-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ------ Spy vs. Spy Germany Angry That CIA Won't Turn Over Stasi Files Is Bad Aibling in the balance? BERLIN - When Gerhard Schroeder was invited to lunch at the White House by President Bill Clinton last month, the German chancellor was fervently hoping he would return home with a special gift: the top-secret archives of East Germany's foreign spy operations that the CIA spirited away after the fall of the Berlin Wall. By the time he arrived in Washington, however, Mr. Schroeder had received disappointing news. His chief troubleshooter, Bodo Hombach, who had been sent to Washington in advance to close the deal, had run smack into what he later called a barrier of ''mutual mistrust.'' Not only would Mr. Clinton not release the files, he did not even want to discuss the matter, according to White House and chancellery aides. While Mr. Schroeder sought to dismiss the rebuff by declaring that the two leaders simply did not have enough time to discuss the issue, senior aides said privately the chancellor was outraged by the United States' refusal to surrender files that Germany considers its property. They warned that the impasse soon could seriously damage cooperation on intelligence and other matters between the countries. German officials hint that the time may be coming to curtail operations of U.S. intelligence agencies in Germany, including eavesdropping facilities such as the powerful U.S. radar and communications systems at Bad Aibling, near Munich, that some Germans suspect are used for commercial espionage. According to diplomats, politicians and intelligence officials interviewed in the United States and Germany, the campaign to recover the ''crown jewels'' of the East German state security apparatus, or Stasi, has escalated into an emotional test case for Mr. Schroeder's government as it seeks to reassert the full sovereignty of a reunited Germany and establish a more equitable partnership with Washington. The files are said to contain the identities, code names and other vital data of thousands of Stasi foreign agents, the vast majority of whom worked in West Germany. Joachim Gauck, a Lutheran pastor who is responsible for collecting and supervising the Stasi archives in Germany, said, ''Only when we recover this material will we ever be able to know the true scope of the East German network of agents in West Germany, and beyond.'' The Clinton administration has refused to return the files at the insistence of the CIA, which says that doing so would jeopardize Western agents still at large. But many Germans believe the U.S. attempt to protect Germans and other Westerners implicated in the files - some of whom are believed still to hold powerful political positions - is preventing their nation from settling its accounts with history and achieving a full reconciliation between East and West. Karsten Voigt, the coordinator of U.S.-German relations for the German Foreign Ministry, said it was ironic that in the eyes of many Germans, the United States is aligning itself with former Communists and their sympathizers who have been trying desperately to cover up the truth about their past. ''We simply find it hard to understand how a great country, which says it stands for freedom, behaves like those in Germany who are trying to block access to the files,'' Mr. Voigt said. ''If this perception is allowed to continue, it could create a lot of problems for our relationship.'' Senior German officials said they suspect that the United States is hiding information on the Stasi's penetration into West Germany. During the 40-year history of East Germany, officially called the German Democratic Republic, between 20,000 and 30,000 West Germans are believed to have worked for the Stasi. With language posing no obstacle, it easily infiltrated almost every sector of West German society, including business, politics, academia, labor unions and the media. Yet, German officials who have been allowed to see what they call ''sanitized'' versions of the files in Washington have been allowed to copy the names of only 1,500 agents who operated in the West. The possibility that many Stasi collaborators in the West are escaping retribution for acts of betrayal - with the perceived consent of the United States - has stirred resentment among East Germans who were forced to endure the pain of confronting their complicity with the repressive Communist regime. In 1995, Germany's constitutional court ruled that East Germans could not be prosecuted for treason, because they were operating under the laws of their country. But the court ruled that West Germans who worked for the Stasi could be prosecuted. U.S. officials said turning over the archives to the Germans would expose many friendly agents still operating in Western nations to retaliation by their victims. The United States is also believed to have informed many individuals that they are cited in the files to reduce their vulnerability to blackmail, and possibly even to have hired some of the former East German spies whose services may prove useful. Rejecting those arguments, Ernst Uhrlau, Mr. Schroeder's adviser on intelligence, said the German government did not understand why the United States insisted on denying the Stasi files to a close ally, when the Russians presumably possess the same information. ''In the long run, it is unacceptable for the German government that relevant files are sitting in the United States and a possible or likely double is in Russia,'' Mr. Uhrlau said. German intelligence sources are convinced the CIA acquired the Stasi archives through a Russian connection, at a price estimated between $1 million and $1.5 million. The sources said the transaction is believed to have taken place in the first half of 1992 - nearly two years after the collapse of East Germany's Communist government. The true story remains a mystery, but U.S. officials have touted the heist or purchase of the files as one of the CIA's greatest triumphs. German officials said their intelligence agency, the BND, located in Pullach near Munich, was thwarted from going after the archives when then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, fearing an espionage fiasco could upset his plans for German reunification, banned any clandestine activities in the East. Differences between Germany and the United States over the fate of the Stasi files have magnified other strains between the two countries' intelligence agencies. German officials said they were upset, for example, by domineering U.S. attitudes that reflect the Cold War days, when American intelligence employed an estimated 25,000 people in West Germany and treated the country more as a quasi-protectorate than a sovereign ally. In March 1997, Germany ordered a CIA officer to leave the country after he was caught trying to persuade an Economics Ministry official to hand over information about high-technology deals with Iran. More recently, the Schroeder government became upset when the United States gave no warning it was assisting Turkey in the pursuit and capture of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan in Kenya - an event that sparked violent disturbances among the 500,000 Kurdish exiles living in Germany. ''The Cold War may be over, but we still share a lot of common goals and common threats that should make us see it is in our own interests to work together,'' a senior German official said. ''But this can only be done on a basis of mutual respect, which we do not seem to be getting from Washington these days.'' International Herald Tribune, March 4, 1999 US vs. China Freeze in US-China Relations Missile Defense may be the last straw An intense round of US diplomacy this week is attempting to save a pillar of Bill Clinton's foreign policy: constructive engagement with China. In what was billed as a significant foreign policy speech last week, Mr Clinton repeated that the US remains "strongly committed to principled and purposeful engagement with China." Trouble is, since his visit to China last year, he has precious little to show for it. Much to Americans' dismay, China has been cracking down on dissidents in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, while the environment for US companies in China has worsened. Now, all of a sudden (or so it seems) a new issue has emerged which could expose the fault lines between the two countries: missile defence. The debate was set off by the launch last August of a North Korean missile over Japan. That missile shifted public and political opinion in Japan, arguably the US's most important Asian ally, towards a more serious consideration of a missile defence system protecting its territory. It also led the US to jumpstart existing programmes for theatre missile defence (TMD) to protect US forces abroad (as well as to pour resources into a US national missile defence system aimed at protecting the US itself from missile attack). Beijing is violently opposed to the introduction of a theatre missile shield anywhere in Asia, as an unwelcome shift in the balance of force there. But it is the prospect of a US-furnished missile shield for Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province, which has provoked the most extreme reaction. A decision to deploy such a shield would be regarded in unambiguous terms by Beijing as the start of the dreaded policy of "containment" - the opposite of "constructive engagement" and the policy pursued by the US to China in the 1950s and 1960s. It would kill any remaining hope for a US-China "strategic partnership", and raise the temperature in relations across the Taiwan strait. Engagement would risk turning into enduring hostility. Beijing fears that a missile shield for Taiwan would encourage the island to declare independence because it would neutralise Beijing's threat to use force in that event. James Mulvenon of Rand Corporation, says TMD for Taiwan raises two main concerns for China. It would undermine China's only credible military threat against Taiwan, given that an invasion is militarily impossible, and it would foster much greater co-operation between Taiwan and the Pentagon. Visiting Beijing this week, Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, sought to avoid confrontation on these matters. When Chinese officials raised the question of the missile shield, "I replied that instead of worrying about a decision that has not been made to deploy defensive technologies that do not yet exist, China should focus its energies on the real source of the problem - the proliferation of missiles". Mrs Albright said China should first use its influence to urge North Korea to restrain from missile development and testing, and to use its dialogue with Taiwan to reduce the perceived need for both missiles and missile defence. But the missile debate may have brought to the surface a fundamental divergence of interests between the US and China. This divergence, say critics, has been almost deliberately submerged as the administration has sought to justify its engagement with China. Most military analysts and China watchers believe China's medium-term strategic ambition is to become the most powerful nation in Asia. The achievement of this aim will necessarily mean unseating the region's current military and diplomatic boss - the US. Military experts say that the pattern of China's arms acquisitions and deployment shows it is preparing primarily for two theatres of operation, Taiwan and the South China Sea. Of the two, the South China Sea - which China claims virtually in its entirety - has the greater strategic significance. About 15 per cent of the world's cross-border trade passes through the sea every year. If China controlled these sea lanes, it would have a potential stranglehold over not only commercial but also military traffic through the heart of Asia. China's recent construction of structures on a reef near the Philippines shows that Beijing has no intention of letting go of its claim to the Spratly islands - several hundred dispersed islands and reefs scattered through the sea, the analysts say. Legally, too, Beijing is preparing to exercise sovereignty. In 1992, it promulgated a law that allows its navy to "evict foreign naval vessels", and rules that foreign navy ships must apply for permission before crossing the sea. The Clinton administration would not be the first to try to conduct China policy without airing fundamental issues publicly. In a new book about US-China relations, About Face (Knopf, $30), James Mann of the Los Angeles Times writes that US administrations have conducted China policy secretively and in a personalised manner since Henry Kissinger opened up relations during a historic visit to Beijing in 1971 as Richard Nixon's national security adviser. But in the long run, argues Mr Mann, policy cannot be hidden from the public and carried out exclusively by elites, In particular, conducting secret diplomacy has become more difficult since the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 exposed another fundamental fault-line: attitudes to human rights. Changes in this secret diplomacy may be on the horizon. There are two reasons for thinking that the changes will see a hardening of US attitudes and, hence, a greater likelihood of confrontation. First, China is likely to be an important issue in the 2000 presidential election - as it has been in every election since 1989. With the likely Republican candidate George Bush assembling a group of foreign policy advisers with relatively hawkish reputations, such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, "constructive engagement" may prove a policy on which his likely challenger, Al Gore, the vice-president, is vulnerable. Mr Gore has shown signs anyway that he may talk tougher on foreign policy than Mr Clinton. So to cover Mr Gore's potential vulnerability, a hardening of administration attitudes toward China over the next 18 months may be on the cards. Second, Congress seems less likely than ever to allow the administration a free hand with China policy - both from the left, where Democrats are pressing hard on human rights concerns, to the right, where security issues dominate. Part of the reason for that is the legacy of mistrust that remains between the majority party and the White House after the impeachment trial. That mistrust has its special Chinese dimension. A special report from a House panel led by Christopher Cox, the California Republican, has concluded that US national security has been endangered by China's licit and illicit attempts to gain access to US technology with military applications. Though that bipartisan report has not been declassified yet, some Republicans have concluded that the Clinton administration has played fast and loose with the system of controls on transfers of so-called dual use technology - commercial technology with potential military uses. Those suspicions have centred on, but are not limited to, the benefits to Chinese missile technology that have been derived from the launches of US satellites on Chinese rockets. According to one Republican aide on Capitol Hill, "the system to prevent technology transfers to China during satellite launches wasn't working, not because it couldn't work but because they [the administration] didn't want it to work". Republicans then question why the administration seemed to be looking the other way. Was it to preserve the policy of engagement with China? Or to preserve a business-friendly environment for US companies operating there? Both motives, they admit, would have been potentially valid public interest arguments. It is a third Republican suspicion that could be the most damaging: that the administration was influenced by Chinese campaign finance contributions. Democratic campaign coffers benefited ahead of the 1996 elections from contributions both from prominent satellite manufacturers such as Loral and from Asian businessmen - though much of their money was returned as illegal. The Cox committee's efforts to examine the link between campaign finance and technology transfers went nowhere - one reason it was able to preserve a bipartisan consensus in its findings. Many potential witnesses have either fled the country or took the fifth amendment right to silence. The prospect of prosecutions under a Justice Department investigation deterred the Cox committee from offering immunity from prosecution for other witnesses. Administration officials react angrily to claims they were influenced by campaign finance considerations. They point out that senior Republicans were pressing the administration to relax export controls in the early 1990s; that countries such as China have access to high technology from sources other than the US; and that the decline of military spending in the US means that technology exports are necessary to the continuing success of US high-technology companies. Whatever the truth, though, a tightening of the control regime on US high-technology exports is almost certain to result. The rejection of an export licence last month for the launching of a Hughes satellite on a Chinese rocket has provided yet another bone of contention between Beijing and Washington. With difficulties almost across the board, US and Chinese officials are hoping for a breakthrough in the one area where it still is possible: China's accession to the World Trade Organisation. That could cap a visit to Washington next month by Zhu Rongji, the Chinese premier and economic supremo. Given China's economic difficulties, getting an agreement that will satisfy US business and farm interests - and other members of the WTO - will be far from easy. And even if an accord is reached, the unusual warmth between the two countries that was demonstrated during Mr Clinton's visit last year is unlikely to return for some time to come. The Financial Times, March 4, 1999 Middle East Mossad "had Clinton telephone sex with Lewinsky on tape" Sex, blackmail, and politics MOSSAD, the Israeli intelligence agency, taped President Clinton's phone sex sessions with Monica Lewinsky and used them to prevent the FBI investigating a Tel Aviv mole inside the White House, according to a new book. Just before Miss Lewinsky's television interview in America and the publication of Andrew Morton's biography Monica's Story, the book claims Mr Clinton's illicit fling compromised American security, and the Israeli agent - codenamed Mega - is still in the White House. Gordon Thomas, author of Gideon's Spies - the Secret History of the Mossad, says a senior Israeli intelligence officer explicitly told him that the spy agency had recordings of the President and Miss Lewinsky talking erotically on the telephone between the White House and her home in the Watergate building. Mr Thomas, a Welshman living in Dublin, said yesterday that the Israelis let the FBI know about the tapes. In his report to Congress, Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel, suggests that Mr Clinton was aware of the phone tapping. Mr Starr wrote: "According to Ms Lewinsky, she and the President had a lengthy conversation that day. He told her that he suspected that a foreign embassy (he did not specify which one) was tapping his telephones, and proposed cover stories. If ever questioned, she should say that the two of them were just friends. If anyone ever asked about phone sex, she should say that they knew their calls were being monitored all along, and the phone sex was just a put on." Mossad could not bug the White House, which is electronically secure, so when it received a tip-off about the Clinton-Lewinsky telephone fling, it tapped her home phone instead, Mr Thomas says. Some in Mossad "saw the recordings as a potent weapon to be used if Israel found itself with its back to the wall in the Middle East and unable to count on Clinton's support." Early in 1997, when the President's affair with Miss Lewinsky was still going on, Israel demanded to see letters written by the former secretary of state Warren Christopher to Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, in case they contained US commitments which Jerusalem opposed. On Jan 16, the day Mr Clinton was giving his deposition in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case, the National Security Agency, America's top-secret intelligence arm known as the Puzzle Palace, intercepted a brief conversation between Mossad's Washington station chief and his immediate superior in Tel Aviv. The station chief said: "The ambassador wants me to go to Mega to get a copy of this letter". The reply was: "This is not something we use Mega for". The tone seemed to indicate that Mega was a US official spying for the Israelis and prompted an investigation by FBI agents. The NSA leaked the Mega story to the Washington Post on May 7, the day veteran US negotiator Dennis Ross was meeting Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, in Jerusalem. Observers believe that Washington wanted to send a message to Mr Netanyahu that he should be pliable. Mr Thomas says Israel concocted cover stories about Mega , saying for example that it was a mistranslation of the Hebrew slang, Elga, which was Mossad's long-standing nickname for the CIA. Then the phone sex tapes landed in Mossad's lap. Mr Thomas, who has been writing about espionage for 25 years, said: "They may have told their counterparts in the CIA and the CIA may have passed it on. It's very normal procedure." Only two weeks after Washington showed that it knew about Mega, Mr Clinton broke off his relationship with Miss Lewinsky. Israeli-American relations deteriorated badly during 1997, and in November Mr Clinton snubbed Mr Netanyahu by refusing to meet him at the White House. This was months after the President warned Miss Lewinsky that a foreign embassy was taping their phone sessions. The Lewinsky scandal broke the day before Mr Arafat was welcomed by Mr Clinton in the White House Rose Garden. Miss Lewinsky had an abortion during her affair with Bill Clinton, according to her biography by Andrew Morton, of which an excerpt is published in the Mirror today. The baby was not Mr Clinton's. Miss Lewinsky's only sexual relations with the President were oral, says the excerpt. The father was identified only as Thomas. He was a senior official at the Pentagon, where Miss Lewinsky worked after being ousted from the White House in the spring of 1996. Miss Lewinsky decided to have the abortion because she did not want to be a single mother. But a friend told the author: "It was a very difficult time emotionally for her. She wants kids so desperately." Her psychiatrist left the Virginia clinic at which she sought help before her mental problems were resolved and she "hurtled down a spiral of lonely despair". Even though Miss Lewinsky had a three-month affair with Thomas, she still thought mainly about Mr Clinton, who had broken off their affair but was later to resume it, Mr Morton discloses. "Even when she had a regular boyfriend," he writes, "she always kept one eye on the clock, like Cinderella racing to get home before midnight just in case Prince Charming might call." In an interview accompanying the serialisation, the Mirror quotes Miss Lewinksy saying it is time Mrs Clinton stopped blaming her for the affair and started blaming her husband. "I was jealous of her," says Miss Lewinsky, of the First Lady, "envious because she was the wife of the man I was in love with." The London Telegraph, March 4, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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