crucial part of the intelligence used to justify one of the most divisive wars in recent history. And they contributed to one of the biggest intelligence failures in living memory.

He became known as Curveball, the codename given to him by US intelligence that turned out to be all too appropriate.
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“
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I thought we’d produced probably the best intelligence that anybody produced in the pre-war period”
Bill Murray
Former CIA Paris station head

Mr Janabi arrived as an Iraqi asylum seeker at a German refugee centre in 1999 and said he was a chemical engineer, thus attracting the attention of the German intelligence service, the BND.

He told them he had seen mobile biological laboratories mounted on trucks to evade detection.

The Germans had doubts about Mr Janabi which they shared with the Americans and the British.

MI6 had doubts too, which they expressed in a secret cable to the CIA: “Elements of [his] behaviour strike us as typical of individuals we would normally assess as fabricators [but we are] inclined to believe that a significant part of [Curveball’s] reporting is true.”

The British decided to stick with Curveball, as did the Americans. He later admitted being a fabricator and liar.

There appeared to be corroborative intelligence from another spy who fooled the world.
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Panorama: Find out more
Peter Taylor presents Panorama: The Spies Who Fooled the World
BBC One, Monday 18 March at 22:35 GMT
Then available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer

He was an Iraqi former intelligence officer, called Maj Muhammad Harith, who said it had been his idea to develop mobile biological laboratories and claimed he had ordered seven Renault trucks to put them on.

He made his way to Jordan and then talked to the Americans.

Muhammad Harith apparently made up his story because he wanted a new home. His intelligence was dismissed as fabrication 10 months before the war.

MI6 also thought they had further corroboration of Curveball’s story, when a trusted source – codenamed Red River – revealed he had been in touch with a secondary source who said he had seen fermenters on trucks. But he never claimed the fermenters had anything to do with biological agents.

After the war, MI6 decided that Red River was unreliable as a source.
Handmade suit

But not all the intelligence was wrong. Information from two highly-placed sources close to Saddam Hussein was correct.

Both said Iraq did not have any active WMD.

The CIA’s source was Iraq’s foreign minister, Naji Sabri.

Tahir Jalil Habbush Al-Tikriti said Saddam Hussein had no active WMD

Former CIA man Bill Murray – then head of the agency’s station in Paris – dealt with him via an intermediary, an Arab journalist, to whom he gave $200,000 (£132,000) in cash as a down payment.

He said Naji Sabri “looked like a person of real interest – someone who we really should be talking to”.

Murray put together a list of questions to put to the minister, with WMD at the top.

The intermediary met Naji Sabri in New York in September 2002 when he was about to address the UN – six months before the start of the war and just a week before the British dossier was published.

The intermediary bought the minister a handmade suit which the minister wore at the UN, a sign Mr Murray took to mean that Naji Sabri was on board.

Mr Murray says the upshot was intelligence that Saddam Hussein “had some chemical weapons left over from the early 90s, [and] had taken the stocks and given them to various tribes that were loyal to him. [He] had intentions to have weapons of mass destruction – chemical, biological and nuclear – but at that point in time he virtually had nothing”.

The CIA insists the intelligence report from the “source” indicated the former Iraqi president did have WMD programmes because, the agency says, it mentioned that, “Iraq was currently producing and stockpiling chemical weapons” and “as a last resort had mobile launchers armed with chemical weapons”.

Mr Murray disputes this account.

The second highly-placed source was Iraq’s head of intelligence, Tahir Jalil Habbush Al-Tikriti – the jack of diamonds in America’s “most wanted” deck of cards which rated members of Saddam Hussein’s government.

A senior MI6 officer met him in Jordan in January 2003 – two months before the war.

Bill Murray says the “best intelligence” was not used

It was thought Habbush wanted to negotiate a deal that would stop the imminent invasion. He also said Saddam Hussein had no active WMD.

Surprisingly, Lord Butler – who says Britons have “every right” to feel misled by their prime minister – only became aware of the information from Habbush after his report was published.

“I can’t explain that,” says Lord Butler.

“This was something which I think our review did miss. But when we asked about it, we were told that it wasn’t a very significant fact, because SIS [MI6] discounted it as something designed by Saddam to mislead.”

Lord Butler says he also knew nothing about the intelligence from Naji Sabri.

Ex-CIA man Bill Murray was not happy with the way the intelligence from these two highly-placed sources had been used.

“I thought we’d produced probably the best intelligence that anybody produced in the pre-war period, all of which came out – in the long run – to be accurate. The information was discarded and not used.”

Panorama: The Spies Who Fooled the World, BBC One, Monday 18 March at 22:35 GMT and then available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer.

18 March 2013 Last updated at 00:43 GMT
By Peter Taylor
BBC News

Find this story at 18 March 2013

Watch the episode online

BBC © 2013

Credo Mobile speaks out after judge orders US government to stop issuing ‘national security letters’ to access citizens’ data

Judge Susan Illston declared the NSLs unconstitutional as they breached the first amendment rights of the parties being served the orders. Photograph: Frank Polich/Reuters

The Californian telecoms company thought to be behind a stunning court victory that has blown a hole in the FBI’s highly secretive system for collecting US citizens’ private data has hailed the “significant” legal breakthrough.

Credo, based in San Francisco, spoke out after a federal judge ordered the US government to stop issuing what are called “national security letters” – demands for data that contain in-built gagging clauses that prevent the recipients disclosing even the existence of the orders or their own identity.

In a carefully worded release, the firm fell short of revealing itself as the instigator of the legal action that resulted in Friday’s development. But it is understood by the Guardian that the telecommunications firm was indeed the unnamed litigant behind the action.

Michael Kieschnick, chief executive of Credo Mobile, hailed the judge’s order as “the most significant court victory for our constitutional rights since the dark day when George W Bush signed the Patriot Act”.

It is extremely rare for a telecoms company to challenge the system of national security letters, or NSLs, which have mushroomed since 9/11 under the Patriot Act. Credo, a subsidiary of Working Assets Inc, that directs some of its profits to support civil liberties groups, has been a long-standing advocate for reform of the NSL.

It is believed to be the company behind a May 2011 lawsuit in which the FBI was sued for breach of its rights after the company was served with a federal demand for private data belonging to its customers. The FBI shot back by counter-suing the company.

The lawsuit was made anonymously, with the name of the company redacted from court papers made available to the media. But last July the Wall Street Journal conducted an analysis of the likely telecoms companies that could have brought the legal action, and concluded that the litigant was probably Credo.

In her ruling, Judge Susan Illston declared the NSLs unconstitutional as they breached the first amendment rights of the parties being served the orders.

Kieschnick said: “This decision is notable for its clarity and depth. From this day forward, the US government’s unconstitutional practice of using national security letters to obtain private information without court oversight and its denial of the first amendment rights of national security letter recipients have finally been stopped by our courts.”

NSLs have been an increasingly important part of the US government’s approach to counter-terrorism, though their growing use has been matched by mounting unease on the party of civil libertarians.

Last year the FBI sent out more than 16,000 of the letters relating to the private data – mainly financial, internet or phone records – of more than 7,000 Americans.

Previous court action has led to the FBI being accused of abusing its powers under the NSL statute by issuing the letters far more extensively than in the limited counter-terrorism situations for which they were devised.

The letters are among the most secretive tools of any deployed by the US state. The demand for data comes with a gagging order attached – meaning that the recipient of the NSL is not allowed even to discuss the letter in public.

…

• This article has been amended since publication.

Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 16 March 2013 19.30 GMT

Find this story at 16 March 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Smart technology and the sort of big data available to social networking sites are helping police target crime before it happens. But is this ethical?

Companies such as Facebook have begun using algorithms and historical data to predict which of their users might commit crimes. Illustration: Noma Bar

The police have a very bright future ahead of them – and not just because they can now look up potential suspects on Google. As they embrace the latest technologies, their work is bound to become easier and more effective, raising thorny questions about privacy, civil liberties, and due process.

For one, policing is in a good position to profit from “big data”. As the costs of recording devices keep falling, it’s now possible to spot and react to crimes in real time. Consider a city like Oakland in California. Like many other American cities, today it is covered with hundreds of hidden microphones and sensors, part of a system known as ShotSpotter, which not only alerts the police to the sound of gunshots but also triangulates their location. On verifying that the noises are actual gunshots, a human operator then informs the police.

It’s not hard to imagine ways to improve a system like ShotSpotter. Gunshot-detection systems are, in principle, reactive; they might help to thwart or quickly respond to crime, but they won’t root it out. The decreasing costs of computing, considerable advances in sensor technology, and the ability to tap into vast online databases allow us to move from identifying crime as it happens – which is what the ShotSpotter does now – to predicting it before it happens.

Instead of detecting gunshots, new and smarter systems can focus on detecting the sounds that have preceded gunshots in the past. This is where the techniques and ideologies of big data make another appearance, promising that a greater, deeper analysis of data about past crimes, combined with sophisticated algorithms, can predict – and prevent – future ones. This is a practice known as “predictive policing”, and even though it’s just a few years old, many tout it as a revolution in how police work is done. It’s the epitome of solutionism; there is hardly a better example of how technology and big data can be put to work to solve the problem of crime by simply eliminating crime altogether. It all seems too easy and logical; who wouldn’t want to prevent crime before it happens?

Police in America are particularly excited about what predictive policing – one of Time magazine’s best inventions of 2011 – has to offer; Europeans are slowly catching up as well, with Britain in the lead. Take the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), which is using software called PredPol. The software analyses years of previously published statistics about property crimes such as burglary and automobile theft, breaks the patrol map into 500 sq ft zones, calculates the historical distribution and frequency of actual crimes across them, and then tells officers which zones to police more vigorously.

It’s much better – and potentially cheaper – to prevent a crime before it happens than to come late and investigate it. So while patrolling officers might not catch a criminal in action, their presence in the right place at the right time still helps to deter criminal activity. Occasionally, though, the police might indeed disrupt an ongoing crime. In June 2012 the Associated Press reported on an LAPD captain who wasn’t so sure that sending officers into a grid zone on the edge of his coverage area – following PredPol’s recommendation – was such a good idea. His officers, as the captain expected, found nothing; however, when they returned several nights later, they caught someone breaking a window. Score one for PredPol?

Trials of PredPol and similar software began too recently to speak of any conclusive results. Still, the intermediate results look quite impressive. In Los Angeles, five LAPD divisions that use it in patrolling territory populated by roughly 1.3m people have seen crime decline by 13%. The city of Santa Cruz, which now also uses PredPol, has seen its burglaries decline by nearly 30%. Similar uplifting statistics can be found in many other police departments across America.

Other powerful systems that are currently being built can also be easily reconfigured to suit more predictive demands. Consider the New York Police Department’s latest innovation – the so-called Domain Awareness System – which syncs the city’s 3,000 closed-circuit camera feeds with arrest records, 911 calls, licence plate recognition technology, and radiation detectors. It can monitor a situation in real time and draw on a lot of data to understand what’s happening. The leap from here to predicting what might happen is not so great.

If PredPol’s “prediction” sounds familiar, that’s because its methods were inspired by those of prominent internet companies. Writing in The Police Chief magazine in 2009, a senior LAPD officer lauded Amazon’s ability to “understand the unique groups in their customer base and to characterise their purchasing patterns”, which allows the company “not only to anticipate but also to promote or otherwise shape future behaviour”. Thus, just as Amazon’s algorithms make it possible to predict what books you are likely to buy next, similar algorithms might tell the police how often – and where – certain crimes might happen again. Ever stolen a bicycle? Then you might also be interested in robbing a grocery store.

Here we run into the perennial problem of algorithms: their presumed objectivity and quite real lack of transparency. We can’t examine Amazon’s algorithms; they are completely opaque and have not been subject to outside scrutiny. Amazon claims, perhaps correctly, that secrecy allows it to stay competitive. But can the same logic be applied to policing? If no one can examine the algorithms – which is likely to be the case as predictive-policing software will be built by private companies – we won’t know what biases and discriminatory practices are built into them. And algorithms increasingly dominate many other parts of our legal system; for example, they are also used to predict how likely a certain criminal, once on parole or probation, is to kill or be killed. Developed by a University of Pennsylvania professor, this algorithm has been tested in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington DC. Such probabilistic information can then influence sentencing recommendations and bail amounts, so it’s hardly trivial.
Los Angeles police arrest a man. The force is using predictive software to direct its patrols. Photograph: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

But how do we know that the algorithms used for prediction do not reflect the biases of their authors? For example, crime tends to happen in poor and racially diverse areas. Might algorithms – with their presumed objectivity – sanction even greater racial profiling? In most democratic regimes today, police need probable cause – some evidence and not just guesswork – to stop people in the street and search them. But armed with such software, can the police simply say that the algorithms told them to do it? And if so, how will the algorithms testify in court? Techno-utopians will probably overlook such questions and focus on the abstract benefits that algorithmic policing has to offer; techno-sceptics, who start with some basic knowledge of the problems, constraints and biases that already pervade modern policing, will likely be more critical.

Legal scholar Andrew Guthrie Ferguson has studied predictive policing in detail. Ferguson cautions against putting too much faith in the algorithms and succumbing to information reductionism. “Predictive algorithms are not magic boxes that divine future crime, but instead probability models of future events based on current environmental vulnerabilities,” he notes.

But why do they work? Ferguson points out that there will be future crime not because there was past crime but because “the environmental vulnerability that encouraged the first crime is still unaddressed”. When the police, having read their gloomy forecast about yet another planned car theft, see an individual carrying a screwdriver in one of the predicted zones, this might provide reasonable suspicion for a stop. But, as Ferguson notes, if the police arrested the gang responsible for prior crimes the day before, but the model does not yet reflect this information, then prediction should be irrelevant, and the police will need some other reasonable ground for stopping the individual. If they do make the stop, then they shouldn’t be able to say in court, “The model told us to.” This, however, may not be obvious to the person they have stopped, who has no familiarity with the software and its algorithms.

Then there’s the problem of under-reported crimes. While most homicides are reported, many rapes and home break-ins are not. Even in the absence of such reports, local police still develop ways of knowing when something odd is happening in their neighbourhoods. Predictive policing, on the other hand, might replace such intuitive knowledge with a naive belief in the comprehensive power of statistics. If only data about reported crimes are used to predict future crimes and guide police work, some types of crime might be left unstudied – and thus unpursued.

What to do about the algorithms then? It is a rare thing to say these days but there is much to learn from the financial sector in this regard. For example, after a couple of disasters caused by algorithmic trading in August 2012, financial authorities in Hong Kong and Australia drafted proposals to establish regular independent audits of the design, development and modification of the computer systems used for algorithmic trading. Thus, just as financial auditors could attest to a company’s balance sheet, algorithmic auditors could verify if its algorithms are in order.

As algorithms are further incorporated into our daily lives – from Google’s Autocomplete to PredPol – it seems prudent to subject them to regular investigations by qualified and ideally public-spirited third parties. One advantage of the auditing solution is that it won’t require the audited companies publicly to disclose their trade secrets, which has been the principal objection – voiced, of course, by software companies – to increasing the transparency of their algorithms.

The police are also finding powerful allies in Silicon Valley. Companies such as Facebook have begun using algorithms and historical data to predict which of their users might commit crimes using their services. Here is how it works: Facebook’s own predictive systems can flag certain users as suspicious by studying certain behavioural cues: the user only writes messages to others under 18; most of the user’s contacts are female; the user is typing keywords like “sex” or “date.” Staffers can then examine each case and report users to the police as necessary. Facebook’s concern with its own brand here is straightforward: no one should think that the platform is harbouring criminals.

In 2011 Facebook began using PhotoDNA, a Microsoft service that allows it to scan every uploaded picture and compare it with child-porn images from the FBI’s National Crime Information Centre. Since then it has expanded its analysis beyond pictures as well. In mid-2012 Reuters reported on how Facebook, armed with its predictive algorithms, apprehended a middle-aged man chatting about sex with a 13-year-old girl, arranging to meet her the day after. The police contacted the teen, took over her computer, and caught the man.

Facebook is at the cutting edge of algorithmic surveillance here: just like police departments that draw on earlier crime statistics, Facebook draws on archives of real chats that preceded real sex assaults. Curiously, Facebook justifies its use of algorithms by claiming that they tend to be less intrusive than humans. “We’ve never wanted to set up an environment where we have employees looking at private communications, so it’s really important that we use technology that has a very low false-positive rate,” Facebook’s chief of security told Reuters.

It’s difficult to question the application of such methods to catching sexual predators who prey on children (not to mention that Facebook may have little choice here, as current US child-protection laws require online platforms used by teens to be vigilant about predators). But should Facebook be allowed to predict any other crimes? After all, it can easily engage in many other kinds of similar police work: detecting potential drug dealers, identifying potential copyright violators (Facebook already prevents its users from sharing links to many file-sharing sites), and, especially in the wake of the 2011 riots in the UK, predicting the next generation of troublemakers. And as such data becomes available, the temptation to use it becomes almost irresistible.

That temptation was on full display following the rampage in a Colorado movie theatre in June 2012, when an isolated gunman went on a killing spree, murdering 12 people. A headline that appeared in the Wall Street Journal soon after the shooting says it all: “Can Data Mining Stop the Killing?” It won’t take long for this question to be answered in the affirmative.

In many respects, internet companies are in a much better position to predict crime than police. Where the latter need a warrant to assess someone’s private data, the likes of Facebook can look up their users’ data whenever they want. From the perspective of police, it might actually be advantageous to have Facebook do all this dirty work, because Facebook’s own investigations don’t have to go through the court system.

While Facebook probably feels too financially secure to turn this into a business – it would rather play up its role as a good citizen – smaller companies might not resist the temptation to make a quick buck. In 2011 TomTom, a Dutch satellite-navigation company that has now licensed some of its almighty technology to Apple, found itself in the middle of a privacy scandal when it emerged that it had been selling GPS driving data collected from customers to the police. Privacy advocate Chris Soghoian has likewise documented the easy-to-use “pay-and-wiretap” interfaces that various internet and mobile companies have established for law enforcement agencies.

Publicly available information is up for grabs too. Thus, police are already studying social-networking sites for signs of unrest, often with the help of private companies. The title of a recent brochure from Accenture urges law enforcement agencies to “tap the power of social media to drive better policing outcomes”. Plenty of companies are eager to help. ECM Universe, a start-up from Virginia, US, touts its system, called Rapid Content Analysis for Law Enforcement, which is described as “a social media surveillance solution providing real-time monitoring of Twitter, Facebook, Google groups, and many other communities where users express themselves freely”.

“The solution,” notes the ECM brochure, “employs text analytics to correlate threatening language to surveillance subjects, and alert investigators of warning signs.” What kind of warning signs? A recent article in the Washington Post notes that ECM Universe helped authorities in Fort Lupton, Colorado, identify a man who was tweeting such menacing things as “kill people” and “burn [expletive] school”. This seems straightforward enough but what if it was just “harm people” or “police suck”?

As companies like ECM Universe accumulate extensive archives of tweets and Facebook updates sent by actual criminals, they will also be able to predict the kinds of non-threatening verbal cues that tend to precede criminal acts. Thus, even tweeting that you don’t like your yoghurt might bring police to your door, especially if someone who tweeted the same thing three years before ended up shooting someone in the face later in the day.

However, unlike Facebook, neither police nor outside companies see the whole picture of what users do on social media platforms: private communications and “silent” actions – clicking links and opening pages – are invisible to them. But Facebook, Twitter, Google and similar companies surely know all of this – so their predictive power is much greater than the police’s. They can even rank users based on how likely they are to commit certain acts.

An apt illustration of how such a system can be abused comes from The Silicon Jungle, ostensibly a work of fiction written by a Google data-mining engineer and published by Princeton University Press – not usually a fiction publisher – in 2010. The novel is set in the data-mining operation of Ubatoo – a search engine that bears a striking resemblance to Google – where a summer intern develops Terrorist-o-Meter, a sort of universal score of terrorism aptitude that the company could assign to all its users. Those unhappy with their scores would, of course, get a chance to correct them – by submitting even more details about themselves. This might seem like a crazy idea but – in perhaps another allusion to Google – Ubatoo’s corporate culture is so obsessed with innovation that its interns are allowed to roam free, so the project goes ahead.

To build Terrorist-o-Meter, the intern takes a list of “interesting” books that indicate a potential interest in subversive activities and looks up the names of the customers who have bought them from one of Ubatoo’s online shops. Then he finds the websites that those customers frequent and uses the URLs to find even more people – and so on until he hits the magic number of 5,000. The intern soon finds himself pursued by both an al-Qaida-like terrorist group that wants those 5,000 names to boost its recruitment campaign, as well as various defence and intelligence agencies that can’t wait to preemptively ship those 5,000 people to Guantánamo.

…

Evgeny Morozov
The Observer, Saturday 9 March 2013 19.20 GMT

Find this story at 9 March 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Police scan your Facebook comments.Photo / File

Police have developed a specialist software tool which mines social media for information.

The Signal tool was developed for high-profile public events and emergencies and works by scanning public-facing material on social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Police director of intelligence Mark Evans said it was “not typically” used as an evidence gathering or investigative tool although it could be.

Social media use by law enforcement around the world has grown with the International Association of Police Chiefs finding 77 per cent of agencies used it most commonly to investigate crime. The survey of 600 agencies across the United States found it had helped solve crimes.

Mr Evans said the tool was developed as part of preparations for the Rugby World Cup because police “wanted the ability to scan social media comments in and around the stadiums in real time”.

Since then, it had been used for royal visits, Waitangi Day and during the Auckland cyclone. Mr Evans said Signal was not used to crawl random postings. Instead, police would set a geographical area and put in key words.

As an example, he said a large sporting event could see “protest”, “traffic”, “accident” or “delays”.

He said the strength of Signal was its ability to help police “identify and analyse social media feeds relevant to crime and public safety” at a specific time and place.

In doing so, Mr Evans said police were able to judge the impact of an event which had happened or stop a problem escalating. It also helped target people and resources where they were needed, he said.

During the Rugby World Cup, it allowed police to detect a boy racer convoy heading from Auckland to Hamilton.

The drivers “felt they would be able to get away with dangerous behaviour on the roads because they believed police resources would be busy elsewhere”, he said.

…

Signal was developed as part of a $60,000 emergency management tool.

Global police use of social media

53 per cent – Created a fake profile or undercover identity
48 per cent – Posted surveillance video or images
86 per cent – Viewed profiles of suspects
49 per cent – Viewed profiles of victims

Source: IACP Social Media Survey 2012

By David Fisher @@DFisherJourno
5:30 AM Saturday Feb 23, 2013

Find this story at 23 February 2013

© Copyright 2013, APN Holdings NZ Limited

Er gilt als der böseste Deutsche im Internet: Martin Münch liefert Polizei und Geheimdiensten Überwachungs-Software. Auch Diktatoren drangsalieren mit den Programmen ihre Bürger.

Im Disney-Film “Mulan” ist alles so einfach. Die Heldin kämpft zusammen mit lauter Männern im chinesischen Militär gegen die Hunnen. Der Film zeichnet Mulans Gegner als schattige, gesichtslose Wesen. Die feindliche Reiterarmee verdunkelt den Horizont. Gut gegen Böse – ein Klassiker.

Martin Münch lebt in einem Disney-Film. Er weiß, wer die Bösen sind. Er weiß, dass er zu den Guten gehört. Es gibt nur ein Problem: Alle anderen wissen es nicht. Für sie steht Münch auf der falschen Seite des arabischen Frühlings, auf der Seite der Unterdrücker. Menschenrechtler prangern an, er liefere Überwachungssoftware an Diktaturen, willentlich oder leichtfertig.

Münch, 31, entwickelt Spähsoftware für Computer und Handys. Sie infiziert das digitale Gedächtnis, sie schnüffelt in der virtuellen Intimsphäre. Polizei und Geheimdienst können dank ihr sehen, welche Krankheitssymptome der Überwachte im Web googelt. Sie hören, was er mit der Mutter über das Internet-Telefon-Programm Skype bespricht. Sie lesen seinen Einkaufszettel auf dem Smartphone. Der Trojaner, der das alles kann, heißt Finfisher. Trojaner wird diese Art Software genannt, weil die Spionagefunktionen eingeschmuggelt werden in einer harmlosen Hülle.
Bild vergrößern

Martin Münchs Firma Gamma entwickelt den Trojaner Finfisher. (Foto: Robert Haas)

Seit kurzem testet auch das Bundeskriminalamt, ob Finfisher als Bundestrojaner taugt. Auf sein Produkt ist Münch stolz. Zum ersten Mal zeigte er jetzt deutschen Journalisten, dem NDR und der Süddeutschen Zeitung, wie Finfisher funktioniert. Bisher durften Medien nicht in die Entwicklerbüros in Obersendling in München.

Auf den Glastüren steht der Firmenname: Gamma Group. Ein Dutzend Mitarbeiter sitzt vor Bildschirmen, die Programmierer gleich vor mehreren. Hinter dem Bürostuhl des Chefs Münch hängt eine Aluminiumplatte mit dem Firmenlogo. Er teilt sich seinen Schreibtisch mit dem Kollegen, der den IT-Notruf betreut. Ihm gegenüber klingelt also das Telefon, wenn irgendwo auf der Welt die Strafverfolgung klemmt. Er ist also sehr nah dran an den Ermittlern, auch sprachlich. “Wenn wir Pädophile verhaften, haben wir ein Problem: Die sperren ihre Rechner automatisch”, sagt Münch, als fahre er bei den Einsätzen mit, und präsentiert schwungvoll die Lösung: einen USB-Stick von Gamma in den PC, und die Daten sind gerichtsfest gesichert.

Münch kann so technisches Spielzeug gut erklären. Vielleicht, weil er sich das alles selbst beigebracht hat. Er hat keine Fachausbildung, er hat nicht Informatik studiert, nur drei Semester Jazzklavier und Gitarre. Er war mit einer Band auf Deutschlandtournee, trat als Bassist einer Casting-Girlband bei “Popstars” auf. Steht er dagegen heute auf der Bühne, zeigt er auf Sicherheitskonferenzen, wie man Rechner infiziert. Für die Ermittler ist Münch ein bisschen wie Mushu, der kleine Drache aus “Mulan”, dem Disney-Film von 1998. Er ist der coole Helfer, der Mulan bei der Armeeausbildung und im Kampf beisteht. Münch hat eine Firma, über die er 15 Prozent der Anteile der Gamma International GmbH hält. Er hat sie Mushun genannt, nach dem Drachen aus dem Film, nur mit einem zusätzlichen “n” am Ende, sagt er. Dann lacht er verlegen. Doch ist er nicht nur Miteigentümer, sondern auch Geschäftsführer bei Gamma.

Mit Medien hat Münch noch nicht viel Erfahrung. Der Süddeutschen Zeitung und dem britischen Guardian liegen Dokumente vor, die zeigen, dass die Gamma-Gruppe eine Firma im Steuerparadies Britische Jungferninseln besitzt. Darauf angesprochen, bestritt Münch vor einigen Wochen erst vehement, dass die Gesellschaft überhaupt existiert. Als der Guardian dann Belege schickte, entschuldigte er sich. Er habe gedacht, dass die Tochter wirklich nicht existiert, schrieb er nach London. Auch nun beantwortet Geschäftsführer Münch Fragen zum Geschäft immer wieder ausweichend. Zahlen, Firmenpartner kenne er nicht. “Ich bin ein kleiner Techniker”, sagt Münch. Die strategischen Entscheidungen in der Firma treffe aber trotzdem er.
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So bewirbt der Gamma-Prospekt den Trojaner für Handys namens Finspy Mobile.

Gammas Bestseller aus der Finfisher-Familie heißt Finspy. Münch beugt sich über den Apple-Laptop und zeigt, was das Programm kann. Er steckt das Internetkabel in den Rechner und tippt “mjm” in das Feld für den Benutzernamen, für Martin Johannes Münch. Zuerst wählt der Nutzer das Betriebssystem aus, das er angreifen will: ein iPhone von Apple, ein Handy mit Googles Betriebssystem Android oder einen PC mit Windows oder dem kostenlosen System Linux? Der Ermittler kann eingeben, über wie viele Server in verschiedenen Ländern der Trojaner Haken schlägt, bis auch technisch versierte Opfer nicht mehr nachvollziehen können, wer sie da eigentlich überwacht. Der Trojaner kann ein Sterbedatum bekommen, an dem er sich selbst löscht. Genehmigt ein Richter später eine längere Überwachung, kann das Datum nach hinten geschoben werden.

Dann darf der Ermittler auswählen, wie fies der Trojaner werden soll, was er können darf: das Mikrofon als Wanze benutzen. Gespeicherte Dateien sichten und sichern, wenn sie gelöscht oder geändert werden. Mitlesen, welche Buchstaben der Nutzer auf der Tastatur drückt. Den Bildschirm abfilmen. Skype-Telefonate mitschneiden. Die Kamera des Rechners anschalten und sehen, wo das Gerät steht. Handys über die GPS-Ortungsfunktion zum Peilsender machen. Finspy präsentiert die überwachten Geräte als Liste. Flaggen zeigen, in welchem Land sich das Ziel befindet. Ein Doppelklick, und der Ermittler ist auf dem Rechner.

Der Trojaner ist so mächtig, als würde jemand dem Computernutzer über die Schulter gucken. Deswegen kommen Ermittler so auch Verdächtigen auf die Schliche, die ihre Festplatte mit einem Passwort sichern und nur verschlüsselt kommunizieren. Der Trojaner liest einfach das Passwort mit. Doch die meisten Funktionen von Finspy sind in Deutschland illegal.

Und Finspy kostet. Der Preis geht bei etwa 150.000 Euro los und kann ins siebenstellige gehen, sagt Münch. Denn Gamma baut für jeden Kunden eine eigene Version des Trojaners, die mit dem Recht des Landes konform sein soll. Für jeden überwachten Computer müssen Ermittler eine Lizenz von Gamma kaufen. Die meisten Behörden würden fünf Lizenzen erwerben, sagt Münch, manchmal vielleicht auch zwanzig. “Ziel sind einzelne Straftäter.” Ein “mutmaßlich” benutzt er nicht, im Gespräch verwendet er die Worte “Kriminelle” und “Straftäter”, als seien es Synonyme für “Verdächtige” und “Zielperson”.

Alaa Shehabi ist so eine Zielperson. Ihr Vergehen: Sie kritisierte die Regierung ihres Landes. Die junge Frau ist in Bahrain geboren, einem Inselstaat im Persischen Golf, etwa so groß wie das Stadtgebiet von Hamburg. Ein Königreich – und ein Polizeistaat. Der sunnitische Regent Hamad Ben Isa al-Khalifa herrscht über eine schiitische Bevölkerungsmehrheit. Als der arabische Frühling vor zwei Jahren auch in sein Land schwappte und Shehabi mit Tausend anderen Reformen forderte, rief der König die Armee von Saudi-Arabien zur Hilfe. Fotos und Videos im Internet zeigen geschundene Körper, von Tränengas verätzte Augen und von Schrotkugeln durchlöcherte Leiber. Es sind die Bilder eines blutig niedergeschlagenen Protestes.
Bild vergrößern

Die Polizei greift mit Tränengas an: Bei Protesten starben Demonstranten (Foto: Getty Images)

Die Formel-1-Veranstalter sahen darin kein Problem und luden vergangenen April zum Großen Preis von Manama, einem glitzernden Großereignis mitten in einem gebeutelten Land. König Khalifa wollte zeigen, wie weltoffen Bahrain sei. Die Opposition hingegen versuchte, zumindest einigen angereisten Journalisten die Wahrheit zu berichten. Auch Shehabi, die ihre dunklen Haare unter einem Schleier verbirgt, traf sich mit Reportern. Sie erzählte von der Polizeigewalt, von den Verletzten, den Toten. Sie brach ein Tabu.

Shehabi war vorsichtig, achtete darauf, dass niemand sie beobachtete, schaltete während des Interviews ihr Handy aus. Trotzdem besuchten Polizisten sie wenig später. Sie fragten, was sie den Journalisten erzählt habe, und warnten sie, so etwas nie wieder zu tun. Die Beamten ließen sie laufen, doch dann kam die erste E-Mail. Im Betreff stand “torture report on Nabeel Rajab”, im Anhang angeblich Fotos des gefolterten Rajab. Er ist ein Freund Shehabis, ein Oppositioneller wie sie. Shehabi versuchte, die Datei zu öffnen. Es ging nicht. Gut für sie: Denn im Anhang war ein Trojaner von Gamma versteckt. Shehabis E-Mails sollten mitgelesen, ihre Telefonate abgehört werden. Der Polizeistaat Bahrain hatte sie im Visier, und Martin Münchs Software half dabei. Auch andere Oppositionelle berichten von ominösen E-Mails. Mal lockten sie ihre Opfer damit, dass der König zum Dialog bereit sei, mal mit vermeintlichen Folterfotos.

Selbst im Ausland haben Exil-Bahrainer diesen Regierungs-Spam bekommen. Husain Abdulla etwa, der im US-Bundesstaat Alabama eine Tankstelle betreibt und in Washington Lobbyarbeit für Bahrains Opposition macht. Das Königshaus hat ihm deswegen die Staatsbürgerschaft entzogen, wollte ihn aber trotzdem überwachen und schickte ihm einen Trojaner. Die bahrainische Regierung versuchte also, auf US-Boden einen US-Bürger auszuspähen. Gamma macht’s möglich: “Wenn Finspy Mobile auf einem Handy installiert ist, kann es aus der Ferne überwacht werden, wo auch immer sich das Ziel in der Welt befindet”, heißt es dazu in einem Prospekt.

Die Universität von Toronto in Kanada hat die EMails an Shehabi und Abdulla untersucht. An ihrem Forschungsinstitut Citizen Lab entschlüsselte Morgan Marquis-Boire, Software-Ingenieur bei Google, das Spähprogramm. Er baut einen virtuellen Sandkasten, setzt einen Computer in die Mitte und lässt den Trojaner auf das abgegrenzte Spielfeld. Dann protokolliert Marquis-Boire, wie das Programm den PC kapert, Passwörter kopiert, Skype-Gespräche aufzeichnet, den Bildschirm abfotografiert. Die gesammelten Daten funkt der Trojaner an einen Server in Bahrain. Marquis-Boire entdeckt im Programmcode das Kürzel “finspyv2” – die zweite Version von Finspy. Auch “Martin Muench” steht da. Münch schreibt seinen Namen seit Jahren mit “ue”.
Citizen Lab fand Münchs Namen im Code des Trojaners. (Foto: Citizen Lab)

Schnüffelsoftware für einen Polizeistaat? Auf die Vorwürfe reagiert Gamma merkwürdig. Münch verschickt eine Pressemitteilung, in der steht, dass eine Demoversion für Kunden gestohlen worden sei. Eine klare Aussage zu Bahrain gibt es nicht. Münch sagt nicht, wer Gammas Kunden sind. Er sagt auch nicht, wer nicht Kunde ist. Alles ganz geheim. So muss die Firma damit leben, dass Reporter ohne Grenzen und andere Menschenrechtsaktivisten in dieser Woche eine offizielle Beschwerde beim Bundeswirtschaftsministerium einlegten. Sie verlangen schärfere Kontrollen, wohin Gamma exportiert, und berufen sich dabei auf – allerdings freiwillige – Empfehlungen der Organisation für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (OECD). Nimmt das Ministerium die Beschwerde an, könnten als nächster Schritt Gamma und die Aktivisten versuchen, hinter verschlossenen Türen im Ministerium eine Einigung zu finden.

Münch wiederholt bei jeder Gelegenheit, dass seine Firma die Exportgesetze in Deutschland einhält. Das soll vorbildlich wirken, aber in Wirklichkeit werden aus München gar keine Finfisher-Produkte verschickt. Das geschieht von England aus. In Andover, nicht weit von Stonehenge, sitzt die Muttergesellschaft von Gamma International, die Gamma Group. Gründer und neben Münch Mehrheitseigentümer ist Louthean Nelson; die Gruppe beschäftigt 85 Mitarbeiter.

In Großbritannien und Deutschland gilt allerdings dieselbe EU-Verordnung über den Export von Überwachungstechnik. Überwachungstechnologien sind im Sinne dieses Gesetzes keine Waffen, sondern Güter, die sowohl zivil als auch militärisch genutzt werden können. Fachwort: dual use. Dementsprechend sind die Auflagen deutlich harmloser als für Panzerverkäufe. Am Ende läuft es darauf hinaus, dass Gamma vom Kunden ein Zertifikat bekommt, demzufolge Finfisher wirklich beim richtigen Adressaten installiert wurde, gestempelt vom Staat selbst. Das Papier heftet Gamma ab. Wie oft und genau das Bundesamt für Ausfuhrkontrolle Gamma prüft, wollen weder Münch noch das dafür zuständige Bundeswirtschaftsministerium sagen.

Wie viele Diktaturen Gamma-Kunden sind, ist nicht bekannt. Das Institut Citizen Lab aus Toronto hat in vielen Ländern Server mit Spuren von Finfisher gefunden. Brunei, Äthiopien, Turkmenistan, die Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate – klingt wie das Kellerduell im Demokratie-Ranking. Doch auch in Staaten wie Tschechien und den Niederlanden fanden die Informatiker Gamma-Server. All diese Länder müssen aber nicht Kunden sein. Jeder Geheimdienst könne schließlich die Daten seines Finfisher-Trojaners durch diese Staaten umleiten, um sich zu tarnen, erklärt Münch. Solche Aussagen können Externe technisch nicht überprüfen.

In der ungeliebten Öffentlichkeit steht Gamma seit dem arabischen Frühling. Ägyptische Protestler fanden in einer Behörde ein Angebot der Firma an ihre gestürzte Regierung, einen Kostenvoranschlag für Software, Hardware, Training, 287.137 Euro. Eine Lieferung habe es nie gegeben, behauptet Münch.

Für Andy Müller-Maguhn ist Gamma trotzdem ein “Software-Waffenlieferant”. Er hat eine Webseite zu dem Thema aufgesetzt mit dem Namen buggedplanet.info. Dort protokolliert er Unternehmensdaten, Presseberichte, verwickelte Personen. Müller-Maguhn war früher Sprecher des Chaos Computer Clubs. Ein Video auf Youtube zeigt, wie er sein Projekt 2011 auf der Jahreskonferenz des deutschen Hackervereins präsentiert. Müller-Maguhn ruft seine Seite über Münch auf; die erscheint auf einer Leinwand, mit Geburtsdatum, Privatadresse und Foto von Münch. Der steigt da gerade aus einer Cessna, mit Sonnenbrille und Fliegerjacke, und sieht ein bisschen proletenmäßig aus. Müller-Maguhns Zuschauer lachen.

Seine Webseite ist auch ein Pranger. “Dass ihre privaten Details in der Öffentlichkeit diskutiert wurden, halte ich für sehr fair, wenn man sich anschaut, was die mit den Leben anderer gemacht haben”, sagt Müller-Maguhn auf der Bühne. “Ich glaube, das ist ein Weg, damit die Leute über Privatsphäre nachdenken.” Applaus und Jubel sind kurz lauter als seine Stimme. Er zuckt mit den Schultern. “Sie wollten nicht am öffentlichen Diskurs teilnehmen. Das wäre vielleicht die Alternative.”

Seit seine Adresse bekannt ist, bekommt Münch Postkarten, auf denen nur steht: “Ich habe ein Recht auf Privatsphäre.” Kein Absender.

Spricht Münch über seine Kritiker, klingt er ehrlich entrüstet: “Wir haben immer dieses Bad-Boy-Image. Ist aber kein schönes Gefühl.” Zumal es unverdient sei: “Manche Leute sagen: ,Das mag ich nicht, das geht ins Privatleben.’ Aber die Tatsache, dass sie es nicht mögen, heißt nicht, dass wir etwas Illegales machen.” Er selbst finde zum Beispiel die Fernsehsendung Deutschland sucht den Superstar “scheiße”, aber deswegen sei die nicht illegal.

…

Quelle: SZ vom 09.02.2013/bbr

9. Februar 2013 10:46 Finfisher-Entwickler Gamma
Von Bastian Brinkmann, Jasmin Klofta und Frederik Obermaier

Find this story at 9 February 2013

Copyright: Süddeutsche Zeitung Digitale Medien GmbH / Süddeutsche Zeitung GmbH

John Catt, who has no criminal record, wins legal action to have records deleted from police database of suspected extremists

An 88-year-old campaigner has won a landmark lawsuit against police chiefs who labelled him a “domestic extremist” and logged his political activities on a secret database.

The ruling by three senior judges puts pressure on the police, already heavily criticised for running undercover operatives in political groups, to curtail their surveillance of law-abiding protesters.

The judges decided police chiefs acted unlawfully by secretly keeping a detailed record of John Catt’s presence at more than 55 protests over a four-year period.

The entries described Catt’s habit of drawing sketches of the demonstrations. Details of the surveillance, which recorded details of his appearance such as “clean-shaven” and slogans on his clothes, were revealed by the Guardian in 2010.

The pensioner, who has no criminal record, is among thousands of political campaigners recorded on the database by the same covert unit that has been embedding spies such as Mark Kennedy – a police officer who infiltrated environmental protest groups – in political movements for more than a decade.

On Thursday Lord Dyson, who is the Master of the Rolls, and two other appeal court judges ordered Bernard Hogan-Howe, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, to delete Catt’s file from the database, ruling that the surveillance had significantly violated his human rights.

The judges noted that the police could not explain why it was necessary to record Catt’s political activities in minute detail.

Lawyers for the police had argued that the anti-war activist regularly attended demonstrations against a Brighton arms factory near his home, which had at times descended into disorder.

The judges dismissed arguments from Adrian Tudway, the police chief then in charge of the covert unit, that police needed to monitor Catt because he “associates closely with violent” campaigners against the factory of the EDO arms firm.

They said it was “striking” that Tudway had not said the records held on the pensioner had helped police in any way.

“Mr Tudway states, in general terms, that it is valuable to have information about Mr Catt’s attendance at protests because he associates with those who have a propensity to violence and crime, but he does not explain why that is so, given that Mr Catt has been attending similar protests for many years without it being suggested that he indulges in criminal activity or actively encourages those that do.”

The judges added that it appeared that officers had been recording “the names of any persons they can identify, regardless of the particular nature of their participation”.

Catt said: “I hope this judgment will bring an end to the abusive and intimidatory monitoring of peaceful protesters by police forces nationwide.

“Police surveillance of this kind only serves to undermine our democracy and deter lawful protest.”

A similar court of appeal ruling four years ago forced the Met to remove 40% of photographs of campaigners held on another database.

In a separate ruling, which also challenged the police’s practice of storing the public’s personal data on databases, the three judges ordered the Met to erase a warning that had been issued against an unnamed woman.

Three years ago officers had warned the woman for allegedly making a homophobic comment about a neighbour. But she argued that police had treated her unfairly as she had not been given an opportunity to respond to the allegation.

She took legal action to prevent the Met keeping a copy of the warning notice on their files for 12 years. She feared it could be disclosed to employers when they checked her criminal record.

…

Rob Evans, Paul Lewis and Owen Bowcott
The Guardian, Thursday 14 March 2013 16.46 GMT

Find this story at 14 March 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

KGB’s former spy chief in Britain says he has no regrets about betraying the Soviet Union as he likens Putin to Mussolini

Oleg Gordievsky says he is the only agent to defect from the KGB in the 1980s to survive. ‘I was supposed to die,’ he says. Photograph: Steve Pyke

Three decades ago, Oleg Gordievsky was dramatically smuggled out of the Soviet Union in the boot of a diplomatic car. A strident figure of a man, he passed to the British vital details of Moscow’s espionage operation in London.

These days, Gordievsky is a shadow of his former self. He walks with a stick and is stooped, following an episode five years ago in which he says he was poisoned. But though diminished, Gordievsky remains combative and critical of his homeland.

Intriguingly, as Britain and Russia embark on something of a mini-thaw this week with top-level bilateral talks in London, Gordievsky warned that Moscow was operating just as many spies in the UK as it did during the cold war.

Gordievsky, 74, claims a large number of Vladimir Putin’s agents are based at the Russian embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens. As well as career officers, the embassy runs a network of “informers”, who are not officially employed, Gordievsky said, but regularly pass on useful information. They include a famous oligarch.

“There are 37 KGB men in London at the moment. Another 14 work for GRU [Russian military intelligence],” Gordievsky told the Guardian. How did he know? “From my contacts,” he said enigmatically, hinting at sources inside British intelligence.

Gordievsky began helping British intelligence in 1974. From 1982-85 he was stationed at the Soviet embassy in London. He was even designated rezident, the KGB’s chief in Britain. Back then, the KGB’s goal was to cultivate leftwing and trade union contacts, and to acquire British military and Nato secrets. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the KGB was divided into the SVR and FSB, Russia’s foreign and domestic intelligence agencies. Vladimir Putin is the FSB’s former boss.

According to Gordievsky, Putin’s foreign intelligence field officers fulfil similar roles to their KGB predecessors. In these days of capitalism, however, they also want sensitive commercial information of use to Moscow. And they keep tabs on the growing band of Russian dissidents and businessmen who fall out with the Kremlin and decamp to London – a source of continuing Anglo-Russian tension.

Former KGB agents, including Putin, now occupy senior roles in Russia’s murky power structures. Many are now billionaires. Gordievsky, meanwhile, was sentenced to death in absentia; the order has never been rescinded. (Under the KGB’s unforgiving code, a traitor is always a traitor, and deserves the ultimate punishment.) Gordievsky noted wryly: “I’m the only KGB defector from the 1980s who has survived. I was supposed to die.”

In 2008, however, Gordievsky claims he was poisoned in the UK. He declined to say precisely what happened. But the alleged incident has taken a visible toll on his health. Physically, he is a shadow of the once-vigorous man who briefed Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan on the Soviet leadership. Mentally, he is sharp and often acerbic.

Gordievsky said he had no regrets about betraying the KGB. He remains a passionate fan of Britain; he reads the Spectator and writes for the Literary Review. “Everything here is divine, compared to Russia,” he said. In 2007 the Queen awarded him the CMG “for services to the security of the UK”.

Gordievsky says he first “dreamed” of living in London after the 20th party congress in 1956, when Khrushchev launched his famous denunciation of Stalin. There is, he insists, nothing in Russia that he misses.

Gordievsky has little contact with his two grown-up daughters, Maria and Anna, or his ex-wife Leila. When he escaped to Britain his family remained behind in Russia, and were only allowed to join him six years later following lobbying from Thatcher. The marriage did not survive this long separation. Gordievsky’s long-term companion is a British woman, whom he met in the 1990s.

A bright pupil, with a flair for languages, Gordievsky joined the KGB because it offered a rare chance to live abroad. In 1961 Gordievsky – then a student – was in East Berlin when the wall went up. “It was an open secret in the Soviet embassy. I was lying in my bed and heard the tanks going past in the street outside,” he recalls.

In 1968, when he was working as a KGB spy in Copenhagen, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. Gordievsky was already disillusioned with the Soviet system; from this point he decided to conspire against it.

It was not until 1974 that he began his career as a double agent in Denmark. Gordievsky met “Dick”, a British agent. After Denmark Gordievsky was sent to Britain, to the delight of MI5. In London he warned that the politburo erroneously believed the west was planning a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. In 1985, the KGB grew suspicious and summoned him home. He was interrogated, drugged and accused of being a traitor. He managed to get word to his British handlers, who smuggled him across the Finnish border in the boot of a diplomatic car, an incident recalled in his gripping autobiography, Next Stop Execution.

Gordievsky is scathing about the Soviet Union’s leadership. “Leonid Brezhnev was nothing special. Gorbachev was uneducated and not especially intelligent,” he sniffed. What about Putin?

“Abscheulich,” he replied, using the German word for abominable and loathsome. (Gordievsky speaks fluent German, as well as Swedish, Danish and English, which he learned last.) By contrast, he praises William Hague. “I used to like him a lot. He was sharp.”

Asked whether he thought there was any prospect of democratic change in Russia – an idea nurtured by anti-Kremlin street protests in 2010 and 2011 – he replied: “What a naive question!”

He added gloomily: “Everything that has happened indicates the opposite direction.” He likens post-communist Russia under Putin to Mussolini’s Italy. Theoretically, he suggested, he might return to Moscow if there were a democratic government – but there is little prospect of that.

It is an open question how effective Russia’s modern spying operation really is. In 2010, 10 Russian agents, including the glamorous Anna Chapman, were caught in the US, and swapped for a Russian scientist convicted of working for Washington. Gordievsky is familiar with these kind of “deep-cover” operations. He began his espionage career in the KGB’s second directorate, which was responsible for running “illegals” – agents with false biographies planted abroad. Many felt Russia’s blundering espionage ring was more of a joke than a threat to US security.

Gordievsky, however, said it would be unwise to be complacent about Moscow’s intelligence activities. He mentions George Blake – a British spy who was a double agent for Moscow. In 1966 Blake escaped from Wormwood Scrubs prison and defected to the Soviet Union. Blake’s and Gordievsky’s careers mirror each other: Gordievsky lives on a civil service pension in the home counties; Blake on a KGB pension in Moscow. Reaching for a sip of his beer, Gordievsky described the treacherous Blake as “effective”. He added: “You only need one spy to be effective.”

Gordievsky said he was convinced that Putin was behind the 2006 assassination of his friend Alexander Litvinenko, who had defected to Britain in 2000. In December it emerged that Litvinenko had been working for the British and Spanish secret services at the time of his death. An inquest into Litvinenko’s murder will take place later this year.

Controversially, the foreign secretary, William Hague, wants to keep the government’s Litvinenko files secret – to appease Moscow, according to critics.

…

Luke Harding
guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 March 2013 17.07 GMT

Find this story at 11 March 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.