INTELLIGENCE "STUFF"
by Col. John Macartney, USAF Ret., Ph.D.
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Old Intelligence "Stuff"
Intelligence "Stuff"
12 December 2000
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EDMUND POPE TO BE FREE THIS WEEK
NAVY PETTY OFFICER'S ESPIONAGE HEARING TO START OVER
ANATOMY OF AN OVERT COVERT ACTION
US DIPLOMAT PNG'd FROM SUDAN
"BACK CHANNELS"
Vernon Loeb's column in today's Post discusses (1) the Dec 11 passage of the FY2001 intelligence authorization bill. An earlier bill was vetoed by President Clinton because it included a controversial amendment criminalizing leaks of classified information to the press; (2) DCI Tenet's speech last week in which he cataloged problems facing the IC: "I will be blunt with you: The pace of technological change threatens to erode America's technical advantage in intelligence — an advantage that has long been a pillar of our national security;" and (3) a critique of the IC by Robert Steele.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57910-2000Dec11.html
CIA ASSISTED IN CAPTURE OF SHINING PATH LEADER
TWO CHARGED WITH PLOT TO EXPORT F-14 PARTS TO IRAN
THIS FASCINATING ITEM FROM LAST WEEK'S AFIO WIN
Some WWII intelligence operations had nothing to do with double cross operations or glamorous people, but produced more valuable information for war missions like strategic bombing than many of those so glorified during the last half-century. Probably no more than one percent of our members have ever heard of the special unit described in this report (except those who remember an earlier WIN report, but the story is so good it bears reiterating). Newly declassified intelligence files now held at the National Archives are among those declassified last year to speed the identification of Nazi assets. They tell of an OSS unit composed of not just secret agents, but secret insurance agents. This "Insurance Intelligence Unit" (IIU) provided data on a global industry that both bankrolled and ultimately, helped bring down the Third Reich. Usually about a half dozen men, the unit focused on the enemy's insurance industry, its leaders, its records, and suspected Allied collaborators in the insurance business. They mined standard insurance records for blueprints of bomb plants, timetables of tide changes and thousands of other details about targets, from a brewery in Bangkok to a candy company in Bergedorf. They provided data on which factories to burn, which bridges to blow up, and which cargo ships could be sunk in good conscience. They uncovered head counts for city blocks marked for incineration and pothole counts for roads to be used for invasion. That insurance information was vital to Allied strategists who were seeking to cripple the enemy's industrial base and batter morale by burning cities. In 1944, the unit chief wrote regarding data for an Allied bombing target committee: "Within a few days, a conference on the burning possibilities of some important cities will be held. I have reproductions of approximately 150 plans covering Japanese plants about ready to ride." Germany had 45% of the worldwide wholesale insurance industry before the war began and managed to actually expand its business as it conquered continental Europe. As "reinsurers," these companies covered other insurers against catastrophic losses and in the process learned everything about the lives and property they were reinsuring. The IIU was composed of men who knew the insurance business and who were able to extract volumes of useful data from the files of American, British and other insurance companies as well as spotting possible insurance contacts that tracked back to the Nazis. Working in Europe, one member of the unit - which operated in the field largely unknown to the State Department or the War Department - gathered material ranging from Chinese railway inspection reports to photos of the Mitsukoshi department store in downtown Tokyo to blueprints of the German chemical company that made poison gas. Interestingly, the article notes that the two largest insurance wholesalers before the war, Munich Re and Swiss Re, are, once again, the two biggest wholesalers in the world. Presumably, these firms again hold the sort of detailed but unglamorous data they held decades ago; a cynical soul would wager the volume and mundane nature of the data means it is not being mined even if its potential value is known.
(Los Angeles Times 22 Sep 00, p. A1 //Mark Fritz) (Harvey) http://www.afio.com/
TRIAL OF ACCUSED CUBAN SPIES CONTINTUES IN FLORIDA
RESERVES TO PICK UP MORE CYBERWAR DUTIES
BOOKS & OTHER SOURCES
DR DISH
E-MAIL GLITCH AT VERIZON
And as always. . .
The Colonel's "INTELLIGENCE ACRONYMS — ON-LINE GLOSSARY"
OLD "STUFF"
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