June 2009

Face-to-face with Afghanistan's opium addiction

Poppy: Life, Death and Addiction Inside Afghanistan's Opium Trade by Gregor Salmon

Numerous eradication efforts appear to be failing to cut Afghanistan's dependence on opium.

The United Nations World Drug Report for 2009, released last week, revealed that even though opium production slumped 19 per cent worldwide in 2008, Afghanistan still produces 93 per cent of the world's supply.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has gone as far to say that opium is "the single greatest challenge to the long-term security, development and effective governance of the country".

In 2007, Sydney-based writer Gregor Salmon set out to get to the bottom of the illicit trade, determined to explore the "modern story of opium".  Based in Kabul for eight months, he zigzagged across Afghanistan and its neighboring countries to find out all about the production and cultivation of what locals call "teryak".  "I wanted to trace the drug trail from the farmer to the exporter," the author of Poppy: Life, Death and Addiction Inside Afghanistan's Opium Trade told ABC News Online.  What Salmon discovered was a country - and its people - dangerously dependent on the drug.  "Poppy is not just a crop... it's a financial system, a finely-tuned industry," he said.

"It's a low-risk crop in a high-risk environment."  (ABC, 30 Jun 09)

Can Hezbollah Launch Long-Range Terror Attacks?

Homeland Security, Assessing the First Five Years by Michael Chertoff

In his new book Homeland Security, Assessing the First Five Years, former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff argues:

Al-Qaeda and its network are our most serious immediate threat, they may not be our most serious long-term threat . . . .[Hezbollah] has developed capabilities that Al-Qaeda can only dream of, including large quantities of missiles and highly sophisticated explosives.

Chertoff’s statement is conventional wisdom among many terrorism experts. Shortly after 9/11 then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage stated:

Hezbollah may be the 'A-Team of Terrorists' and maybe al-Qaeda is actually the 'B' team.

But Hezbollah has not carried out a successful out-of-area attack since the 1996 Khobar strike. Is Hezbollah still capable of carrying out long-range terror attacks?

In 1992, exactly one month after Israel assassinated Hezbollah Secretary-General Abbas al-Musawi, the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires was bombed. Two years later, on July 18, 1994 Hezbollah bombed the Jewish communal offices in Buenos Aires, at least partially in response to Israel’s capture of Hezbollah leader Mustafa Dirani on May 21 and a bombing of a Hezbollah training camp on June 2.  (Terror Wonk, 26 Jun 09)

Rise and Fall of the KGB in America: book review

Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev
The Haynes/Klehr/Vassiliev (hereafter Haynes) volume contains a great deal of highly valuable scholarship within a massive tome consisting of over 40 pages of prefatory matter, 550 pages of main text and 90 pages of footnotes. Despite raising massive and extremely troubling methodological, historiographical and, sometimes, judgmental questions, it is unquestionably a major contribution. In general, this reviewer finds it convincing, and certainly a book which anyone interested in the post-World War II Red Scare cannot ignore. . . . In an earlier joint book, Early Cold War Spies (Cambridge University Press, 2006), which in general I find quite reliable, Klehr and Haynes let their ideological bias and personal pique explode--rather than “peak” through--when (on page 22) they ridiculously declared that Schrecker’s leading study Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, Princeton University Press, 1999, was a “broad academic denunciation of any form of opposition to communism,” which are all “conflate[d]” with “McCarthyism.” My own published views and interpretations are sometimes “conflated” with Schrecker’s and are unquestionably far closer to hers than those of Haynes and Klehr, who have written about half-dozen studies of Russian espionage in pre-Cold War America and are certainly the pre-eminent authorities on the subject.  (Spero Forum, 25 Jun 09)

In Denial: Round 11

Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev

While we were writing Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, based on Alexander Vassiliev’s notebooks, we anticipated a hostile reaction from battered but still rancorous remnants of the pro-Communist left in the academic world and partisan pundits. Together they have denied for more than fifty years that Soviet espionage in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s had much significance, denounced claims linking the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) with Soviet espionage, and proclaimed the innocence of many of those identified as Soviet agents. . . . The opening chapter of Spies, entitled “Alger Hiss: Case Closed,” ended with our conclusion that in light of new and definitive evidence from the KGB archives recorded in Vassiliev’s notebooks, as well as the ample evidence available earlier from other sources, “to serious students of history continued claims for Hiss’s innocence are akin to a terminal form of ideological blindness.” But we also noted, “it is unlikely that anything will convince the remaining die-hards.” Similarly, we foresaw continued protests of innocence from the ranks (albeit much-thinned ranks) of the Rosenberg defenders in the academy and elsewhere to the extensive documentation in Spies of the extraordinary size of the espionage apparatus Rosenberg established. Spies revealed for the first time, for example, that Rosenberg had recruited a second atomic spy, Russell McNutt, in addition to the his long-identified brother-in-law David Greenglass.  Somewhat to our surprise, however, the defenses of Hiss and the Rosenbergs, while not disappearing, have taken a back seat to the protection of I. F. Stone .  (Washington Coded, 10 Jun 09)

Interview:  Putin’s Spies in America

KGB/FSB's New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent by Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy

Frontpage Interview's guest today is Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy, a former KGB agent who became one of the KGB’s harshest critics. He is the author of seven books about the KGB and Japan.

FP: Tell us about your background and the circumstances under which you came to the KGB.

Preobrazhensky: I graduated from the Institute of Asia and Africa of the Moscow University in 1976. Before that, I was an intern at the Tokai University in Japan. I am a specialist in Japan, a fluent Japanese speaker.  I love Japan very much. And this love has brought me to the KGB.

. . . . FP: Ok, so tell us how you ended up in Japan.

Preobrazhensky: Well, if you are a specialist in Japan, you had to travel to the country that you were studying.  And that was possible only if you were working for KGB. By the way, Soviet specialists in the U.S.A. were in the same situation. They all were connected to the KGB and most of them were its officers.  There was only one chance to avoid working for KGB: becoming an officer of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the member of the highest elite. But it was very hard to do that.

So I only had one choice: either become a KGB collaborator, whose position is very dependent, or its staff officer with shoulder-stripes and high military salary. The second variant was much better.

But it was very hard to do. In the end, my father, the Deputy Commander of the KGB Frontier Troops, “pushed” me into KGB intelligence, the most privileged and well-paid job in the USSR.  

My work in Tokyo as a spy from 1980-85, was very successful. I was covered as a correspondent of the Soviet TASS Agency. But it was not a cover for me. It was my actual job, because I am a born author. My KGB colleagues in Tokyo called me, with a grin, “An author covered as a spy.” And they were right.  (FrontPage, 19 Jun 09)

Women and jihad - A singular life

The Mother of Mohammed: An Australian Woman’s Extraordinary Journey into Jihad by Sally Neighbour

Sally Neighbour, an Australian journalist who writes about terrorism, has set herself apart from the herd with her careful studies of the lives of terror suspects.

Her first book, “In the Shadow of Swords”, was about the Bali bombers. In her latest work, “The Mother of Mohammed”, she focuses on an Australian woman who converted to Islam, moved first to Indonesia and then Afghanistan, was branded a dangerous terrorist by Australian intelligence and had her passport revoked. No charges have been brought against her.

Raised in a broken home, Robyn Mary Hutchinson was a “tenacious tomboy” who railed against conformity. As a teenager, she became a drug-using surfing groupie, and eventually took the hippy trail to Bali. There she converted to Islam, adopted the name Rabiah, married into the Javanese royal family and had two children. Later she left her husband, a drug addict, married again and had more children, before coming into contact with Abu Bakar Bashir, the imam who envisioned an Islamic caliphate across an arc of South-East Asia and whose name has been linked to several terrorist attacks in Indonesia. Eventually, Ms Hutchinson moved to Pakistan, where she seems to have found happiness living a spartan existence among a community of devout Muslims, a veritable United Nations of educated, professional women. (Economist, 18 Jun 09)

Rebels to the Death

Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F. by Stefan Aust

The Weather Underground, a leftist terrorist group from the 1970s, played a bit role in last fall’s presidential election through the association of unrepentant former Weatherman Bill Ayers with his fellow Chicagoan, Barack Obama. That kind of connection would have come as no surprise in Germany, where the Weather Underground’s far more deadly counterpart, the Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, continues to cast a shadow over the country’s politics.

In 1985, German journalist Stefan Aust published the definitive book on the RAF, The Baader-Meinhof Complex. His book has since been turned into a successful feature film of the same name, which was nominated last year for a foreign-language Oscar and is slated for U.S. release this summer. Aust, a former editor of Der Spiegel, has now reissued his earlier work, changing the title to Baader-Meinhof and updating it with information that has come to light since the end of the RAF’s reign of terror in West Germany 30 years ago. The new edition deserves attention, and not just because Anthea Bell’s deft translation preserves the dynamic, detail-rich prose that made Aust’s original read like a real-life thriller. Dense with insights into the psychology of terrorism, this history of West Germany’s struggle against RAF radicals also serves as a cautionary tale for the West in its war against the modern threat of jihadist terror.

From the day of its founding in 1970, the Baader-Meinhof gang wasn’t what it appeared to be. Though Andreas Baader was the group’s leader (along with his lover-cum-comrade Gudrun Ensslin), the leftist journalist Ulrike Meinhof was always a secondary figure. Indeed, the RAF was something of a personality cult built around the volatile Baader. More sociopath than socialist, the speed- and LSD-addled Baader parlayed a troubled youth as a car thief and street hooligan into a career as the RAF’s “general,” leading the guerilla group on everything from combat training missions in Jordan under the tutelage of Palestinian terrorists to bombing raids on German department stores and police stations and U.S. military bases in Frankfurt and Heidelberg. An RAF slogan—“Madmen to arms!”—was as apt a description as any of Baader’s modus operandi.  (FrontPage, 16 Jun 09)

Saudi ambassador pens book on terrorism

Combating Terrorism: Saudi Arabia’s Role in the War on Terror by Saudi Ambassador in Pakistan Ali Saeed Awadh Asseri

The book deals with efforts of Saudi Arabia in eliminating the threat of terrorism and will be published by Oxford Press, which has planned to bring out the book in September this year.  The book gives a comprehensive overview of the terrorism as it evolved, not over years but centuries. The writer has traced the scourge of terrorism from antiquity and tried to prove that it is not a new phenomenon, but an age-old evil that has haunted many generations of mankind.  The author forcefully presents the Saudi perspective on terrorism, which he termed as Islamic. He also gives details description of Saudi anti-terror strategy. He says that the policy to defeat terrorism was based on prevention, cure and care.  He says that Saudi policy has been successful in dealing with the terror and a number of countries have adopted the same strategy to fight terrorism. He gives the example of Indonesia, which has been following the Saudi anti-terror strategy.  The author tried to prove from verses of the Holy Quran and sayings of the Prophet (PBUH) that Islam is a religion of peace and it has nothing to do with the evil of terrorism. (Daily Times, 16 Jun 09)

With Dance Shoes in Siberian Snows

With Dance Shoes in Siberian Snows by Sandra Kalniete

Born in Siberia to exiled Latvian parents, Sandra Kalniete depicts her family’s “descent into hell” during Stalin’s mass deportations.  In 1941 and 1949 tens of thousands of Latvians had the dreaded night-time knock on the door and were herded into cattle trains. Some families would never see each other again; from departing trains they threw hasty farewell notes that “like white butterflies swarmed around the railway tracks”.  “Resettled” in Siberia, they endured hard labor, disease and starvation. One famine was so severe that deportees ate undigested seeds from their own excrement.  Though given to hammering her point home, Kalniete, until recently an EU commissioner, tells a moving story woven from memories, letters and KGB files. Her family returned to Latvia in 1957 but her mother still has nightmares.  (Financial Times, 15 Jun 09)

Book examines Reagan's role in ending Cold War

The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War by James Mann

Two of the most memorable political speeches in the 20th century were delivered in West Berlin by two American presidents. One was John F. Kennedy's in 1963, in which he concluded with "Ich bin ein Berliner." The other was Ronald Reagan's speech in Berlin in 1987.  Reagan had the reputation of a hawk in dealing with the Soviet Union in his first term. Some Democrats in the early 1980s considered Reagan provocative to the point that former Vice President Walter Mondale, who would be the Democratic challenger to Reagan in 1984, made a speech in which he warned that the Reagan administration had increased the "risk of nuclear war." Mondale said, "It's three minutes to midnight and we are scarcely talking to the Soviets at all."  (Reagan had gone briefly to West Berlin in 1982, where he was denounced by an anti-nuclear crowd, which ended up in a riot. He wouldn't come back until 1987.) . . . . One version from the White House had Reagan, Kennedy-like, say in German that the Berlin Wall behind must be destroyed.  That was changed slightly in the ultimate draft. It had Reagan say, with the wall behind him, and in English, "General Secretary Gorbavech if you seek peace. . . . Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev . . . open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"  (Savannah Now, 14 Jun 09)

The KGB Poison Factory – new book showing strength of Soviet traditions

KGB Poison Factory: From Lenin to Litvinenko by Boris Volodarsky

The historian of secret services Boris Volodarsky, the author of the new biography of well-known deserter Alexander Orlov (The Orlov KGB File: The Most Successful Espionage Deception of All Time) and of the book, KGB Poison Factory: From Lenin to Litvinenko, to be printed these days in the United States and Great Britain has given an interview to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Russian Service. His latest book concentrates on a single crime, the murder of the former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Alexander Litvinenko in London.  Volodarsky engaged the case the next day after Litvinenko’s death, he was familiar with him before. The special directorate SO-15, investigating Litvinenko’s case, addressed Volodarsky and he had a number of meetings with the directorate’s experts where he told about his experience of use of poisons by the Soviet secret services and was consulting them on these issues.   According to Volodarsky, one could clearly enough notice in this murder the scheme which the Soviet secret services applied in previous years in special actions abroad. Volodarsky names one of the most known cases, journalist Georgy Markov's murder in London in 1978.  There is a version that the general director of the well-known cooperative society Ant, a former employee of the KGB, Vladimir Ryashentsev was poisoned in July 1997 in California with radioactive substance in a similar way as Litvinenko. Precisely the same mysterious story happened with Roman Tsepov, a St.Petersburg gangster, reportedly close to Vladimir Putin.   (Axis Globe, 14 Jun 09)

Now We Know

Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev

. . . . Working for more than a decade, making the best possible use of newly released Soviet archival material, the two scholars have produced multiple books, including three learned and exceptionally sane works of history in Yale University Press's splendid Annals of Communism series.  The first of their volumes, The Secret World of American Communism, used the newly opened archives of the Comintern, the organization that ran the international communist movement, to determine the extent of Soviet funding of the American Communist Party--which, it turns out, was quite substantial. The second, The Soviet World of American Communism, also used Soviet archives, but focused more directly on the Soviet Union's ideological influence on the Communist Party of the United States, or CPUSA, which was--surprise!--even more substantial. The third, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, examined the National Security Agency's declassified "Venona" files as well as Soviet archives relevant to it. Venona was a joint American and British cryptological project that deciphered Soviet wartime cables. Among other things, the cables provided direct evidence that the Soviet Union was running a large espionage network in the United States during the 1940s--and that Alger Hiss and Julius Rosenberg were among the Soviet Union's most valued agents.  Haynes and Klehr have usually stuck to the documents, the evidence, the facts. At least in their historical works, they do not write polemically, and they have emphatically not endorsed Senator Joseph McCarthy and his analysis of American communism. In The Secret World of American Communism, they went out of their way to condemn McCarthy for having used anti-communism "as a partisan weapon." . . . . Their newest work, a history of Soviet espionage in America, continues their research in this same spirit, although it makes use of a different kind of source. Along with Soviet archives, FBI archives, and the Venona cables, Haynes and Klehr this time around had access also to a set of KGB operational files that have not yet been opened to Western researchers. (In what follows I use "KGB" to mean Soviet foreign espionage, even though it had other names in the 1930s.) The story of how they got access to these materials is a little involved. In a long introduction to Spies, their Russian co-author, Alexander Vassiliev, explains his complicated personal story.  (New Republic, 17 Jun 09 Issue)

William Empson's influence on the CIA

James Jesus Angleton, The CIA, and The Craft of Counterintelligence by Michael Holzman

. . . . An updated scheme called the “Double Cross” later emerged from Whitehall as a way of dealing with the subsequent threat from Hitler’s Germany. When the American allies arrived in London in 1942, they were so impressed by the massive British card index of agents that they modeled the system of their own Office of Strategic Services (OSS) on it.

. . . . Norman Holmes Pearson, formerly an instructor in the English Department at Yale University before becoming a major element in the OSS, was wholly approving. As a student of literary criticism, he was naturally attracted to the subtleties of a text-based system that put a crucial emphasis on recognition of thematic and structural patterns.

. . . . The power produced by this kind of close reading was intense, and as a result he was delighted to welcome as one of his new assistants in the OSS a graduate of Yale who had studied these mysteries: James Angleton. Based in Europe, educated at Malvern and clad in bespoke English tailoring, James Angleton fitted comfortably into an Anglophiliac Yale.

. . . . Angleton was one of a number of professionals in intelligence who chose to remain in government service at the end of the war. In 1947, with the capital of the Western world starting to shift from Whitehall to Washington, he returned to the US. On December 20 of that year he joined the Central Intelligence Group, one of the organizations designed to succeed the OSS.

. . . . Holzman’s brisk, uncluttered book offers valuable access to previously untapped material on Angleton, who became the first head of the Counter-intelligence Staff of the CIA. In particular, it makes incisive use of his years as a student of English at Yale and the influence on him of the New Critics and modernist poets of his day. Previous biographers such as Robin Winks have pointed out that at Yale he was co-editor of the literary journal Furioso. But Holzman takes a more spirited line, publishing two of Angleton’s grating undergraduate poems and a list of his correspondence with writers such as T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, I. A. Richards, William Empson, Ezra Pound and Louis MacNeice. These famous poets all “took this young man very seriously” and he, in return, was greatly impressed by their writings, particularly the book that became a crucial text of New Criticism, Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity. For Empson, ambiguity is the central aspect of language. Not a minor stylistic flourish, it is an unavoidable linguistic feature permanently in place and in effect seems to exploit the fundamental characteristics of language itself. This means that “opposite” meanings will always illuminate and invade the primary meanings of ordinary words, so that “in a sufficiently extended sense any prose statement could be called ambiguous”.  (Times Online, 10 Jun 09)

Follow That Leader!

K BLOWS TOP: A Cold War Comic Interlude, Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America's Most Unlikely Tourist by Peter Carlson

In September 1959, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev gave a speech before Hollywood's biggest stars at the Café de Paris, Twentieth Century Fox's elegant commissary. Forty-five minutes into his talk, as celebrities like Marilyn Monroe (wearing, on orders from her studio bosses, her slinkiest dress) and Frank Sinatra watched in amazement, a red-faced Khrushchev began to punch the air. He wasn't complaining about American nuclear plans or Cuba but an even graver matter: his American guides' refusal to allow him to visit Disneyland. (The problem was security, they said.)   Khrushchev's mood didn't really improve as his motorcade went on a meandering, two-hour tour of tract housing developments, while curious Angelenos gathered along the roads to catch a glimpse of the communist dictator. Most were friendly, but one woman, dressed all in black, clutched a black flag and a terse sign that read: "Death to Khrushchev, the Butcher of Hungary." Enraged, the premier asked Henry Cabot Lodge, the American ambassador to the United Nations who was accompanying him, "If Eisenhower wanted to have me insulted, why did he invite me to come to the United States?" Lodge was baffled. Surely Khrushchev didn't believe that the president had personally arranged for the woman to stand on that particular street corner? "In the Soviet Union," Khrushchev replied, "she wouldn't be there unless I had given the order."

It was never going to be easy to host Stalin's combustible successor, and as Peter Carlson shows in "K Blows Top," Khrushchev's two-week journey across America quickly became one of the most outlandish episodes in the annals of Cold War history. (Washington Post, 9 Jun 09)

New book examines 1967 Israeli attack on USS Liberty

Attack on the Liberty by James Scott

A new book that takes a long, hard look at an Israeli attack on the U.S. spy ship USS Liberty in June 1967 draws in part on reporting and commentary that linked the international tensions and the Shreveport-Bossier City area.

. . . . The June 8, 1967 attack took place in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea just off Sinai coast. The Liberty, which was clearly marked as a U.S. Navy vessel and also had an oversized flag displayed, was observed for several hours by Israeli jets, then strafed and finally attacked by torpedo boats.  One of the dead sailors was James Lupton, 25, from a large Keithville family with members in the military and local police. He died when a torpedo slammed into the secret compartment he and other communications technicians shared. . . . The Times' editorial on the attack, quoted in the book, noted that "almost as shocking as the attack itself has been the manner in which Washington — especially the Defense department — has seemed to try to absolve Israel of any guilt right from the start. Some of these efforts would be laughable but for the terrible tragedy involved.". . . . He also delves into the inner workings of politicians and military leaders in Washington and Tel Aviv, and shares new research in which reveals that at least one key Israeli pilot knew the ship was American. He also looks into how the mindset of Washington gelled once it became apparent that initial outrage over the attack paled in comparison to the daily body count rising in the Vietnam War, and that many Americans, including but not limited to the Jewish community, was proud of how Israel had trounced national enemies in the brief but strategic war. . . . The official Navy inquiry lasted just eight days, "less time than it took to bury some of the dead," Scott said. Investigators interviewed only a dozen crew members; never visited Israel, reviewed its war logs or signals transcripts; nor interviewed any of the attackers, he added.  (Shreveport Times, 7 Jun 09)

May 2009

Rethinking the "War on Terror"

The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad by Walid Phares

. . . .  In his first chapter, Phares puts the finger on the wound: We must define the war. In fact, he calls for a "re-definition" of the eight-year-old confrontation that began officially on September 11, 2001, but has started historically decades earlier. The classical definition used by the United States government, "war on terror" has served its purpose even if it wasn't intellectually accurate. The foes of America and other democracies, namely the jihadists, aren't confining themselves to military activities and acts of terror. Rather, they have a global agenda they seek to attain which would lead to collapse of international law. Though many have doubted the ability of democracies to eventually win the confrontation with the jihadi forces, the author maintains that the free world can still win. But to win, he argues "you must define the threat and the enemy." At a time when the United States and Great Britain's governments are gradually dropping the term "war" from the lexicon of foreign policy, the author reviews the pillar-arguments of the debate and suggests identifying the actual enemy by referring to its ideology and goals, not to cater to our public relations needs. It is neither a war "on terror," nor is it just an overseas effort against individuals and particular organizations. It is a confrontation with an ideological movement which uses terror as one of its means, Phares correctly argues.  Chapter 1 sets the agenda of the debate about identifying the conflict: framing past and present campaigns and localized wars as one global confrontation is inescapable. Otherwise it will be a unilateral war waged by the jihadists against democracies while the latter would become unable to respond globally, systematically and methodically. This war, initially waged by the jihadists, won't be won if we fail to define it strategically, warns Phares. Unfortunately, a fundamental lack of understanding grips many in the policy world both around the globe and in the United States. Interestingly, the Bush administration had used some of the author's descriptions of the foe, such as caliphate seeking-jihadists, as presented in his first post 9/11 book, Future Jihad, in 2005. But the Bush administration never went to the end of this logic in its strategic communications. Nowadays, the Obama administration is borrowing an idea advanced in The Confrontation: the conflict in Afghanistan wasn't initiated by the U.S. but by al-Qaeda. However, the present administration fails to reach the minimal level of definition: the ideology behind the movement. (Cutting Edge, 18 May 09)

World of code names and multiple identities

Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev

. . . . John Earl Haynes is a distinguished scholar at the Library of Congress. Harvey Klehr is a professor at Emory University. These men are arguably the best informed persons on their subject of anyone in the country, private or official. Alexander Vassillev, a former KGB officer turned journalist, gained access to previously closed KGB archives as part of an aborted book deal between Soviet intelligence veterans and Crown Publishers.

Mr. Vassillev took notes. Oh, but did he take notes — 1,150 pages of them, jammed into three thick books, that he squirreled away after the Crown-KGB book collaboration went belly up. The delicious irony is that a leading Hissite, New York lawyer John Lowenthal, started the skein of events leading to the new disclosures discrediting his idol. Mr. Vassillev collaborated with scholar Allen Weinstein on the "The Haunted Wood," which satisfied most objective readers that Hiss worked for Soviet intelligence while at the State Department. Lowenthal (now deceased) wrote a nasty piece challenging Mr. Vassillev's honesty in the Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, prompting a libel suit. In pressing his case, Mr. Vassillev produced his documents, which contained much damning evidence about Hiss. Mr. Vassillev refused a monetary offer of settlement, insisting on an apology, that the journal publisher declined. The court ruled against him. In due course, he hooked up with Mr. Haynes and Mr. Klehr for the book at hand. Ah, seldom has revenge been so sweet.

Let me caution you: "Spies" is heavy reading, even for someone versed in USSR espionage. It is a mare's nest of code names and multiple identities, facts piled atop facts and names upon names until a reader pauses to shake.  (Washington Times, 17 May 09)

Spy novel had role in birth of British intelligence. Books reflect real-life espionage and can influence it

Free Agent by Jeremy Duns

. . . . The first world war was not much of a success for the Secret Service Bureau, nor any other intelligence agency in Europe. Most found out to their cost that it was relatively simple to discover the location and strength of the enemy’s forces, but extremely difficult to gauge what they planned to do with them. Spy fiction prospered during the war, though: Le Queux, John Buchan, E Phillips Oppenheim and others turned out a stream of thrilling, if implausible, tales of gentlemen heroes saving England from dastardly plots. It was not until the 1920s that the genre would receive its first dose of reality. This came from Somerset Maugham, whose short stories about the British writer-turned-agent Ashenden were the first to present espionage as a rather shabby occupation, filled with loose ends and frustrating bureaucratic muddles.

. . . . Maugham had worked for British intelligence during the war, but his greatest follower in this new school of spy fiction was an advertising copywriter, Eric Ambler, whose centenary will also be celebrated this year. Ambler brought a new psychological dimension to the genre, and in novels such as Epitaph for a Spy (1938) and The Mask of Dimitrios (1939) he ex­posed the murky underworld of European politics and finance.

. . . . In this decade, the spy story has flourished: on television and in cinemas, Spooks, 24 and the Bourne films are reflecting the current reality, while novelists such as Charles Cumming, Henry Porter and Tom Cain explore it in print. Meanwhile, writers such as Alan Furst and Tom Rob Smith are shedding new light on espionage history; I hope to do the same with my own novels set in the cold war.  (Sunday Times, 17 May 09)

David Kilcullen's Iraq invasion lesson for the US: don't do it again

The Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen

That is, don’t invade countries in pursuit of a few Islamic terrorists and turn the whole population against you.

That is the message from David Kilcullen, an Australian academic turned military strategist and one of the most influential advisers to General David Petraeus. Kilcullen, the author of a thoughtful new book on lessons from fighting radical Islamists, is blunt about the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan - and invasions in general.

“Al-Qaeda is already starting to burn itself out”, he says. “Provided we don’t do anything egregiously stupid like keeping invading countries, the trend lines are not good for it.” Iraq, which he calls “a disaster of our own making”, is “exactly the type of conflict we need to avoid”. He agrees that after the 9/11 attacks “there was no option but to do something”. But he holds that the US-led mission conflated “the Taleban with al-Qaeda and the Afghan state with the Taleban”.   Kilcullen’s book, The Accidental Guerrilla, is a perceptive addition to the flood of “what went wrong” books on these wars. It is based on his experience of Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia, from within the Australian Army and then on loan to the Pentagon and State Department. It is an argumentative handbook on how to fix a problem.   His argument is that while “there is a global enemy”, it amounts to “only 2 per cent to 5 per cent of the people we’ve been fighting since 9/11”. Many of the others are “accidental terrorists”, provoked into retaliation by intrusion into their territory or disputes. The academic tone shows his roots as a political anthropologist.   His taste is to make more complex the analysis of an already complicated situation. He rejects, for instance, classic theories of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency in favor of his own, subtler hybrid.  (Times Online, 15 May 09)

New spy book names Engelbert Broda as KGB atomic spy in Britain

Spies, the Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev

Based on secret KGB documents, it names Engelbert Broda, an Austrian physicist and secret communist sympathizer, as a mole who worked at Britain's Cavendish nuclear laboratory.   Codenamed "Eric" by his Russian handlers, he is believed to have passed thousands of pages of top secret documents about British and American atomic research to Moscow, and was regarded as one of the Soviet Union's most valuable moles. He demanded no payment for his services, and would meet his handlers up to three times a week to pass details of the "tube alloys project", as the nuclear project was officially known.  Eric's true identity has been a matter of speculation for decades. But Spies, the Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, which draws heavily on previously undisclosed Soviet-era intelligence documents, alleges that he was definitely Broda, who fled Austria after Hitler annexed it in 1938.  One of the book's authors is Alexander Vassiliev, a columnist on a Communist Party newspaper, who was given unprecedented access to KGB files for an official history soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union - but who later left for the West with his smuggled notebooks.  His book cites numerous KGB documents, including a telegram from the KGB station in London, informing Moscow about its latest star recruit.  Eric offered his services to the KGB via a contact at Cambridge, and "gave his full consent to work with us," the KGB station chief told Moscow.   (Telegraph, 9 May 09)

Introducing the book "The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad"

The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad by Walid Phares

My latest book, The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad was published in paperback this month. It is the third in a post 9/11 trilogy beginning with Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against the West, followed by The War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracy. The first in this series is an analysis of the past and potential future global strategies by Salafi and Khomeinist Jihadists against their foes worldwide. Future Jihad provided me with opportunities for briefings and interactions with legislators and CT officials on both sides of the Atlantic over the past four years.  The War of Ideas is in short an answer to many questions raised by readers of the first book: along the lines of the 9/11 Commission central question: How come we didn't know we were at war with Jihadists forces and for that long? The second book of this series attempts to explain the multiple campaigns launched by the various Jihadi pressures groups and networks to delay the threat knowledge in the West. I argue that the real war of ideas has been waged by the Salafists, Wahabi, Muslim Brotherhood and others to camouflage their designs and advances for decades.  The third book of the Trilogy, The Confrontation, advances concepts and global strategies to resist, contain then reverse the advances made by the Jihadi forces. It proposes strategic options regarding the identification of the threat, new coalitions, economic strategies, support to democratic revolutions in the Arab and Muslim world, and other guidelines.  I am glad to report that the three books are now being used as textbooks on a number of campuses particularly in strategic and security studies, as well as conflict and terrorism programs. Also, the two first books were selected to be on the Reading lists of the US House of Representatives and the UK House of Commons. The Confrontation (hardcover) was already launched at the European Parliament and in the US Congress. Following is a review authored by David Major, former intelligence officer, a national security analyst and the Director of the Counter Intelligence Center in Virginia.  (Counterterrorism Blog/Walid Phares, 9 May 09)

A Clash of Symbols

Alger Hiss and the Battle For History, by Susan Jacoby

Sixty years ago, at another fraught historical moment, the world and all its troubles seemed to be bound up in the relationship of two men. Between Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers was a story so deep in political significance that it has remained a historical touchstone ever since. . . . Susan Jacoby, in her vigorously argumentative new book about the Hiss-­Chambers case, is interested in the towels and the men only as they are reflected in the partisan passions with which the story has been told. For her own part, Jacoby, the author of “The Age of American ­Unreason” and other books, believes ­Alger Hiss was guilty of the perjury for which he was convicted; she is almost, but not entirely, persuaded that Hiss was also a Soviet spy. This strikes me as an odd quibble, but I see that it positions her outside the two camps of scholars who, she says, have used and often misused the tale to further a political agenda. “Indeed,” Jacoby writes, “the conspicuous trait uniting Hiss’s dogged ex post facto bloodhounds with his die-hard defenders is the need to be 100 percent right in order to vindicate not only their verdict on American history but the governmental policies they espouse today.”  (New York Times, 8 May 09)

From Fatwa to Jihad by Kenan Malik: review

From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy by Kenan Malik

It is 20 years since the late Ayatollah Khomeini declared that everyone involved in the publication and sale of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses should be killed. The Rushdie affair has become a key event in our understanding of free speech and blasphemy, as well as Islam, faith, politics and even international diplomacy. But there is a problem: since the affair touches so many hot topics it is difficult to pinpoint its lasting significance. From Fatwa to Jihad attempts to extract a message but leaves me as confused as ever: I see conflict everywhere, but few signs of understanding. If this sounds pessimistic, at least Malik’s book proves that conflict rarely leads to enlightenment.       The idea that conflict is the motor of history is an article of faith for thinkers as diverse as Hegel, Mill, Marx and Khomeini. Malik is a true believer. He argues that the Rushdie affair has made us fearful of conflict. His solution is to protect the space of discussion with stronger laws so that people can be as rude as they like about other cultures and religions without risk to themselves. This would remove any sense of danger from such conflicts, which sounds brilliant until one realizes this is why we invented the word oxymoron.   Malik demonstrates a dreamy confidence in the power of the state, matched by a chronic despair at the impotence of real governments. When Khomeini delivered his fatwa, the British Conservative government reacted by downgrading relations with Tehran. Malik sees this as weakness, arguing that Iran proved stronger when it responded by severing its ties to Britain. Among the various appeasers, Malik singles out Norman Tebbit - then a backbench MP - who agreed that The Satanic Verses may actually be offensive.   (Telegraph, 8 May 09)

Internationalist House of Pancakes: I.F. Stone and the KGB

Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev

. . . . let's understand that Spies recounts that the years of Stone's known employment by the KGB—the Russian intelligence archives are enormous and difficult to penetrate, as Jonathan Brent's new book demonstrates, and Vassiliev's notebooks are just a sampling of material, not a full accounting—were the year's of Stalin's great purges, during which hundreds of thousands were murdered. Nor does DeLong know if the only secret work Stone engaged in was anti-Nazi and never against his own government. Besides, if one wanted to be anti-Nazi why sidle up with a dictatorship that, by 1939, would ally with the fascist Germany and provide military and logistical support in their war on Poland? Was the Roosevelt administration not good enough? The point of the Stone documents is not to suggest that he was the journalistic equivalent to Alger Hiss, but that the ex-Soviet agents that previously fingered Stone as "one of ours" were, broadly speaking, telling the truth.
Second, the idea that, in the case of Stone or any ideologically-motivated agent, one can simply separate support for Stalinism from a supposedly naive anti-fascism is absurd. Why is it so difficult for his hagiographers to believe that Stone was actually a true-believing Stalinist? Recall that this is a man who wrote a ridiculous book accusing South Korea of invading North Korea in 1950, or whose first reaction to the 1953 Soviet massacre of workers in East Berlin was to write that "It is too early to tell whether the East German disorders represent a spontaneous worker uprising—it is difficult to associate spontaneity with the German character—or coordinated action exploiting labor grievances but carefully prepared by a military underground for some crucial moment?" (Reason, 7 May 09)

Spy Mystery Solved - His name was Wynn. Arthur Wynn.
Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, & Alexander Vassiliev

In our forthcoming book, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, we identify several dozen Americans never before suspected of working for Soviet intelligence. These identifications are based on KGB archival records of its operations in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s.  These records included some files on atomic espionage that also covered KGB work in Great Britain in World War II--due to the close links between the British and American atomic projects. To our surprise, we learned that from 1942 until early 1944 the chief source of Moscow's intelligence on the Manhattan Project were two KGB recruits in Britain with access to Manhattan Project technical reports. One of these British sources, Melita Norwood, was exposed in 1999 thanks to the KGB material Vasili Mitrokhin gave to MI5 in the 1990s. The other is revealed for the first time in Spies: Engelbert Broda, a refugee Austrian physicist and secret communist, who worked at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge.  Another KGB spy in Britain identified in the documents we examined had no discernible American connections, so he is not discussed in our book--but he is well worth some attention, for his identification clears up a mystery in espionage history.  In their 1998 book, The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the Heart of the KGB Archives, historian Nigel West and former KGB officer Oleg Tsarev cited an October 1936 report from the KGB's illegal station in London announcing to Moscow that through Edith Tudor Hart, the Austrian-born KGB asset who had recruited Kim Philby, the station had recruited a "second SOHNCHEN [Philby's cover name] who, in all probability, offers even greater possibilities than the first." By 1937, this source had been given the code name "Scott" and credited with providing "about 25 leads." Theodore Mally, "Scott's" KGB controller, noted, "most of these are raw material, but there are 4-5 among them who have already been studied and on whom we have already started working."   (Weekly Standard, Vol. 014, Issue 31, 4 May 09)

April 2009

Winning the War Against Jihad by Walid Phares; reviewed by David Major

The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad is the third book by Walid Phares in a trilogy beginning with  Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against the West (2005-2006) and The War of Ideas (2007).

In the first book, the author uncovers the historical evolution of the jihadi movements and strategies against America and the West. In the second book, Phares explains how the jihadists delayed the Western counter offensive for decades until 9/11. In the third book, he proposes strategies and policies to win the confrontation.

Redefining the War  - In his first chapter, Phares puts the finger on the wound: We must define the war. In fact, he calls for a "re-definition" of the eight-year-old confrontation that began officially on Sept. 11, 2001, but has started historically decades earlier.  The classical definition used by the United States government, “war on terror" has served its purpose even if it wasn't intellectually accurate. The foes of America and other democracies, namely the jihadists, aren’t confining themselves to military activities and acts of terror. Rather, they have a global agenda they seek to attain which would lead to collapse of international law.   (NewsMax, 30 Apr 09)

Story of gradual disillusionment

SPYMASTER: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West by Oleg Kalugin
One of the more interesting figures in Washington's international intelligence community is a gregarious former KGB major general who spent much of his professional life trying to topple Western governments in favor of a Soviet dictatorship.

Ironically, Oleg Kalugin now spends part of his time training U.S. security personnel in the counterintelligence tradecraft he practiced for three decades on behalf of the Soviet Union. Yet Mr. Kalugin is not - NOT, and he emphasizes the word - a defector. Rather, he is a man who came to realize that Soviet leaders were so enmeshed in their false conceptions about the world that they ignored contrary intelligence. The tipping point for Mr. Kalugin came in August 1968, when disgusted Czechs revolted against continued Soviet domination.

Mr. Kalugin's Moscow superiors insisted the CIA had inspired the uprising, and they demanded evidence of it. From the KGB rezidentura in Washington, Mr. Kalugin politely, but firmly, told his spymasters that they were wrong: that the United States had absolutely nothing to do with the events in Czechoslovakia. Indeed, it was the last thing desired by former President Lyndon Johnson, who was hoping for arms-control talks that autumn to burnish his tarnished presidency.

Thus began the long road that led Mr. Kalugin to leave the KGB, gain election to the Soviet parliament as an outspoken dissident, and then be driven from his beloved homeland in the turmoil preceding the collapse of the communist state. He now has several successful business ventures in the Washington area - some involve dealings with the U.S. intelligence community - and serves on the board of the International Spy Museum in addition to his teaching gig at the Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies in suburban Virginia.

"Spymaster" is a much-updated version of a memoir, titled "The First Directorate," named for the KGB directorate that worked against the "main enemy," i.e., the United States. Mr. Kalugin came to the United States in his late teens to attend the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and for much of his career he posed as a press officer at the Soviet Embassy in Washington.

. . . . "Spymaster" is a story of gradual disillusionment. For years, he writes, "I strongly believed that what I was doing was necessary and useful. I was not so blind that I didn't see how far we were falling behind the West, how corrupt the upper reaches of the Communist Party were, and what a senile fool [Leonid] Brezhnev had become." But even as he became critical, "I had no desire to run to another country, be pumped dry of everything I knew about the Soviet Union and its intelligence services, and then be cast aside to live a life of isolation."

Nonetheless, "When it concerned defectors from the other side ... my harsh moral scruples disappeared. It was the defectors' business if they wanted to turn against their own country. I was delighted that people like [Navy Warrant Officer John] Walker and [British MI6 officer] Kim Philby had decided to help our cause." Mr. Kalugin admits to a grudging admiration even for the spies, such as Walker, motivated by money, rather than ideology because of the risks they run. He also notes that as the pool of ideological spies dried up, so, too, did the quality of Soviet espionage.   (Washington Times, 28 Apr 09)

Author contends that the conflict between the Arabic world and the West can be solved only by addressing finite, rather than rhetorical

How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror by Reza Aslan

. . . .  Reza Aslan's "How to Win a Cosmic War" recognizes the struggle between Global Jihadism and the war on terror as an insolubly infinite one. He proposes, instead, that we'd be better off if we replaced the rhetoric of the absolute obligation, which characterizes movements, with the campaign's rhetoric of the finite aim.
"It is time," Aslan writes in his introduction, "to strip this ideological conflict of its religious connotations, to reject the religiously polarizing rhetoric of our leaders and theirs, to focus on the material matters at stake, and to address the earthly issues that always lie behind the cosmic impulse."
Aslan goes on to devote much of his book to distinguishing the earthly grievances of Islamists from the cosmic grievances of Global Jihadists, and to detailing how the former are pressed into service of the latter. Islamists, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, are "religious nationalists"; they seek specific domestic redress, through Islamic political parties, of political and economic deprivation. Global Jihadists, like Al Qaeda, are "religious trans-nationalists." They plait together stories of specific injustice -- Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the corruption of decades of secular Egyptian and Saudi leaders, the dispossession of Muslim minorities in Europe -- into a "master narrative" of universal Muslim humiliation. They are purists; they prefer the unspecific glory of the struggle to the disheveling imperatives of regency. For nationalists who despise some foreign patriotism, war is the health of the state. For religious trans-nationalists who despise all infidels, jihad is the bloom of the believers.  (LA Times, 28 Apr 09)

Pancake Red I.F. Stone

Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev

. . . . . the man behind I.F. Stone's Weekly was neither patriot nor independent.  He was an agent for the Soviet Union.

     "Charges about Stone's connections with the KGB have been swirling about for more than a decade, prompting cries of outrage among his passionate followers," write John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev in an excerpt of their new book, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, posted at Commentary magazine's website and linked by the Drudge Report. "Until now, the evidence was equivocal and subject to different interpretations. . . . Atop the Venona intercepts, numerous mid-century FBI informants, including the former managing editor of the Daily Worker, reported Stone as a onetime Communist Party member. KGB General Oleg Kalugin, who plied his trade as a press liaison at the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., conceded in the early 1990s that Stone had been his agent. "We had an agent -- a well known American journalist -- with a good reputation who severed his ties with us in 1956," he declared. "I myself convinced him to resume them. But after 1968, after the invasion of Czechoslovakia . . . he said he would never again take any money from us." Kalugin subsequently identified the unnamed agent as Izzy Stone. After an uproar by Stone's admirers in the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, Kalugin vacillated as to how formal the arrangement with Stone actually was.  And now, Vassiliev, a KGB-agent-turned-historian, has recovered more than 1,100 pages of notes from research inside Soviet intelligence archives. Included among them are details of Stone's work as a Soviet agent in the 1930s. "Relations with Pancake [Stone's codename] have entered the channel of normal operational work," a document from 1936 reports. The intelligence files outline Stone's role in recruiting other agents for the KGB and passing along information to his handlers. "To put it plainly," Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev write, "from 1936 to 1939 I.F. Stone was a Soviet spy."  (Spectator, 24 Apr 09)

Related:

I.F. Stone: Soviet Spy  (Pajamas Media)

Rosenberg May Have Enlisted Two Spies   (New York Times)

Jihad goes on in Pakistan

The Fluttering Flag of Jehad by Amir Mir Mashal

Amir Mir has developed into an informed commentator on the state of jihad with an uncomfortable inside track with those who are supposed to counter it in Pakistan. Of course jihad has unfortunately become another name for terrorism and those who have taken it out of the roster of the functions of the state and privatised it are to blame for this development.  Amir Mir was able to interview Benazir Bhutto just before she fell to the terrorism of Al Qaeda or whoever it was who assassinated her in December 2007. She thought Pervez Musharraf was secretly in league with the terrorists and had tried to kill her in Karachi in October 2007, and was sure he would get terrorists like Abdur Rehman Otho of Lashkar-e Jhangvi and Qari Saifullah Akhtar of Harkat Jihad Islami, protégés of the ISI, to do the job. She named Brigadier Ijaz Shah and Brigadier Riaz Chibb etc. in her final writings. She predicted her death and blamed it on the army; months later, Major General Faisal Alvi too predicted his own death at the hands of the army and was shot down in Islamabad.  Musharraf claimed that Benazir was killed by Baitullah Mehsud through his suicide-bombers whose minder was taped talking to him on the phone about the achievement. Evidence in place was destroyed by the establishment, and questions arising from her murder could not be answered although Al Qaeda was at first quoted in the press as having taken care of ‘the most precious American asset’ in the words of Mustafa Abu Yazid, the Al Qaeda commander in Afghanistan. Benazir had her moles inside the ISI (p.28); but Amir doesn’t accept that Baitullah Mehsud killed her and gives a convincing critique of the findings of Scotland Yard.  (Daily Times, 23 Apr 09)

Fjordman Essay: A Critical Look at The House of Wisdom by Jonathan Lyons

This text is written in response to the book The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization by Jonathan Lyons, which was published early in 2009. I have made a brief, early review of this book at the Gates of Vienna blog and will expand upon this here. Thematically related to this is John Freely’s Aladdin’s Lamp, which I have also evaluated. I don’t recommend buying either of these books, but Freely’s work is the least bad of the two because he has a better grasp of the history of science than Mr. Lyons does.

Lyons’ work is 200 pages long, Freely’s 255 pages. Neither of them mentions the terms “Jihad” or “dhimmi” even once in their accounts of Islamic culture. This says a great deal about the current intellectual climate. I didn’t notice these words while reading the books and they are not listed in the indexes. The authors certainly don’t devote much time to debating the violent aspects of Islamic expansionism through the Islamically unique institution of Jihad or the fates of the conquered peoples, as documented by Bat Ye’or and others. Is it a coincidence that whatever useful scholarly work that was done in the Middle East happened during the first centuries of the Islamic era, while there were still many non-Muslims living in the region? The question is never debated by these authors, but in my view it deserves to be.

Stephen O’Shea of The Los Angeles Times in a very positive review claims that “Dust will never gather on Jonathan Lyons’ lively new book of medieval history.” I disagree. I consider The House of Wisdom to be a bad case of poor scholarship.   (Jihad Watch, 23 Apr 09)

Spies & diplomats

Diplomacy Between the Wars: Five Diplomats and the Shaping of the Modern World by George W. Liebman and Nine Lives: True Spy Stories from Mata Hari to Kim Philby by Fitzroy Maclean

THE line that divides diplomacy and espionage has become blurred. Heads of secret services have been employed to conduct secret diplomacy with representatives of another country behind the back of the ambassador stationed there. The Central Intelligence Agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, the Inter-Services Intelligence, Mossad and the KGB are known to have conducted such extra-curricular activities. The advantages of such excursions are obscure. RAW’s chief was sent on a mission to Colombo though India was represented by an able High Commissioner, J.N. Dixit. “Sunil” asked that the fact of his negotiations with Kittu, a senior Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam leader, “be not disclosed to anyone in the Indian High Commission”.  Rohan Gunaratna’s book Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka: The Role of India’s Intelligence Agencies may be tendentious in its analyses. But the texts of documents he reproduces, no doubt with the help of persons in power, reveal that RAW participated in the conduct of Indian diplomacy to a worrying degree. . . . These two volumes contain studies of the creme de la creme of both the foreign and the intelligence services in which the legendary Sir Fitzroy Maclean (1911-1996) won distinction. He served as a diplomat at the British Embassy in Moscow and as Winston Churchill’s trusted personal envoy and commander of the British Military Mission to Josip Broz Tito and his partisans. He was dropped by parachute into German-occupied Yugoslavia, served in the Special Air Service (SAS) and was also involved with the Free French forces in Iran. He was one of the inspirations for his friend Ian Fleming’s James Bond.  Fitzroy Maclean’s volume is a serious work, a quality that is not to be overlooked by its riveting account of the lives of nine most famous spies from Mata Hari to Kim Philby, George Lonsdale and Oleg Penkovsky. Their motives varied from greed and the pleasure of betrayal to professional pride and ideology.  (Frontline, Vol. 26, Issue 09, 25 Apr 09)

Interview: The Statistical Analysis of Islamic Doctrines

Defeating Political Islam: The New Cold War by Moorthy Muthuswamy

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Moorthy Muthuswamy, an expert on terrorism in India. He grew up in India, where he had firsthand experience with political Islam and jihad. He moved to America in 1984 to pursue graduate studies. In 1992, he received a doctorate in nuclear physics from Stony Brook University, New York. Since 1999 he has extensively published ideas on neutralizing political Islam's terror war as it is imposed on unbelievers. His new book is Defeating Political Islam: The New Cold War.  

. . . . FP: So expand on your observations on the Muslim outlook as derived from statistics.

Muthuswamy: It is one thing to have a theology with certain attributes, but the question is how well it is influencing its adherents and in what way.

During the past sixty years from every Muslim majority region of South Asia – without exception – upon gaining power Muslims have set about marginalizing and worse – expelled most non-Muslims to the neighboring non-Muslim majority areas. This occurred despite the people sharing everything – including ethnicity, culture, language, but excluding religion. Most of these expulsions occurred before 1975, when money from Saudi Arabia was starting to flow into the region to immerse the population with even more Islam. This region of Asia is home to about to a third of the worldwide population of 1.3 billion Muslims. This is significant.

Any non-Muslim majority region of the world with a higher local Muslim population growth rate has to worry about its very existence in the coming years.

There is also a strong correlation between the increased funding for the propagation of Islam and the worsening of Muslims’ uneasy relations with unbelievers – in the form of insurgencies, terrorism and riots that extend across the world. This is seen in India, the Philippines, Thailand, America, Russia, Europe, to name a few.   

There is one and only common denominator in all of this: Islam. The statistics of hatred and conquest present in the Islamic doctrines must be the source of the conflicts.

We now reach important conclusion: increased exposure to Islamic doctrine is seen to propel Muslim populations to embrace jihad and sharia (a medieval repressive Islamic “law”) fervently.   (FrontPage, 22 Apr 09)

The choice facing Muslims

The Crisis of Islamic Civilization by Ali Allawi

. . . .Mr. Ali Allawi calls his new book an “attempt to understand the factors behind the decay of the spirit of Islam”. He locates this decay not in the personal piety of the world’s Muslims - which remains vibrant - but in the collective failure of Muslims, over the past 200 years, to come up with an adequate and effective response to Western modernity. The problem is not that Islam is incapable of finding its own path to modernity. Mr. Allawi wholly rejects the popular notion that Islam is inherently incompatible with tolerance, democracy, women’s rights - in short, all that the West holds dear. . . . Mr. Allawi calmly and methodically deconstructs an Islamic revival which has failed to live up to its promise. Islamist movements and secular governments anxious to pay lip-service to Islam have, between them, failed spectacularly to anchor themselves in genuinely Islamic principles: principles which, for Mr. Allawi, are as much about inner spirituality as outward religiosity. The results are everywhere to be seen. Autocratic governments abuse human rights, whether in Islamic Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan or in secular Egypt and Syria. Economies are corrupt and mal-administered, and their supposed ethical principles, such as Islamic banking, are a sham. There has been a profound loss of cultural creativity, apparent, for example, in the decay of the Islamic city and its time-honored traditions of craftsmanship, piety and community.  Mr. Allawi buttresses his case with some striking statistics: “The creative output of the twenty or thirty million Muslims of the Abbasid era [750-1258] dwarfs the output of the nearly one-and-a-half billion Muslims of the modern era.” Per head, the income of the wealthiest Muslim country (the United Arab Emirates) is 200 times that of the poorest (Somalia).  Is there a solution? Mr. Allawi, himself a Shia Muslim, believes the mystical (or Sufi) tradition must be an integral part of the revival of Islamic civilization. But here too - although Sufism retains a strong grassroots following in several parts of the Muslim world - he finds himself at odds with both the modernist and puritanical (Wahhabi) strands of Islam, which disdain the individualistic heterodoxy of “folk Islam”.  (Economist, 16 Apr 09)

An Alternative Theory

Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased down the World's Most Notorious Nazi by Neal Bascomb

Sixty-four years after the end of World War II and the period known as the Nazi Holocaust, we still grapple with the question of responsibility. Was the Final Solution only accomplished due to the insistence of Adolf Hitler? Or was it the result of decisions made by Hitler and the leadership of the Nazi Party?

Maybe, those really responsible were not elites at all, but rather the German people, who knowingly allowed the Holocaust to happen. This theory has been espoused in major works like Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1993) and Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1997).

An alternate theory is that although the Nazi Party created the genocidal policies against Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, political opponents, and others, the real danger and source of accountability lay with the administrators and bureaucrats. This was the premise behind Unmasking Administrative Evil (1998) by Guy Adams and Danny Balfour.  (Pop Matters, 16 Apr 09)

At Least They Weren't Nazis

BAADER-MEINHOF: The Inside Story of the R.A.F. by Stefan Aust

Before 9/11, before terrorism took on a foreign face, there was terror chic: the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers, the Baader-Meinhof Gang. This was intellectualized, secular terror of the sort that college radicals could embrace as others of their generation found thrills in rock music or fast cars.   In West Germany in the 1960s and '70s, memories of the Nazi years were fresh enough that the rebellious children of academics, clerics and artists could win considerable sympathy by accusing their elders of being too authoritarian, too (gulp) Nazi-like. The Baader-Meinhof gang, also known as the Red Army Faction, was a bunch of young people enraptured with violence, eager to upset a society that longed for quiet stability, and profiting from a system in which politicians were afraid of taking forceful actions that might recall the Nazi past.

German journalist Stefan Aust reflects that uneasy relationship with his country's traumatic past in his new history of the terrorist movement launched by Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin. Aust, for many years the editor of Der Spiegel, the German newsweekly, has a long history with the RAF. He even played a bit part in one of the gang's exploits, helping to retrieve Meinhof's young twins from a Palestinian orphans' camp after she had abandoned the girls there. But the writer, who calls himself a "participating observer" in the leftist movement, never details his relationship with the gang members and gives only a few clues to his own take on the RAF's years of bank robberies, kidnappings, murders and bombings. (Washington Post, 12 Apr 09)

Geert Wilders’ Fight

My guest today is Bat Ye'or, the world's foremost authority on dhimmitude and Eurabia. She is the author of Islam and Dhimmitude – Where Civilizations Collide. Her recent study, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, came out in a Hebrew version in 2008, while her next book will soon be published by an Italian publisher.

Véronique Chemla: Bat Ye’or, thank you for joining me today for an interview for Frontpage Interview. It is an honor to speak with you. Let’s begin with Eurabia. Is there a difference between the American and French versions?

Bat Ye'or: Yes, the French version is shorter. I rewrote the book in French while I was staying at hospital with my daughter who had been operated for cancer. I was absolutely exhausted and finally collapsed: I just could not work any longer. Fortunately, on his side, the French publisher wanted an abridged version. I cut out the parts concerning international and American politics and added some information about how the EU and its bodies work, which is not included in the American edition as it wouldn’t have interested an American public. Remember that Eurabia was written primarily for an American, non-European audience, based on an article published in a French Jewish journal Observatoire du monde juif and which I didn’t know where to submit as it had become so long. Fortunately my friend Shmuel Trigano took it. It was another friend, Andrew Bostom, an American, who – after reading a translation on my site – insisted I make a book of it.   (FrontPage, 13 Apr 09)

How Cold War strategy was forged

The Great Cold War: A Journey Through the Hall of Mirror by Gordon S. Barrass

When the final and definitive story is told — you probably won't read details for decades — the initial turning point in the Cold War came very quietly in the 1950s and 1960s. It was then that analysts at the RAND Corporation made what was then a radical but verifiable conclusion: "the West was far stronger than the Soviet Union and its allies — it had more manpower, greater wealth and a huge lead in technology."  So, what was needed to exploit these inherent advantages? "A long term strategy that would be more effective than the policy of containment — and the will to implement it."  Such, in a very tight nutshell, is the essence of Gordon Barrass' "The Great Cold War," an absolutely brilliant account of how analysis both in and out of our government concluded that the Soviet Union, in many ways, was a Potemkin Village, whose outward bravado and blustering concealed a "power" that was a hollow shell. Eventually, the Soviets came to realize the futility of keeping up the facade of being a world power, and the entire artifice collapsed.  To be sure, Mr. Barrass on one point (in a closing section titled "Slaying the Myths") is certainly on target. He writes, "The first myth that needs to be slain is that the Soviet Union was not ever a real threat to the West. On the contrary … it was a serious threat.   (Washington Times, 12 Apr 09)

Muslim former CIA official details struggles

A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World by Emile Nakhleh

. . . . “We need to understand the Muslim world much better,” Nakhleh said. “It is a matter of national security.” 
Nakhleh, who was born in Palestine and served in the CIA for 16 years before retiring in 2006, said there was a tendency during the Bush administration “to paint the Islamic world with one broad brush.” The CIA, on the other hand, made the distinction “between terrorism and the larger Islamic community,” he said. . . . “We need to talk to moderate thinkers, Muslim thinkers who try to synchronize faith and active citizenship in non-Muslim societies,” Nakhleh told The Daily Free Press during his book signing. “And that is what Tariq Ramadan has been doing in Europe, a new kind of reasoning.”  (Daily Free Press, 8 Apr 09)

March 2009

House of Wisdom

The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization by Jonathan Lyons and Aladdin’s Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe Through the Islamic World by John Freely

. . . . I have read both of them, and Freely’s book is the best of the two, or the least bad, since he at a minimum has some understanding of the history of science, which Mr. Lyons in my view does not. That doesn’t mean that I would recommend buying his book; there are better and more balanced titles available on the market. Stephen O’Shea in his very positive review claims that “Dust will never gather on Jonathan Lyons’ lively new book of medieval history.” I strongly disagree. I consider The House of Wisdom to be a bad case of poor scholarship.
Lyons’ book is 200 pages long, Freely’s Aladdin’s Lamp 255 pages. Neither of them mentions the terms ‘Jihad’ or ‘dhimmi’ even once in their books about Islamic culture. This says a great deal about the current intellectual climate. I didn’t notice these words while reading the books and they are not listed in the indexes. The authors certainly don’t devote much time to debating the violent aspects of Islamic expansionism through the Islamically unique institution of Jihad, or the fates of the conquered peoples. Is it a coincidence that whatever useful work that was done in the Islamic world happened during the first centuries of the Islamic era, while there were still large numbers of non-Muslims living in the region? We don’t know because the question is never debated by these authors, but it deserves to be.   (Gates of Vienna, 27 Mar 09)

New Book Reveals NSA Communications, Espionage Details

Seven Floors High by Steve Goddard

. . . . Written with style and humor, Seven Floors High is a personal account of one individual who saw the "paper tiger" from the inside. Woven through the main plot is a very powerful nonfiction sub-theme, describing with detailed insight and analysis several covert intelligence operations carried out by the US National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. This intelligence sub-theme scrutinizes the events that built up to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and also details several other covert operations from recent history.  Iaxis was located in London’s ITN Building and its story provides a very timely insight into corporate greed and commercial excess. Iaxis was born out of Kevin Maxwell’s Telemonde company in January 1999 and following the rise of “dot.com” shares, Iaxis was valued at $1 billion in March 2000. An offer to buy the company for $670 million in April 2000 was turned down by the Iaxis board. Following the Wall Street crash in the same month, Iaxis was sold in September 2000 to Dynegy Corp for USD$1 with $300 million of debts. Seven Floors High is a vivid and humorous account of life inside Iaxis during this extravagant, turbulent period.  A “secret narrator” within the text also provides the reader with a detailed insight into both the classified world of intelligence gathering operations and the politics of oil as the life blood of the global economy. How much do we really know about the US National Security Agency’s ECHELON system? What was the role of the U.S. Department of Defense in the development of the Internet? How did America’s National Security Directive 26 change US foreign policy towards Iraq in 1990? And how does this new information all tie-in with a story set in a London-based start-up Telecoms/Internet company called Iaxis?  (Press Release Network, 26 Mar 09)

The experience of empire seems to leave a people with at least a taste, if not a particular talent, for conspiracy. Certainly, that's true of the Russians for whom the one place at which the history of czarism and Bolshevism most clearly conjoins is in a lasting predilection for plots and plotting. It's true as well for the British, who transmuted the gifted amateurism of Kipling's "great game" into the modern world's first recognizable professional intelligence agencies.  It's not for nothing that Bill Haydon - the Kim Philby-like English double agent in John le Carré's classic "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" - informs his interrogator and betrayed friend, George Smiley, that he'd "always regarded the secret services as the only true expression of a nation's character." . . . . MI6 is Britain's external spy service - like our CIA - and reports to the foreign secretary, the British equivalent of our secretary of State. MI5 is responsible for internal security - rather like our FBI, but without its power to make arrests -- and is responsible to the home secretary, roughly our attorney general. Both will mark their 100th anniversaries this August. A longtime reporter and commentator on intelligence affairs, Thomas is the author of more than 40 nonfiction books and novels, along with a clutch of screenplays. . . . Thomas takes a novelist's approach: We're told where on Savile Row the head of MI6 has his suits tailored and that he wears a Travellers Club tie, sits at a desk once used by Adm. Lord Horatio Nelson and writes his most important communications with a Parker pen filled with green ink from a Victorian desk well. (He also has a desk console that links him instantly to the prime minister, the heads of the Central Intelligence Agency and Israel's Mossad.) Thomas builds one fast-paced anecdote upon another, often yielding surprising insights, such as the fact that Allen Dulles, who ran the OSS' European operations for Donovan out of a base in Switzerland, was, unlike his overwhelmingly Anglophilic Ivy League colleagues in the early CIA, profoundly anti-English. He'd acquired an antipathy for imperialism and the English class system while working as a schoolteacher in India before beginning his celebrated career as a Wall Street lawyer. (He also was carefully monitored and manipulated by Philby during those early days with OSS.)  (LA Times, 25 Mar 09)

American Raj

American Raj: Liberation or Domination? – Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World by Eric S. Margolis

In a wide-ranging and thorough overview of essentially the Middle East, but also the rest of the Muslim world, Eric Margolis’ recent work American Raj should become a first source of information on current events in the Muslim world. It is not encyclopedic in trying to fit in all the details about people and events, and other works dig deeper into specific areas and ideas, but it is comprehensive, covering all the main themes, ideas, places, and personalities that have shaped the area over the last century. More importantly as compared to a more narrow focus, Margolis shows the linkages and cross-currents between events that are often seen as disparate unrelated items in the west – other than being classified as “terrorist.”   Terrorism is the theme provided by the western media, but as viewed from the perspectives (and there are many, it is not a monolithic system of beliefs or structures) of the local populations, the theme becomes imperial domination for resource control and power vis a vis other empires and religions. From Morocco through northern Africa, from Israel through the now better known countries of the Middle East extending into South Asia and the complications of a nuclear Pakistan, from the Balkans and the northern Caucus regions of Chechnya to the African Sahel, there is a wide range of Muslim belief (think of Christianity as a comparison and the many sects and divides that are involved within it, and how they frequently battle with one another) and a wide range of secular belief that the west generally remains ignorant of.   (Political Affair, 24 Mar 09)

Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda by Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, with Henry Robert Schlesinger

Spycraft is a fairly detailed history of CIA’s Office of Technical Service, the outfit that makes all the neat James Bond toys used -- or not used -- in espionage since the creation of the first OTS during World War Two. The first OTS was called R&D, Research and Development, when it was first created in 1942. (I use the phrase “fairly detailed history” since much of what OTS did or does is still highly classified.)  Past credits include observation planes, the most famous of which was the U-2. Heirs to the U-2 include Oxcart, A-12, SR-71, and AURORA, although you won’t find much information about AURORA, since it’s still being used. Satellites have, of course been around since the late 1950s, and it wasn’t long after the first one that many more were launched. When the program became too big, a separate agency was spun off and created. Again, not much is made public, except for instances such as the Jonathan Pollard case, when the agency was known as the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), now called the National Geo-Spatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).  The most enjoyable parts of the book are the first five sections, which are described as stories of “ingenuity, skill and courage.” Section VI of the book is a treatise on clandestine tradecraft, including the revolutionary changes digital technology has brought. It also gives the five essential elements of clandestine operations used by every intelligence service in the world. I find it interesting that this section can be read first, to give yourself a primer or refresher on the business of spying, or after the first 15 chapters.  (Blog Critics, 22 Mar 09)

Idealism Unraveled

The Lost Spy: An American In Stalin’s Secret Service by Andrew Meier
Despite the best efforts of the likes John Le Carre, Len Deighton and, especially, Graham Greene, spying remains by popular consent one of the glamour professions. As that triumvirate admirably demonstrated, it is for most part as dull a way to spend one's existence as is imaginable. But, like prostitution, that other venerable career option for those without formal qualifications, it has an aura that no amount of debunking can deny. Nor will Andrew Meier's The Lost Spy alter that impression.  On the contrary, this meticulously researched, exquisitely paced and genuinely thrilling book demonstrates that, for the ideologically blinkered, spying is not something one does but what one is.  Meier's spy in question is one Isaiah "Cy" Oggins. His name, even to those familiar with the lore of espionage, is unlikely to resonate. Until Meier came along, Oggins's story was untold and his deeds - such as they were - unheralded. One of the many spies who was recruited in the 1920s when the world was in political ferment, Oggins was off the radar until 1992 when that old soak Boris Yeltsin delivered a hitherto unseen dossier to the White House. It transpired that Oggins had been murdered in 1947, executed on the orders of Stalin, the pocket-sized, pock-marked despot. Those were the bald facts; the reality, as Meier relates, was much more complicated and considerably more intriguing.  The Lost Spy is constructed like an artful movie, flitting back and forth until we are brought to that fateful moment when Oggins met his end. That Stalin should have been the architect of his demise is one among a welter of ironies outlined by Meier. Another is the fact that at one time Oggins shared a cell with Pavel Sudoplatov, who would be his executioner. We know this because Sudoplatov tells us so in his memoirs, which Meier describes as "an audacious act of self-justification" and "a highly contentious historical source". Why did he kill Oggins? Because, he protests, he was told to do so.

Why Oggins had to be killed is less easily explained. Sudoplatov says it was not because of what he knew about the gulags. Nor, he adds, was it because he was a Trotskyist agent and, therefore, an enemy of Stalin. In Sudoplatov's telling, Oggins was doomed because he had become a double agent. Consequently, he felt no remorse at killing him.  (Sunday Herald, 19 Mar 09)

My imam father came after me with an axe

The Imam’s Daughter by Hannah Shah

Hannah Shah had been raped by her father and faced a forced marriage. She fled, became a Christian and now fears for her life.  We are all too familiar with the persecution of Christians in countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Yet sitting in front of me is a British woman whose life has been threatened in this country solely because she is a Christian. Indeed, so real is the threat that the book she has written about her experiences has had to appear under an assumed name.  The book is called The Imam’s Daughter because “Hannah Shah” is just that: the daughter of an imam in one of the tight-knit Deobandi Muslim Pakistani communities in the north of England. Her father emigrated to this country from rural Pakistan sometime in the 1960s and is, apparently, a highly respected local figure.  He is also an incestuous child abuser, repeatedly raping his daughter from the age of five until she was 15, ostensibly as part of her punishment for being “disobedient”. At the age of 16 she fled her family to avoid the forced marriage they had planned for her in Pakistan. A much, much greater affront to “honor” in her family’s eyes, however, was the fact that she then became a Christian – an apostate. The Koran is explicit that apostasy is punishable by death; thus it was that her father the imam led a 40-strong gang – in the middle of a British city – to find and kill her.  Hannah Shah says her story is not unique – that there are many other girls in British Muslim families who are oppressed and married off against their will, or who have secretly become Christians but are too afraid to speak out. She wants their voices to be heard and for Britain, the land of her birth, to realize the hidden misery of these women. (Times Online, 16 Mar 09)

C-SPAN Features UPK Book On Heinz Luning

Hitler's Man in Havana: Heinz Luning and Nazi Espionage in Latin America by Thomas D. Schoonover

 . . . . For nearly 60 years, the story of Heinz Lüning remained largely shrouded in secrecy. In "Hitler's Man in Havana," Schoonover explores for the first time the story of Lüning, a German spy in World War II. He extensively researched Lüning's activities and uses his findings to paint a picture of his life and capture. Of the hundreds of Nazi spies working in Latin America during World War II, Lüning was the only one executed, and his death marked the first time in Cuban history an individual was executed for espionage.  In September 1941, Lüning slipped into Cuba to spy on shipping traffic for the Third Reich. Little more than a year later he was executed by the Cuban government as the supposed leader of the vast spy network. Schoonover writes a compelling account of the daily life of a spy including the use of invisible ink, secret mail drop-off sites, intercepted trans-Atlantic correspondences, and clandestine rendezvous.  An exploration of a lost chapter of World War II history, "Hitler's Man in Havana" is a great read for individuals interested in the war and the history of espionage. Thanks to Schoonover's extensive research, the story of Lüning can finally be told.   (UKY, 16 Mar 09)

What Drove an American to Spy for Stalin

The Lost Spy by Andrew Meier

One bleak night in February 1939, as the snow was falling on Moscow, the men came for Cy Oggins. They took him from his hotel room, bundled him into the back of their van, jammed him into a tight wire-mesh cubicle with no room to sit down, and drove to the Lubyanka, the dreaded iron-shuttered prison of the Soviet NKVD. There, in a solitary cell on a long, windowless corridor, in the harsh light of a bulb that never went off, he waited. Nobody ever told him why he had been arrested.   Cy Oggins had always believed himself to be marching in the vanguard of history, his life dedicated to a revolution that would build heaven on earth. Instead, this serious young man from small-town Connecticut became one of the revolution’s forgotten victims, destroyed by the cause to which he had pledged himself.   In this intriguing, chilling book, Andrew Meier calls him the “lost spy” – an American idealist who joined the Communist Party as a student in the Twenties, gave up his academic career to become a secret agent for Stalin, and ended his days a broken prisoner of the Gulag, trapped thousands of miles from home in the bitter cold of the Russian Arctic.  As a piece of historical detective work, Meier’s book is a triumph. He traces Oggins’s extraordinary life from his childhood in a bookish Jewish family in New England to his student days at Columbia in the 1910s where, amid the passionate arguments over American entry into the First World War, he found his way into radical politics.  Like many of his intellectual friends, Oggins was deeply attracted to the dream of world revolution. He moved to Greenwich Village, then a melting pot of socialism and bohemianism, and married a short, spiky Yiddish radical, Nerma, herself never far from the front lines of activism and argument . . . . That Oggins’s life was a waste and a tragedy is not in doubt, but I wonder whether a man who spent so long spying for Stalin could be quite the innocent idealist that Meier portrays.  The truth is that we do not really know what inner dreams or demons drove him to his death, and despite Meier’s keen eye for detail and historical sweep, Oggins always remains an enigma.   (Telegraph, 13 Mar 09)

Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism, and Slavery

Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism, and Slavery by M.A. Khan

 . . . . It is a documented book, backed by relevant Islam legacy, including the Koran and Hadith.  The author, Khan, is a typical case of a young Muslim who was taught that “Prophet Muhammad was the ideal human being: most merciful and just; that Islam is the most peaceful religion.”   After 9/11, Khan began reading the scriptures of Islam and realized that Islam is actually a “manifesto of open-ended war against non-Muslims for converting them or for subjugating them into horribly degraded dhimmi subjects.”   Khan also found out that the Muslim leader was “anything but what a peace-loving, merciful, and just person stands for.”  This is exactly the point and the biggest lesson we draw from Khan’s experience with Islam. Therefore, I always say that if Muslims read at least the Koran and Hadith, they would reach the same conclusion Khan came to.  More often than not, Muslims read the Koran and Hadith superficially and their belief in Islam blinds them from seeing the truth.  (FSM, 10 Mar 09)

'Hunting Eichmann' offers fascinating take on a true spy story

Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi by Neal Bascomb

In the confusion following the fall of Nazi Germany to the Allied forces in 1945, SS Lt.-Col. Adolf Eichmann vanished, leaving behind millions of dead including six million Jews. By the time Eichmann was identified as the architect of Hitler's "final solution," he was gone, some believed never to be seen again.  It wasn't until 1960 that Mossad agents caught up with Eichmann, living with his family under a false identity in a desolate suburb of Buenos Aires. Under the nose of the Argentine authorities, the Mossad kidnapped Eichmann and brought him to the young nation of Israel to stand trial for his crimes. The story - told in Neal Bascomb's "Hunting Eichmann" - remains one of the most stunning successes in the history of espionage and established the Mossad's reputation as one of the world's most effective intelligence agencies.  Bascomb's tale starts off slowly as he details the mostly fruitless attempts to locate Eichmann following his disappearance, but the story heats up as the trail does. So difficult was the task of finding and identifying the war criminal that even after weeks of surveillance, they couldn't be certain they had the right man until he was in their hands.  Any attempt to bring Eichmann to justice would have to be done without Argentine knowledge. Argentina had become a popular refuge for former Nazis, in part because they had sympathizers in that nation's government.   (Canadian Press, 6 Mar 09)

Islam's Victims

Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism, and Slavery by M. A. Khan

M. A. Khan is the editor of increasingly popular Website, islam-watch.org. Under his able stewardship, it is gradually emerging as one of the most popular Websites that disseminate the factual understanding of Islam and its ongoing malaise.  Khan has also proved his ability as a scholarly author in his maiden venture by writing a persuasive book, Islamic Jihad, a very important addition to the growing list of literature for the accurate and objective understanding of Islam and Jihadi violence. In this book, Khan has made it crystal-clear that Islam is imperialistic and violent at its heart, and that the current Islamist terrorism is a continuation of Islamic Jihad that ensued at the birth of Islam. The message of this book is that Islamic Jihad is very much alive and kicking and the current civilization may ignore the threat only at its peril.  This seminal work of Khan is in the same league of the work of Andrew Bostom’s bestseller, The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims.

Islamic Jihad is divided into seven main chapters: beginning with the elaboration of such topics as the controversies that currently surrounds the idea of Jihad, basic beliefs in Islam, Prophet Muhammad’s biography and the birth of jihad, and ends with the topic of Islamic slavery. At 380 pages, it is a massive work. Khan deserves a huge acclaim for completing such an influential work.  (FrontPage, 2 Mar 09)

On the Road to 9/11, There Was 9/16

The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror by Beverly Gage

 . . . . Just before the noon bell tolled at Trinity Church, a horse-drawn cart pulled up near J. P. Morgan’s headquarters at Broad and Wall Streets. The driver quickly dismounted and melted into the crowd. The wagon, laden with dynamite and iron sash weights, exploded, sending flames into the sky and a fusillade of shrapnel into the heart of the nation’s financial district. Thirty-eight people were killed in the blast, and 143 more were maimed. It was the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil, and so it would remain until the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 . . . . This was a moment that Wall Street clearly wanted to forget. Laborers worked through the night to repair the damage. The next morning, the New York Stock Exchange miraculously opened for business. The market continued its rally — aided no doubt by free-spending private bankers who wished to restore the public’s confidence. They succeeded. Soon, America was swept up in the great stock market boom of the Roaring Twenties. Terror seemed so passé. Not anymore. As Ms. Gage, a Yale history professor, argues convincingly in her book, the events of that Sept. 16 are more relevant than ever after terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Of course, this second atrocity inspired former President George W. Bush to proclaim a war on terror. Most people would now agree that this war has been less than a resounding success. But then, neither was the first.  (New York Times, 1 Mar 09)

Exile’s Return

HONEYMOON IN TEHRAN: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni

The subtitle of “Honeymoon in Tehran,” an engaging new book from the author of “Lipstick Jihad,” promises “two years of love and danger in Iran.” But while Azadeh Moaveni does indeed deliver details of her romance with the son of an Iranian textile tycoon, there’s another, more intriguing relationship at the core of this memoir.

It’s embodied by a certain Mr. X, the intelligence agent the Islamic Republic has assigned to shadow Moaveni’s movements as a reporter for Time magazine. “For a long while,” she observes, “he behaved like a controlling husband.” On and off over seven years, Moaveni and her minder meet in anonymous hotel rooms and play psychological games. Citing national security constraints, he insists on the secrecy of their rendezvous. And he presses to know what she’s writing, who she’s interviewing, what her circle of sources and friends is up to. She struggles to read him: is he the uncomplicated thug of a mullah state or simply a man in a job, with doubts about the regime he represents? Mr. X is, of course, a stand-in for Iran, and her fascination with this elusive figure mirrors her fraught relationship with the country her parents left in 1976 and with the religion that, in the hands of ascendant ayatollahs, kept them from returning after the revolution.  (New York Times, 1 Mar 09)

Rewriting the Narrative: An Integrated Strategy for Counterradicalization

J. Scott Carpenter, Michael Jacobson, and Matthew Levitt of The Washington Institute convened the task force.

With the Middle East having emerged as a focal point of American foreign policymaking, a complex array of regional issues now compete for the urgent attention of our nation's leaders. In preparation for the first presidential succession of the twenty-first century, The Washington Institute assembled three independent Presidential Task Forces. Each is composed of its own bipartisan, blue-ribbon group of experts and practitioners, and each charged with addressing a discrete issue high on the Middle East policy agenda.  A strong investment in counterradicalization -- with special focus on helping mainstream Muslims provide hopeful and practical alternatives to jihadist ideology -- should be a critical element of the Obama administration's counterterrorism strategy, a high-level Washington Institute task force urges.  Rewriting the Narrative: An Integrated Strategy for Counterradicalization is the final report of the Task Force on Confronting the Ideology of Radical Extremism, a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission of diplomats, legislators, strategists, scholars, and experts. A joint project of two Institute programs -- Project FIKRA and the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence -- the task force has been meeting since June 2008 to devise a comprehensive strategy to counter the growing radicalization of Muslim populations, particularly youth, worldwide.   (Presidential Study Group,  March 2009)

February 2009

Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri: The Exoneration

The Exoneration: A Treatise Exonerating of the Nation of the Pen and the Sword of the Denigrating Charge of Being Irresolute and Weak by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri

On March 2, 2008, a lengthy book by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri titled "The Exoneration: A Treatise Exonerating of the Nation of the Pen and the Sword of the Denigrating Charge of Being Irresolute and Weak" was published on jihadist websites. The book is a response to attacks by Sayid Imam Sharif, better know in radical Islamic circles as Dr. Fadl. Dr. Fadl was a one-time Emir of the Islamic Jihad and its chief ideologue, who, in November 2007, published a book titled, “Rationalizing Jihad in Egypt and the World.” Dr. Fadl reinterpreted the meaning of Jihad, forbidding declarations of Takfir and the killing of non-Muslims in Muslim countries or members of other Muslim sects. Zawahiri wrote that when he "carefully examined" the book, he found "that it served, in the best possible way, the interests of the alliance that the crusaders and Jews have with our rulers, who act in contradiction of Shari'ah. This document is an attempt to sedate their mujahidin enemies, make them doubt their methods, and drive them from the battlefield under the pretext of weakness and impotence, the lack of resources necessary for jihad, and the absence of hope that the Islamic movements can bring about any change in Egypt. I also found that the document focused on me personally, both by implication and by direct reference, in addition to Shaykh Usama bin Ladin. . ." This translation was produced by the CIA's Open Source Center and has become public.  (NEFA, 28 Feb 09)

The 19th-century roots of terrorism

THE DYNAMITE CLUB: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siècle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror by John Merriman

Terrorist bombings of nightclubs, restaurants, and hotels are, unfortunately, the stuff of today's headline news. But the bombing of Paris's Café Terminus in 1894 was a new, stunning phenomenon made possible by a violent philosophy and the development of dynamite. Yale historian John Merriman does many things in "The Dynamite Club," his book about the bombing, and does them quite well, from explaining the intellectual and social underpinnings of anarchism to detailing the invention of dynamite to taking us inside the murky underworld of extremist Émile Henry, who built and then set off the 1894 bomb.  "This book is motivated by a very simple question: Why did Émile Henry do what he did?" In seeking an answer, Merriman meticulously details the massive socioeconomic inequalities of 19th-century Paris, and the rest of Europe, which created alienation and resentment, especially among impoverished intellectuals such as Henry. Merriman shows us the dual worlds of Paris, the conspicuous consumption of the relatively few haves and the desperation, sickness, and want of the majority have-nots. Henry's radical father had been forced to flee France after the 1871 Paris Commune, and young Henry adopted an extreme anarchist philosophy that advocated violence to destroy the social and political order.  (Boston Globe, 26 Feb 09)

Islamic Jihad - A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism and Slavery by M. A. Khan

After recounting the ongoing, often-contradictory, debates surrounding the true nature of Jihad and what Muslims fundamentally believe about their creed in the first two chapters, Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism and Slavery establishes, in the next, an ideal paradigm of Jihad with compelling references from the Quran (God’s words), as well as from the examples of how Prophet Muhammad had himself applied those divine commands of Jihad. With great insights and analyses, this book makes it crystal clear that the paradigmatic model of Jihad is overwhelmingly violent; and that it lies at the heart of Islam, as it says, “Violent Jihad is the heart of Islam; without it, Islam would, most likely, have died a natural death in the seventh century itself” (p. 79).  It clearly identifies, in this ideal model of Jihad, three major strands of Jihadi actions, namely forced conversion, imperialism and slavery — all of which are commanded by God and practiced by Prophet Muhammad. In accordance with the Muslim belief that the command of the Quran and actions of Prophet Muhammad are eternal in nature, it goes on to demonstrate in subsequent chapters (4–7) with compelling historical documentation that, those commands of Jihad were perpetuated by later Muslim holy warriors and rulers; and that this practice continues to this day, although in severely suppressed forms in Muslim societies.  In these latter chapters, the book first gives clear outlines of the Quranic commands of forced conversion, imperialism and slavery and their ideal models set by Prophet Muhammad. Thereafter, each chapter goes on to anecdote extensive historical examples of these practices exercised by Muslim invaders and rulers over the centuries. (Blog Critics, 24 Feb 09)

United in Hate

United In Hate - The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror by Dr. Jamie Glazov

United In Hate - The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror is a book that examines the seamy underbelly of the radical Left which considers Western society and its values an anathema. Dr. Jamie Glazov, the Editor of FrontPage Magazine, methodically details the causational factors that have lead modern Leftists to adhere to the death and destruction mantra of tyrannical Islamic Jihadists.
The Twin Towers are destroyed, 2973 people die in the attack and the radical Left cheers; the war in Iraq is won and the Left expels a disgusted sigh; totalitarian thugs kill innocent millions that the Left justifies as a “cleansing” required to forge a utopian society; suicidal Jihadists shred shoppers in malls with nail bombs and are excused by the Left as door-matted victims striking back at their oppressors; women are vilified, stoned, mutilated and killed by radical Muslims as Leftist feminists remain silent, save here in America where they rail mightily against a country club that’s denied membership to a female executive.
What draws Leftists moth-like toward the annihilating fires of unbridled totalitarianism, or drives them to slavishly worship at the feet of dictators that kick them to the curb when they are considered no longer useful? Why does the Left cleave to a radical Islamic terrorism that vows to destroy all non-believers, including them? Dr. Glazov answers these and other “head scratching” questions in a court-ready presentation of the Left’s mindset that will make forensic psychologists proud.
The Left’s hatred and rejection of Western civilization, its freedoms and values, begins with an acute sense of alienation from it, and unable to “fit in” the Left believes radical societal change, regardless of the consequences, is necessary. After all it’s the West’s fault that the Left has no sense of purpose or direction.  (FrontPage, 20 Feb 09)

Book claims drone attacks began after ISI-Taliban coordination confirmed

The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the challenges to American power by David E. Sanger

A new book by a New York Times journalist has leveled serious allegations against Pakistan and its Army claiming the telephones of all senior officers, including the COAS General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani were bugged by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA), the main eavesdropping US agencies around the world.  The book written by David E Sanger, which has hit the stands a few days back, claims that the American intelligence agencies were intercepting telephonic conversations of Army officers and the decision to attack Pakistan through drones was taken after one such high level conversation was intercepted claiming the Taliban as a “strategic asset” for Pakistan.  The book, titled “The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the challenges to American power” claims the decision to invade Pakistani territories was taken after the CIA reached a conclusion that the ISI was absolutely in complete coordination with the Taliban.  The NSA intercepted messages indicating that ISI officers were helping the Taliban in planning a big bombing attack in Afghanistan although the target was unclear. After some days, the Kandahar Jail was attacked by the Taliban and hundreds of Taliban were freed, it says.   General Kayani would be the second army chief of Pakistan whose conversations have been bugged by the Americans, if the allegations in the book are true. Earlier the FBI had intercepted the telephone conversation between President Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto when Musharraf had threatened her that her safety within Pakistan depended upon her nature of relationship with him (Musharraf). The Indians had also recorded a telephone conversation between General Musharraf and General Aziz when Musharraf was in Beijing during the Kargil war days.  (The News, 16 Feb 09)

Hamas Vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine by Clare M. Lopez

As a new American administration takes office promising renewal of the Middle East 'peace process,' and Israel looks to national elections in February 2009, the Palestinians have no real government at all. Bitterly divided between their internal factions, Hamas and Fatah, they maul each other with a savagery that mocks the world's hopes for a Palestinian unity government-even as that outside world barely knows there is fitna in Palestine.

Set against the backdrop of thoroughly unrealistic expectations for the birth of a unified Palestinian state, Jonathan Schanzer's Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine lays bare the raw facts of an internecine conflict rooted deeply in a battle for the identity of the Palestinian Arabs. Although the origins of this conflict date to the foundation of Hamas in the crucible of the 1987 Intifada, its existence has been mostly ignored, deliberately glossed over by an Arab world intent on perpetuating the fiction of Palestinian unity and readily dismissed by an international media only too willing to serve as an Arab echo chamber.

Schanzer writes in a lucid style undergirded by extensive regional travel and research that firmly establishes his mastery of the complicated issues driving Palestinian dysfunctionality. He describes the history of the relationship between Fatah, the secular nationalist party of Yasser Arafat and the PLO, and Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood off-shoot motivated since its inception by the Islamic doctrine of jihad. Tracing the discord between them that flared into outright civil war with Hamas' 2007 putsch in Gaza, Schanzer's account explains how years of forced exile, misrule, and the crass corruption of its leadership eroded Fatah's credentials on the street while its negotiations with Israel during the Oslo process provided the perfect opening for an empowered and violently radical Hamas to alter the fundamental nature of the face-off with Israel. The sharply different historical influences of Egypt and Jordan in Gaza and the West Bank, respectively, also come into stark relief under Schanzer's keen focus.  (American Thinker,  15 Feb 09)

Former CIA Official on Gitmo, Iraqi Elections and Iran Policy Part 1

A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World by Emile Nakhleh

Emile Nakhleh headed the CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program until leaving the agency in 2006. During his tenure, he briefed top officials on issues related to Iraq and Afghanistan, and interviewed numerous detainees held at Guantanamo Bay…Nakhleh recently talked with Harper’s about his book as well as his thoughts on developments in the Middle East…..(Harpers, 10 Feb 09)  Part 2

Throwing the book at Sharia Law

Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law by Nonie Darwish

Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian immigrant to America who was raised a devout Muslim, is blunt: "Sharia is Islam, and Islam is Sharia." In her estimation, Islam is a backward and authoritarian ideology that is attempting to impose on the world the norms of seventh-century Bedouin life. For Darwish, Islam is a sinister force that must be resisted and contained.  Part memoir, part history and part Qur'anic exegesis, the author provides an unsettling catalogue of Sharia-based practices: the subjugation and brutalization of women, the persecution of homosexuals, honour killings, the beheading of apostates and the stoning of adulterers. Unlike others who attribute such barbarities to extremism or fundamentalism or the hijacking of a "peaceful" religion by fanatics, Darwish doesn't flinch: Such depraved practices arise directly from the Qur'an itself, a text that is "violent, incendiary, and disrespectful."

Darwish is careful to distinguish between people and ideas: "The purpose of this book is not to spread hatred of a people but to tell the truth about the wickedness of Islamic Sharia law."…..(Financial Post, 6 Feb 09)

Shifting Sands

A WORLD OF TROUBLE: The White House and the Middle East -- From the Cold War to the War on Terror by Patrick Tyler

Patrick Tyler, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times and The Washington Post, has written an engaging but idiosyncratic account of U.S. interactions with the Middle East from 1956 onward. He sums up this period as "a half century of costly miscalculations in the Middle East" and writes that it is "nearly impossible to discern any overarching approach to the region such as the one that guided U.S. policy through the cold war." Indeed, he says, "what stands out is the absence of consistency from one president to the next."

Many people, even many veteran U.S. diplomats, are likely to agree with this verdict. In 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, echoing George W. Bush, maintained that U.S. policy toward the region was a 60-year record of failure because the United States had mistakenly pursued stability at the expense of freedom. The Bush administration acted on this diagnosis and jettisoned stability -- without, unfortunately, fostering freedom.

Critics of Washington's Middle East policy tend to fall into distinct camps. Those on the left blame the United States for supporting authoritarian regimes. Neoconservatives point a finger at feckless and often malign leaders in Arab countries. Neorealists argue that Israel has hijacked U.S. policy and redirected it against Israel's adversaries, to the detriment of American interests…….(Washington Post, 1 Feb 09)

Priest uncovering beginnings of Final Solution

The Holocaust by Bullets by Patrick Desbois

…Less known is the "Holocaust by Bullets," in which over 2 million Jews were gunned down in towns and villages across Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Their part in the Nazis' Final Solution has been under-researched, their bodies left unidentified in unmarked mass graves…Now another Frenchman, a Catholic priest named Patrick Desbois, is filling in a different part of the picture.  Desbois says he has interviewed more than 800 eyewitnesses and pinpointed hundreds of mass graves strewn around dusty fields in the former Soviet Union. The result is a book, "The Holocaust by Bullets," and an exhibition through March 15 at New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage…Some 1.4 million of Soviet Ukraine's 2.4 million Jews were executed, starved to death or died of disease during the war. Another 550,000-650,000 Soviet Jews were killed in Belarus and up to 140,000 in Russia, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Most of the victims were women, children and the elderly.  Begun after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the slaughter by bullets was the opening phase of what became the Nazis' Final Solution with its factories of death operating in Auschwitz and other camps, all in Nazi-occupied Poland……(AP, 1 Feb 09)

January 2009

Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War

The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War by Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko

…One of the more interesting revelations in the book is the authors’ analysis of the intrigue surrounding international atomic control and the Acheson-Lilienthal Report. Immediately after the surrender of Japan, Secretary of War Henry Stimson proposed a plan to President Truman for international atomic control. Stimson was certain that the Soviets were hell bent on developing their own atomic bombs and without some sort of international control including the mutual sharing of information on the commercial and humanitarian uses of atomic energy, a fierce arms race with the Soviets would ensue. A committee was created by Secretary of State James Byrnes and chaired by Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson and David Lilienthal, former director of the TVA, to address the issue of international control. The committee’s lengthy report proposed a method whereby the United States could gradually transfer scientific knowledge, nuclear material, and whatever bombs it possessed, to the U.N. Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC). Strict inspection and verification regimes would be established to prevent other nations, i.e., the Soviet Union, from secretly building a bomb.

As the Acheson-Lilienthal Report was being prepared, the syndicated columnist Drew Pearson dropped a journalistic bomb by revealing the existence of a large Canadian spy ring connected with the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa. The ring had penetrated the Manhattan Project.  The columnist also noted the “possibility” of atomic espionage from within the United States itself. It is posited by the authors that this leak to Pearson came from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who opposed international control and the sharing of our atomic secrets. The Truman administration was now caught in a difficult political dilemma with the President’s tacit support for international atomic control facing the angry public outcry about Soviet atomic espionage…..(American Diplomacy, 6 Jan 09)

Spy was behind Russia's H-bomb

The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation by Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman

A defining moment of the Cold War came in 1955 when Moscow detonated its first hydrogen bomb — a weapon roughly a thousand times more powerful than atom bombs and ideal for obliterating large cities.  The bomb ended the American monopoly and posed a deadly danger. So, Washington dealt far more gingerly with Moscow, beginning a tense era dominated by fear of mutual annihilation.  A new book says Moscow acquired the secret of the hydrogen bomb not from its own scientists but from an atomic spy at the Los Alamos weapons lab in New Mexico…A surprising clue the authors cite is disagreement among Russian nuclear scientists over who deserves credit for the advance as well as some claims that espionage played a role. The book details this Russian clash and questions the popular idea that Andrei D. Sakharov, who later became known as a campaigner for human rights, independently devised the Soviet hydrogen bomb…..(Houston Chronicle, 3 Jan 09)

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