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Human Terrain program takes first KIA in Afghanistan

The US Army's innovative Human Terrain Systems program in Afghanistan offered up its first fatality last week, with 31 year-old civilian contractor Michael Bhatia losing his life along with two soldiers near Khost.

Bhatia (pictured), a doctoral candidate at Oxford University who grew up in Massachusetts, was a civilian contractor for BAE Systems assigned to the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the Army 101st Infantry (Air Assault) division in hot al Qaeda/Taliban territory alog Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan. He died in an IED blast on his humvee, along with two soldiers.

Bhatia was a civilian social scientist. The experimental and extremely important Human Terrain System (HTS) program is operated by the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) to coordinate cultural anthropologists and social scientists and improve the troops' knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the local populations in parts of Iraq and Afghanistan.

HTS in general, and Bhatia in particular, are credited with saving hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American, Afghan and Iraqi lives. Steve Fundacaro, HTS project manager, told reporters that Bhatia was "a hero in every sense of the word."

"I can't think of a better example of what being an American was all about," said Fundacaro in a WCVB-TV report from Boston. "Here was a civilian, a civilian scholar who was very comfortable in his personal situation -- he gave up all of that to volunteer his services to be a participant in what we were involved in, and assumed all the risks every one of those soldiers assumed. He gave his life for exactly what he believed in."

"Michael is a hero. The Army didn't go looking for him to ask him for his service -- he came looking for us because he was committed to make things better. Our nation is better, as are the people of Afghanistan, because of his devotion and brilliance. He will not be forgotten," said Gen. William S. Wallace, TRADOC commander.

Khost, south of Tora Bora and one of Afghanistan's furthest points into Pakistan, is a hot area. I was down there in December with Blackwater and the 82nd Airborne, aboard low-altitude ammunition supply flights to drop shipments of mortar rounds to our troops in small forward operating bases on the PakThe border. The remote, mountainous area, along a broad plain, is the site of heated Taliban activity, along with smuggling people, weapons and narcotics.

New torch and logo designs for Beijing Olympics

Our friends at the People's Cube have come up with new designs for the torch and logo of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Marking the continued persecution of Tibet, the spirited comrades at the Cube incorporate the horrific self-immolation of a Buddhist monk with the Olympic torch. They redesigned the official logo, which already incorporates a flame motif, with a fire exit sign.

As a bonus, they created a PRC "Official List of Easy People to Beat Up."

(Note: Click on the image for a popup that provides a clearer view.)

A sound spanking for crybaby terrorists

Widow Beats Terrorist with Shoe

With women enjoying near-subhuman status among most Islamist extremists and the sole of the shoe being a cultural metaphor for dirt and shame, Iraqis have developed a way to punish terrorists.

That's right: a woman being terrorists with a shoe.

It might sound odd to American ears, but for Iraqis and others in that part of the world, it's perfectly appropriate. This video is old - aired on Iraqi TV in 2005 - but given the previous posting I thought it worth highlighting.

The woman identified three terrorists as the murderers of her husband. She is apparently at a police station, smacking them around with a shoe. The terrorists are sitting on the ground, appropriately stripped of their ability to terrorize, sobbing like crybabies.

Overall an appropriate use of humiliation to tear down the terrorists' stature a notch or two, which is probably why Iraqi TV aired the clip in the first place. Too bad we Americans are too squeamish about such things, where we've worked ourselves up so much that hurting terrorists' feelings is now considered a war crime.

Shame and blame: Just the ticket

"I'm sorry we left Afghanistan with so much war and death. I wish we had built hospitals or schools."

These aren't the words of a fringe anti-war politician here at home. They're from a Saudi man, a former al Qaeda terrorist and one-time Guantanamo detainee.

Khalid al-Hubayshi is living proof that former enemy combatants can have powerful psychological messages that can be used to undermine and demoralize al Qaeda and other extremist forces. From the perspective of the enemy a shameful, negative message that he is being defeated (and therefore is in disfavor with God) is more powerful than a positive message about the US.

The Washington Post interviewed al-Hubayshi in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where the government apparently rehabilitated him from al Qaeda extremism (and presumably toward the regime's official Wahhabi ideology, but I'm getting ahead of myself).

Look at the excellent themes that emerge from al-Hubayshi's story:

• Al Qaeda doesn't help Muslims; it harms them. "I'm sorry we left Afghanistan with so much war and death. I wish we had built hospitals or schools," says al Hubayshi.
• Local Muslims blamed al Qaeda - not the United States - for the deaths inflicted during the war in Afghanistan. "On Sept. 11, 2001, Hubayshi said, he was training Chechen fighters in explosives in the eastern city of Jalalabad. In October, when the first U.S. airstrikes hit Jalalabad, the Afghans 'blamed us . . . and forced us out of the city at night. We slept by the river for two weeks.'"

• Al Qaeda's ideology is shaky. Al-Hubayshi said he was attracted to al Qaeda during the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but by 2001 "the fight had changed from defending Muslims to attacking the United States. I wasn't convinced of his ideology. And I wanted to be independent, not just another minion in this big group." 

• Bin Laden is a liar who uses his people. "'What are my duties toward you, and what are your duties toward me, if I join with you?' Hubayshi said he asked. 'That you don't betray us and we don't betray you,' bin Laden responded, and offered him a plot of land, Hubayshi said." Read on.

• Bin Laden is a coward who betrayed his own fighters. After the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden dug in at Tora Bora to fight the Americans, and called his fighters into the mountain fortress. The Post paraphrases al-Hubayshi's story: "As the airstrikes moved closer, and with the United States' Afghan allies advancing, bin Laden decided to retreat and left one morning. His aides told 300 Arab fighters to make their way to Pakistan and surrender to their embassies. Pakistani authorities stopped the fighters near the border and handed them over to the US military, which sent them to Guantanamo Bay. Hubayshi remains bitter about what he considers bin Laden's betrayal: calling the fighters to Tora Bora and then abandoning them there."
• Bin Laden is no hero. "There was no dignity in what he made us do."
• "Jihad" does not mean to attack innocent civilians. "Hubayshi said he is sorry that Muslims carried out the Sept. 11 attacks because they targeted civilians: 'That was wrong. Jihad is fighting soldier to soldier.'"

There's a lot more in this story. This blogger has discussed problems with Saudi ideology before and will do so again, and has warned against viewing only the immediately violent extremists as strategic threats when subversive Islamist threats remain. But for the time being, let's just look at the example of Khaled al-Hubayshi and the opportunity it brings us to undermine the most immediate violent threat.

A sound psychological warfare effort emerges

The New York Times is reporting on a new military effort to exploit the enemy's ideological and cultural weaknesses in a new mode of attack.

This is an exciting development, because it shows adaptation of a much more sophisticated approach that a handful of psychological warfare experts have been promoting for years. The very report in the Times is almost a psychological operation in itself, revealing what is almost surely a tiny effort and magnifying it into something big - and playing on the paranoia inherent in ideological extremist movements.

While I don't claim credit for any of the developments, as others were working on them apart from my efforts, it's striking to see how the details in the March 18 New York Times article closely parallel the policy recommendations in my book, Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War, and in the early drafts which circulated through the Pentagon and CIA since 2004. The ideas in the Institute of World Politics-sponsored book aren't new: They date from the times of the ancient Hebrews, Aristotle and Sun Tzu, and as the Times says, were practiced during the Cold War. But they're new to the war effort.

Here are some of the points in the article that the book advocated. The quotes are taken from the March 18 NYT story. The numbers in parentheses are the corresponding pages in the book.

• Sow confusion, dissent and distrust among the enemy. "To counter efforts by terrorists to plot attacks, raise money and recruit new members on the Internet, the government has mounted a secret campaign to plant bogus e-mail messages and Web site postings, with the intent to sow confusion, dissent and distrust among militant organizations, officials confirm." (65, 74, 130-131)
• Amplify voices of certain Islamic authorities. "At the same time, American diplomats are quietly working behind the scenes with Middle Eastern partners to amplify the speeches and writings of prominent Islamic clerics who are renouncing terrorist violence." (70-73, 122, 139)
• Plant seeds of doubt in terrorists' minds to exploit cultural shame and religious beliefs. ". . . if the seeds of doubt can be planted in the mind of Al Qaeda’s strategic leadership that an attack would be viewed as a shameful murder of innocents — or, even more effectively, that it would be an embarrassing failure — then the order may not be given, according to this new analysis." (123, 132)
• Fight the terrorists in their battlespace: Online. "Terrorists hold little or no terrain, except on the Web. 'Al Qaeda and other terrorists’ center of gravity lies in the information domain, and it is there that we must engage it,' said Dell L. Dailey, the State Department’s counterterrorism chief." (30-31, 144)
• Establish combat teams to exploit terrorist computers for propaganda purposes. "Some of the government’s most secretive counterterrorism efforts involve disrupting terrorists’ cyberoperations. In Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, specially trained teams have recovered computer hard drives used by terrorists and are turning the terrorists’ tools against them." (122)
• Make better use of captured intelligence to humiliate and demoralize the enemy. "Other American efforts are aimed at discrediting Qaeda operations, including the decision to release seized videotapes showing members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely Iraqi group with some foreign leaders, training children to kidnap and kill, as well as a lengthy letter said to have been written by another terrorist leader that describes the organization as weak and plagued by poor morale."
• Exploit local cultures and rhetoric against the enemy. "Even as security and intelligence forces seek to disrupt terrorist operations, counterterrorism specialists are examining ways to dissuade insurgents from even considering an attack with unconventional weapons. They are looking at aspects of the militants’ culture, families or religion, to undermine the rhetoric of terrorist leaders." (38-75)
• Amplify local voices to sow doubts and break the enemy's will. "For example, the government is seeking ways to amplify the voices of respected religious leaders who warn that suicide bombers will not enjoy the heavenly delights promised by terrorist literature, and that their families will be dishonored by such attacks. Those efforts are aimed at undermining a terrorist’s will. "'I’ve got to figure out what does dissuade you,' said Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, the Joint Chiefs’ director of strategic plans and policy. 'What is your center of gravity that we can go at? The goal you set won’t be achieved, or you will be discredited and lose face with the rest of the Muslim world or radical extremism that you signed up for.'" (32-34, 138-144)
• Widen rifts between terrorists and their friends. "Efforts are also under way to persuade Muslims not to support terrorists. It is a delicate campaign that American officials are trying to promote and amplify — but without leaving telltale American fingerprints that could undermine the effort in the Muslim world. Senior Bush administration officials point to several promising developments. Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Grand Mufti Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Asheik, gave a speech last October warning Saudis not to join unauthorized jihadist activities, a statement directed mainly at those considering going to Iraq to fight the American-led forces. And Abdul-Aziz el-Sherif, a top leader of the armed Egyptian movement Islamic Jihad and a longtime associate of Mr. Zawahri, the second-ranking Qaeda official, has just completed a book that renounces violent jihad on legal and religious grounds. Such dissents are serving to widen rifts between Qaeda leaders and some former loyal backers, Western and Middle Eastern diplomats say." (123)
• Peel away at the concentric rings of support around the terrorists. "'Obviously, hard-core terrorists will be the hardest to deter,' [Pentagon special operations policy planner Michael G.] Vickers said. 'But if we can deter the support network — recruiters, financial supporters, local security providers and states who provide sanctuary — then we can start achieving a deterrent effect on the whole terrorist network and constrain terrorists’ ability to operate." (34-35, 76, 120-123)

Footnote: This is a very productive piece of journalism. I would be remiss in not pointing out that one of the co-writers, Eric Schmitt, was also a co-writer of the February 19, 2002 New York Times report that falsely branded the Pentagon's new Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) as a disinformation unit. That careless report was the product of a turf battle in which Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke leaked the false story to the Times with the intent of inflicting political damage on OSI and forcing it to be shut down. This is indeed what happened. Clarke has never been held accountable for this action (nor has Schmitt or the New York Times), which set back psychological and ideological warfare operations by three years or more.

Memo rips Foreign Service's 'gripping culture of excused inaction'

A senior State Department contractor who completed a year's tour of duty in Baghdad has written a scathing memo describing how the Foreign Service bureaucracy is undermining the war effort in Iraq.

Manuel Miranda, Director of the Office of Legislative Statecraft in the embassy’s Political Section, addressed the February 5 memo to Ambassador Ryan Crocker as a “departure assessment.”

The memo is the most withering internal critique of the State Department bureaucracy that I have ever seen - and it is consistent with what I have been hearing for years. I quote at length from the memo below, and attach a copy of the original here: Download mirandamemo1.pdf

From his State Department in Baghdad, Miranda was a senior adviser to the Iraqi Prime Minister's office. A graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Miranda has extensive international legal and business experience and also served as a staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee and as counsel to the US Senate Majority Leader. He also has written for the Wall Street Journal. 

Miranda won't be a media favorite because he supports the war effort in general, and backs what General David Petraeus and the other warfighters are trying to do in particular. His criticism to Ambassador Crocker was directed squarely at the “Foreign Service and the State Department’s bureaucracy” as being “at the helm of America’s number one policy consideration.”

“We have brought to Iraq the worst of America – our bureaucrats – and failed to apply, as President Roosevelt once did, the high-caliber leadership class and intellectual talent, whose rallying has defined all of America’s finest hours," he said.

“After a year at the Embassy, it is my general assessment that the State Department and the Foreign Service [are] not competent to do the job that they have undertaken in Iraq. It is not that the men and women of the Foreign Service and other State Department bureaus are not intelligent and hard-working, it is simply that they are not equipped to handle the job that the State Department has undertaken. . . .

“The purpose of the Surge, now one year old, was to pacify Iraq to allow the GOI [Government of Iraq] to stand up. The State Department has not done its part coincident with the Commanding General’s effort. This is not the fault of the intelligent and hard working individuals skilled at the functions of the ‘normal embassy.’ The problem is institutional. The State Department bureaucracy is not equipped to handle the urgency of America’s Iraq investment in blood and taxpayer funds. You lack the ‘fierce urgency of now.’

“Foreign Service officers, with ludicrously little management experience by any standard other than your own, are not equipped to manage programs, hundreds of millions in funds, and expert human capital assets needed to assist the Government of Iraq to stand up. It is apparent that, other than diplomacy, your only expertise is your own bureaucracy, which inherently makes State Department personnel unable to think outside the box or beyond the paths they have previously taken.”

Miranda assailed what he called "the Foreign Service’s gripping culture of excused inaction.” Among his points:

·         “. . . neither the State Department nor its Foreign Service is competent to manage or lead personnel who have been hired and brought to Iraq as experts, or to synchronize expertise, funds, and programs to support the GOI.”

·         “The American people would be scandalized to know that, throughout the Winter, Spring and Summer of 2007, even while our Congress debated the Iraq question and whether to commit more troops and more funds, the Embassy was largely consumed in successive internal reorganizations with contradictory management and policy goals. In some cases, administrative and management goals that occupied our time reflected the urgencies and priorities that could only originate in Foggy Bottom and far-removed from the reality or urgencies on the ground. The fact that over 80 people sit in Washington, second-guessing and delaying the work of the Embassy, many who have been to Baghdad, is an embarrassment alone.”

·         “. . . the State Department’s culture of delay and indecision, natural to any bureaucracy, is out of sync with the urgency felt by the American people and the Congress in furthering America’s interests in Iraq. The delay in staffing the Commanding General’s Ministerial Performance initiative (from May to the present) would be considered grossly negligent if not willful in any environment.”

·         “. . . if the management of the Embassy and the State Department’s Iraq operation were judged by rules that govern business judgment and asset waste in the private sector, the delays, indecision, and reorganizations over the past year, would be considered willfully negligent if not criminal. In light of the nation’s sacrifice, what we have seen this past year in the Embassy is incomprehensible.”

·         “The Embassy is also severely encumbered by the Foreign Service’s built-in attention deficit disorder, with personnel and new leaders rotating out within a year or less. . . .

·         “. . . there is a near complete lack of strategic forethought or synchronization between Embassy staffing and program initiatives and funding . . . Only the military takes seriously the Joint Campaign and its metrics of achievement, while State Department leaders use it only when advantageous.”

·         “The waste of taxpayer funds resulting from such mismanagement is something that only a deeply entrenched bureaucracy with a unionized attitude, like the Foreign Service and Main State [Department], could find acceptable.”

·         “This past year, the State Department and the Embassy has been led by two misguided premises: first, the obsessive aim that the Embassy be turned into a ‘normal embassy’ and, second, that the State Department cannot be faulted for things that the GOI is not doing, i.e. ‘the Iraqis need to do this themselves.’”

·         “The impulse to transform the Embassy into a ‘normal embassy’ displays most starkly the State Department bureaucracy’s endemic problems, including inflexibility and the inability to understand alternative management principles, use expertise and funds in any manner outside the State Department’s normal experience, the inability to respond to the urgency of America’s presence in Iraq, and the inclination to make excuses and blame the Embassy’s failures on others.”

·         “The second mantra, that political success in Iraq depends entirely on Iraqis, amounts to little more than excuse-making by people who cannot imagine alternative paths and who are limited by their own limited experience in government and economic development.”

·         “Simply put, Foreign Service officers are not equipped to manage process-oriented assistance programs and yet we have put into their hands hundreds of millions of dollars. Any American graduate school study group could do better.”

·         “In this excuse-making culture, the State Department has been an albatross around the neck of the Coalition command, whose leaders and personnel have a leadership profile radically opposite to the State Department’s. Among other things, the State Department has failed to assist Coalition initiatives by delaying or failing to supply the civilian expertise needed in a thoughtful and timely manner and also delaying decisions on funding and staffing vital to GOI (and our) success.”

·         “In the greater degree of importance, the Foreign Service culture has created a situation where important information is kept from vital decision makers. In my year in Baghdad, I have seen the Embassy intentionally keep information from: the White House and relevant policy-making agencies; the State Department in Washington (because ‘we cannot trust that they will not leak to the press’); and the Commanding General (because ‘we do not wash our dirty laundry in public’).”

·         “I have also witnessed a relentless culture of information-hoarding within the Embassy. The dysfunctional failure to communicate and share information is beyond anything that can be imagined under any circumstances. It is endemic of a bureaucracy that is far beyond its pale of competence and experience.”

·         “Needless to say, I have also witnessed the failure to coordinate and communicate with allies and international organizations.”

·         “. . . despite the countless and deeply-researched written products created by the Embassy over 5 years, and by contractors who are paid millions of dollars for the work product, the Embassy has no system in place to retrieve vital information about Iraq, its government and laws, and past experiences and decisions.”

·         “Embassy (and Coalition) personnel are in a constant state of information-gathering that relies mostly on luck and personality, and is always retaking the same ground.”

·         “Only American bureaucrats, without practical legal or business experience, who spend their careers abroad, could fail to understand the role of legislative practice in our own country, or the need for a concerted, professional support effort in our Embassy in Baghdad.”

·         “America’s success in Iraq will not be had with older or more Foreign Service officers doing the little that the Foreign Service is competent to do. The last thing that we need in Baghdad is more Foreign Service officers. We need experts, experienced human capital managers, and leaders who can think outside the box to synchronize staffing, funding, and urgent needs.”

·         “In addition . . . there are no lack of Americans who are willing to come to Iraq. At the Embassy today, there are Americans who have foregone incomes five times greater than what they make now and who put aside careers to serve. If I thought the State Department were competent, I would have been glad to sign on for more than a year. Recruitment is not your problem. Your system of staffing is.”

·         “The State Department would do the nation a service if it admits that it is not equipped to do the job you have undertaken. Our Congress has an obligation to give you the oversight our national sacrifice demands. We are now living our latest error.”

Jorge Castañeda, Mexico's foreign minister under Fox, had spied for Cuba, according to declassified report

Jorge Castañeda Gutman, the Foreign Secretary of Mexico under former President Vicente Fox who seemed to delight in hammering the United States, was a spy for the Cuban government, according to a Mexican newspaper.

Citing a declassified report in the Mexican National Archives from the defunct Federal Security Directorate (DFS), El Universal reports that Castañeda served as a spy and agent of influence for the Castro regime from 1979 to at least 1985.

No word yet from Castañeda for his version of events.

The report says that Jorge Luis Joa Campos, chief of the Mexico section of Cuba's General Intelligence Directorate (DGI), recruited Castañeda in 1979. Castañeda reportedly "surprised" the DGI with his productivity as a spy.

The 215-page DFS report shows that Castañeda not only passed secrets to Cuban intelligence, but served as an agent of influence to make propaganda for the regime in Havana. Thirty-seven pages of the report were redacted. Castañeda is influential among US policymakers on Western Hemisphere issues. He has also been a columnist for Newsweek and the New York Times.

As Foreign Secretary under conservative President Fox, Castañeda disappointed US leaders by moving Fox sharply to the left on international issues. He shepherded Mexico on to the United Nations Security Council and used the council as an international forum to hammer Washington. Despite Fox's proclaimed "special relationship" between Mexico and the US, Castañeda made it one of his top priorities to dismantle the successful inter-American security system that had been in place since the Rio Treaty of 1947.

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks aborted Castañeda attempts (Brazil invoked the mutual defense treaty on the United States' behalf), but Mexico's Department of Foreign Affairs was one of the last in the world - holding out with Qatar which had been supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and North Korea's Kim Jong-il - to extend official condolences to the American people.

According to the report in El Universal, published February 4, Castañeda also spied on his own father, Jorge Castañeda y Álvarez de la Rosa, who served as Foreign Secretary under President Jose Lopez Portillo in the 1980s, and "pressured him to make decisions under Havana's dictates."

El Universal reports that, as Fox's foreign secretary, he would later begin undoing Mexico's close diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Last year, Castañeda surprised observers by calling for an "ideological and political struggle" against Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez - but not without demanding a poison pill concession from the United States to allow virtually uncontrolled immigration over its southern border.

Dude in Che hat denounces US for Cuba 'spy' request

ABC News is breathlessly reporting in an "exclusive" interview from Bolivia that an American Fulbright scholar wearing a Che Guevara hat says that the State Department asked him and Peace Corps volunteers "to basically spy" [sic] on Cuban and Venezuelan operatives in the Andean country.

John Alexander van Schaick (pictured), who received his Fulbright scholarship from the State Department, expressed shock and dismay that the State Department would ask him to pitch in against Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. Fulbright programs and the Peace Corps are supposed to be off-limits for intelligence collection purposes, but the issue here is the student's indignation about being asked to serve his country - and the fact that he gave the interview while wearing a Che Guevara hat.

Van Schaick's hat proclaims, "Che Vive" (Che Lives). We checked with our buddy Felix Rodriguez, the CIA man who handed Che to his Bolivian executioners, and are assured that the Fulbright scholar's hat has its facts wrong.

ABC published a Spanish translation of the story on ABCNews.com.  (By the way, for proper Che hats and shirts, check out Che Mart at www.che-mart.com.)

State Department kicks Salvadoran ally in the face

Here's a great way to reward the only country in the hemisphere that still has troops in Iraq and is one of our last solid Latin American allies: Give a high-level diplomatic reception to its Marxist opposition.

This is precisely what the State Department did today to our ally El Salvador, poking it in the eyes or worse by receiving a delegation from the Marxist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) - the group that murdered US Marine Embassy guards in the notorious Zona Rosa massacre, among other things.

The formerly Soviet-backed organization, which still sports the communist red banner and celebrates its Stalinist namesake, Salvadoran Communist Party founder Farabundo Marti, set down its arms to avoid defeat 15 years ago. But it still finds common cause with the FARC narcoterrorists of Colombia, Fidel Castro, Palestinian terrorists and other extremists.

Now Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is bankrolling the FMLN's attempt to defeat the pro-US government of El Salvador in the 2009 elections - and Assistant Secretary of State Tom Shannon is right there to help. He's greeting FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes with full diplomatic recognition, ignoring the fact that the meeting boosts the credibility of the Marxist opposition party in what most observers agree will be a tight election.

Meanwhile, Funes is in Washington meddling in American internal political affairs, saying he hopes the Democrats win the 2008 presidential elections here. All the Democrat candidates for president should disavow his endorsement, but I'm not holding my breath.

Glassman brings new opportunity for public diplomacy

The naming of James Glassman to replace Karen Hughes as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs is a great opportunity finally to get something accomplished.

We don't need to recount the horror show of feckless ineptitude that has plagued the administration's public diplomacy for nearly seven years.

Glassman has the potential to fix it. Not for the next thirteen months by any means, but to fix things for the long term. He should use his very short tenure at the State Department to clean up the wreckage by designing a new public diplomacy agency that will really do what the nation needs it to do.

That means creating a modern analogue to the former United States Information Agency (USIA) - an independent organization answerable to the president and the secretary of state, with its own mission and bureaucratic culture.

The forced marriage between the public diplomats and the traditional foreign service - producing a Quasimodo-like love child of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her nemesis-turned-dancing partner, former Senator Jesse Helms - is the number one reason why the US was caught with its pants down after 9/11, when the world saw that the US no longer had a functioning public diplomacy instrument or information strategy.

Glassman gets it. As the new head of the other unloved bastard child of Albright-Helms - the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) - Glassman knows what a lot of the problems are. He hasn't been in office long enough to fix many of them, but he knows the deal. As Undersecretary of State, he will remain on the BBG board and ideally should arrange for a successor who answers to him and not to the majority of schemers who dominate the board.

Here's the bottom line: Jim Glassman should spend the next six months designing a new, separate public diplomacy agency infused with a real culture of influence, and work with Congress to establish the organization by statute, with full funding, so that the next president can get moving.

The president and secretary of state should support such an initiative, both for the good of the country and to turn the public diplomacy horror show into a positive legacy.

Anti-American operatives at VOA's Iranian service

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A music video mocking democracy and heaping scorn on the United States is the product of staffers for the Voice of America's Farsi language service to Iran. The VOA employees used several terrorist propaganda video clips showing IED attacks on American humvees and armored vehicles in Iraq.

The title of the video is "DemoKracy." (Click here to view the video if the YouTube image is not visible above.)

Produced by an obscure Swedish-Iranian band called Abjeez, the music video is themed in and around a TV newsroom, with the anchor and a reporter, played respectively by Safoura and Melody Safavi, mocking the United States and democracy.

The "reporter," shown at right holding the microphone in the first part of the video, is the VOA employee, Melody Safavi, whose married name is Arbabi. This blogger has learned that VOA fired her after an Iranian former political prisoner filed a complaint to Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes, but her husband Saman Arbabi, who directed the video, reportedly is still on VOA staff.

The video includes pictures of civilian casualties, grieving women and wounded children, Iraqi and American coffins and funerals, and a weather map of the Middle East showing bombs dropping on every country in the greater Middle East, from Sudan and Egypt to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Three nuclear bomb-style mushroom clouds are superimposed over the part of the map depicting Iran. The video closes with an archival aerial photo of a nuclear weapon test in the desert.

Abjeez has produced the video in several languages, though viewer statistics on YouTube show few people worldwide have accessed the video. Nevertheless, the production raises questions about the editorial judgment of VOA personnel, and whether US taxpayers should have such individuals on the payroll to wage the war of ideas against Islamist extremism.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which governs VOA, has long denied problems with its controversial Iran services. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has been raising concerns for a year about the broadcasts to the Islamic republic, but the BBG and State Department were dismissive. Last spring, this blogger also submitted a set of written questions to outgoing Under Secretary of State Hughes at the request of a senior aide, and received a written response that ignored or evaded the answers. It's time for BBG and State to catch up with the new leadership at RFE/RL and tackle the larger problems of US broadcasting into Iran. 

A Druze legend as part of FBI/CIA penetration?

Nada Nadim Prouty, the suspected Hezbollah spy in both the FBI and CIA, had told friends and acquaintances as far back as 1999 that she was a Druze, but FBI sources tell me that she is actually a Shi'ite Muslim.

This is an important difference, as many Druze of her home country of Lebanon were allied with the Christians (and many Israeli Druze serve in the Israeli military), while most Lebanese Shi'ites identify with Hezbollah.

Hezbollah or its precursor was responsible for the 1983 truck bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, in which more than 240 Marines were killed; and the bombing that same year of the American Embassy in the Lebanese capital, killing 63. The Beirut Memorial Online says that the entire Middle East contingent of the CIA was wiped out in the blast.

Nada Nadim Al-Aouar, as she was known by her maiden name, arrived in the US at about age 19 in 1989 on a student visa. I met her in 1999, when she was one of only seven FBI special agents who spoke fluent Arabic. She was married to her second husband, a colleague of mine who was a former Marine. He has not been implicated in any wrongdoing. At the time, she had said that she was Druze and that she was not Muslim.

This distinction is important, and it underscores why religion can be an important factor in a full background investigation of an individual seeking a US government security clearance. It's not a question of discrimination, but of protecting the government from individuals with divided loyalties.

US counterintelligence generally does not assign Jewish agents to watch and counter Israeli Mossad operations that negatively affect American interests. At least one intelligence agency is said not to assign Catholic agents to monitor the Vatican's quiet diplomatic and intelligence operations. (As a Catholic I have no problem with it; the policy not only safeguards against divided loyalties, but it also keeps individuals above suspicion.) So too must the FBI ensure that it is not unduly affected by people with ethnic or religious loyalties that might reasonably be suspected of being divided when it comes to terrorist movements.

That's why knowing the religious affiliations of a person being issued a security clearance - and knowing the cultural context of a government agent's religion - is so important. Our ignorance of the issue, and the political correctness that prevents us as a nation from understanding it, has struck us again.

How did Nada Nadim Al-Aouar burrow into the FBI and CIA the way she did? (I know some of the story, but it's of a prurient nature that I'll leave to the sensationalists to break.) 

How did FBI/CIA infiltrator color US understanding of the enemy?

After looking at the mess the FBI made of part of the Hanssen espionage damage assessment, it might be too much to ask for the Bureau to make a proper assessment of how former Special Agent Nada Nadim Prouty may have warped US understanding of the Islamist enemy.

Prouty is the illegal alien who became one of the FBI's only Arabic-speaking special agents in the 1990s and went on to become what agency insiders are pooh-poohing as a mere "mid-level official" at the CIA.

Prouty pled guilty to crimes relating to stealing classified information on behalf of relatives in Hezbollah. US official response has been appalling, practically ruling out the idea that she was a spy for the terrorist organization (or for its main state sponsor, Iran),

Are the CIA and FBI in denial AGAIN? Is anybody in the counterintelligence business any more? Does the US still cling to the Cold War idea of counterintelligence as working or defending against the intelligence services of foreign governments - thus not treating terrorist organizations with their own intelligence services as counterintelligence threats?

I don't know, but something tells me that the answer isn't a good one. Prouty was at the center of the United States' most sensitive counterterrorism investigations in the late 1990s, at home and abroad, when she was one of only 7 (that's right: seven) FBI agents who could speak Arabic. Her pre-911 influence within the US counterterrorism, counterintelligence and intelligence communities is likely to have been considerable.

A Google News search doesn't show it, so we'll break some news here: Prouty told her closest friends in the 1990s that she was of Druze background in Lebanon. By inference, she would not have been an Islamist; the Druze split with Islam centuries ago and many are allied with Lebanese Christians and even with Israel. However, many Druze also support Hezbollah.

Prouty was one of the FBI's hottest agents at the time: hard-charging, tall and in excellent physical condition, and known to carry her Bureau-issued weapon in the most casual of dress. Prior to 9/11, when presented with evidence of Islamist networks in the Washington, DC area, she dismissed the evidence as of little importance. Those close to the matter trusted her judgment at the time, though after 9/11 US authorities, under the direction not of the FBI but the Justice Department, raided the offices in those networks, made several arrests, and got several terrorist-related convictions.

Bottom line: As with the Ana Belen Montes case of Cuban penetration of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI and CIA must do fundamental and sweeping damage assessments of how Prouty might have colored American perceptions of the terrorist threat in ways damaging to this country.

FBI agent: Saddam used WMD as deception against Iran

Did Saddam Hussein slam-dunk CIA Director George Tenet with a deception operation aimed at Iran? It looks that way.

Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program was a deception to deter Iran, an FBI agent who spent nearly a year with the dictator says in a new book.

If true, the deception was one of the costliest mistakes in human history.

Special Agent George Piro befriended Saddam in what is described as a successful interrogation that yielded confessions about mass murder and about the WMD program that the US used as a pretext to invade in 2003.

Prominent intelligence writer Ronald Kessler authored the book, The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack. Kessler interviewed Piro who provided the account for the story.

Piro's account calls for an immediate classified and public assessment of how the US intelligence community detects and neutralizes deception. I don't think the community has been very willing to confront the issue, or to fix its own bureaucratic cultural biases in order to defend against such ruses. Higher education does little to fix the problem either, with the exception of places like The Institute of World Politics, where our new Master's degree program in strategic intelligence prepares current and prospective intelligence officers like no other school.

Bloggers respond to my new magazine on global stability solutions

With the role of the private sector growing in the global stability field, I'm enthused to announce a new magazine devoted to the subject. One of the reasons for my enthusiasm is because I'm the editor. Another reason is that everyone from Mother Jones to Keith Olbermann's MSNBC show are choking on it.

Serviam's first issue just came out and has already been getting attention in the blogosphere. The magazine's name is Latin for "I will serve," and it stresses service to humanity through private sector solutions. Our lead editorial describes the publication's purpose.

Here's the link to our homepage, with info on the publication and how to subscribe.

Now for the fun: We're already getting some irreverent treatment among the bloggers at Wired, Mother Jones and Gawker. They compare our happy little magazine to Soldier of Fortune. In the words of the Mother Jones blogger, Serviam is a "sleeker, tamer version of SOF."

Not really, but we'll take that as a compliment considering the source. Gotta love the Mother Jones coverage:

It was only a matter of time before an entrepreneurial publisher seized on the private military contracting boom—and all those untapped ad dollars—in order to give Soldier of Fortune, long the preeminent mag for hired guns, a run for its money. That time has arrived and the mag is called Serviam (Latin for "I will serve"). Edited by conservative author and think tanker J. Michael Waller and published by EEI Communications (whose president, James T. deGraffenreid, is a board member of Frank Gaffney's hawkish Center for Security Policy), the magazine bills itself as a provider of "accurate and actionable information about private sector solutions to promote global stability." Serviam is a sleeker, tamer version of SOF, which, like the companies it caters to, is seeking to soften the mercenary image, casting soldiers-for-hire as international peacekeepers.

To hear Waller tell it in his inaugural editor's note, private security firms are as central to America's heritage as the pilgrims themselves.

Ephemerist, in his own blog, says our magazine will "make a great Christmas present." But I infer from the tone of his comment that he isn't really serious. BlogforDemocracy calls us "completely terrifying." The fan club of Keith Olbermann says Rachel Maddow talked about Serviam on the November 1 MSNBC show.

Many are upset that we actually show Captain John Smith of Jamestown and Captain Myles Standish of Plymouth for what they were: retired professional soldiers-turned-private security contractors who led the civilians to safety in America where they built a new society.

Gawker, based in Manhattan, is horrified about our historical review that asserts that America owes its first Thanksgiving to the 17th century's version of Blackwater. We're told by Very Important People in New York City that we've hit the big time with Gawker.

Pulling a chunk out of Ephemerist's comment, Gawker writes, "did you know that if not for mercenaries—sorry, Private Security Contractors—there would have been no Thanksgiving? It's true! Myles Standish was basically the forefather of Blackwater. Also, Capt. John Smith. PSCs are basically as American as apple pie. Yeah. Apple pie that shoots you."

Now that's a neat idea!

Sharon Weinberger, blogging on Wired magazine's "Danger Room," comments, "Will Serviam someday rank among the names of other well known defense titles, like Aviation Week & Space Technology or Jane's Defence Weekly (and with duly noted bias, I'll add in Defense Technology International). I have no idea, but I wish them luck!"

Bloggers Aaron R. Linderman and Christopher Fulford, on Statecraft & Security, find Serviam to be "interesting, innovative and enlightening." Watch those two - they're going places.

To top it off, Blackwater - an advertiser in Serviam - announced the launch of the magazine in its hot Blackwater Tactical Weekly newsletter.

Iraqi shark rumor blames Americans

Every once in a while a story surfaces of Iraqis suspecting Americans of offbeat or bizarre feats. We should never underestimate suspicions, because many Iraqis (and others) sincerely believe in them.

The latest is the report of a shark caught in an irrigation canal by the Euphrates River, 160 miles from the sea. Reuters reported from Nassiria on October 30 that a man and his two sons were fishing in the river and discovered they had caught a two-meter-long shark in their net.

According to Reuters, "Locals blamed the US military for the shark's presence.

"Tahseen Ali, a teacher, said there was a '75 percent chance' Americans had put the shark in the water. 'This is very frightening for us. Our children always swim in the river and I believe that there are more sharks. I believe that America is behind this matter,' said fisherman Hatim Karim."

While it's easy to brush off such rumors, such suspicions are dangerous to US interests. Left unaddressed, they tend to multiply and often cannot be refuted by reason or facts. Iraq and many Arab societies (as well as much of humanity as a whole) tend to place great faith in rumors, whose impact is difficult to counteract.

Speaking engagements this season

Thanks mostly to my books Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War and The Public Diplomacy Reader, I've been active this season speaking about information operations, psychological warfare and public diplomacy. Here are some of the events where I've been a featured speaker:

August 15: "Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War," 2nd Annual Proteus Futures Workshop, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Intelligence University, Center for Strategic Leadership, US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

September 5: "Semantic Warfare and Ridicule as Weapons Against the Terrorists," Information Operations Workshop, US Strategic Command, Arlington, Virginia.

September 12: "Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War," 3rd Annual World Wide Information Operations Conference, National Reconnaissance Office, Dulles, Virginia.

September 17: Adams Group meeting on Information Operations, Center for Security Policy, Washington, DC.

September 20: Speaker at launch of my book, The Public Diplomacy Reader, The Heritage Foundation, Washington DC.

October 9: Advanced psychological warfare, Joint Senior Psychological Operations Course, US Air Force Special Operations School, Hurlburt AFB/MacDill AFB, Florida.

October 10: US Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. (Ignore security alert when clicking on this link.)

October 21: "Fighting Islamist Extremists in America: Lessons from Fighting the Soviets," Radical Islam 101: Defining America's Enemy and Developing a Strategy for Success, Young America's Foundation, Reagan Ranch Center, Santa Barbara, California.

October 27: "Political Warfare and Propaganda," Association for Intelligence Officers (AFIO) Counter-Jihad Symposium, Tyson's Corner, Virginia.

October 30: "Russia Is Becoming Our Enemy Again," Debate panelist for the motion, Intelligence Squared debate, Rosenkranz Foundation, Asia Society and Museum, New York City.

October 31: "Information Operations: How it is Evolving," AOC Electronic Warfare and Intelligence Operations Conference, Orlando, Florida.

November 29: "Elements of Strategic Psychological Warfare," Conference on the Battle for Hearts and Minds: Soft Power and the Struggle Against Global Jihadism," Link Campus University of Malta, Rome, Italy.

Mark Timothy Coyle, 1965-2007

Another of our brothers-in-arms has died. Mark Coyle was one of my unofficial press agents who booked me on a hundred or more radio and TV shows over the past few years. With an energy and intensity of a true political warrior, Mark put me on talk radio shows across America, from small-town studios to giant syndicates of 200 stations, plus MSNBC, CNN and Fox News. He loved getting us on the airwaves, even if it meant dragging us out of bed early on a Saturday morning.

On the night of October 12-13, Mark drove to Syracuse University with his five year-old daughter Samantha - the little girl was his life - for a much-anticipated homecoming event.

Just outside the city on the New York State Thruway, Mark's SUV crossed the median and struck an oncoming car head-on. Both Mark and the other driver died. Samantha survived with a broken pelvis and other fractures, and was put into an induced coma. She is expected to recover.

Mark was buried on October 18. He was 42 years old. He is survived by Samantha, his parents, and his sister.

Raised in New York state, Mark earned a communication degree from Syracuse, and pursued a career in broadcast and print journalism with the Metronews radio network and United Press International. He moved into the public relations field, serving as a publicist for politicians and policy experts, and as a political campaign strategist. He is widely credited with being one of the most influential figures in the electoral victory of George W. Bush in the state of West Virginia. He worked for Creative Response Concepts of Alexandria and Key Bridge Communications in Arlington at the time of his death.

Thank you, Mark. You did so much for us, and never asked anything in return.

Réquiem aeternam dona eis, Dómine. Et lux perpétua lúceat eis. Resquiescant in pace.

Russian propaganda campaign starts to pay off as US relents on missile defense

Russian leader Vladimir Putin's pressure campaign against a US-built missile defense system for Europe is bearing fruit.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates' announcement today that the US might delay activation of the system showed the Kremlin that its old-style intransigence still works in pressuring the West. Gates' statement, according to the New York Times, was "clearly seeking to mollify Moscow."

This is a terrible move. The Bush Administration seems to have learned nothing from dealing with the Russians. Precedent shows that when Moscow succeeds in delaying a US decision, it will follow with a campaign to push harder to isolate the US from its European allies and ultimately cause Washington to cancel its program.

President Bush has set himself up to become another Jimmy Carter, who got the US into a similar fix in the late 1970s by delaying his decision to deploy the enhanced radiation warhead (ERW, often inaccurately called the "neutron bomb") to deter against a Soviet armored invasion of Western Europe. Carter's delays allowed the Soviets to mount a political warfare counteroffensive within NATO that pressured the president to cave.

The American political position in Eastern Europe is already weakened with the expected change in the government of Poland, which is less pro-American and less anti-Russian than the incumbent. This will give the Kremlin another wedge against the United States.

The US isn't helping things with its lame defense of the anti-missile system. While warning about the danger that a nuclear missile-armed Iran presents, the White House now says that the missile defense system, to be based on Poland and the Czech Republic, can be delayed until Iran does something that looks threatening.

At the same time, everyone knows the Bush Administration is being either disengenuous or naive by continuing to insist that the Russians pose no missile threat to Europe. Indeed, Bush has maneuvered himself into another corner; in order to "prove" that we don't think Russia threatens Europe, the administration now wants to invite the Kremlin to be part of our missile defense system.

Meanwhile, Moscow's threat to reprogram its ICBM force to target European cities still stands, and we pretend not to notice. Ditto for Russia's ongoing strategic nuclear missile modernization program that is proceeding apace, as we look the other way. 

New twist: Lawyers for terrorists sue Blackwater

When Blackwater CEO Erik Prince said that the Center for Constitutional Rights lawsuit against his company is "politically motivated," he was right.

The Center for Constitutional Rights heralds itself as a civil or human rights group, but over the past four decades it has established a firm track record of providing legal assistance, propaganda support, and direct action for terrorists and political extremists who murdered FBI agents and police officers. Its leader is a William Kunstler protege named Michael Ratner (pictured).

Another lawyer in the suit is representing an organization that the US Treasury Department has designated as a fundraising operation for al Qaeda.

I wrote about the terrorist lawyer connection in the October 17 New York Post. The op-ed, titled "Lawyers for Terror," is available here.

The suit is said to be on behalf of ordinary Iraqis whom Blackwater security guards allegedly wounded or killed in the September 16 shootout in Baghdad. The question is, of the million-plus lawyers in the United States, how and why did ordinary Iraqis align themselves with American lawyers who support terrorists?