------ Forwarded Message
From: Robert Eringer
Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2008 07:01:30 -0700

D.C. habit:

Robert Eringer
November 1, 2008 12:00 AM

If Barack Obama wins the White House three days from now, he is likely to entrust John McLaughlin, Rand Beers, John Brennan and Anthony Lake with our nation's national security policies. To quote Yogi Berra, "This is like dèjé vu all over again."
"These are Obama's principal intelligence advisers," a former CIA official confirmed for The Investigator. "Which means that his call for 'change' is as hollow as it is ridiculous."

Mr. McLaughlin served in the CIA for 32 years and was deputy director of that agency when he resigned in a huff in November 2004. Before that, he was deputy director of the agency's analytical division.

"It was John McLaughlin's analytic failure that led to the invasion of Iraq," said a former CIA operations officer who had a front row seat during pre-war U.S.-Iraq machinations between the White House and CIA. Or, as another senior intelligence source put it: "He has a history of tailoring his analysis to satisfy the needs of the principal and cannot be trusted to be a provider of intelligence information."

This source added that Mr. McLaughlin serves his own best interests. "One can be assured," he said, "that anyone who leaves the intelligence community and immediately finds a job with a news outlet, as McLaughlin did with CNN, leaked classified information while in office."

Mr. Beers, a former National Security Council staffer, would likely be national security adviser to Mr. Obama. Highly partisan, Mr. Beers -- according to a member of the intelligence community -- while at the NSC gathered inside-White House, NSC and top level State Department information -- and placed it at the disposal of John Kerry's presidential campaign to secure a senior job. When informed by FBI agents in June 1996 that mainland China had hatched a plot to secretly fund President Clinton's re-election campaign, Mr. Beers famously declined or neglected to inform his boss, national security adviser Anthony Lake.

John Brennan was an analyst at CIA until Director George Tenet made him a special assistant and, says a former CIA official, "turned him into a creature of the Bush administration to become Fran Townsend's gopher." (Ms. Townsend was assistant to President Bush for Homeland Security.) "I'm just appalled that these are the guys Obama has around him," continued The Investigator's CIA informant. "They are inside-the-Beltway chair-movers. We call it 'rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.' "

Mr. Brennan is CEO of The Analysis Corporation, a State Department sub-contractor that found itself in hot water earlier this year after improperly searching the passport records of presidential candidates. "Brennan is a substantial self-promoter and achieved nothing but dysfunction while head of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center," a former intelligence official told The Investigator. "One could argue that his effort was a complete waste of energy."

It is believed by some Democratic bigwigs that Mr. Obama would select Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico as secretary of state -- Richardson's reward for coming out early against Hillary despite "owing" his allegiance (in Bill Clinton's mind, anyway) to the Clinton campaign.

Big mistake. Mr. Richardson is a walking bundle of scandals ready to come unstuck at the first mention of Senate confirmation process. Something about women, including a former personal assistant, weary of being groped and tweaked, who finally snapped, "Cut it out or you will wake up one morning and find your name splashed on the front page of every newspaper in New Mexico," and intimate dinners with girlfriends at El Farol's on Canyon Road in Santa Fe and Embudo Station, a brew house halfway between Santa Fe and Taos.

And something about corruption: Rumors are circulating that the governor received cash kickbacks from the construction of Rail Runner Express, a new commuter train between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. In addition, the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office are investigating Beverly Hills-based CDR Financial Products and its CEO, David Rubin, for contributing $110,000 to Mr. Richardson's political pursuits after winning a $1.6 billion bond issue to fund NM highway projects, including the Rail Runner.

And the man Mr. Richardson supported to become president of Highlands University in 2004? Meet Manny Aragon, former president of the state senate, who 17 days ago pled guilty to conspiracy and mail fraud and now faces five years in the clink for siphoning $700,000 from construction funds allocated by the governor.

Some say Bill smells.

So secretary of state in an Obama administration would probably go to Anthony Lake, but only if the Democrats score at least 60 seats in the Senate to ensure confirmation. That's because when Mr. Lake was nominated by Bill Clinton to be director of Central Intelligence, he requested his name be withdrawn after learning he would be confronted with allegations that he endeavored to personally profit from oil companies in "the Stans" (former Soviet Union) while still national security adviser.

"Change" will bring him back.

That's how Washington works, with a government-in-exile occupying think tanks like Brookings and CSIS, and lobbying firms, where former officials hibernate until their party makes a comeback and they rejoin officialdom with stale agendas repackaged as "change."

John McCain's intelligence and foreign policy advisers are no different. Mr. McCain's main guy, Randy Scheunemann, is a professional lobbyist who lobbied on behalf of disgraced Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi for the U.S. to invade Iraq. And while advising Mr. McCain on foreign policy, Mr. Scheunemann took money from the Republic of Georgia to lobby its causes as a registered foreign agent.

The point: The Capital Establishment is in control; the commander-in-chief constrained. A new president takes two-to-three years just to fill appointments -- and then it's re-election time.

Although "change" is the rhetorical slogan of choice this election, get ready for another four years of yielding to lobbyists, turf wars and pork -- and contrived scandals to divert your attention from being sold out. As Sarah Palin might say: Same old, same old.

In perpetuation of its own pork, Washington knows how to hog-tie a new chief executive.

If you have a story idea for The Investigator, contact him at reringer@newspress.com. State if your query is confidential.

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My ex spook pal Robert Eringer emailed me an article he wrote for the Santa Barbara News Press. One more damn thing to fret about..

October 18, 2008 7:13 AM
"The geniuses at Homeland Security who brought you hare-brained procedures at airports (which inconvenience travelers without snagging terrorists) have decreed that October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. This means The Investigator -- at the risk of compromising national insecurities -- would be remiss not to make you aware of the hottest topic in U.S. counterintelligence circles: rogue microchips. This threat emanates from China (PRC) -- and it is hugely significant.
The myth: Chinese intelligence services have concealed a microchip in every computer everywhere, programmed to "call home" if and when activated.
The reality: It may actually be true.
All computers on the market today -- be they Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Apple or especially IBM -- are assembled with components manufactured inside the PRC. Each component produced by the Chinese, according to a reliable source within the intelligence community, is secretly equipped with a hidden microchip that can be activated any time by China's military intelligence services, the PLA.
"It is there, deep inside your computer, if they decide to call it up," the security chief of a multinational corporation told The Investigator. "It is capable of providing Chinese intelligence with everything stored on your system -- on everyone's system -- from e-mail to documents. I call it Call Home Technology. It doesn't mean to say they're sucking data from everyone's computer today, it means the Chinese think ahead -- and they now have the potential to do it when it suits their purposes."
Discussed theoretically in high-tech security circles as "Trojan Horse on a Chip" or "The Manchurian Chip," Call Home Technology came to light after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched a security program in December 2007 called Trust in Integrated Circuits. DARPA awarded almost $25 million in contracts to six companies and university research labs to test foreign-made microchips for hardware Trojans, back doors and kill switches -- techie-speak for bugs and gremlins -- with a view toward microchip verification.
Raytheon, a defense contractor, was granted almost half of these funds for hardware and software testing.
Its findings, which are classified, have apparently sent shockwaves through the counterintelligence community.
"It is the hottest topic concerning the FBI and the Pentagon," a retired intelligence official told The Investigator. "They don't know quite what to do about it. The Chinese have even been able to hack into the computer system that handles our Intercontinental Ballistic Missile system."
Another senior intelligence source told The Investigator, "Our military is aware of this and has had to take some protective measures. The problem includes defective chips that don't reach military specs -- as well as probable Trojans."
A little context: In 2005 the Lenovo Group in China paid $1.75 billion for IBM's PC unit, even though that unit had lost $965 million the previous four years. Three congressmen, including the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, tried to block this sale because of national security concerns, to no avail. (The PRC embassy in Washington, D.C., maintains a large lobbying presence to influence congressmen and their staffs through direct contact.)
In June 2007, a Pentagon computer network utilized by the U.S. defense secretary's office was hacked into -- and traced directly back to the Chinese PLA.
A report presented to Congress late last year characterized PRC espionage as "the single greatest risk to the security of American technologies." Almost simultaneously, Jonathan Evans, director-general of MI5, Britain's domestic security and counterintelligence service, sent a confidential letter to CEOs and security chiefs at 300 UK companies to warn that they were under attack by "Chinese state organizations" whose purpose, said Mr. Evans, was to defeat their computer security systems and steal confidential commercial information.


The Chinese had specifically targeted Rolls-Royce and Shell Oil.
The key to unlocking computer secrets through rogue microchips is uncovering (or stealing) source codes, without which such microchips would be useless. This is why Chinese espionage is so heavily focused upon the U.S. computer industry.
Four main computer operating systems exist. Two of them, Unix and Linux, utilize open-source codes. Apple's operating system is Unix-based.
Which leaves only Microsoft as the source code worth cracking. But in early 2004, Microsoft announced that its security had been breached and that its source code was "lost or stolen."
"As technology evolves, each new program has a new source code," a computer forensics expert told The Investigator. "So the Chinese would need ongoing access to new Microsoft source codes for maintaining their ability to activate any microchips they may have installed, along with the expertise to utilize new hardware technology."
No surprise then that the FBI expends much of its counterintelligence resources these days on Chinese high-tech espionage within the United States. Timothy Bereznay, while still serving as assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, told USA Today, "Foreign collectors don't wait until something is classified -- they're targeting it at the research and development stage." Mr. Bereznay now heads Raytheon's Intelligence and Information Systems division.
The PRC's intelligence services use tourists, exchange students and trade show attendees to gather strategic data, mostly from open sources. They have also created over 3,500 front companies in the United States -- including several based in Palo Alto to focus on computer technology.
Back in 2005, when the Chinese espionage problem was thought to be focused on military technology, then-FBI counterintelligence operations chief Dave Szady said, "I think the problem is huge, and it's something we're just getting our arms around." Little did he know just how huge, as it currently applies to computer network security.
The FBI is reported to have arrested more than 25 Chinese nationals and Chinese-Americans on suspicion of conspiracy to commit espionage between 2004 and 2006. The Investigator endeavored to update this figure, but was told by FBI spokesman William Carter, "We do not track cases by ethnicity."
Excuse us for asking. We may be losing secrets, but at least the dignity of our political correctness remains intact.
Oh, and Homeland Security snagged comic icon Jerry Lewis, 82, trying to board a plane in Las Vegas with a gun -- no joke."
If you have a story idea for The Investigator, contact him at reringer@newspress.com. State if your query is confidential.