Gently lifting the Kuromaku.

The Almost War, “Able Archer 83″

“Edited by Nate Jones
Assisted by Lauren Harper
With Document Contributions from Svetlana Savranskaya

For more information contact:
Nate Jones 202/994-7000 or foiadesk@gwu.edu

Washington, D.C., May 16, 2013 — Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov warned US envoy Averell Harriman that the Reagan administration’s provocations were moving the two superpowers toward ‘the dangerous “red line”‘ of nuclear war through ‘miscalculation’ in June of 1983. Andropov delivered this warning six months before the 1983 “War Scare” reached its crux during the NATO nuclear release exercise named Able Archer 83, according to Harriman’s notes of the conversation posted for the first time today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org).

The meeting provides important, first-hand evidence of Soviet leadership concerns about a possible US threat. But other documents included in this posting suggest that not all Soviet political and military leaders were fearful of a US preemptive first strike, but may rather have been ‘rattling their pots and pans’ in an attempt to gain geopolitical advantages, including stopping the deployment of Pershing II and Cruise nuclear missiles in Western Europe. ‘This would not be the first time that Soviet leaders have used international tensions to mobilize their populations,’ wrote the acting CIA director John McMahon in a declassified memo from early 1984.

President Reagan zeroed in on the essence of this debate in March of 1984 when he asked his ambassador to the Soviet Union, Arthur Hartman, “Do you think Soviet leaders really fear us, or is all the huffing and puffing just part of their propaganda?” The evidence presented here, and in two forthcoming electronic briefing books in this series, suggests that the answer to the president’s question was ‘both.’”

Does this mean Apple’s changing the future? 8 May 2013 1145 hours
Apple wants to put a curve on its batteries. That would expand the battery’s surface area — more battery for the buck. But does it also mean that Apple will change the shape of its devices? We’re talking about a new and much anticipated device. This story’s no curve ball. It’s been around awhile, but when things like this don’t go away they sometimes show up. From Bloomberg News: Apple Inc. (AAPL), the maker of the iPad and iPhone, applied for a patent on a battery aimed at using space within a mobile device more efficiently.
Application 20130108907, published in the database of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office May 2, covers curved battery cells for portable electronic devices.
Apple said in the application that a curved battery pack can use the area outside of the rectangular space ordinarily reserved for such an energy source. A curved battery could occupy space that is “curved, rounded, or irregularly shaped,” the Cupertino, California-based company said. That could allow designs for devices to diverge from the standard rectangular configuration.
Apple applied for the patent in October 2011.

Gang of Four 5 May 2013, 1325 hours
The Congressional Research Services Does Not Announce Its Publications because it first reserves its work for Congress. 
From CRS “Gang of Four” Congressional Intelligence Notifications
Marshall Curtis Erwin
Analyst in Intelligence and National Security…

Copies available upon request

“’Gang of Four’” intelligence notifications are oral briefings of particularly sensitive non-covert activities that the Intelligence Community typically limits to the chairmen and ranking members of the two congressional intelligence committees. This report reviews the history of Gang of Four notification process and compares it to that of the “Gang of Eight” notification procedure, which provides that the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the intelligence committee, along with the Speaker and minority leader of the House, and Senate majority and minority leaders are to receive prior notice of particularly sensitive covert action programs.” (Thank you, http://goo.gl/K8b53)

SPY SATURDAY 9 MARCH 2013 
WHEN DO SPIES CRY?
NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE ELECTRONIC BRIEFING BOOK NO. 415 POSTED – MARCH 5, 2013 EDITED BY WILLIAM BURR FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: WILLIAM BURR 202/994-7000 OR NSARCHIV@GWU.EDU
Washington, D.C., March 5, 2013 – The fabled but previously secret State Department intelligence memorandum that predicted, five months in advance, the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, has now emerged from classified vaults that were so obscure that even State Department historians and CIA FOIA officers could not penetrate them. Published for the first time today by the National Security Archive the INR memo from May 1973 warned Acting Secretary of State Kenneth Rush that there was a “better than even bet” that war between Egypt and Israel would occur “by autumn.”

According to the INR analysis, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat would initiate a war with Israel not for specific military objectives but to spur “big power” diplomatic intervention in the Arab-Israeli conflict so that Egypt could regain the Sinai Peninsula lost in the 1967 War. On 6 October 1973 war broke out in the region.

The existence of this example of INR acuity has been known for years, but the document itself was surprisingly elusive. State Department historians preparing the official Foreign Relations of the United States series could not find a copy, even with their security clearancesand access to classified files, and neither could CIA FOIA offices as recently as 2011.

The author of the INR paper, Roger Merrick, anticipated that if war unfolded, U.S. “interests” in the region would come under attack because of the close American-Israeli relationship. He anticipated the possible nationalizations of petroleum facilities, “efforts to displace US oil companies with those from Europe and Japan,” and “prolonged oil embargoes.” The prescient analyst did not discuss the implications of such a conflict for U.S. relations with the Soviet Union, which had close ties to Egypt and Syria (U.S.-Soviet relations was not his field), but he might have anticipated that it could lead to increased tensions, possibly even a crisis. Other intelligence organizations in the U.S. government disagreed with the estimate of war and the conflict came as a surprise to the U.S. and Israeli governments. A post-mortem of the intelligence failure characterized the INR paper as a “case of wisdom lost.”

Spy Friday 11 February 2013. An explanation about why President Obama, like his predecessor, favors drone strikes. From Steve Coll’s book Ghost Wars, pg 404, Penguin Press, 2004, “Over two decades the CIA had learned again and again that it could not hope to defend against terrorists by relying solely on its ability to detect attacks in advance. No matter how many warnings they picked up, no matter how many terrorist cells they disrupted, at least some attackers were going to get through. Officers in the Counterterrorist Center privately compared themselves to soccer goalies: They wanted to be the best in their league, they wanted to record as many shutouts as possible, but the knew they were going to give up scores to their opponents. Ultimately, many of them believed, the only way to defeat terrorists was to get out of the net and try to take the enemy off the field.” Coll’s source was “Report of the Accountability Review Boards: Bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on August 7 1998,” which was release on January 8 1999. [emphasis added by Jeff Shear]

Spy Friday 11 January 2013. A lot will be written in the coming days about John Brennan, the administration’s choice for the Director of Central Intelligence. In the now famous photo taken in the White House situation room as the raid on Abbottabad was underway, the one where Hillary Clinton looks on in horror, we notice a man on the far right edge of the photo wearing a plain white open collared shirt. He’s the somber bully-faced man, looking on critically. That’s Brennan. No doubt, critics will rattle on (rightly) about his June 2011 comment that no civilian deaths had occurred as a result of American drone strikes. And FOX News is already puffing about security leaks revealing American cyber attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And surely the Senate will want to know much more about Brennan’s position on torture. (Me too.) But no one will forget that it was Brennan who was in the forefront of the team that finally brought down Osama bin Laden.  More telling is the moment back in 2009 when Afghanistan ceased to be a lingering campaign promise and howled for attention. As the Obama administration strained to come to terms with requests for a huge troop surge, the counterterrorism guy Brennan reckoned that al Qaeda had been trampled by NATO. Osama had lost his base of operations, and the Taliban had lost control of Afghanistan. Brennan thought the lesson had gored the Taliban ox. After 2014, with a corrupt Karzai government on its own, and warlords fed by Pakistan kicking around the possibility of a civil war, the surging Taliban could well get another shot at power. If it turns out that Brennan’s hunch about the Taliban’s bitter experience is largely correct (burn me once…), the Taliban, though extremists, might prove  less than eager to sponsor foreign jihadists with global aims, which is what we came to Afghanistan to do in the first place, right?

Spy Wednesday 09 January 13 is coming out on Thursday; actually, I’m doing Spy Wednesday, today, Friday, at 8:52 am EST, after which I’ll piece together Spy Friday. I slipped the deadline. No apologies. If I wished, I could have back-dated and faked the sequence of blogs. No one would have been the wiser. Put another way, I can play with time, alter reality. It’s small beer, I known, but it’s telling. It’s one of the essences of espionage, which defines a “spy” as an unapologetic bastard who takes advantage of the trust of others. I’m thinking of John le Carré’s The Perfect Spy, as I write this. It’s the story of a man who grew into the spook business by way of his dad, a womanizing grifter. Le Carré’s protagonist turns out to be a double agent, dad’s little con man. He didn’t lie to his service, MI5 or MI6; or lie about his service — for the KGB, not yet the FSB — in order to gain any reward. Rather, he preferred the pleasure of manipulating others, of the sensuous affect of slipping off one identity for another, like a tweed bespoke jacket. The puppeteer knew his way around the reality of others, but got lost, and that’s not small beer.

Spy Monday  7 January 2013 More on the FISA mess. From Amy Goodman and “Democracy Now,” this exchange with former NSA intelligence pooh-bah turned whistler blower, William Binney. Goodman: “‘I asked [William] Binney if he believed the NSA has copies of every email sent in the U.S. He replied, “’I believe they have most of them, yes.’” These comments were made on April 26, 2012. Binney served in the NSA for over 30 years, including a time as director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group. *** FYI: From Wikipedia: Binney, was awarded the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage presented annually by The Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest. Shafeek Nader is Ralph’s big brother. Wikipedia, adds, “The Callaway Award recognizes individuals who take a public stance to advance truth and justice, at some personal risk…’” When Binney tooted on NSA, the FBI dropped by to hold a gun to his head, inviting him down to H Street for a chat. (Cough) Binney went on hobnobbing presciently with Goodman last April explaining to “Democracy Now” why Ron Wyden was conspiculously AWOL last Christmas when FISA was on the Congressional hotplate: “Ron Wyden and Mark Udall [see his limp quote below in Spy Friday  4 January 2013 ] have expressed concern, but have not spoken out…they [fear] would lose their seats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.”Spy Friday  4 January 2013 From the Project on Government Secrecy we learn that public privacy will have to remove its shirt and pants. Why? Congressional delusions over whether to renew the FISA Amendments Act without changes means more spooks are still free to check your underwear. Good news for spies. The effort to provide more public information about communications privacy was laughed away by the Senate on December 27 and 28, as they suited up to slide down the fiscal cliff. The Federation of American Scientists thinks the intelligence committees (Dems in the Senate, Reps in the House) have both gone back on their promises of sunshine. Why the FAS thought Congress was serious about the issue is another matter. Chalk it up to magical thinking. Congress has always paid lips service to accountability. But give the Congress some credit for a neat switcheroo on the FISA act. Where once they promised disclosure, they now want to provide information about oversight. There’s a big difference here. It’s a switch in Congressional attention from substance to process. This translates into hearings held by the Select Intelligence committees, of which there was only one public hearing in 2012. That would be a 25 year low. Investigate that bit of oversight! On the bright sun shiny side, the SSIC has made hearing records available back to the 1970s on its web site. Not too shabby. (I feel like I’m playing tennis.) On the other hand, on December 27 2012, Senator Diane Feinstein explained that everything was okay, because as far as the intelligence committees themselves go, ”We are the public.” Wow, and corporations are people, Senator Feinstein. Hear that Mr. Orwell? But wait, not even the “people” of the Congress are getting information. ”Plain and simple–we need more information,” said Sen. Mark Udall. “How else can we evaluate this policy? The American public has a right to know. And needs to know how many Americans are affected by FISA. Are existing privacy protections working? Are they too weak? Do they need to be strengthened? These are vital questions.” Like the Redskins.Spy Friday 21 December 2012 10:52 NASA gets the attention, but the really extraordinary work of  optical and radar and infrared espionage goes to the National Reconnaissance Office. Says Marco Langboek of the Netherlands, “When it comes to innovation in space research everyone looks at NASA. But NASA’s only the public face. The other side is the NRO, where in many ways the real experimentation and innovation takes place.” Today, because of a glitch in the budget process we learn, ”NRO systems allow users to quickly focus multiple sensors on almost any point on the globe to respond to emerging crises or operational requirements and provide persistent, multi-INT coverage.”Movies make it seem like spy satellites just kind of hop around and do as the earth-bound spy masters please. In reality, it’s a little more like the budget document reveals.Spy Thursday20 December 2012 19:02 – Josh Gerstein blogging at Politico tells us James Hitselberger charged under the Espionage Act with “mishandling” classified files was ordered released while awaiting trial. A brilliant man, Hitselberger worked (presumably, for the Office of Naval Intelligence) as a multi-lingual translator (Arabic was one) and happens to be a collector of rare documents.  Secrecy News says, Hitselberger may be out but he’s a closely watched train, “‘high intensity supervision’ and with ‘Global Positioning System monitoring’ of his whereabouts.”