What is highlighted is the need for intelligence services to get off their butts and start taking active measures against the terrorists simple information collection is not going to stop the attacks. Counter-attacks will. Pre-emptive attacks will.
Bruce Spies vs. Spies The execution of Egypts top envoy highlights the intelligence challenges facing governments whose citizens are kidnapped in Iraq WEB EXCLUSIVE By Melinda Liu Newsweek Updated: 6:34 p.m. ET July 8, 2005 July 8 - The grim news broke Thursday, just hours after multiple explosions rocked London. The insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamiaposting a picture of Egypts blindfolded ambassador-designate to Iraq on a militant Islamic Web siteannounced that it had executed the kidnapped envoy. Ihab al-Sherif had been abducted in a brazen assault in Baghdad last Saturday, pistol-whipped by gunmen who shouted that he was "an American spy," stuffed him into the trunk of a car and sped off. Al-Sherifs reported death came just two days after two other failed kidnap attempts on senior Muslim diplomats. In Baghdad's upscale Mansur district, gunmen fired upon a diplomatic convoy carrying Pakistani Ambassador Mohammad Younis Khan; he escaped unharmed. Several hours earlier, also in Mansur, Bahrain's top envoy, Hassam Malallah al-Ansari, was shot and wounded in the hand. Aside from the human tragedy, this weeks assaults underscore the intelligence challenges that foreign governments face when a high-profile citizen is abducted or attacked. Of the 200-plus foreigners kidnapped in Iraq, at least 33 have been killed in captivity. Some have been beheaded as their captors made gruesome videotapes that were later released to the media. Such images have great potential to inflame antiwar and antigovernment sentiment back home. Speed is of the essence, and a government often mobilizes intelligence officials in full crisis mode to try to free an abducted national. U.S. officials nearly always offer liaison and supportas Washington did to Cairo this weekbut there is a catch. The involvement of heavily armed U.S. troops could provoke extremists to greater anger and violenceand at the very least could complicate delicate hostage negotiations. Some foreign officials hit up against another problem when they contemplate consulting with U.S. authorities. Governments that agree to pay money in return for a hostage contradict the firm no-ransom policy of America, Britain and Australia. For this and other reasons, some governments decide to keep much of their intelligence activities secret, even from allies. The lack of coordination with U.S. authorities, for example, played a role in this year's shooting death of Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari as he rode in a car with <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7818807/site/newsweek/> newly released hostage Giuliana Sgrena. Calipari had just successfully secured Sgrena's release, and they were heading toward Baghdad airport for a flight back to Italy. Perceiving their approaching vehicle as a threat, U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint opened fire, <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7139834/site/newsweek/> killing Calipari and wounding Sgrena. Immediately afterward, Sgrena hinted that the troops had fired upon her vehicle intentionally because her government did not agree with the U.S. stand against ransom payments. Later she declined to discuss the topic of ransoms. Sometimes a hostage gets lucky, like Australian <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8234978/site/newsweek/> Douglas Wood, who was freed in mid-June by Iraqi troops on a routine search operation. Sometimes luck runs out. Al-Sherif was thought to have had a fair chance at being released since, almost exactly a year ago, Egypt's third-ranking diplomat in Iraq was abducted by Islamic militants and released days later, after the Egyptian government said it had no plans to deploy soldiers to Iraq. And sometimes a government has to dig deep into its bag of covert resources to deal with a hostage crisis. Iraq's shadowy kidnapping industry is a backdrop for some of the most exotic intelligence ops in Iraq. One of the most successful: a campaign by the Romanian government to free three journalists kidnapped in late March. The story sounds like something out of a John Le Carré novel. The Romanian journalists had been in Iraq just five days when they were abducted. Initially the kidnappers made no demands; later they threatened to kill the hostages unless Romania pulled out its 860 troops deployed in Iraq. Ultimately, the hostages were released May 22, after which Romanian President Traian Basescu publicly thanked his country's secret services, saying that the hostage release was "100 percent a Romanian operation." The episode was especially unusual in that someone actually got detainedin Buchareston kidnapping charges. A wealthy Syrian-born businessman, Omar Hayssam, has been charged with orchestrating the abductions. Romanian prosecutors claim Hayssam initially tried to engineer a "fake" kidnapping so that he could leave the country in possession of a large sum of money, purportedly destined as ransom. (Earlier, he'd been barred from leaving the country pending tax evasion and money-laundering probes. But things started to go wrong when Iraqi insurgents got wind of the original abduction planand decided to kidnap the journalists themselves, the Romanian president has charged. Hayssam has denied any wrongdoing and said he was only trying to help.) Actually, the plot began to thicken decades ago. The Romanian newspaper Averea quoted an intelligence agent saying that President Basescu had appealed to a dormant communist-era spy network to help free the Romanian captives. The network had been cultivated by the then-feared secret intelligence services of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was executed in 1989. During the Ceausescu era, as many as half a million Arab students flocked to study in Romania, especially Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis and Libyans. Spymasters of the notorious Securitate intelligence services reportedly recruited "assets" among these students. The unnamed Romanian spy was quoted as saying Basescu enlisted espionage agents who'd served as communist-era recruiters, and asked them to look up their erstwhile Arab protégés to find a way to open hostage negotiations with the kidnappers. "The moles were 'reactivated' by President Basescu during the hostage crisis. From that moment on, information started flowing our way," Averea quoted the agent as saying. The accuracy of the agents claims are hard to assess. One of Ceausescu's former spymasters, Nicolae Plesita, did weigh in to say the revelations were true. Local media quoted him saying the Romanian hostage releases were assisted "by an old spy who was set to work again." But then, Plesita has reasons to burnish the name of the once-ruthless Securitate. Plesita had headed the Securitate's Foreign Intelligence Service, and military prosecutors are now investigating him for alleged ties to the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal. (Plesita is accused of hiring Carlos to carry out a bomb attack on the Munich offices of Radio Free Europe in February 1981). The Romanian president has refused to divulge details of precisely how the spies helped in the hostages' release. However, in June Basescu acknowledged that the hostage crisis showed that the Arab connection should be stressed once again. "Life has proved to us that it's good to restart and consolidate ties with Arab countries," Basescu said. In all, the three Romanian journalists spent 55 days in captivity. At one point they found themselves detained in a cramped and sweaty cellar alongside kidnapped French journalist Florence Aubenas and her Iraqi interpreter, who had been abducted months earlier. A high-level Romanian source, who requested anonymity because his job bars him from talking to media about such topics, told NEWSWEEK that Bucharest authorities passed on key information about the hostages to their French counterparts. He said Romanian negotiators were able to secure the release of their citizens more quickly, because they had a better understanding of the Iraqi psyche and the kidnappers' deeply entrenched sense of humiliation at the hands of foreigners. Also, the Romanians were less prickly than the French when it came to tolerating abusive language used by Iraqi negotiators, he said, recalling that one epithet used by the Iraqi intermediaries was "that dog Basescu." The Romanian-French connection came to light only after Aubenas, who works for the newspaper Liberation, was released June 14 after five months in captivity. At that point Romanian Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu confirmed in an interview with French TV that Romanian spies had helped free Aubenas and her translator. "There was a close collaboration between the Romanian and French secret services with a view to freeing the French journalist," he said. Despite calls for the French government to explain exactly how the releases were achieved, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy refused to divulge details. The reason for continued secrecy, he claimed at the time, was because "There are still some hostages in the place of detention [where Florence had been held] a few hours ago." Will this exotic spy-versus-spy tale ever be revealed? For his part, Basescu has said that full disclosure about the hostage releases might take half a century to emerge.Meanwhile, the killing of Egypts Al-Sherif has served as a setback to Baghdad's efforts to enhance its diplomatic ties, especially with Arab governments that have been reluctant to send ambassadors to Baghdad because their citizens opposed the U.S.-led war against Saddam Hussein. The new Iraqi government undoubtedly hoped Egypts decisionannounced last monthto upgrade its mission in the Iraqi capital and give its top envoy full ambassadorial status could have been a first step in turning the diplomatic tide. Instead, the online statement purporting to be from the group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia said its members had killed al-Sherif, who would have been Baghdad's first Arab ambassador since Husseins ouster, in retaliation for Egypts decision to obey the Crusaders in sending the first ambassador to Baghdad. The group, which is led by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, also warned it would be targeting other envoys in Iraq. The authenticity of such online statements could not be immediately verified, but theyre unlikely to encourage Arab governments to send their representatives to Baghdad. With Michelle Kelso in Bucharest © 2005 Newsweek, Inc. © 2005 MSNBC.com URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8514522/site/newsweek/ FAIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with "Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The Copyright Act of 1976. 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