The Difference Between Operations of the Special Services and Actions of the Terrorists Exist Only at First Sight

In the known Ekaterinburg publishing house "Ultra-culture" preparations to the issue of the book “World-wide Investigation. Special Services in the Epoch of Globalisation” in Russian come to the end. The book is written by two foreign scientists-humanitarians - an Englishman Pol Todd and living in London Jonathan Bloch from South Africa. The English version of the book appeared on the shelves of the shops almost three years ago - in 2003.

The Russian translation of the research of scientists in spite of the fact that they are not and never have been professional intelligence officers promises to become a significant event for domestic experts and analysts engaged in studying of a role and a place of special services in lives of the leading countries of the modern world, first of all of the USA and other countries of the West.

The book contains rich factual material on the basis of which analysis the authors come to their main conclusion which they formulate so:

After the end of "cold war" the western special services announced "struggle against terrorism and the organized crimimality" as the main task of their activity. Thus "the difference between the operations of the state services agencies and actions of terrorists, carried out without any sanction” only at first sight. This difference is just about to disappear in practice.

According to the authors, taking into consideration low level of the accountability of special services as well as methods used by them, most often it’s possible to neglect the difference between special services and terrorist groups and in many cases these groups are simply identical.

Examples of activity of Foreign Intelligence of Saudi Arabia and interdepartmental investigation of Pakistanare given in the book to eveolve thesis. In particular, authors emphasize that so-called states-derelicts (Democratic People’s Republicof Korea, Iran, Syria) in much more smaller degree promote radicalization of Islam rather than Saudi Arabiawhich is the main "sponsor" of radicalization and ideologization of Islam. The conclusion is that "if the USAreally wishes to struggle with Islamic radicalism, then it has to engage itself with Saudi Arabia.

As to Pakistanit is underlined in the book that it’s at least “the real aspiration of the Pakistaninvestigation to cooperation with corresponding services of the USAnot clear. Many members of organization "Taliban" and also "Afghans" of the Arabian origin easely found a refuge in the North-West Boundary Province of Pakistan after the beginning of military operation of the USA".

One more subject of sharp criticism of authors - Israel. Its special services - it is told in the book - skilfully manipulate the Americans. So, they repeatedly imposed their American partners reports contained deformed information about participation of Iranand other external forces in Intifada.

As a whole, according to the authors’ conviction, in the matter of "struggle against terrorism" certain obvious duality is present. And the situation will not change until the USAwill not cease to compromise its values by, for example, refusal to criticize the politicy of Israelor by unwillingness of the American service agencies "to give an estimation of a situation in Saudi Arabia”.

At last, the following circumstance that is not the least important is mentioned in the book: "In spite of the fact that special services did not get tired to repeat that the main threat came from terrorists, the real threat to their own existence proceeded from the reduction of budgetary financing".

All aforesaid, certainly, completely corresponds to the reality. Nevertheless, it is still felt that the authors though criticizing Israel, Saudi Arabiaand Pakistando not finish speaking a lot about the true role of special services of the United Statesin direct manipulation of actions of different groups and fractions of "international terrorism". Probably, discussion of the theme given is tabooed which they try to avoid in the book by the hints of a general character, however, quite transparent.

Passing to details of special services’ activity in the modern conditions, the authors give a lot of attention to methods and means of radio-electronic investigation and also to Internet. According to their data, recording and tracking of e-mail, fax and telefax messages as well as phone calls is a usual practice of the American and others western special services. General spreading belongs to tracking cameras, the data transferred from satellite allows to receive even more detailed image, loading of which in the real time happens with ten shots a second speed. The call by mobile phone allows to define the location of its owner, the use of the Internet - to learn a lot about the user.  There are means of reading of information from a desktop of PC, scanning of contents of the sealed letters and direct listening of conversation through vibrating windowpanes at more advanced, anticipatory level of work.

At that modern radio-electronic systems of data gathering, admitedly, have received even greater distribution after the Agency of national safety of the USAhas started to be engaged in industrial espionage and a struggle against “drug-trafficking". As to the Internet which from the beginning of 90th years became an object of supervision, first of all, in connection with the fact that messages transferred from the Europe to Asia, Ocenia, Africa or South America and vice versa, as a rule, pass through the American servers.

It is known, that "Internet-messages” consist of so-called datagrams or packages of data and address information connected with them. The data set is unique for each computer connected to the Internet, thus determination of location of the sender does not represent any difficulties. Processing, sorting and routing of millions such data packages is the central element of functioning of the largest the Internet-units.

Similar technologies are used and for extraction of the necessary information from the general traffic in the reconnaissance purposes, an access to the Internet-traffic has become possible through servers in the territory of the USAor through the largest Internet-units. According to some data, NSA did not experience any difficulties with tracking of foreign traffic owing to the use of the programs-analyzers of network traffic placed in the largest Internet-units developed by it.

At the same time, the authors share their observations, carrying out of actions of radio-electronic investigation “is at a loss as a result of introduction of such technologies as digitizing, batch transmission, use of fiber optics and enciphering. Thus, digitizing allows to send huge piece of information through one channel that complicates the search of concrete details. , Batch transmission allows to change a route the message follows during a session of communication and also to send the message and the address of the message in different packages. The use of fibre-optical technologies has allowed to improve cable data transmission therefore less messages go into the open air space where they can be intercepted by satellites or earth stations".

As a result the disturbing conclusion is given in the book, that society gradually becomes the hostage of constantly improved technologies, that "as terrorists and drugs cartels find even new ways of avoiding shadowing, even more often civil freedoms and lawful forms of the protest, not speaking about vulnerability of commercial "objects" find themselves under the threat “.

Rather a lot of attention is also paid in the book to questions of industrial espionage. First of all to the practice of special services of the USA. In particular, it is marked that "openly declared aim of the American government is the use of reconnaissance systems of the USAfor supervision over the European companies" so that ostensibly "to prove the facts of bribery and market discrimination".

So, addressing the Congress in April, 1992, director of CIA Robert Gates said that "intelligence office has a great lot of clients, the fact that never has occured earlier. They are inetersted in the work which is beyond traditional concern by problems of safety interests. The special attention is given to financial and trading questions and also to the problems of the technological development, capable of influencing badly on the USA".

In this connection the authors quote one of the reports of EU in which it has been established that "approximately 40% of all inquiries" to gather information in the American special services carry "partly or fully economic character". At that the EU countries have incurred significant financial losses. So, the trade turnover of Francein 90th years decreased approximately for 17 billion dollars, Germanylost about 4 billion dollars, losses of Swedenmade up 386 million dollars, of the Netherlands- 184 million dollars".

That is characteristic and evidently proves in the practice of the American specail agencies presence of double standards, despite of great quantity of announcements about established facts of bribery, the American government has not given any proofs of existence of such practice and has not insisted on carrying out in the EU countries corresponding proceedings.

One of the most fascinating themes mentioned in the book, was a policy of the USAand activity of their special services in 80-90th years on the Middle Eastand other regions of the third world. In particular, the authors showed that during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 the USAactively supported Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Thus, on the 26th of February, 1982Ronald Reagan's administration excluded Iraqfrom the list of "the states-accomplices of terrorism" made up by the Department of state, having recognized "obvious improvements" which ostensibly Saddam’s regime displayed in that sphere. In 1984, altogether with restoration of full diplomatic relations Reagan signed the directive about national safety which legalized "the limited granting of reconnaissance data" to Iraq. At that close cooperation between CIA and Saddam included interception of messages, granting of information about the armament, photos of the Iranian objects with high resolution as well as information about moving of armies practically in real time received from the operated by the Americans system of early detection and pointing Awacs from the base in Saudi Arabia.

It is shown in the book that an important role in strengthening of relations with Iraq was given to the economy, especially to the oil taking into account that annually Iraq delivered to the USA 1.5 billion barrels of oil that made a quarter from the total amount of the Iraq export of oil.

Moreover, as a result of bankruptcy of branch of the bank BNL in Atlantain August, 1989 the fact of granting by the USAof poor loans to Iraqfor the sum more than 4 billion dollars was revealed. It became the largest bank swindle in history of America! By own calculations of CIA, at least 600 million dollars were spent by Saddam Hussein for purchase of weapon.

Even after the first war in Persian Gulfostensibly "pig-headed" Saddam for long time remained more preferable to the USAthan national excitements in Iraqwhich, as all of us are sure today, conduct to strengthening of the main opponent of Washington- Iran. By virtue of it during all term of presidency of Clintonand also during the last years Bush-senior presidency the policy of the USAin connection to Iraqwas defined by necessity of "double restraint" of Iraqand Iran. Such was the situation till 2002-03, when the administration of Bush-junior changed the policy in reference to Baghdadcardinally and made its mind to military venture.

Another subject of the detailed analysis could be found on the pages of the book - Afghanistanin 80-90th years. According to the authors, secret operation in this country which had the cost of 6 billion dollars was considered as conclusive in the "victory" of the USAin "cold war" and one of the greatest successes of CIA. Even after pullout of the Soviet troops from Afghanistanin 1989 the stream of the American help continued to flow to the Islamic forces which struggled with president Nadjibulla. After final defeat, the last in 1992, very few people in Langleythought of consequences of policy of so-called "positive symmetry" in deliveries of weapon which was followed with the only aim not to allow the USSRto win over their Afghani protИgИ. "To tell the truth, we didn’t care much of how the postSoviet Afghanistanwould look like, - the Director of CIA Robert Gates noted later, - we expected that it would be similar to per-Soviet Afghanistan".

Thus, the authors bring the reader to an idea that to the beginning of 1990th years more than 35 thousand foreign mojaheds from all Islamic world have had training preparation in a network of educational camps in Pakistanand in the Afghanistan, generally at the expenses of Saudi Arabia. They continued their activity, frequently hiring future mojaheds directly from 20 thousand madrasahs located on the territoryof Pakistanand financed by Saudi Arabia. An appearance of more than 100 thousand radical Islamists united into one global network “al Kaida” became one of the results of war in Afghanistan. “Arabian Afghans” very soon took part in a number of local conflicts involved Algeria, Bosnia, the Chechen Republic, Egypt, Kashmir, Philippines and the South Sudan.

Better to say, it is affirmed in the book, secret services of Saudi Arabia, Pakistanand the USAwere "godfathers" of Usama Ben Laden  and his terrorist network. At that Washingtonstarted to change the attitude to Ben Laden only starting from the middle of 90th years. Only after explosions of the American embassies in Kenyaand Tanzaniaon the 7^th of August, 1998Islamic terrorism and Ben Laden officially appeared on the foreground of the American policy.

Alongside with Iraqand Afghanistan, double standards in the policy of the USAevidently showed themselves also in connection to other parts of the world. In particular, in Colombia. Thus, the authors specify, the official basis for granting help to the Colombian government became struggle against terrorism and drug industry. The largest Colombian guerrilla grouping FARC entered the American list of the terrorist organizations. However, they say in the book, if the USA was really occupied with struggle against terrorism and drug industry, it would concentrate the basic efforts on counteraction to semi military organizations of the right trend closely connected with the Colombian armed forces, but at the same time bear the responsibility for the majority of acts of terrorism in Colombia as well as for drug industry.

Alongside with special services of the USAa lot of attention in the book is given also to investigations of similar services in other states. First of all it’s such well-known to the authors countries, as the Great Britain, France, Germany, Israel, the republicof South Africa. Special services of Pakistan, India, Burma, Syriaand Saddam’s Iraqare also mentioned. At the same time the absence of any information about intelligence services of Egypt, Turkey, Iran, China, Northern and South Korea, Japanis evident. Probably, the authors of the book did not have enough materials for carrying out of the qualitative analysis in reference to these countries. In conclusion it’s necessary to pay special attention to the part devoted to special services of modern Russia. I shall note at once that it’s not the strongest part of the researches though the materials for the critical analysis are in large excess. Unfortunately, such analysis has not been made, therefore the part looks rather superficial.

However, the drawback noticed doesn’t belittle the general positive impression from the book of Pol Todd and Jonathan Bloch and can easily be recommended for reading to all those who are interested in the role and place of special services in the modern global policy.