The FBI-altered image of Osama bin Laden on the left incorporates the photograph of Spanish politician Gaspar Llamazares on the right.

The FBI incorporated the photograph of a Spanish politician in its age-progressed image of Osama bin Laden.

Apparently, an FBI forensic artist plucked the photo of Gaspar Llamazares off the Internet; the Bureau had touted the new bin Laden image, showing how he might look at age 52, as the product of cutting-edge technology. The FBI adapted the image, and another depicting bin Laden with a beard, from a 1998 photo of the al-Qaeda leader.

Click here for the BBC story and here for the CNN report.

Llamazares, the former leader of the United Left coalition in parliament, called the FBI’s use of his photo “shameless,” and said he feared he wouldn’t be able to travel to the U.S. anymore.

“I was surprised and angered because it’s the most shameless use of a real person to make up the image of a terrorist,” he said a news conference. ”It’s almost like out of a comedy if it didn’t deal with matters as serious as bin Laden and citizens’ security.”

Will Ostick, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, told CNN he had called Llamazares to “express regret” on behalf of the embassy.

“That was not normal procedure. It was completely unintentional and the FBI is looking into it to prevent it from happening again,” Ostick said.

Spain’s Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba is scheduled to meet the new American ambassador to Madrid, Alan Solomont, on Monday, according to CNN.

The photos were published on the State Department’s Rewards for Justice Web site on Friday.

An FBI spokesman explained the image-altering process in a statement to the BBC:

When producing age-progressed photographs, forensic artists typically select features from a database of stock reference photographs to create the new image.

After a preliminary review, it appears that in this instance the forensic artist was unable to find suitable features among the reference photographs and obtained those features, in part, from a photograph he found on the internet.

The forensic artist was not aware of the identity of the individual depicted in the photograph. The similarities between the photos were unintentional and inadvertent.

The U.S. intelligence community is near completion of a major assessment of the national security threat posed by international organized crime, according to administration officials and experts.

The National Intelligence Estimate, which could be finished as soon as January, was conceived more than two years ago to address the dangers posed by Eurasian criminal groups’ suspected infiltration of energy and other strategic markets.

But its focus broadened over time to include a wide swath of criminal syndicates and issues, from drug-trafficking by Mexican cartels to the relationship between terrorism and organized crime, the officials and experts said.

“Globalization has done great things for organized commerce, but it’s also helped organized criminal groups to advance as well,” said one senior Justice Department official, who spoke in general terms about the threat.

The threat was underscored in recent weeks, as reports emerged of an FBI investigation into a major cyberattack on Citibank Inc., which Citibank denies. And the Justice Department announced drug charges in New York against alleged Al-Qaeda associates arrested in Ghana during a Drug Enforcement Administration sting.

NIEs are produced under a classified process and carry the full weight of the U.S. intelligence community’s judgment. The existence of the NIE on international organized crime has not been previously reported.

The assessments are compiled by the National Intelligence Council, a research arm of intelligence community that reports directly to Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair. The NIC incorporates in its estimates expertise from inside and outside of the federal government.

The estimate’s focus expanded over time as more agencies sought to reap the benefits of inclusion, including increased funding and more say in policy direction. In this case, the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, State and Treasury contributed to the NIE, the officials said. The National Intelligence Council is expected to release a public overview of the threat assessment, increasing its visibility and impact, experts say.

“I think it’s going to open this field up to some serious academic research and funding,” said Louise Shelley, director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at George Mason University. “We’re going to be focusing on a whole range of issues that we haven’t thought enough about, and connecting the dots on other issues.”

A sensitive subject: Russia

One effect of broadening the NIE is that it allows the Obama administration to sidestep the diplomatically sensitive issue of Russia, where authorities have long suspected that the tentacles of organized crime reach into the government.

In 2008, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey gave a speech that identified as the top security threat organized criminals who control significant positions in the global energy and strategic materials markets, threatening U.S. geopolitical interests.

He never mentioned Russia. But as an example, Mukasey pointed to Semion Mogilevich, who is thought to be at the pinnacle of Russian organized crime and is said to have influence over large portions of the natural gas industry in former Soviet-bloc states.  (Mogilevich is wanted in the U.S. on racketeering charges, and the FBI recently placed him on its Top Ten Most Wanted list.)

Russian control of energy supplies and transport networks is a security issue for the European Union, which relies heavily on Russian natural gas. But Russia controls the spigot for pipelines that service Central and Western Europe through the former Soviet state of Ukraine. Twice since 2006, Russia has cut off gas to Ukraine in payment disputes, affecting EU supplies.

Of further concern to intelligence analysts is the murky ownership of some middleman companies crucial to European energy supplies.

In 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department’s organized crime unit was investigating the ownership of a Ukrainian energy trading company named Rosukrenergo AG, half owned by Russian state company OAO Gazprom.

In response to U.S. concerns about who ultimately controlled Rosukrenergo, company representatives met with the DOJ in Washington to disclose the ownership stake of a Ukrainian businessmen with ties to Mogilevich – the suspected organized crime figure on the FBI Most Wanted list, the Wall Street Journal reported.

There’s also the case of  William Browder, a U.S. native and British citizen who founded Hermitage Capital Management, once the largest foreign investment fund in Russia but now accused in Russian courts of tax evasion.

Hermitage has denied evading taxes. It has countered with allegations that a government-affiliated “criminal enterprise” siphoned off $230 million in taxes paid by Hermitage units. Browder has retained the law firm of former Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate.

Hermitage has filed an application for judicial assistance in the Southern District of New York federal court, asking the U.S. to compel access to information it says it needs to defend itself in Russia.

In a recent declaration filed in the case, Neil Mickelswaithe, a British solicitor and outside counsel to Hermitage, said the fund is the victim of a “criminal enterprise” in Russia spanning senior offices of the Russian Interior Ministry, the Russian Federal Security Service (the successor to the KGB), senior Russian tax officers, and certain Russian court judges and “numerous private individuals in Russia, some of whom have previous criminal convictions.”

U.S. authorities have long suspected billionaire Oleg Deripaska, one of Russia’s most powerful tycoons, of having ties to Russian organized crime. Deripaska, who made his fortune in the post-Soviet aluminum industry, is close to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, often traveling with him abroad. He presides over a business empire that spans metals, finance and construction.

Deripaska, who has denied any ties to organized crime, had been barred entry to the U.S. for years. But recently, the FBI made secret arrangements to allow him into the country to seek his assistance in an ongoing criminal probe, the Wall Street Journal reported. In two visits to the U.S. this year, Deripaska also met with executives of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Co.

Putin and other Russian officials have raised the visa issue with their U.S. counterparts, and in the past Deripaska hired high-powered Washington lobbyists — including former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) — to make his case for entry into the U.S.

New approach more measured

The Obama administration, in contrast, has been careful not single out any country or group. Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, in a speech and in interviews given at the Interpol General Assembly in October, noted continuing threats posed by Mexican drug cartels, South Asian heroin-trafficking syndicates, and traditional crime families from Asia and Eastern Europe.

Ogden made no mention of strategic markets. The apparent shift in message is reflected in the intelligence estimate, officials said.

Under Mukasey, the Justice Department pushed for a finished product before President George W. Bush left office. After a draft NIE was circulated late in the Bush administration, officials in the departments of Homeland Security, State, Treasury advocated a broader sweep, officials said. The recommendations were ultimately passed on to the Obama administration.

“When the Justice Department first started working on the estimate, there was much more focus on energy issues,” said George Mason’s Shelley, who was first contacted in March by government officials involved in drafting the estimate.

“They asked me what I thought was wrong with it, and I told them they needed to broaden the scope and the geographical range. There’s a tendency to stovepipe too much. When you broaden the scope, you are able to see the diversity of the problem and the relationship among
the different aspects of transnational crime,” she said.

The Obama administration has been actively highlighting fronts in the battle against international organized crime.

In November, the State Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement co-hosted a symposium in Honolulu. The event drew attention to criminal networks that span East Asia, the Pacific and Latin America — and that engage in a broad range of criminal activity, including drug, gun and human trafficking, money laundering and corruption.

Earlier this month, officials from the departments of Commerce, Homeland Security and Justice, as well as the White House, met with entertainment industry executives to focus on intellectual property crimes. The connection between piracy and organized crime is
well-documented, particularly in Asian countries such as China.

At the event, billed as the first of its kind, Attorney General Eric Holder called on the international community to respond.

“This is a problem that the United States cannot solve by itself,” said Holder. “We want to confront these nations, quite frankly, where too much of this occurs.”

Narco-trafficking also a danger

Violent Mexican cartels, responsible for thousands of killings south of the border, have emerged as a singular threat. Their vast drug-trafficking networks reach deep into the U.S., and law enforcement officials fear a scenario in which the cartels rent their smuggling routes to terrorists.

“If you were to ask me what is the biggest organized crime threat, I would say it’s more the cartels in general and other organized crime syndicates engaged in narco-trafficking and other illicit activities,” said David Luna, director for anti-crime programs at the State Department’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. “They’re not just in our backyard, they’re actually in the U.S.”

The link between terrorism and crime is also of growing concern, officials said. The case of the three alleged Al-Qaeda associates charged in New York, who are believed to be in their 30s and originally from Mali, appears to show a direct link between the terror group and drug traffickers. Authorities long maintained that Al Qaeda and the Taliban profit from the heroin trade in Afghanistan. Michael Braun, who retired as DEA’s chief of operations last year, told The Associated Press the case was “the tip of the iceberg.”

Decade-long focus

The intelligence community’s interest in international organized crime dates back more than a decade. In the mid-1990s, intelligence officials began work on a separate estimate, with the help of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, said Jim Moody, a former FBI Deputy Assistant Director who oversaw organized crime investigations.

The estimate, he said, “helped get rid of a lot of barriers to sharing information” between the intelligence and law enforcement communities and set priorities for developing intelligence on international criminal groups.

But its impact was curtailed by the events of Sept. 11, 2001. “Given the trauma that the country faced after the 9/11 attacks, international organized crime was relegated understandably to a second-tier national security priority” as the Bush administration redistributed resources to deal with terrorist threats, the State Department’s Luna said.

Officials said they hoped the estimate would cement international organized crime as top national security priority, motivate agencies to develop stronger policies and make an argument for increased funding.

Jay Albanese, former chief of the International Center at the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Justice Department, was cautiously optimistic.

“Estimates are a mixed bag,” he said, adding that international organized crime is neither easily quantified, nor easily defined.

“This puts those of us in the crime businsess at a severe disadvantage,” said Albanese, a criminologist and professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. “It’s very diffcult to say with any degree of accuracy how much we should be focusing on human-trafficking versus arms-trafficking.”

Mary Jacoby contributed to this report.

State Department official Debra Sue Brown pleaded guilty to illegally accessing confidential passport application files, the Justice Department announced Friday.

Between 2005 and 2008, Brown repeatedly logged  into the department’s Passport Information Electronic Records System (PIERS) to view passport information for more than 60 celebrities and their families, professional athletes, musicians, comedians and other people who were in the news, the DOJ said. She also viewed information on personal friends and acquaintances. Brown admitted her motivation was “idle curiosity,” the DOJ said.

Brown is the ninth current or former State Department employee or contractor to plead guilty to illegally accessing files in the department’s Passport Information Electronic Records System (PIERS). She is scheduled to be sentenced on Mar. 23, 2010.

Of the eight individuals who have already pleaded guilty to unlawfully accessing passport files, five  have been sentenced. All received 12 months probation and either community service of 50 or 100 hours or pay a $5,000 fine.

The cases are being prosecuted by Armando O. Bonilla of the public integrity section of the criminal division at DOJ.

The government has agreed to settle a 15-year-old lawsuit by an ex-Drug Enforcement Administration agent who alleged his conversations were illegally wiretapped, Politico reports.

Former DEA agent Richard Horn and his lawyer, Brian Leighton, a solo practitioner in Clovis, Calif., will receive $3 million. The government made no admission of wrongdoing in the settlement agreement. Horn had alleged that a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and a State Department official illegally eavesdropped on his conversations.

The Justice Department has been paying legal fees for former CIA officer Arthur Brown and former State Department official Franklin Huddle, who were sued in their official capacities. Horn alleged that Brown and Huddle placed a listening device in his coffee table, passing the collected information to Washington. At the time, in 1993, the three men were serving in Burma.

In the winding course the litigation, which had been under seal until this summer, the parties engaged one another over the government’s use of state secrets privilege, and a federal judge roughed up the CIA.

Politico reports:

The case became a massive headache for the government recently after [Chief] U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth found that government lawyers committed fraud on the court by pressing forward with state secrets claims in the case even after Huddle’s cover was formally rolled back by the CIA.

As part of the agreement, Horn dropped his motions for sanctions in the case, but the matter is still before Lamberth. Lamberth also ordered the government to issue security clearances to private lawyers so they could discuss classified information with their clients.

The Justice Department said it entered into a settlement, in part, to attempt to vacate Lamberth’s orders relating to security clearances and state secrets.

Lawyers for five former Blackwater guards charged with voluntary manslaughter are seeking a government security detail when they travel to Iraq to conduct their own investigation. The Justice Department is pushing back, calling the request “radical” and unnecessary, reports The National Law Journal.

The stakes are high for the government, as more foreign-based criminal allegations take root in federal district courts in the United States, according to The NLJ.

“The experiences of the prosecutors and the FBI in Iraq, and the substantial government resources devoted to their security, illustrate an obvious truth: American lawyers and investigators working in Baghdad face mortal danger,” wrote Steptoe & Johnson LLP partner Mark Hulkower in court papers filed earlier this month. “They require professional protection to assure their survival and to enable them to perform their work.”

The Justice Department responded in court papers filed last week, arguing that the lawyers should use one of the private security contractors working in Iraq.  The Justice lawyers said granting such a request would be an unprecedented and unwarranted exercise of judicial authority.

Judge Ricardo Urbina, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, spoke in court of his concern for the lawyers’ safety, but defense lawyers following the case told The NLJ that Urbina will likely side with the Justice Department.

“If they want armed bodyguards, by golly, there’s lot of folks who do that,” Puckett & Faraj military lawyer Neal Puckett of Alexandria, Va., told The NLJ.

Puckett, who has traveled to Iraq twice and owns his own body armor and Kevlar helmet, said he saw no basis for granting the request.

The government’s case against the Blackwater guards stems from a deadly shooting in Iraq in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square on Sept. 16, 2007. Seventeen unarmed Iraqi civilians were killed, after guards stopped in an crowded intersection and opened fire. Prosecutors say the guards were unprovoked.

The case is the first under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act to be filed against non-Defense Department private contractors.

Yesterday evening, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Lev L. Dassin and Acting Administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Michele M. Leonhart announced that Gerardo Aguilar Ramirez, a former front commander in the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC), has been extradited from Colombia to the United States, where he will face cocaine importation conspiracy charges.

The FARC, in addition to being designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the State Department, is the world’s largest cocaine manufacturer, producing more than half the world’s cocaine supply, and over two-thirds of the cocaine imported into the U.S.  According to press releases from the DOJ and DEA, Ramirez and others voted unanimously at a leadership meeting over 8 years ago to kidnap and murder U.S. citizens to dissuade the U.S. from supporting the Colombian government’s cocaine fumigation efforts against the FARC.

Ramirez is also charged in a separate indictment in a hostage-taking conspiracy involving four U.S. citizens, one of whom was executed, but will not be tried on the charges because the Colombian Supreme Court has not approved Ramirez’s extradition on the charges.  Ramirez is scheduled to be presented this morning at 10:30 a.m. in District of Columbia federal court before U.S, District Judge Thomas F. Hogan.  Codefendants Erminso Cuevas Cabrera, Jorge Enrique Rodriguez Mendieta, and Juan Jose Martinez Vega were previously extradited on the indictment, and are currently scheduled for trial on Jan. 5, 2010.  Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys from the Southern District of New York are prosecuting the case in the District of Colombia.

The release also states that the State Department has offered $75 million in rewards for information leading to the arrest of the highest-ranking FARC leadership defendants, who remain fugitives.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Eric Snyder, Pablo Quinones, and Randall Jackson are in charge of the prosecution.

You can read the DOJ press release in its entirety below:

LEADER OF COLOMBIAN NARCO-TERRORIST GROUP EXTRADITED TO UNITED STATES ON COCAINE

IMPORTATION CHARGES

NEW YORK – Lev L. Dassin, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Michele M. Leonhart, the Acting Administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), today announced that Gerardo Aguilar Ramirez, aka “Cesar,” a former front commander in the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC), has been extradited from Colombia to the United States to face cocaine importation conspiracy charges.

The FARC, which has been designated by the U.S. State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, is Colombia’s main leftist rebel group.  Aguilar Ramirez was extradited on an indictment, unsealed March 1, 2006, in the District of Columbia, in which the United States has levied charges against fifty of the top leaders of the FARC.  According to the indictment and documents filed by the United States in Colombian extradition proceedings:

The FARC, which occupies large swaths of territory in Colombia, is a hierarchical organization comprised of 12,000 to 18,000 members.  At the lowest level, the FARC is made up of 77 distinct military units, called Fronts, organized by geographical location.  These in turn are grouped into seven “blocs.”  The FARC is led by a seven-member Secretariat and a 27-member Central General Staff, or “Estado Mayor,” responsible for setting the cocaine policies of the FARC.  The FARCis responsible for the production of more than half the world’s supply of cocaine and nearly two-thirds of the cocaine imported into the United States.  It is the world’s leading cocaine manufacturer.  The FARC initially involved itself in the cocaine and cocaine paste trade by imposing a “tax” on individuals involved in every stage of cocaine production.  Later, in the 1990s, recognizing the profit potential, FARC leadership ordered that the FARC become the exclusive buyer of the raw cocaine paste used to make cocaine in all areas under FARC occupation.  Before his capture on July 2, 2008, Aguilar Ramirez was the commander of theFARC’s 1st Front and was ultimately responsible for all of that front’s criminal activities.  In that capacity he conspired with others to, among other things, manufacture and distribute thousands of tons of cocaine in Colombia, with the knowledge and intent that such cocaine would be imported into the United States.

In the late 1990s, the FARC leadership met and voted unanimously in favor of a number of resolutions, including resolutions to: expand coca production in areas of Colombia under FARC control; expand the FARC’s international distribution routes; increase the number of crystallization labs in which cocaine paste would be converted into cocaine; appoint members within each Front to be in charge of coca production; raise prices that the FARC would pay to campesinos (peasant farmers) from whom they purchased cocaine paste; and mandate that better chemicals be used to increase the quality of cocaine paste.

Further, recognizing that the FARC could not survive without its cocaine revenue, the indicted members of the Secretariat and Estado Mayor directed its members to attack and disrupt coca eradication fumigation efforts, including shooting down fumigation aircraft; forcing local farmers to participate in rallies against fumigation; and attacking Colombian infrastructure to force the Colombian Government to divert resources from fumigation.  Recognizing that the United States has contributed significantly to Colombian fumigation efforts, the FARC leaders also ordered FARC members to kidnap and murder U.S. citizens in order to dissuade the United States from its continued efforts to fumigate and disrupt the FARC’s cocaine manufacturing and distribution activities.  In late 2001 or early 2002, Aguilar Ramirez and other FARC leaders participated in a meeting at which they voted unanimously to encourage the kidnapping of U.S. citizens for that purpose.  The meeting also resulted in resolutions to, among other things: increase cocaine trafficking routes overseas, including to the United States; establish better ways to exchange cocaine and cocaine paste for weapons; pay more to campesinos for cocaine paste; and to apply “Revolutionary Justice,” including murder, to any campesino who failed to sell coca to the FARC.

Aguilar Ramirez is also charged in a separate indictment in a hostage-taking conspiracy involving four U.S. citizens — Marc D. Gonsalves, Thomas R. Howes, Keith D. Stensell and Tom Janis — whose plane crashed in February 2003 in FARC-occupied territory in the Colombian jungle.  The four were captured by theFARC.  Janis was executed and the remaining three were led into captivity and held hostage for more than five years until their rescue on July 2, 2008.  Aguilar Ramirez was captured at that time while holding the three American hostages.  The Colombian Supreme Court has not approved Aguilar Ramirez’s extradition on these charges, however; it has only approved his extradition on the narcotics conspiracy charges, and therefore Aguilar Ramirez will be tried only on those narcotics charges.

Aguilar Ramirez, 50, is scheduled to be presented tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. in District of Columbia federal court before U.S, District Judge Thomas F. Hogan.  Codefendants Erminso Cuevas Cabrera, aka “Mincho,” Jorge Enrique Rodriguez Mendieta, aka “Ivan Vargas,” and Juan Jose Martinez Vega, aka “Chiguiro,” were previously extradited on the indictment, and are currently scheduled for trial beginning Jan. 5, 2010.  Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys from the Southern District of New York are prosecuting the case in the District of Colombia.

The State Department has offered $75 million in rewards for information leading to the arrest of the highest-ranking FARC leadership defendants, who remain fugitives.

“The FARC’s terrorist and cocaine-trafficking activities pose an extraordinarily grave threat to the people of Colombia and the United States,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Dassin. “We are committed, together with Colombian authorities and United States law enforcement agencies, to attacking FARC’s criminal leadership.  The extradition of Aguilar Ramirez, alleged to be a high-level FARC commander, is another milestone in this office’s fight against narco-terrorism worldwide.”

“Today’s extradition of Aguilar Ramirez continues our unwavering commitment to bring to justice leaders of this violent narco-terrorist organization,” said DEA Acting Administrator Michele M. Leonhart.  “Aguilar Ramirez is alleged, as commander of one of the FARC’s most dangerous fronts, to have participated in decisions to kidnap Americans and to attack the Colombian infrastructure in support of the FARC’s massive narco-terrorism operations.  He will now face justice.”

The investigation resulting in these charges was led by the International Narcotics Trafficking Unit of U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, working with the New York Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Strike Force (which is comprised of agents and officers of the DEA, the New York City Police Department, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division, the Department of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, and the New York State Police) and the DEA’s Bogota, Colombia, Country Office.  The investigation, conducted under the auspices of the Department of Justice’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force Program, involved unprecedented cooperation from the Colombian Military, the Colombian National Police, and the Colombian Fiscalia.  Mr. Dassin praised all the law enforcement partners involved in the investigation, and thanked the Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs, as well as Criminal Division’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section attachés in Bogota for their involvement in the extradition process.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Eric Snyder, Pablo Quinones and Randall Jackson are in charge of the prosecution.

The charges contained in the indictment are merely allegations.  All defendants are presumed innocent unless and until convicted in a court of law.

President Obama nominated former Clinton U.S. Attorney Stephen Rapp to be the State Department’s ambassador at large for war crimes issues, according to a White House news release yesterday.

Stephen Rapp (UCLA)

Rapp was the U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Iowa from 1993 to 2001 after working as the staff director on the Senate Judiciary juvenile delinquency subcommittee and serving as an  elected member of the Iowa legislature. Following his tenure at the U.S. Attorney’s office, he was the senior trial attorney and chief of prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and served as a prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, where he led the prosecution of former Liberian President Charles Taylor for war crimes.

The ambassador at large for war crimes issues advises the Secretary of State on U.S. policy for areas  of conflict where atrocities occur.

Former State Department analyst Walter Kendall Myers and his wife were arrested by the FBI for serving as illegal agents for the Cuban government for nearly 30 years, press release here.  The charges include conspiracy to provide classified information to the Cuban government, serving as an illegal agent for the Cuban government, and wire fraud.

Myers, now 72 years old, started working for the State Department in 1977 as a contract instructor at the Department’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI).  In 1988 he started “periodic work” with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which turned into a full-time job in July 2001.  From then on, until he retired in October 2007, Myers “specialized in intelligence analysis on European matters and had daily access to classified information through computer databases and otherwise.”  (His clearance was bumped up from “Top Secret” to “Top Secret/SCI” in 1999)

You can read details on the FBI’s undercover operation below:

Undercover Operation:

According to the affidavit, in April 2009, the FBI launched an undercover operation to convince the couple that they had been contacted by a Cuban intelligence officer and to ascertain the scope of their activities for the CuIS.  On April 15, 2009, an undercover FBI source posing as a Cuban intelligence officer approached Kendall Myers in Washington, D.C., stating that he had been sent to contact Myers by a named CuIS official in order to obtain information.  The FBI source also congratulated Kendall Myers on his birthday and offered him a cigar.  Myers agreed to meet the source later that day at a nearby hotel and volunteered to bring his wife along to the meeting.

During the meeting later that day, the couple agreed to meet the source again and to provide information on U.S. government personnel with responsibility for Latin America.  According to the affidavit, the couple also made a series of statements about their past activities on behalf of the CuIS, including acknowledging having received coded messages from the CuIS via shortwave radio, meeting CuIS officials in Mexico, and being alert to surveillance. “We have been very cautious, careful with our moves and, uh, trying to be alert to any surveillance,” Kendall Myers allegedly told the FBI source.

In subsequent meetings with the FBI source, the Myers allegedly agreed to provide information on the April 17-19, 2009 Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, as well as to use specified code words, signals and encryption programs to transmit information via email during future interactions with the source.  They also asked the source to “send special greetings…and hugs” to certain CuIS officials.

In addition, the couple allegedly made further statements to the source about their past activities for the CuIS.  According to the affidavit, the defendants discussed how they were first recruited by the CuIS and how codes had been used for each of them in messages, including “123” for Gwendolyn Myers and “202” for Kendall Myers.  The Myers also stated that they had traveled to meet Cuban agents in Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Jamaica, New York City and other locations.

The Myers also discussed how they had passed information to CuIS agents, with both agreeing that the most secure way was “hand-to-hand.” According to the affidavit, Gwendolyn Myers said her favorite way of passing information to CuIS agents involved the changing of shopping carts in a grocery store because it was “easy enough to do.”

According to the affidavit, Kendall Myers told the source that he typically removed information from the State Department by memory or by taking notes, although he did occasionally take some documents home. “I was always pretty careful. I, I didn’t usually take documents out,” he said.  According to the affidavit, he also acknowledged delivering information to the CuIS that was classified beyond the “Secret” level.   He further stated that he had received “lots of medals” from the Cuban government and that he and his wife had met and spent an evening with Fidel Castro in 1995.

And here’s some information about how Myers was recruited by the Cubans:

Recruitment:

According to the affidavit, Kendall Myers traveled to Cuba in December 1978 after receiving an invitation from an official who served at the Cuban Mission to the United States in New York City.   His guide while in Cuba was an official with Cuba’s Foreign Service Institute.  This trip provided the Cuban Intelligence Service (CuIS) with the opportunity to assess or develop Myers as a Cuban agent, according to the affidavit.

Approximately six months after the trip, the Myers were visited in South Dakota by the official from the Cuban Mission in New York and, according to the affidavit, Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers agreed to serve as clandestine agents of the Cuban government.  Afterwards, the CuIS directed Kendall Myers to pursue a job at either the State Department or the CIA.  Kendall Myers, accompanied by his wife, then returned to Washington, D.C., where he resumed contract work at the State Department and later obtained a State Department position that required a Top Secret security clearance.

According to the affidavit, during this time frame, the CuIS often communicated with its clandestine agents in the United States by broadcasting encrypted radio messages from Cuba on shortwave radio frequencies.  Clandestine agents in the United States monitoring the frequency on shortwave radio could decode the messages using a decryption program provided by the CuIS.  Such methods were employed by defendants previously convicted of espionage on behalf of Cuba.  According to the affidavit, the Myers have an operable shortwave radio in their apartment and they told an FBI source that they have used it to receive messages from the CuIS.

The Justice Department will launch a center  that will bring together more than a dozen government groups to fight international crime, Attorney General Eric Holder said today in Rome at the G8 Justice and Home Affairs Ministerial.

The International Organized Crime Intelligence and Operations Center will enable these agencies to meet together and more effectively coordinate international criminal prosecutions, according to a DOJ statement.

“The globalization of criminal networks and advances in technology have made international criminal organizations a significant threat to the safety and security of our nation,” Holder said in the statement.  “But we are answering that threat by developing a 21st century organized crime program that will be nimble and sophisticated enough to combat the danger posed by these criminals for years to come.  [The center] gives us the capacity to collect, synthesize and disseminate information and intelligence from multiple sources to enable federal law enforcement to prioritize and target the individuals and organizations that pose the greatest international organized crime threat to the United States.”

The center will bring together:  the FBI; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the Drug Enforcement Administration; Internal Revenue Service; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Secret Service; U.S. Postal Inspection Service; Department of State, Bureau of Diplomatic Security; Department of Labor, Office of the Inspector General; the Justice Department, Criminal Division;  the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Treasury Department, Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

At the G8 meeting, Holder also highlighted the necessity for collaboration between U.S. and foreign law enforcement, according to the Justice Department.

“He noted that the creation of (the center) demonstrates the United States’ commitment to addressing international organized crime issues and will make the United States a more effective partner for joint investigations and prosecutions,” the DOJ statement said in the statement.

Ex-FBI interrogator Ali Soufan and a former State Department counselor Philip Zelikow told the Senate Judiciary administrative oversight and the courts subcommittee that the harsh interrogation methods used against terror suspects were abusive and did not help in the battle against al Qaeda.

Zelikow, who advised then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, questioned the legality of the harsh interrogations in a May 2005 memo to the Justice Department, which he claimed was lost by the Bush administration. He said at the hearing today that his memo has been found as he continued to stand behind the advice he gave to Main Justice.

“The U.S. government adopted an unprecedented program of coolly calculated dehumanizing abuse and physical torment to extract information,” Zelikow said before the subcommittee. “This was a mistake, perhaps a disastrous one.”

Soufan — who interrogated suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah — said harsh techniques including nudity and sleep deprivation were “borderline torture” that did not work. He added that he was not involved with the 83 times Zubaydah was waterboarded.

“These techniques, from an operation perspective, are ineffective slow and unreliable, and as result harmful to our efforts to defeat al Qaeda,” Soufan said from behind a curtain that concealed his identity.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) condemned waterboarding – that was also used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The Republican said although Bush officials weren’t perfect, they did not break any laws when they authorized the harsh interrogation methods.

“They made mistakes,” Graham said. “They took a very aggressive interpretation of the law.”

Democrats present including Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) disputed the legality of the harsh interrogation methods.

Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the authorization of the interrogation techniques a “fundamental breakdown of the rule of law.”  Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the Bush administration legal opinions on the methods were discounted in Supreme Court decisions.

Graham argued that the interrogations could have saved lives, and forcing the executive branch into compliance with the Army Field Manual when dealing with interrogations could have a chilling effect on the president. Interrogators were acting in compliance with the Army Field Manual at the time the harsh interrogations were conducted. A 2006 version of the guide prohibited waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods.

“If we restrict ourselves to the field manual, then shame on us,” Graham said. “It is a guide for soldiers on the field.”

Whitehouse, who chairs the subcommittee, said there is no evidence that harsh interrogation methods helped elicit pertinent information from suspected terrorists.

“We were told that torturing detainees was justified by American lives saved – saved as a result of actionable intelligence produced on the waterboard,” Whitehouse said. “This is far from clear. Nothing I have seen as a member of Intelligence Committee convinces me this was the case.”

In addition to Soufan and Zelikow, professors David Luban, Robert Turner and Jeffrey Addicott testified at the hearing. Only Turner, associate director of the Center for National Security Law, agreed with Graham that the Bush administration made mistakes, but did not break the law.

Luban, a law professor at Georgetown University, said the memos authored by then-DOJ Office of Legal Counsel lawyers Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury were “a legal train wreck.”

“Unfortunately, the interrogation memos fall far short of professional advice and independent judgment,” Luban said. “They involved a selective and in place deeply eccentric reading of the law.”