Consistent with the theme that we live in the center of the universe right here in the Triangle region, why not have the man who is considered the most knowledgeable about the overarching issue of the day—worldwide terrorism—come to Raleigh and give us the inside scoop?
So we are.
New York City-born Bruce Hoffman was specializing in the dangers of terrorism in the modern era in the 1960s when only a few realized the threat. With degrees in government, history and international relations, he went on to receive his doctorate from Oxford. He moved on to St. Andrews University in Scotland, serving as Chairman of the Department of International Relations and a founder of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence.
Today he serves as the RAND Corporation’s vice-president for External Affairs and director of the Washington office. He also serves as Senior Adviser on Counter-terrorism to the Office of National Security Affairs, Coalition Provisional Authority, Baghdad, Iraq. He is Adjunct Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at the US Military Academy at West Point. In 1994 the CIA awarded him the US Intelligence Community Seal Medallion and his latest book, Inside Terrorism (Columbia University Press), has been published in nine languages. He is a regular contributor to the Atlantic Monthly.
He is the keynote speaker for the Second Raleigh International Spy conference, founded by yours truly and presented by Metro and the NC Museum of History Associates. The 2004 event, titled “Spies, Lies and Deception: From Pearl Harbor Through the Age of Terrorism,” will be held September 1-3 at the Museum of History. Go to www.raleighspyconference.com or call the Museum at 919-733-3076 to register and to learn more about the internationally lauded 2003 event.
Hoffman, who was recommended to me by Chris Andrew, last year’s keynote speaker, will be joined by several of the popular speakers from the 2003 event: CIA Officer Brian Kelley; spy craft expert Keith Melton; former KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin; UK espionage historian Nigel West and CIA Historic Intelligence Collection Curator Hayden Peake. And, new this year, joining us in Raleigh are Tony Mendez and his wife Jonna, former “masters of disguise” for the CIA, and Tom Kimmel, retired FBI special agent whose grandfather served as Commander of the Pearl Harbor Naval Base on December 7, 1941. Kimmel uses recently declassified documents to prove that his grandfather could have been informed of the Japanese surprise attack—considered by some to be the first terrorist act of the modern era. (We are also awaiting confirmation to attend from Kim Cragin, the world’s top expert on suicide bombers and a specialist on Hamas).
The emphasis for this year’s Raleigh conference is the role of espionage in combating terrorism, as well as panels on spy tradecraft and a special session with new information on the capture of the notorious FBI mole Robert Hanssen. Things kick off Wednesday evening, September 1, with a cocktail registration followed by an overview of the upcoming conference subjects. Panels will run from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m., Thursday the 2nd, followed by the popular secret spy gala that evening. Friday morning’s concluding panel, September 3, will be followed by a champagne reception before Bruce Hoffman’s keynote address at 11 a.m.
It’s up to you, but I wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to hear Bruce Hoffman, the world’s leading expert on terrorism. And ask anyone who attended last year’s event: The returning speakers are expert insiders who know the most about the world today as seen through the lens of our secret services. And it is coming to you in Raleigh the first day of September.
IRAQ IN A NUTSHELL
Sometimes it’s better just to say it when provoked rather than ruminating for days and weeks between issues. Following is my response to a well-meaning friend who sent me a message reiterating he was against the war in Iraq by attacking George Bush:
“Opposing war policy is your right but there is a whiff of cowardice in your cavalier tone intimating you find status and solace being against the war when you are actually against George Bush. Let me tell you why I am for Bush—and it could just as well be Al Gore—I don’t share your ad hominem style (I didn’t attack Clinton when he was down by the way).
It’s because Bush was actually confronted with a world-changing cataclysm on 9-11. The president has to do something and at least he did: Afghanistan for example; reorganizing national security (sorely needed as the FBI was failing in the security/counterintelligence part of its mission); declaring “war” against this fanatical and irrational enemy worldwide; and taking over Iraq where a murderous dictator was executing his people (over a million now confirmed), supplying and giving succor to Al Qaeda, paying the families of suicide bombers, stockpiling weapons and financing nuclear capability, bribing UN officials (it appears that Kofi Anan was one) with the oil for food program and presenting a clear and present danger to his own people, his neighbors in the region and to the US.
The Bush team, dealing daily with dangerous issues, was confronted with the Saudi request to remove US forces—invited there as the Kingdom wanted Saddam under control and to help us to help them in the Kuwait battle—leaving us with no redoubt for moving men and materiel in the Middle East. Iraq serves that purpose. The day we took Baghdad, 30,000 US troops and support personnel quietly left Saudi Arabia. As soon as it got tough in Iraq, your fellow travelers trotted out and refried the old anti-war Vietnam rhetoric without thinking through what you are doing. And rank and file with you come the comical national media, uniform in their banality and obviously enlisted in the campaign to help John Kerry beat Bush by spitting out salvos accusing Bush of causing 9-11, failing in Iraq and putting up the mirror of Vietnam (quagmire, lack of support at home, body-bag counts) to discredit our troops and our country. If the coverage of Iraq were balanced, we could all be informed of the good and bad of the war. Instead, the public is inflicted with anti-war propaganda and sinister anti-Americanism every nanosecond. Rarely have I seen in the national mass media a presentation of our achievements, of the sacrifices being made by our troops, or of the reality that the “insurgents” in Iraq—actually murderers blowing up innocent people for the hell of it—represent a small minority grabbing headlines to obscure the truth:
Iraqis are now a free people. What they do with it once we’re gone is their business, but history will congratulate the US for its initiative and, I sincerely pray, stain those who undermined our efforts. That would be you and your knee-jerk friends, the corrupt UN, France, Germany and Russia, and the mass media in the US.”
THAT’S NOT ALL
Let me now add, as a democrat with a little “d,” I believe that the people of this country are not stupid. They see right through the petty conspiracy to discredit the United States by orchestrating a personal attack on George Bush. The 9-11 Commission has become a grandstand for obscuring the facts and promoting the unconscionable charge that the Bush administration was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Robert Woodward’s book undermining the Bush team, following on the heels of the deranged Richard Clarke’s self-promoting tome, didn’t just appear by accident right on schedule to be used as bludgeons during the hearings. The New York Times, the Washington Post and CBS 60 Minutes were amazingly synchronous in leaking “excerpts” before publication (and during the Commission hearings) and ready to go to give Woodward front-page and prime-time coverage when the book hit the streets.
Woodward, as any serious historian or politically savvy pundit knows, is a charlatan with an agenda. He throws innuendo in the air disguised as sound reporting and waits for his cohorts to shape it into propaganda to suit their needs. Woodward is all words and no book. He writes the sort of floss, only coherent by its innuendo, desired by his coterie of useful idiots in the national media to weave and slant into their transparent agenda in news reports to harm Bush and the US without consulting the facts of the matter.
My friend Kathleen Parker, the syndicated columnist, nailed the truth about the agendas of the national media in a column set in November 2004. John Kerry beats Bush and is inaugurated due to accusations in the “9-10 Commission,” convened in 2001 after President Bush invaded Afghanistan and was tried for war crimes by the United Nations. The “commission” also charged Bush with human rights violations after a CIA/FBI roundup of suspected Muslims taking flying lessons. Kerry celebrated with a victory the next day at the famous Windows of the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center.
NOTES FROM LA-LA LAND
It was North Carolina’s own John Edwards, still serving on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who floated the idea that the US create an internal security service similar to the UK’s MI5. As the news reports on this proposal are vacant of background, I’ll offer it here: In the early 1900s the British created intelligence services for protection against the machinations of its enemies in Europe and the aggressive espionage activities of the newly created Soviet Union in 1917. There were several Military Intelligence sectors but the best known today are MI5 and MI6, the former dedicated to internal security and counterintelligence and the latter to gathering intelligence worldwide.
The US, reluctant to establish spy agencies, officially created the Office of Strategic Services during World War II to coordinate with Britain and to protect American war operations in Europe. In 1947, the US formed the Central Intelligence Agency in recognition of the need for worldwide intelligence and surveillance during the Cold War. In a sense, the CIA is a mirror image of MI6, but the parallel is off-balance if the FBI is assumed to be the opposite number of MI5, which does not engage in law enforcement but only operates as a domestic intelligence security and counterintelligence service. (By the way, Chris Andrew is writing the history of MI5 and has access to all secret files.)
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover insisted that his federal police force handle domestic intelligence and counterintelligence so no security service equivalent to MI5 was established in the US. The FBI did perform somewhat adequately as a spy agency but its law enforcement culture has turned out to be a drawback today. FBI agents are trained as lawyers and cops: They investigate espionage as they do criminals by making a case that goes to court. As CIA Officer Brian Kelley learned when he was mistaken for the mole that turned out to be the notorious FBI agent Robert Hanssen, the Bureau is hidebound, stubborn and arrogant when it comes to espionage. They made their case against Kelley in their own minds and set out to prove they were right. As Kelley told me, the FBI’s culture is not suited for the subtleties of espionage in which the point is not to take a suspect to court. The object is to watch, learn, feed them inaccurate data and perhaps turn the culprit around. It’s a compartmentalized house of mirrors hardly suited for the cops-and-robbers style of the FBI. Ironically, Brian Kelley is conducting seminars to help the FBI in its intelligence operations.
The John Edwards idea is a good one, but if I were he, I’d be watching my back. The FBI does not take criticism well.