Saturday, August 27, 2005

WSJ / NBC Poll : U.S. Public Is Hostile to Cnooc Bid

July 14, 2005

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that 73% of Americans dislike the potential deal, fueling prospects that U.S. lawmakers will seize on the issue as the takeover battle continues.


Hu Will Press Bush on Energy Deals



By REBECCA BLUMENSTEIN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNALAugust 25, 2005 8:55 p.m.; Page A11

BEIJING -- Chinese President Hu Jintao plans to urge President Bush at a coming meeting to let companies from both their nations pursue energy acquisitions without politics getting in the way, a senior Chinese official said.

The official, talking about the scheduled Sept. 7 meeting in the U.S. between the two presidents, said energy "is very likely to be one of the items on the agenda."

While each country should be able to pursue its own strategy, "we hope that business issues will prevail and the issues will not become politicized," the official said.

The meeting between Messrs. Hu and Bush will take place five weeks after China's Cnooc Ltd. halted its efforts to buy U.S. oil company Unocal Corp. for $18.5 billon. American lawmakers raised an outcry about a Chinese company potentially buying U.S. energy assets. While Cnooc's offer for Unocal topped that of Chevron Corp. of the U.S., the Chinese company withdrew it because of the stiff U.S. resistance, leaving the way open for the American bidder to win.

Chinese officials have high hopes for Mr. Hu's trip, his first state visit to the U.S. since taking office in March 2003. They say relations between the two countries remain good, though they acknowledge that tensions have been rising during the past year over issues including America's widening trade deficit with China, Beijing's rising demand for natural resources such as oil, and concern about increased Chinese military spending.

Mr. Hu is expected to meet members of Congress and see factories in a trip that the Chinese government hopes will allow him to meet "regular people" as well as politicians. The Chinese leader is expected to give a speech at Yale University.

Among the messages Chinese officials hope Mr. Hu will convey is how open China has been to U.S. investment. The senior Chinese official, in his remarks yesterday about the trip, said more than 50,000 American enterprises have invested in China, "and we welcome their business." He estimated American investment in China at about $50 billion.

During the trip, Mr. Hu also is expected to highlight moves by China to increase its imports from the U.S., ranging from Boeing Corp. planes to soybeans.

Chinese officials say bilateral relations have been improving during the past two months. China recently moved to allow the yuan, formerly pegged at 8.28 to the dollar, to rise about 2% and introduced a reference to a basket of currencies. U.S. critics had been pressuring China to make an adjustment to its currency, which they argue makes Chinese exports to the U.S. unfairly inexpensive. Many argued that China's move didn't go far enough.

Mr. Hu doesn't intend to discuss China's currency during the meeting with Mr. Bush, according to the senior official, who called it an internal matter. However, he said Beijing will continue on "this road to reform" of its currency, though he declined to be specific about any possible further adjustments.

Friday, August 26, 2005

Housing-Bubble Talk Doesn't Scare Off Foreigners


Global Investors Gobble Up Mortgage-Backed Securities,Keeping Prices Strong


By RUTH SIMON, JAMES R. HAGERTY and JAMES T. AREDDY Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL August 24, 2005; Page A1


Strong demand for mortgage-backed securities from investors world-wide is allowing American lenders to make more loans -- and riskier ones -- in a way that is helping prolong the boom in U.S. house prices.

The cash pouring in -- not only from U.S. investors but increasingly from Europe and Asia -- keeps stoking the housing market even as the Federal Reserve Board continues to raise interest rates, normally something that damps home prices. The market has shown a few signs of slowing recently, and talk of a bubble has grown louder, but prices continue to rise or remain at lofty levels as investors continue to gobble up mortgage-backed securities and banks keep lending.

"As the Fed has tightened, lenders have eased" terms for borrowers, says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com, a forecasting firm in West Chester, Pa.

Investment banks and other firms have been buying mortgage loans from lenders and packaging them into securities for sale to investors since the 1980s. But investor demand has surged in recent years, largely because in an era of low returns, mortgage-backed securities offer yield-starved investors much higher returns than government bonds.

U.S. lenders will make about $2.8 trillion in home-mortgage loans this year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The MBA estimates that about 80% of these loans will end up in mortgage-backed securities. Mortgage-backed securities outstanding at the end of the first quarter totaled $4.61 trillion, up 61% since the end of 2000. In the same period, total Treasury securities outstanding grew 35% to $4.54 trillion.

Investors' strong demand for mortgage debt, besides allowing lenders to offer many borrowers better terms, has also made it easier to offer mortgages to borrowers who might not easily qualify for a loan. The growth of the mortgage markets spreads the risks around. But some mortgage-industry analysts say lenders have become less stringent in their loan terms because they can sell almost any type of loan to those who package mortgage securities for investors.

"Loose lending standards are probably the single biggest thing fueling the speculative fever we have today" in housing, says Kenneth Rosen, an economist who is chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate at the University of California at Berkeley.

In a world of low interest rates, the market for mortgage securities is simply too big and profitable for many investors to ignore. Investors can earn about 5.5% on mortgage securities whose payments are guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, government-sponsored companies. Those who can stomach greater risk can buy subprime mortgage securities, which come with no guarantee but can yield as much as 15%, according to Bear Stearns. By contrast, 10-year U.S. Treasurys yield about 4.2%; the equivalent government securities in Germany yield about 3.2% and in Japan 1.5%.

The buyers of mortgage-backed securities include U.S. pension funds, hedge funds and insurance companies. But overseas investors are the fastest-growing source of demand. The trade publication Inside MBS & ABS estimates that foreigners held $280 billion of U.S. mortgage securities at the end of 2004, or 6% of the total outstanding. The foreigners' holdings rose 26% last year and have continued to bound ahead so far this year, Inside MBS & ABS says.

"There's this insatiable appetite for mortgage-backed securities world-wide," says Andrew Sciandra, a senior vice president at IndyMac Bancorp, a California thrift, who heads a team that creates those securities. In the past year, Mr. Sciandra has met with investors from places like Germany, France and Abu Dhabi. Asian investors now account for roughly 10% to 20% of mortgage securities sold by IndyMac.

For homeowners, the growing international demand for mortgages means it's increasingly likely that the money they borrow to buy a home or refinance their mortgage is coming ultimately from outside the U.S. When Claude Gaty, a chef and co-owner of a bistro in Las Vegas, recently refinanced the mortgage on his four-bedroom Las Vegas home, the lender was IndyMac. But the bulk of the money came from investors in Asia.

IndyMac pooled Mr. Gaty's loan with about 3,000 other mortgages that carry a fixed rate for the first three, five or seven years. Mr. Gaty is paying both principal and interest on his loan, but most of the loans in the pool are interest-only mortgages, which allow borrowers to pay no principal in the early years. When the $650 million offering of triple-A rated bonds backed by these mortgages came to market in June, it drew more than a dozen investors from Europe, Asia and the U.S., according to Deutsche Bank, which handled the deal. Such bonds typically yield 0.75 to 1.15 percentage point more than Treasurys, Deutsche Bank says.

The most recent entrant to the market is China. Its banks are rich with deposits from Chinese companies that earn dollars exporting to the U.S. Dollars have also been handed to some banks by the government in Beijing as part of its efforts to strengthen their balance sheets.

Until a few years ago, Chinese investors restricted U.S. investment mostly to Treasurys. Now, to boost their yields and because they consider the market safe, bankers from a number of institutions say they are devoting more of their portfolios to mortgage securities. Some bankers say their goal is to have 40% of their U.S. dollars in asset-backed securities.

China's government also is testing U.S. mortgage investment. The country's Bank of Communications, the only bank with a mandate to help manage China's $700 billion of foreign-exchange reserves, has recently put a sliver of those reserves into mortgage-backed issues, according to a banker there. The State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the government agency in charge of the reserves, declined to comment.

Zhu Kai, who helps manage U.S. dollar investments at Bank of China, says in a rare interview that his mortgage-backed portfolio has "plenty of room to grow." Mr. Zhu expresses confidence in the U.S. dollar and the health of the U.S. home market. Housing is so vital to the U.S. economy, Mr. Zhu and some of his counterparts at other Chinese banks reason, that U.S. authorities will prevent a bust.

Even the recent decision by the Chinese government to raise the value of its currency by about 2% isn't likely to lead Chinese banks to shift their plans. "The timing may be a little bit surprising but we will not change our investment portfolio," Mr. Zhu says.

While Asian investors have largely focused on triple-A-rated bonds, other investors are buying lower-rated debt. These bonds, which are created when bankers carve up pools of mortgages, offer higher yields, but also bear the first risk of losses should borrowers default. Investors who buy these bonds in effect set the standards for which mortgages are made by deciding how much extra yield they need to compensate for the added risks of lower-quality loans. They include real-estate investment trusts, hedge funds and investors from Europe.

Strong investor interest has also made loans available to borrowers with poor credit and many other people who might otherwise have trouble getting a mortgage. Subprime loans included in mortgage securities totaled $401.5 billion last year, nearly double the total for 2003, according to Standard & Poor's. Meanwhile, loans with less than full documentation of the borrower's income and assets accounted for 70% of mortgage securities rated by Standard & Poor's in this year's first half, double the level recorded in 2000.

"There's no question that [lending] standards have loosened over the past couple of years," says Arthur Frank, director of mortgage research at Nomura Securities International in New York. If house prices fall, "you may well have some pretty serious credit problems," hurting holders of the lower-rated mortgage securities.

Mr. Zhu, the Chinese fund manager, is sanguine, for now. The U.S. housing market is "maybe losing a bit of steam," Mr. Zhu says. "I think the monetary authorities, they don't want this housing market to burst. I don't think it is a bubble. But if things go on like this for another five years, it's a different story."

Read more about the housing market and see home-buying calculators and resources.

Hu's Visit to U.S. Has Trade Agenda

By KATHY CHEN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL August 25, 2005; Page A7

BEIJING -- Chinese President Hu Jintao will visit the U.S. in early September armed with a host of trade deals that could help ease economic tensions between the countries.

President Bush is scheduled to meet his Chinese counterpart Sept. 7, the White House said. Beyond that, the two sides are still ironing out details of the several-days visit, including whether Mr. Bush will host a state dinner for Mr. Hu.

He Ning, director-general of the America and Oceania Affairs Department of China's Ministry of Commerce, said "various trade and economic deals will be signed between China and the U.S. that have been put together by different government departments and companies." He declined to provide further details.

Among deals that could be signed is one between China National Nuclear Corp. and Westinghouse Electric Co., the U.S. nuclear arm of British Nuclear Fuels PLC. Westinghouse and companies from France and Russia have been vying for a CNNC contract to build pressurized water reactors in China. A Chinese official at CNNC suggested a deal could be in the works, but Westinghouse executives said they hadn't heard any news on their bid.

Mr. Hu also is expected to visit Boeing Co. Chinese officials are in negotiations for what is expected to be an order for at least several single-aisle 737s, according to people familiar with the talks.

Another agreement involving Chinese quarantine and inspection procedures for U.S. exports to China is on the table, Chinese quarantine officials said. They declined to provide details, but the U.S. often has alleged that Beijing uses quarantine and inspection regulations as nontariff barriers to imports of U.S. farm products and other goods.

While Mr. Hu has visited the U.S. previously and met with Mr. Bush on numerous occasions, it is his first state visit to the U.S. since taking office in March 2003. The trip comes amid strains between the countries over such economic issues as China's widespread violation of intellectual-property rights, the ballooning U.S. trade deficit with China and a failed bid by China's Cnooc Ltd. to buy U.S. oil-and-gas company Unocal Corp.

The White House, in a statement Tuesday, said: "The president looks forward to holding discussions with President Hu on the full range of issues on the U.S.-China agenda and continuing to build a candid, constructive, and cooperative bilateral relationship."

Some in the U.S. also want Beijing to let the Chinese currency appreciate further. China recently allowed the yuan, formerly pegged at 8.28 to the dollar, to rise by about 2% and linked it to a basket of currencies. These critics say that despite the adjustment, the yuan remains undervalued.

Despite such tensions, the U.S. and China in recent years have established a practical working relationship to address shared problems such as North Korea's nuclear program, drug smuggling and terrorism. Both sides expressed optimism about Mr. Hu's visit.

Yan Xuetong, head of the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University, said one agenda issue would be setting up a system to manage bilateral relations between China as a rising power and the U.S. as the world's only superpower.

Besides meeting with Mr. Bush, Mr. Hu is scheduled to stop in Washington state, where he may visit Microsoft Corp. as well as Boeing. He also is expected to give a speech before the United Nations General Assembly and meet with other U.S. officials and congressional leaders.

--Cui Rong in Beijing, Neil King in Washington and J. Lynn Lunsford in Los Angeles contributed to this article.

Write to Kathy Chen at kathy.chen@wsj.com

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Hackers Attack Via Chinese Web Sites

U.S. Agencies' Networks Are Among Targets

By Bradley GrahamWashington Post Staff Writer Thursday, August 25, 2005; A01

Web sites in China are being used heavily to target computer networks in the Defense Department and other U.S. agencies, successfully breaching hundreds of unclassified networks, according to several U.S. officials.

Classified systems have not been compromised, the officials added. But U.S. authorities remain concerned because, as one official said, even seemingly innocuous information, when pulled together from various sources, can yield useful intelligence to an adversary.

"The scope of this thing is surprisingly big," said one of four government officials who spoke separately about the incidents, which stretch back as far as two or three years and have been code-named Titan Rain by U.S. investigators. All officials insisted on anonymity, given the sensitivity of the matter.

Whether the attacks constitute a coordinated Chinese government campaign to penetrate U.S. networks and spy on government databanks has divided U.S. analysts. Some in the Pentagon are said to be convinced of official Chinese involvement; others see the electronic probing as the work of other hackers simply using Chinese networks to disguise the origins of the attacks.

"It's not just the Defense Department but a wide variety of networks that have been hit," including the departments of State, Energy and Homeland Security as well as defense contractors, the official said. "This is an ongoing, organized attempt to siphon off information from our unclassified systems."

Another official, however, cautioned against exaggerating the severity of the intrusions. He said the attacks, while constituting "a large volume," were "not the biggest thing going on out there."

Apart from acknowledging the existence of Titan Rain and providing a sketchy account of its scope, the officials who were interviewed declined to offer further details, citing legal and political considerations and a desire to avoid giving any advantage to the hackers. One official said the FBI has opened an investigation into the incidents. The FBI declined to comment.

One official familiar with the investigation said it has not provided definitive evidence of who is behind the attacks. "Is this an orchestrated campaign by PRC or just a bunch of disconnected hackers? We just can't say at this point," the official said, referring to the People's Republic of China.

With the threat of computer intrusions on the rise generally among Internet users, U.S. government officials have made no secret that their systems, like commercial and household ones, are subject to attack. Because the Pentagon has more computers than any other agency -- about 5 million worldwide -- it is the most exposed to foreign as well as domestic hackers, the officials said.

Over the past few years, the Defense Department has taken steps to better organize what had been a rather disjointed approach to cyber security by individual branches of the armed forces. Last year, responsibility for managing the Pentagon's computer networks was assigned to the new Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations under the U.S. Strategic Command.

"Like everybody connected to the Internet, we're seeing a huge spike" in outside scanning of Pentagon systems, said Lt. Col. Mike VanPutte, vice director of operations at the task force.

"That's really for two reasons. One is, the tools are much simpler today. Anyone can download an attack tool and target any block on the Internet. The second is, the intrusion detection systems in place today," which are more sophisticated and can identify more attacks.

Pentagon figures show that more attempts to scan Defense Department systems come from China, which has 119 million Internet users, than from any other country. VanPutte said this does not mean that China is where all the probes start, only that it is "the last hop" before they reach their targets.

He noted that China is a convenient "steppingstone" for hackers because of the large number of computers there that can be compromised. Also, tracing hackers who use Chinese networks is complicated by the lack of cyber investigation agreements between China and the United States, another task force official said.

The number of attempted intrusions from all sources identified by the Pentagon last year totaled about 79,000, defense officials said, up from about 54,000 in 2003. Of those, hackers succeeded in gaining access to a Defense Department computer in about 1,300 cases. The vast majority of these instances involved what VanPutte called "low risk" computers.

Concern about computer attacks from China comes amid heightened U.S. worry generally about Chinese military activities. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned in June that China's military spending threatened the security balance in Asia, and the Pentagon's latest annual report on Chinese military power, released last month, described the ongoing modernization of Beijing's armed forces.

The report contained a separate section on development of computer attack systems by China's military. It said the People's Liberation Army (PLA) sees computer network operations as "critical to seize the initiative" in establishing "electromagnetic dominance" early in a conflict to increase effectiveness in battle.

"The PLA has likely established information warfare units to develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems and networks, and tactics to protect friendly computer systems and networks," the report said.

"The PLA has increased the role of CNO [computer network operations] in its military exercises," the report added. "Although initial training efforts focused on increasing the PLA's proficiency in defensive measures, recent exercises have incorporated offensive operations, primarily as first strikes against enemy networks."

The computer attacks from China have given added impetus to Pentagon moves to adopt new detection software programs and improve training of computer security specialists, several officials said.

"It's a constant game of staying one step ahead," one said.

Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Hearing on China's Growing Global Influence: Objectives and Strategies


U.S.-China Commission Hearings
July 21-22, 2005 Washington, DC

Report is available online at: http://hongkong.usconsulate.gov/pas/eb/2005/0802.htm

Hearing Cochairs: Commissioners Carolyn Bartholomew, June Teufel Dreyer and Michael R. Wessel

Panel I: Congressional Perspectives
Panel II: China's Future Energy Development and Acquisition Strategies
Panel III: Factors Driving China's Global Strategy and U.S. Policy Responses
Panel IV: China's Approach to Africa
Panel V: China's Approach to Latin America
Panel VI: China's Approach to Europe
Panel VII: China's Approach to Northeast and Southeast Asia
Panel VIII: China's Approach to South Asia and Former Soviet States

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Chinese, Russian Militaries to Hold First Joint Drills

Alliance May Extend to Arms Sales

By Peter Finn Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, August 15, 2005; A10

MOSCOW -- Russia and China will hold their first ever joint military exercises this week as the once wary neighbors demonstrate their willingness to cooperate in the face of the U.S. military presence in Central Asia.

The two countries will also do a little business on the side as Russia shops its hardware, including nuclear-capable strategic bombers, to its military-industrial complex's best customer, Russian and Chinese defense analysts said.

The simulated land, sea and air operations are scheduled for Thursday in the Russian Far East, near the city of Vladivostok, before moving on to the Chinese coastal province of Shandong and the Yellow Sea. The two countries have held exercises before with other Central Asian republics, but this week's maneuvers are the first bilateral exercises, defense analysts said.

"The Chinese want to use Russia in a complicated game with the U.S. and Taiwan," said Alexander Golts, a military analyst and journalist in Moscow. "China is expanding its military presence in the region. For Russia, this is mostly about selling weapons."

Billed Peace Mission 2005, the exercise involves about 10,000 troops simulating a mission to aid a third state where law and order has broken down because of terrorist violence.

"The joint exercises will help strengthen the capability of the two armed forces in jointly striking international terrorism, extremism and separatism," China's official New China News Agency said.

The use of that last word, separatism, has unsettled some in Taiwan, who fear that China would try to draw on Russia's support in the event of a confrontation with the island.

Russia, however has resisted being drawn into any standoff with Taiwan -- even a simulated one. According to Russian reports, the Defense Ministry here rejected Chinese proposals to hold the exercises closer to Taiwan.

"China tries to put the Taiwan question into every issue, but for Russia that was never the purpose of the exercises," said Dmitry Kormilitsyn, an analyst at Chinacom, a Moscow think tank that studies China and Russian-Chinese relations. "In Central Asia, on the other hand, Russian and Chinese interests are very close: maintaining the status quo and pushing back against the very active U.S. presence."

The two countries have invited observers from the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, which together with Russia and China form the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

That group recently called on the United States to set a timetable to withdraw its forces from bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, which are used to support military operations in Afghanistan. The Uzbek authorities later gave U.S. forces 180 days to pull out, after the United States criticized the Uzbek government for suppressing demonstrators in the city of Andijan in May, leaving hundreds dead, according to human rights groups.

"The reason that China can have a joint military exercise with Russia is that mutual understanding between the two countries has reached a certain level, and this gives out a signal to neighboring countries," Ni Lexiong, a military expert who teaches at Shanghai Normal University, said in an interview with the China Times newspaper. "I believe the implied message of Peace Mission 2005 is very obvious: We are facing the same threat."

The week will begin with a news conference and a planning exercise in Vladivostok. Russian airborne troops and marines will then seize a beachhead on China's Shandong peninsula in advance of an inland offensive coordinated with the Chinese military, Vladimir Moltenskoi, a Russian army deputy commander, said in an interview with Russian television.

Toward the end of the exercise, the Russians will deploy strategic, long-range bombers, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, which will fire cruise missiles at targets on the surface of the sea.
"You wonder, if this is a peacekeeping operation, what the strategic bombers are doing there," said Golts, the military analyst.

Moltenskoi said the strategic aircraft, as part of the simulation, would "prevent the vessels of any other countries from approaching the area of the peacekeeping operation."

But Zhao Zongjiu, who teaches at the People's Liberation Army's Nanjing Politics Institute, said in a published comment: "My own understanding is that Russia wants to achieve more military trade with China by engaging in the joint military exercises, in addition to its purpose of promoting military cooperation with China."

In particular, Russia is trying to interest the Chinese in nuclear submarines and strategic bombers, which, Golts said, could be deployed against the U.S. fleet in the Pacific. Golts said Russia was eager to lock in new contracts quickly, to hedge against the European Union lifting an arms embargo it imposed on China after the 1989 crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square.

The U.S. Defense Department has warned the European Union that lifting the embargo would bring "serious and numerous" consequences.
Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, deputy director for operations for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon recently that the U.S. Pacific Command planned to monitor the exercises.

"Clearly, there's interest in anything that affects security in the Pacific region," he said.

Friday, August 12, 2005

China's Own Historical Revisionism

By WILLY LAM Wall Street Journal August 11, 2005

China's government bitterly accuses Japan of historical revisionism, but the new Chinese leadership should also earn high marks for creative and self-serving misinterpretation of past events. Going by a recent propaganda offensive, for instance, one would easily conclude that the Chinese Communist Party single-handedly defeated the Japanese imperialists in World War II.

The fact is, of course, that when Tokyo surrendered to the American-led Allied Powers in 1945, the CCP could hardly claim victory. It was, for one, expending at least as much effort fighting the better-equipped Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalists) forces as Japanese invaders.

It's easy to see why China's ruling communists would want to savor today a triumph that eluded their predecessors 60 years ago. The disinformation campaign requires relentless media manipulation and political mobilization, but it aims to boost the party's sagging legitimacy as well as preventing archrival Japan from emerging as a political power on the world stage.

As a true disciple of Mao Zedong, President Hu Jintao is a master at molding history to serve political ends. And though the Hu team probably understands that nationalism is a double-edged sword, the "anti-Japan card" seems indispensable at a time when Communism is dead and the social fabric is being torn asunder. Thus the marathon WWII-related ceremonies and television documentaries teaching these peculiar "lessons of history."

And relentless they have been. While inspecting WWII battlegrounds in central Shanxi Province late last month, Mr. Hu -- who has nearly four decades of experience as a Marxist theorist, commissar and spin-meister -- noted how "the great victory over the atrocious Japanese invaders" was achieved "under the flag of the anti-Japanese national united front championed by the CCP." Mr. Hu then paid tribute to the larger-than-life exploits of the Long March generation of party elders.

During the sometimes frenetic commemoration exercises of the past few weeks hardly any mention has been made of the perhaps equally heroic -- and certainly of much larger scale -- efforts made by the non-Communist elements who fought in the 1937-1945 anti-Japanese war. The state media has also only made the skimpiest reference to the fact that the Japanese war machine was crushed mainly by the U.S. Instead, Mr. Hu earlier this year chose to dwell on how Soviet soldiers had helped China defeat the hated Japanese by fighting "shoulder to shoulder" with their Chinese comrades in the northeastern provinces.

The truth is that, though the KMT leadership that ruled much of eastern and central China during this period was incorrigibly corrupt, Nationalist soldiers did most of the fighting against the Japanese intruders. The great majority of casualties sustained by Chinese soldiers were borne by KMT, not Communist divisions. Mao and other guerrilla leaders decided at the time to conserve their strength for the "larger struggle" of taking over all of China once the Japanese Imperial Army was decimated by the U.S.-led Allied Forces.

Apart from using the 60th anniversary of WWII to drum up support for the CCP, Mr. Hu and his colleagues in the Central Military Commission want to underscore the imperative of strengthening the People's Liberation Army, which earned its spurs during the twin anti-KMT and anti-Japanese campaign. As the Soviet-trained defense minister, Gen. Cao Gangchuan recently put it, "the history of WWII has shown that we'll be invaded [again] in the absence a strong national defense."

Apart from repackaging history to prolong the mandate of heaven, the CCP leadership is trying to ensure that Tokyo's less-than-thorough apologies over WWII atrocities will continue to prevent Japan from emerging as a political and diplomatic power in Asia-Pacific. The Hu team has linked Tokyo's own problematic treatment of history with Beijing's efforts to deny Japan a seat as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. Beijing's task, of course, has been rendered easier by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's obsession with visiting the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which honors some war criminals.

One dominant theme of Beijing's campaign has been to mobilize demands for compensation by surviving victims of Japanese atrocities, such as the sex slaves or "comfort women," the conscripted laborers, as well as Chinese hurt by bombs and chemical weapons left behind by the Imperial Army. Obviously, these groups have every right to press their just claims. The CCP leadership, however, has chosen to gloss over the fact that during bilateral negotiations for the establishment of Sino-Japanese diplomatic ties in the early 1970s China's leaders explicitly ruled that China had, as a gesture of goodwill, voluntarily given up the right to press the Japanese government for WWII-related damages and compensation. Partly as a result of this, Tokyo later decided to earmark hefty overseas development aid for China.

Given that, under international law, the majority of war-related compensation claims can only be made against governments, the CCP leadership's decision more than three decades ago has made the legal campaigns of different victim groups much more difficult. Moreover, neither Mr. Hu nor former president Jiang Zemin have explained why the Chinese government had until about two years ago discouraged WWII-related victims from publicizing their plight in the Chinese media, not to mention making trips to Tokyo to seek damages. Not surprisingly, the recent upsurge of "anti-Japan" cases has coincided with the dramatic downturn in bilateral relations.

Given Beijing's total control over the archives -- and near-total control of the media -- it is much easier for Chinese authorities to embellish or excise historical records than it is for Japan or other democratic countries. China will however win a lot more respect in the international community -- including among ordinary Japanese -- if the Hu leadership were willing to take advantage of global attention on WWII-related events to reveal, warts and all, the untold story of the CCP's struggle against the Japanese as well as the KMT in the 1930s and 1940s.
Certainly military geniuses such as Mao and Gen. Zhu De scored several coups against the much better-armed Japanese invaders. But how about questions raised by historians, for example, that Mao and his Red Army hid in mountain redoubts even as the Communists' bitterest foes -- the Japanese and the KMT -- were cutting down each other in ferocious battles on the plains? Only if a country -- and its leadership -- is willing to face up to the truth can it demand another country to do the same.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

前任駐華大使們眼中的中美關係


“如果我們願意,就能把握好中國的崛起。如果我們要將中國作為美國的敵人,那它就會成為我們的敵人。”美國前駐華大使尚慕杰(James Sasser)2005年8月1日對中美關係做出了這樣的評語。 也許是巧合,就在中美首次戰略對話8月1日在北京釣魚臺國賓館舉行時,華盛頓幾位曾駐訪中國多年的資深外交官受美中政策研究基金會(US-China Policy Foundation)之邀,在美國國家新聞俱樂部(National Press Club)匯聚一堂,縱談中美關係大趨勢。

在“大使”們眼中,中國的經濟崛起、軍力上升、能源爭奪、台海局勢和朝鮮核問題,都成了左右這盤大棋局的重量級棋子。 “中日關係的發展將是美國看待中國走向的一塊很好的‘試金石’。”

美國國防部前助理部長,前駐華大使館公使傅立民(Chas W. Freeman, Jr.)說,“在美國積極發展和日本的外交關係時,中日間卻不斷交惡,兩國的民族情緒正日益提升。如果雙方成功處理好這一激化的矛盾,相信中國能‘和平崛起’不是一件壞事。東亞在接受一個日益強大的中國時,需要一個發展穩定的日本。美國不妨拭目以待。”

中國不是美國的威脅 傅立民和尚慕杰都是地地道道的“中國通”。前者在1971年中美關係正常化伊始,就擔任尼克森總統的首席翻譯;後者在1996到1999年常駐中國,卸任前正趕上中國駐南斯拉夫大使館被美軍誤炸,讓尚大使親身經歷了“砸館”一事(憤怒的遊行群眾砸碎了美國大使館的窗戶)。

然而,談到對中國崛起的看法,二人卻不約而同地認為:美國可以以平和的心態對待中國的強大。 “美國是西半球的主導力量,現在仍然保持著這樣的地位。但是中國沒有這麼大的影響力。”傅立民分析說,“中國四周圍繞著頗具實力的鄰國,其發展也一直被亞洲國家看作是潛在的威脅,因此,中國外交總是背負著處理好與鄰國,乃至整個國際社會關係的重擔。而另一邊,美國的工業實力是中國的五倍,其修建的石油管道、高科技術水平,都是中國無法比擬的。” 基於此,他認為,“美國要建立和中國的長期穩定的建設性夥伴關係並沒有任何危險性,反而十分重要。

當然,中美關係們並沒有掩蓋二者的分歧:中國對石油資源的野心讓美國人擔心其日益膨脹的經濟財富;而隨之而來的,將是中國軍力如何發展?”

與前者不同,尚慕杰從美國的角度論證道:“美國對世界格局的認知已經過時了。‘美帝國’(American Empire)的概念已成昔日黃花。伊拉克戰爭證明,美國如今實力有限,不足以左右整個世界格局。” “然而,中國一方實行的是‘和平友好’的睦鄰外交。”他說,“錢其琛、江澤民成功地與周邊鄰國建立了和諧的外交關係,為中國的經濟發展創造出良好的氛圍。如此局面下,與中國友好的政策已成為美國勢在必行的政策。” 尚慕杰以保守的布希政府為例分析說:“2000年,布希競選總統時,曾一改前任柯林頓的對華夥伴政策,將中國稱之為‘競爭對手’。但是他上任後卻成為對華高層互訪最頻繁的一任政府。去年秋天溫家寶總理訪美,今年九月胡錦濤主席也要來。而布希正計畫明年去中國看看。”

曾在1991-1995年任駐華大使芮效儉(J. Stapleton Roy)則從經濟角度闡述了中美間的相互依賴:“美國曾對中國實行多次經濟制裁。但縱觀歷史,這些制裁都不起作用。兩國經濟已經相互依賴。制裁中國,只能導致美國經濟利益下滑。比如美國零售業巨頭沃爾馬公司就有60%的產品來源於中國。”

中國軍事實力差得遠?

“解放軍沒有與美國對等的(coordinate)軍事實力。”美國退役海軍少將、曾在美國駐華大使館武官處任職的麥利凱(Eric A. McVadon)為中美軍事對比定下這樣的基調:“美國擁有導彈防禦體系,但中國沒有。中國只能依靠儘量增加其導彈數量,相對提高實力。” 這一點得到了傅立民的認同:“美國對中國的軍力增長總是響起一片‘喊打,喊殺’之聲,卻沒有給中國思想家(Thinker)為其自身國防利益辯護的機會。以低造價軍事力量為主的中國,相較於擁有高科技武器的美國,缺乏對外擴張軍事影響力的實力。因此,我不假定中國的軍事實力增長是懷有野心的。”

以中國的軍事預算為例,傅立民解釋說:“中國250億美元的軍費相對於美國的4000多億是小巫見大巫。將之放入更大的語境中來看:以中央情報局提供的資料顯示,英、法、德、意等國在世界上並無主要敵國,但是其軍費開支是中國的兩倍;俄、印、日、韓是中國的鄰國,國防花費也是中國的兩倍,更不要提中國的人口10倍於它們。”

“中國軍方發展武力,均是以臺灣為目標。”麥利凱說,“中國軍方曾明確表示,他們已得到足夠的資金和俄羅斯的援助,為武力解放臺灣做準備。除了升級各種海、空裝備之外,中國的軍事現代化也包括發展其資訊操作網路,旨在偵察、遮罩美國的進攻。但是中國要綜合利用所有這些手段對付美國,還言之尚早。”

“美國如果真的有一天從中國手?贏得了臺灣,那也就意味著它的失敗。”從戰略眼光出發,芮效儉認為:“美國從來沒有認真對待過台海戰爭。由於要下的賭注太高,以至於美國根本不願打仗。而另一方面,中國也沒有做好準備用核武器對付臺灣。”

如果說臺灣是美國進行外交要價時的一張牌,朝鮮半島的核危機問題則不適用於這一理論。尚慕杰在研討會後向《華盛頓觀察》週刊表示:“如果中國能說服朝鮮放棄核武器,它將在中美雙邊關係中贏得政治聲望。這和臺灣問題不同,美國不會因問題解決了而對中國置之不理,中國反而能從中得到更多的外交主動權。”

中國的政治“公關”不夠強 “美國的對華政策中存在這樣一個悖論:美國希望中國能逐漸融入其推崇的政治體系。但實現這一目標的必經之路是發展經濟,縱觀世界各國,無一例外;然而,中國經濟如今正走在半途,美國卻在擔心它會成為自己潛在的威脅了。”傅立民一針見血地指出,“患得患失,我認為美國值得賭這一場。”

也許正是因為這樣的矛盾心理,傅立民認為在美國的對華政策沒有焦點(unfocused),支離破碎。美國政壇還未形成統一的,被一致認可的對華政策。 “美國國務院在對華政策上指出一個方向,但是五角大樓卻坐滿鷹派,偏偏要走向另一邊。尚慕杰附和說:“但讓我最失望的還是國會。議員們總是挑起對華問題。”

“在對華問題上與國會打交道是最麻煩的。”芮效儉感觸良深地呼應道,“現在幾乎所有的院外遊說組織都在抱怨中國的威脅,軍事、人權、政治改革都是他們經常掛在嘴邊的議題。” 深諳美國政治運動原理的芮效儉和尚慕杰都認為,要教育這群反華的議員,院外活動集團的遊說是最有力的武器。但他們也感歎中國人往往這一“公關”手段上偏弱。 “我在參議院工作的時候,臺灣的遊說團體在全華盛頓的勢力排到第二位,而在美的大陸社區卻不太關心政治。”尚慕杰對《華盛頓觀察》週刊說:“直到現在,我也沒有看到事情有所改變。這是中國社區的政治冷感所致。也是中國政府應該引起注意的。如果在中國問題上教育美國人,教育美國議員,院外活動集團起的作用至關重要。”

李焰,《華盛頓觀察》週刊(http://www.WashingtonObserver.org)第28期,2005/08/03

RAND : Chinese Government Responses to Rising Social Unrest



By Murray Scot Tanner

The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) reports that the number of “mass incidents” (e.g. various forms ofprotest) has skyrocketed from about 8,700 in 1993, to 32,000 in 1999, to about 50,000 in2002, and surpassing 58,000 in 2003. Especially noteworthyhas been the steady rate of increase: protest incidents have apparently increased everyyear since 1993 (although 2001 data are unavailable), and in no year did they increase byless than 9 percent.

Full Document: PDF (0.2 MB)

RAND : China's Defense Spending Lower Than Previous Estimates


May 19, 2005

Projects future growth in Chinese government expenditures as a whole and on defense in particular, evaluates the current and likely future capabilities of China’s defense industries, and compares likely future expenditure levels with recent defense expenditures by the United States and the U.S. Air Force. The authors forecast that Chinese military spending is likely to rise from an estimated $69 billion in 2003 to $185 billion by 2025-approximately 61 percent of what the Department of Defense spent in 2003.

Full Document: PDF (2.3 MB)

FBI Sees Big Threat From Chinese Spies; Businesses Wonder


Bureau Adds Manpower, Builds Technology-Theft Cases; Charges of Racial Profiling
Mixed Feelings at 3DGeo

By JAY SOLOMON Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL August 10, 2005; Page A1

WASHINGTON -- Back in the 1980s, David Szady was among the premier Soviet spy catchers at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, studying every aspect of the Kremlin's mole network. Today, he's mobilizing agents across the country to sniff out spies from a new rival: Beijing.

"China is the biggest [espionage] threat to the U.S. today," says Mr. Szady, now 61 years old and assistant director of the FBI's counterintelligence division.

In one of their biggest initiatives after the fight against terrorism, the FBI and Justice Department have sent hundreds of new counterintelligence agents into the bureau's 56 field offices, many with a specific focus on China. There is a cloak-and-dagger element to some of this: A principal FBI team focusing on Chinese economic espionage, including some undercover operatives, occupies an unmarked floor in a Silicon Valley office park near a popular Chinese restaurant.

But this is an altogether different battle from the one with the Soviets. Thousands of Chinese nationals regularly come to the U.S. as students and businessmen, some working for major U.S. defense contractors -- something the Russians could only have dreamed of during the Cold War. They are welcomed with open arms by universities and companies who prize their technical acumen and links to capital and low-cost labor back home.

The vast majority of them are here innocently working or studying. Counterespionage experts say the trouble often starts when they are contacted by Chinese government officials or one of the more than 3,000 Chinese "front companies" the FBI alleges have been set up in the U.S. specifically to acquire military or industrial technologies illegally. Sometimes they are wooed with cash, but often the motivation is nationalism.

"They can work on so many levels that China may prove more difficult to contain than the Russian threat," Mr. Szady says.

Even as concerns mount in Washington about China's growing economic and military might, the government faces charges of racial profiling from Asian-American advocacy groups and ambivalence from some business groups. Working with sometimes vague laws on technology exports, it is having trouble making some of its cases stick.

The government is currently prosecuting about a dozen cases against individuals alleged to have sent technology -- sometimes designs, sometimes software, sometimes high-tech equipment -- to China illegally. FBI officials say at least three more cases will likely go ahead in the coming months. Over the past five years, the total number of such charges has grown by around 15% annually, according to some FBI agents.

Most of the cases involve small, lesser-known tech firms. But Sun Microsystems Inc. and Transmeta Corp. were the targets in one alleged plot, where two Chinese nationals who had worked at the software and semiconductor giants were arrested at the San Francisco airport allegedly holding proprietary data from the companies. The pair were charged with economic espionage and the case is pending. The FBI's Business Alliance, established a year ago, has been meeting regularly with leading defense contractors to understand what technologies they're developing and what potential threats are posed by company employees. The participants include Lockheed Martin Corp., General Dynamics Corp. and Raytheon Co.

Growing Threat

The FBI campaign is part of a broader shift in Washington, where more and more policy makers see China's rapid economic rise as a threat to the U.S. both militarily and economically. That growing sentiment is seen in the heated debate over the recent failed bid by China's state-owned oil company Cnooc Ltd. for California's Unocal Corp. The Pentagon has caused a stir in recent months by raising the prospect that China's secretive military buildup could pose a significant long-term threat to Asia and the U.S.

Many people in Silicon Valley are concerned that the FBI is overreaching. Asian-Americans worry about a new wave of racial profiling and say the crackdown is reminiscent of the 2000 case of Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwan-born American scientist who was fired from his job at Los Alamos National Laboratory and was prosecuted for allegedly giving away nuclear secrets to Beijing. After months in solitary confinement, all the espionage charges were eventually dropped, though Mr. Lee pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of mishandling top-secret information.

Business executives, meanwhile, fear a chill in commerce. "There's a bit of a disconnect between how the law-enforcement agencies see" the risk of espionage and how the business community does, says Harris Miller, the Arlington, Va.-based president of the Information Technology Association of America, one of the high-tech industry's principal lobbying groups. He says many U.S. companies are dependent upon manufacturing and conducting research in places like China -- and on the talents of Chinese employees.

"There's a real advantage to work with foreign nationals, as they're very talented," Mr. Miller says. "You don't want to turn them away just because they are not born in the U.S."

Even some of the victims of alleged Chinese espionage have mixed feelings about the FBI's campaign.

Software maker 3DGeo Development Inc. suspected it had a spy problem when it brought in for training Yan Ming Shan, an employee of one of 3DGeo's clients, state-owned oil company PetroChina Co. The Chinese oil giant had earlier sent an employee to train at 3DGeo's Santa Clara, Calif., campus, but he was ejected after trying to gain access to the software company's secured systems. Mr. Shan then appeared and was expelled after doing the same thing. Mr. Shan was later arrested at San Francisco International Airport and accused of seeking to pass on some of 3DGeo's proprietary software programs to PetroChina.

Mr. Shan, a Chinese national, was sentenced last December to two years in prison for illegally accessing 3DGeo's computers.

Dimitri Bevc, 3DGeo's president, says the episode highlights a dilemma for the company, which is seeking to secure its intellectual property but also expand its business in Asia. "There's incredible demand from Chinese firms that are hungry for technology," says Mr. Bevc. "But we are built on our own intellectual property."

Now Mr. Bevc is afraid his company is being punished in the Chinese marketplace. The company is still seeking payments from PetroChina for work completed in September 2001, says Mr. Bevc. Meanwhile, 3DGeo's sales representative told Mr. Bevc his Chinese sales prospects have been drying up. "What we heard back was...that 3DGeo did something wrong" by taking action against Mr. Shan, who served most of his sentence while awaiting trial and has since returned to China, says Mr. Bevc.

PetroChina declined to comment on the case. Nicholas Humy, an attorney for Mr. Shan, said his client pleaded guilty only to illegally accessing 3DGeo's computer system and not to stealing the company's software or seeking to pass it on to a foreign entity. "The government never proved to a jury...that Mr. Shan was trying to commit industrial espionage," Mr. Humy said.

October Trial

On the military side, prosecutors at the San Jose, Calif., offices of the Department of Justice are preparing for an October trial of two Silicon Valley residents. The pair were indicted in June 2004 for allegedly signing contracts with Chinese military-related entities to provide high-tech gear and consulting work for the mass production of thermal-imaging cameras. Technology industry officials say the case highlights the murkiness of export laws.

The case involves Night Vision Technology Corp., a San Jose-based firm that procures infrared technology and other high-tech equipment for overseas buyers, particularly in Taiwan. The company is headed by Martin Shih, 62, a Taiwanese-Canadian executive with wide experience as an electrical engineer, working both in Canada and in California with satellite-communications company Loral Space & Communications Ltd. Mr. Shih's Taiwanese-American consultant, Philip Cheng, was also charged.

Pretrial motions filed by the two men's attorneys speak to the belief of many in the technology industry that U.S. laws guarding technology exports are difficult to interpret because so often the technologies have legitimate commercial applications. They also say products like infrared cameras can't be blocked for export because they have numerous commercial applications, such as use in consumer-electronics items. The lawyers also point out that the equipment can be purchased on the open market in countries such as France.

"The indictment does not allege -- and the government cannot plausibly argue" that the infrared products "were 'specifically designed, modified, or configured for military use,' " according to one of the motions by the lawyers, quoting from the indictment.

An attorney for Mr. Shih, K.C. Maxwell, said her client would plead not guilty in the October trial. An attorney for Mr. Cheng, Matt Pavone, declined to comment.

The FBI has had a difficult time making similar charges stick against other alleged Chinese spies. In May, Qing Chang Jiang, a Chinese national in the import-export business, was acquitted in a California court on charges of illegally selling microwave amplifiers, which can be used in radar and missile systems, to the Beijing government.
The technology is involved in so many nonmilitary commercial applications that many companies aren't aware they need a license to export it, say attorneys who have worked on these cases. Mr. Jiang's lawyer says that the U.S. company he got the technology from, L-3 Communications Holdings Inc.'s Narda Microwave-West, told him he didn't need a license and so he went ahead with the sale.

A spokeswoman for L-3 Communications declined to comment. But the U.S. Department of Commerce said L-3 Communications was aware an export license was required and that the company worked closely with the government on the case.

Mr. Jiang was convicted on a lesser charge of making false statements to federal investigators and is currently awaiting sentencing in California. His attorney, Tom Nolan, believes the U.S. government is systematically targeting Asian businessmen. "They're trying to prevent Chinese industry from doing business in the U.S.," he says.

Asian-American community leaders note that the number of Asian-Americans applying for government research jobs plummeted after the Wen Ho Lee case, and warn of a similar mutually destructive chill now. "At a time when the U.S. government is so dependent on the scientific skills of our community, it seems crazy that they've taken steps that dampen our desire to serve," says Cecilia Chang, a Fremont, Calif.-based Asian-American activist who led many protests and donation drives for Mr. Lee.

And that could have a big impact on American academia and commerce. About 150,000 Chinese students are currently studying in the U.S., according to the FBI, and the number of new admissions has been rising. Nearly 64,000 Chinese students entered the U.S. last year, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, up from 55,000 in 1998. All told, about 700,000 Chinese tourists and business executives visit the U.S. each year.

The swirl of suspicions and tensions between the FBI, China and the Chinese-American community has surfaced even among the bureau's own agents. Mr. Szady has made a point of hiring more Asian-Americans into his counterespionage network. Yet in the past two years, the FBI brought charges against two of its own Chinese-American employees in Los Angeles, accusing them of having aided Beijing. One case was thrown out this year and the other is pending.

Mr. Szady acknowledges the inherent complexity of monitoring the Chinese community in the U.S., and says he's trying to find a balance: "How do you protect without being overbearing?" But he argues that it's the Chinese government, not the FBI, that is blurring the lines between legitimate transborder commerce and national rivalry. He says that Beijing doesn't recognize the concept of Chinese-American. In the government's eyes, "they are all overseas Chinese," says Mr. Szady, a lanky former chemistry student dubbed the "Z Man" by his agents.

Warming Relations

Mr. Szady and other FBI experts believe China began intensifying its spying operations in the late 1970s, when warming relations between Washington and Beijing opened the way for hundreds of thousands of Chinese to begin visiting the U.S. annually. These analysts say units of the People's Liberation Army and China's Ministry of State Security oversee intelligence operations, and that the state-run Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics has targeted U.S. weapons labs.

In addition, the Beijing government runs an extensive, informal, decentralized spy network, counterespionage experts allege. In most cases, Beijing's spy agencies don't send trained agents to the U.S. to penetrate companies and government agencies, but rather simply seek to glean information from the hundreds of thousands of Chinese who visit and study in the U.S. every year. They also try to get Chinese-Americans to provide information, appealing to their desire to help uplift China's economy.

"In almost all of its collections operations, China is not so much looking at opportunities for stealing things...as devising all sorts of opportunities for you to come to the conclusion that you would be willing to give at least some of these things," says Paul Moore, who was the FBI's top China analyst from 1978 through 1998. "It's the mundane, day-to-day contacts that are killing us, not the exotic spy operations."

[WSJ's Jake Schlesinger discusses1 the FBI's initiative to crack down on Chinese economic espionage. Chu Maoming, the spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, calls the FBI's assertion that Beijing is coordinating spying activities inside the U.S. "totally groundless."]

China Grows More Wary Over Rash Of Protests

Cell Phones, Internet Spread The Word, Magnify Fallout

By Edward CodyWashington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, August 10, 2005; Page A11


BEIJING, Aug. 9 -- Facing a steady rhythm of violent protests, the Chinese government is showing increased concern about stability, using caution in putting down riots around the country but warning people that violence will not be tolerated.

The fallout from a series of demonstrations has been magnified recently because of loosened restrictions on news reporting and increased use of cell phones and the Internet, even by villagers in remote areas, according to government-connected researchers and peasants involved in the protests. Although Communist Party censors try to stifle reporting on the unrest, they said, word of the incidents is transmitted at a speed previously unknown in China.

As they are more widely publicized, the violent protests have become a major issue for President Hu Jintao's government. According to Chinese academics with ties to the government, senior officials early on realized that such violence could undermine the country's economic growth -- and perhaps the party's monopoly on power -- if it continues to grow and spread. As a result, calls for stability and social harmony have become the watchwords in speeches by Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao.

Reflecting the leaders' concern, the People's Daily, the main party newspaper, declared in a front-page editorial July 28 that any attempt to use protests to correct social injustices that arise as China moves toward a market economy would be "punished in accordance with the law." The editorial was also broadcast on state television and relayed by the official New China News Agency, underlying the importance officials attached to the warning.

"Resolving any such problems must be done in line with law and maintenance of stability," the editorial said. "The solution of any problems must rely on the party, the government, the law, the policies and the system." Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang said last month that the number of what he called "mass incidents" was rising fast across China, according to an official who heard Zhou speak at a closed meeting. Zhou said that 3.76 million Chinese took part in 74,000 such protests last year, which he characterized as a dramatic increase.

Perhaps more worrisome, Zhou continued, is a "noticeable" trend toward organized unrest, rather than the spontaneous outbursts that traditionally have led to violent clashes between citizens and police. The minister added, however, that most protests erupt over specific economic issues rather than political demands, suggesting they are not coordinated or directed at bringing down the one-party system that has been in place in China since 1949.

Rural protesters have recently cited farmland seizures by local governments working with developers, or pollution of fields and irrigation sources by locally licensed factories or mines as the reasons for their uprisings. Other protests have erupted over clashes between factory managers and the millions of youths who leave their villages to work in assembly plants in big city suburbs.

Provincial, municipal and county governments have often proven unable to handle these complaints because local officials, eager for economic growth in partnership with businessmen, regard the aggrieved people as obstacles to success.

Kang Xiaoguang, a Tsinghua University professor and political specialist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, noted that the protesters' lack of national coordination or broad political goals is an indication the government can probably bring the riots under control.

Hu and Wen, he said, regard the unrest as a major problem but inevitable, the fruit of economic disparities caused by reforms over the past 25 years. As a result, Kang added, they want to rein in the poorly regulated capitalism that, in many respects, has replaced socialism and have gone out of their way to demonstrate concern for the underdogs in China's hybrid system.

As far as is known, even the most violent protesters have been armed only with farming tools in the spate of unrest over the last several years. Similarly, police responding to riots have generally been equipped only with clubs, staffs and tear gas. There have been no reports of firearms being used.

However, officials told a party newspaper in Guangxi province last week that police found arms, ammunition and explosives in a raid Thursday against villagers who refused to heed orders to stop illegal mining. The villagers had already clashed once with police in late June, the Reuters news service reported.

Seeking to get ahead of the protests, Zhou has urged Chinese security officials to study what causes riots and try to resolve problems before they get to the stage of violence. Beijing, the capital, already has set up such a committee, officials reported, as part of its effort to prepare for the Olympic Games in 2008.

"Short-term methods, such as this emergency committee system, and long-term methods, such as an early-warning system [about social discontent], should be combined to solve the problem," said Deng Weizhi, a Shanghai University sociologist and member of the People's Political Consultative Conference, a government advisory body.

Deng, who was at a meeting of the conference addressed by Zhou recently, said the minister showed concern about instances in which police must react violently to bring protests under control. This was particularly true, he said, when police broke up a protest in Beijing in April by People's Liberation Army veterans demanding better retirement benefits. Another protest by disgruntled PLA veterans was held last week in Beijing as the army marked its 78th anniversary, witnesses said, and police intervened to break it up by hauling away a number of demonstrators.

In a sign of the swift movement of protest news, one of the organizers sent a short cell phone message to a Chinese journalist Tuesday saying he was about to be arrested for his part in the demonstration. Similarly, a peasant protest leader from Zhejiang province, whose grimy fingernails and weathered skin attested to a life on the farm, remarked matter-of-factly in a conversation last week that he became aware of other protests after surfing the Web.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Al Qaeda and the Internet


Evan Kohlmann International Terrorism Consultant
Monday, August 8, 2005; 3:00 PM

Terrorism researcher Evan Kohlmann was online Monday, Aug. 8, at 3 p.m. ET to discuss al Qaeda and its use of the Internet. Kohlmann is featured in a washingtonpost.com video report on this topic .
Read The Post's three-part series on al Qaeda and the Internet .

The transcript follows.
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New York, N.Y.: Will encryption and other methods of disguising Web site hosts always stay ahead of anti-terrorism efforts to find the source of Web sites? Could we ever use a posting on the Internet to lead us to the poster, say Al-Zarqawi or his network, after a posting about Iraq?

Evan Kohlmann: In short, the answer is no. Everyone operating on the Internet has an originating Internet Protocol (IP) address, whether they use encryption or disguises. Those IP addresses--which function something like conventional telephone numbers--are reasonably difficult to spoof or fake, and are typically kept in logs of Web sites and web providers. The trick is usually, to start, finding the terrorist Web site and then gaining access to voluminous log files hosted by its Internet provider. These files can be located on web servers in foreign countries where U.S. law enforcement holds little sway. In such cases, access to these logs is difficult and requires use of multilateral law enforcement assistance treaties.

Even when these Internet providers are located in the United States and access logs containing IP addresses can be obtained fairly easily, the end user responsible for distributing terrorist propaganda is very often located in a foreign country and merely is using American Internet resources to his advantage. We can shut down his or her Web server and perhaps negotiate with friendly foreign authorities to detain him, but ultimately, his or her fate is no longer in our hands.

These end-users often use Internet proxy servers to obscure their location. These days, they also layer their communications internally to provide an additional cover. Nevertheless, somewhere out there in cyberspace, there is still an originating IP address. Finding and identifying it is perhaps a difficult but rarely impossible endeavor.

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Dayton, Ohio: We frequently hear and read about these statements and videos which are posted on "Jihadist" or "Islamic" Web sites, but we never get any information about the actual Web sites themselves.

What countries are they located in? What are the URL's? What (if any) action is taken against the ISP's and/or hosting companies for aiding and abetting international terrorism? Have IP addresses been harvested and analyzed from postings to determine geographical locations?

All of these basic technical questions are fairly obvious, but seem to never be answered. If terrorists are using the Internet to organize, why is this not being disrupted? The equivalent battlefield tactic would be "area denial."
Evan Kohlmann: Ironically, these Web sites are most often hosted on Internet Providers inside the United States.

As you might have guessed, the same is rarely true of the webmasters themselves, who are spread across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. While we can temporarily disable Web sites such as these by forcing their Internet provider to close them down, within less than 24 hours, they can reappear on new providers that we aren't familiar with--also, most often, located in the United States.

Internet Service Providers (ISP)s are not liable for any terrorist propaganda posted on their systems unless and until they have actual knowledge of it. Internet vigilantes frequently report such propaganda to ISP administrators, and it is quickly removed by most ISPs. Unfortunately, the terrorist Web sites can jump providers faster than either system administrators or even sometimes law enforcement can track them. Anytime that an ISP is identified as hosting a terrorist Web site, it is a fair assumption that law enforcement or intelligence officials will send a request to the ISP for identifying electronic information (Internet Protocol addresses) that leave the equivalent of a digital footprint.

Then again, if the online terrorist is smart, has layered his communications, and is using an Internet proxy server, that footprint may yield precious few clues to his actual identity or location.
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Madison, Conn.: Given the accessibility of the Internet to everyone everywhere, it seems reasonable that the terrorists might be beaten at their own game. If we could organize a large international group of volunteers to find these sites and enter them, and even go to the extent of joining them and gaining trust, the terrorist organizers total control of their own Internet alliance could be jammed.

Evan Kohlmann: There are already such groups in existence on the Internet. Besides the well-known "Internet Haganah" Web site (Internet Haganah), there is a variety of hackers and other Internet volunteers who monitor these sites and report their location. Unfortunately, the results are typically short-lived. At least for now, the terrorist Web sites can jump around faster than they can be shut down. I would suggest you read a blog entry I wrote this past weekend about the brief takedown of two major terrorist web sites by a hacker, which lasted only for a few hours at most.
The Counterterrorism Blog.
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Bethesda,Md.: Obvious question but one that deserves an answer. Certainly the NSA and CIA have enough computer geeks to hack into these sites and disrupt them. Why are we allowing them to stay online?
Evan Kohlmann:

The answer comes in two parts:

1.) The NSA is chock full of computer geeks. The problem here is to find computer who also are familiar with terrorist groups and have an ability to translate Arabic on the fly. That's a much rarer bird, and there is a shortage of such individuals in almost every branch of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence--at least in my humble opinion.

2.) There are those of us both in the private and public arena who believe that monitoring these sites, collecting information from them, and using it to ultimately defeat the terrorists on the real battlefield--as opposed to the Internet--is a far more fruitful and valuable enterprise. Rarely in modern history have law enforcement or intelligence agencies had such unprecedented immediate access to authentic and credible information about terrorist groups, their recruitment, their financing, and their long-term intentions. Rather than frustrating the weekend hobby of a low-level terrorist sympathizer and Internet webmaster, it would seem more desirable to use the information he publishes to help track down elusive "big fish" like Al-Qaida's frontman in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or even his top media advisor, Abu Maysarah al-Iraqi.

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Netherlands: Dear Mr.Kohlmann,

Have you seen an English translation of the latest publication by Mustapha Setmarian Nasar, one of the main propagandists of al-Qaeda? Do you know how I can get hold of this translation? Do you agree that this publication will become a main source of inspiration for the next generation of jihadists?

Evan Kohlmann: I've read bits and pieces from Setmariam's new masterpiece, though personally, I found his direct statement to the U.S. State Department last December more interesting--particularly his insistence upon the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States. If you'd like to read more about this, check out: Document

Something to note--the original Arabic version of Nasar's book is currently offline as far as the Internet goes. It was first released via a hacked American Web site (carriagehouseglass.com), where it was secretly hosted in a hidden directory. This same hacked Web site also published over 700 megabytes of video lessons given by Nasar and numerous other documents written by him. There seems little doubt that those publications will become classics in the annals of the global mujahideen. Though, it should be noted that Nasar's re-release on the Internet of his other book criticizing the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) did deeply anger some current Algerian Islamists, including alleged representatives of the GIA's heir-apparent, the Algerian Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat (GSPC).

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Frederick, Md.: I don't understand why we (the United States) has not found Bin Laden, with all that we have going for us. My son was killed at WTC. NYC Firefighter.

Evan Kohlmann: I'm very sorry for your loss. Unfortunately, I don't know if I can give you a complete answer as to why we haven't captured Usama Bin Laden yet. The area that Bin Laden is most likely hiding in--the mountainous Pakistani-Afghani border region--is much larger and more expansive than you might think and boasts some of the most formidable high country in the world. This particular area is also inhabited primarily by conservative Muslim tribesmen who can be highly sympathetic for Al-Qaida and the Taliban. The central governments in Pakistan and Afghanistan are both weak and generally considered to be under siege by radical elements who support Bin Laden and Al-Qaida. Even the internal intelligence agency in Pakistan known as the ISI is riddled with fundamentalist sympathizers.

There are also some valid criticisms of past U.S. military strategy in tackling Bin Laden and his senior henchmen. When we had an opportunity to surround Al-Qaida's elite, we backed off somewhat fearing heavy casualties and believing that Bin Laden would become irrelevant with his organization destroyed. Perhaps we underestimated their resilience in this respect. In the interim, the remaining Al-Qaida hardliners have dug themselves in deep into the mountains and are awaiting a planned resurgence which is brewing from Islamist resentment over the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, the prison scandal in Abu Ghraib, and the Newsweek-Quran-desecration fiasco.

Ultimately, Bin Laden could be captured or killed at any time. It just takes one good informant or a solid electronic intercept. Thus far, or at least recently, we just haven't gotten those kind of breaks in time for us to act on them successfully. In Arabic, we would say, inshallah (God Willing), our luck will soon change in this regard.

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Washington, D.C.: Very interesting series. I have two questions. First, I realize it's virtually impossible to track down individuals who post information on the extremist Web sites, but isn't it possible to track down whoever owns and/or hosts the Web site? Can't this avenue be forcefully used to shut down these Web sites? Secondly, with all the havoc hackers unleash on other Web sites, it must be possible to hack into the extremist Web sites. Is anyone doing this? I think it would be a good job for some folks in the Department of Homeland Defense. Thanks.

Evan Kohlmann: Actually, I don't have the links in front of me, but several articles have been published recently in major media outlets discussing how the Department of Defense and other government agencies are trying to recruit such hackers for tracking and potentially disabling these sites.

You might be surprised, however, at the impressive level of technical sophistication of the terrorists. The reason, of course, is that not everyone responsible for distributing terrorist propaganda or setting up web sites is actually a terrorist. There is a notorious individual online who goes by the pseudonym "Irhaby007" (or, translated, "Terrorist007"). Though this person does not appear to be a member of any particular terrorist group, he volunteers his worthy skills as a cybermarauder to help terror groups in need, including Zarqawi's Al-Qaida faction in Iraq. What Zarqawi is unable to do on the Internet, Irhaby007 does for him. Unsettlingly, Irhaby007 also speaks perfect English and has even hacked his way into an unprotected file directory on an Arkansas state government Web site, using it to host beheading videos and other such propaganda.

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Silver Spring, Md.: In the situation resulting from the Bush administration's war of 2003, Al Qaeda has been reborn in Iraq after almost being wiped out in Afghanistan earlier. This seems to me to put it in a better position than it was in in Afghanistan to work for one of Bin Laden's primary aims--the overthrow of the Saudi regime right next door. There is already a flow of Saudi jihadists into Iraq and if there is a full-blown civil war between Shiites and Sunnis, many Saudis will back the Sunnis and view their government's Iraq policy as unacceptable. How powerful is the Internet as a possible tool for Al Qaeda in rallying the opposition of Saudis to the regime? How well-connected are Saudis to the Internet? Do we know whether jihadist Web sites are widely viewed in Saudi Arabia?

Evan Kohlmann: The Internet is used very frequently by terrorists and terrorist sympathizers in Saudi Arabia. One of the first authentic terror groups to go active on the Internet was Al-Qaida's Committee in Saudi Arabia, then led by the legendary former bodyguard to Usama Bin Laden Shaykh Youssif al-Ayyiri. Al-Qaida's Committee in Saudi Arabia was also one of the first terrorist groups to publish an online magazine, the infamous Sawt al-Jihad ("Voice of Jihad"), which even featured lesson plans for a would-be assassination plot targeting the convoy of Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayif. The Saudi Al-Qaida elite were also first to publish live footage of a suicide bombing attack.

There are loopholes in most terrorist Web forums which allow snoops to track the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of those who are perusing the material. I'm not going to go into the details of those loopholes for operational reasons, but suffice it to say, there is ample evidence of the participation of Saudi Internet users on the most popular terrorist web sites. Aaron Weisburd at Internet Haganah has done some valuable work tracking the nationalities of those who frequent terrorist Web forums. Again, I don't have the exact link in front of me, but his Web site is Internet Haganah

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Boonsboro, Md.: Why not set up dummy sites and monitor who hits them?

Evan Kohlmann: Don't be sure that people aren't doing exactly that. The former Al-Qaida Web site known as Azzam Publications openly accused a popular English-language jihad information Web site (Jihadunspun) of being a CIA intelligence gathering project. After reading the analysis of Azzam.com, even I grew to wonder whether jihadunspun wasn't just set up to monitor Web hits and sell videotapes online to would-be jihadis paying for them with a credit card number--very easy to track by law enforcement.

Similarly, there have been recent accusations that some popular Web forums--including Qal3ah.net, the Web site that featured the first claim of responsibility for the 7/7 London attacks--have been reconstituted after being disabled in order to serve as covert intelligence gathering projects. I think it is reasonable to assume that one or more governments may be considering if not implementing such plans.

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Washington, D.C.: I am stunned at how uncritical you were in looking at some of these "terrorism documents." I note that the Federation of American Scientists and GlobalSecurity.org have also criticized how you have taken ridiculous documents as being serious. Do you really believe you can make botulism from that recipe of mixing horse manure with dirt? The ricin recipes also are silly. The Post story's uncertain grasp of the underlying science was signaled early on when it twice mistakenly referred to a virus as the cause of pneumonic plague. Also please note that pneumonic plague which may or may not have been the cause of the Black Death in history, is caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis, not by a virus.

Evan Kohlmann: I'm not sure exactly what document you are referring to, but critical analysis is one of the most important elements of tracking this material. I am extremely careful about what I publish and how I describe it to accurately reflect what is known for certain at a given time. You are correct in pointing out that terrorist training manuals distributed online can offer ridiculous--if not downright invalid--information about producing explosives or toxins. That being said, there are often dozens of such manuals that have been carefully vetted by trained military experts working for extremist groups. For instance, the Algerian Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat (GSPC) featured links on its official Web site to "approved" military manuals, including recipes for the production of chemicals and explosives. In 1992, the World Trade Center bombing was nearly averted because one of the conspirators was intercepted by local authorities at Kennedy airport beforehand while carrying bomb-making manuals. Imagine how much easier it would be if he only had to access the Internet from anywhere in the world in order to obtain such materials--even in the Arabic language. The possibilities are astounding.

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Fairmont, W. Va.: Are terrorists using steganography to establish covert channels for communication to conceal their activities in cyberspace?

Evan Kohlmann: Steganography is one of the most controversial emerging arenas of cyberterrorism study. Depending on who you talk to, stenography is either frequently used or not at all. Ultimately, it is difficult to be certain either way. For those unfamiliar, steganography is the process of encoding non-descript image, movie, or audio files with secret coded messages that are virtually invisible except at the binary level. The difficulty in detecting possible coded documents and then running an exhaustive steganographic analysis on them cannot be understated. Law enforcement officials simply do not have the time or resources to thoroughly analyze all possible documents for steganography, so it is generally limited to single suspect documents. Given the wide variety of steganographic tools available for download for free off the Internet, we would be well advised to devise quicker and more efficient methods of analysis and decryption.

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Washington, D.C.: Is there any evidence that terrorist groups continue to use 'chat rooms' to communicate? If so, how adept are we at locating the rooms and listening in?

Evan Kohlmann: Yes, one of the most popular new chat mediums on the Internet is known as "PalTalk"--a free service that hosts dozens of chat rooms around the world. However, particularly in the Middle East, PalTalk technology has exploded and many of the same individuals who inhabit terrorist web sites and forums also populate similarly-themed chat rooms on Paltalk. In one chat room in particular, I have listened in to users describing in Arabic their experiences fighting with the Arab-Afghans in Afghanistan and alleged relatives of foreign fighters in Iraq discussing the "martyrdom" of their sons and nephews.

Here is a link to download an audio recording from one PalTalk chat room where British Islamic militants were discussing their support for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq.

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washingtonpost.com: Global Terror Alert: Video

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New York, N.Y.: Do you believe that in the years to come, the Internet will thoroughly eradicate the need for in-person terrorist training? Although al Qaeda no longer freely operates camps in Afghanistan, since 9/11, other camps have trained operatives in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, etc. We've also recently seen reports of terrorists training in France, Australia, and even seeking to set up camps in the U.S.

Evan Kohlmann: There are some analysts who are arguing exactly that point right now. There is also some evidence to suggest that is the case. Al-Qaida's Committee in Saudi Arabia has released video footage of underground training camps inside warehouses for small groups of militants. Even the French government has prosecuted several individuals who retreated from major French cities up into national parks and mountain ranges, where they established temporary makeshift Al-Qaida training camps. With the strategic and military knowledge now available on the Internet, you could literally take a correspondence course in terrorism--assuming, that is, that you can read Arabic. I don't know if your expertise would be the same as an operative who went through the experience directly in Afghanistan, but it doesn't take too much sophistication to carry out a relatively deadly terror attack--and I think that's why we've seen some initial suspicions after 7/7 that this potentially could have been the work of independent operators, or "lone wolves."

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Herndon, Va.: I noticed in the table of contents of Jihadi book that you had translated there was a chapter under the heading of SAVAK (Security Agency). That is interesting because SAVAK is a Persian acronym for words in Farsi (not Arabic) that stood for the previous Iranian secret police agency during M.R. Pahlavi. Can you explain?

Evan Kohlmann: Yes, Al-Qaida members frequently study the techniques of other terrorist groups or intelligence agencies and adapt them for their own use. Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian Al-Qaida recruit instructed at camps in Afghanistan, admitted during U.S. court testimony that during classes he attended taught at Al-Qaida's "Terrorism University", specific emphasis was put on studying past trends in terrorism and learning from them, including the Hizballah bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and the failed assassination attempts targeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa during the mid-1990's. In Al-Qaida manuals seized in the United Kingdom, enormous focus is put on learning the methods of Middle Eastern intelligence agencies and how to mimic or foil them.

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Gaithersburg, Md.: Is there a method we could use to determine how they use IT in remote regions? What do they call their counter-terrorism?

Evan Kohlmann: Interestingly enough, some information is available on how extremists manage to access the Internet in remote locations. In Iraq, Internet Protocol (IP) addressing information has allowed us to track Islamic Army of Iraq (IAI) communications back to satellite Internet access providers, including at least one designated for use by the U.S. military. In other words, these guys are beaming a signal into space just like a satellite telephone. Russian officials claim that they have shut down numerous such satellite Internet signals in the troubled south-Caucasus region of Chechnya, where Islamic militants are engaged in a desperate guerilla war with Russian military forces.

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DeRidder, La.: How ironic a communications system initially developed by the U.S. Department of Defense to survive nuclear attack would become a vital operational tool for international terrorists bent on destroying Western Civilization.

Evan Kohlmann: Ironic, but not entirely unforeseeable. The DoD designed the Internet to provide a redundant information system that would continue to operate and share information even if several of its most critical nodes were taken offline. The terrorists have simply taken a page from the same book. The idea is to create redundant information systems, so that even if law enforcement or Internet vigilantes disable one terrorist Web site, there will always be somewhere to carry the jihad news of the day.

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Arlington, Va.: As you stated, a Web administrator can easily redirect his Web site to a new I.P. address when his service provider pulls the plug. However, the domain name itself (e.g. washingtonpost.com) is controlled by some bona fide registrar, as are the DNS servers which maintain directory maps to each domain. Why then, is it so difficult to pull the plug on a Web site? It would be fairly easy for any government to tell when a rogue web site was redirected to a new address, no?

Evan Kohlmann: It is intriguing to watch as these sites change not only their hosting providers, but even their domains. The popular Muntada al-Ansar forum has gone through at least four or five varying domain names as each previous one has been disabled. Finding the new domains is not typically a very difficult task. There are numerous mailing lists, chat rooms, and sympathizer web sites that immediately advertise the new locations to Al-Qaida supporters. Increasingly, these forums are being password protected and carefully vetted so that only apparently-genuine terrorist sympathizers get advance notice of new releases on the Internet.
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Lyme, Conn.: What is your sense on how well al Qaeda announces its plans (and I don't mean the details) before it acts? It has been suggested by some experts that they do announce who they intend to attack, and why, before they do so. I was wondering if you find this analysis to be correct.

Evan Kohlmann: This is another good, but complex question. We have indeed seen at least a few notable examples of authentic terrorist groups broadcasting their intentions just prior to launching an attack, including Al-Qaida. Last summer, Al-Qaida's Committee in Saudi Arabia issued an authentic statement specifically threatening Western commercial airliners entering and leaving the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Though no successful plot was ever carried out, strong evidence was uncovered by Saudi and U.S. authorities that Al-Qaida was indeed attempting to down Western aircraft--both civilian and military--with mobile, shoulder-launched surface to air missiles.

Generally speaking, however, it goes against the basic interests of terrorist groups to advertise their targets before launch. Of course, we can't immediately dismiss these threats--even if they come from an unknown source--but every such doom-and-gloom prediction has to be put into larger perspective. Over the last year, mainstream media has published numerous stories detailing would-be threats from terrorist groups that are absolutely incredible--to the point that even Abu Musab al-Zarqawi himself warned his followers to only pay heed when documents were released by his official spokesperson Abu Maysarah al-Iraqi.

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Montclair, Va.: To go back to your previous answer, why aren't there more Arabic language classes at the secondary level in the U.S.? There was an article this weekend in The Post re: difficulty of language acquisition by native English speakers and Arabic was on the most difficult list (88 weeks of intense training required). Wouldn't this be a better investment of Homeland Security dollars than some of the pork we've seen doled out to non-likely targets in Middle America?

Evan Kohlmann: Again, in my humble opinion, not nearly enough Homeland Security money has been spent on training the next generation of counter-terrorists, whether it be in technology or languages. Recently, senior FBI officials testified that they did not believe proficiency in Arabic or familiarity with terrorism were necessary qualifications for an agent to work with, or even lead the Bureau's Counter-Terrorism team. With all due respect, I strongly object to those statements. If we study the methods of our allies like France and the United Kingdom, we would learn quickly that the only reason they have developed such effective intelligence networks is because of the time and thought they have invested in creating a work force that has superior knowledge and skill than the terrorists they are hunting.

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Washington, D.C.: We should be going on the offensive on this, not just shutting down terrorist Web sites when we find them, but also making Web sites of our own. If we make convincing fake sites that contain subtle pieces of misinformation, potential terrorists will eventually learn not to trust everything they read on the Internet.
Evan Kohlmann: I agree... but unfortunately, there is also a downside to this. These web sites are valuable sources of information for our intelligence and law enforcement personnel. The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) is a good indicator of that. FBIS works as the open-source information outlet of American intelligence, and these days, it regularly publishes translations of terrorist communiques and audio recordings downloaded from Internet web sites. This information goes directly to help shape ongoing military operations, intelligence work, and even future counterterrorism policy on Capitol Hill. In this respect, we must take care not to inadvertently poison our own information feast.

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Washington, D.C.: Even though you make clear we seek to exploit the sites, it seems to be a bad trade-off, especially if they are being used for recruitment, training, and command and control. Might it be a better strategy to prevent traffic in certain languages containing certain keywords from crossing national borders? Or national gateways, if you prefer that term? The Chinese seem to be having some success using such technology in their capacity as evildoers. Couldn't we as do-gooders use similar technology to fence these terrorists off from the civilized world? Are we even obligated to carry traffic encoded in Arabic? Seems a bit suicidal to me.

Evan Kohlmann: Your argument is well-taken, and I generally agree with your point. Unfortunately, at least in my opinion, I don't think it is a productive or fruitful strategy to filter traffic, nevermind the free speech concerns involved. The Chinese have indeed managed to block many pro-democracy web sites, but not all of them, and not even nearly all the chat rooms, web forums, and other areas on the Internet used by Chinese dissidents to congregate and discuss politics.

I should note that not everyone shares this opinion. Some others, including most prominently Aaron Weisburd at Internet Haganah, encourage a more aggressive approach and believe that routinely disabling such web sites or filtering material is a legitimate possibility. Realistically, given the chaos that you often find in the halls of the U.S. government, I think that might be expecting a little more law enforcement and intelligence coordination than is realistic--at least for the moment.

Not to mention, there are also pro-American web sites written in the Arabic language. I think this illustrates why it would be highly problematic to distinguish web sites merely on the basis of language, both legally and technologically-speaking.

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Arlington, Va.: Besides Babar Ahmad's Web site, is there any estimate on the number of other Web sites within England that promote terrorism? How about within the U.S.?

What are the major obstacles to eliminating these sites?

Evan Kohlmann: There are at least two (if not more) major terror-supporting web sites run by London-based jihadi webmasters: Qal3ah (run by Saudi dissident Dr. Saad al-Fagih) and Tajdeed (run by Saudi dissident Dr. Mohammed al-Massari). Both Al-Fagih and Al-Massari have long histories of providing support to Al-Qaida, and their Web forums were a haven for online extremists, including those who openly glorified beheadings and suicide bombings. Both web sites went offline shortly after the 7/7 bombings in London, perhaps because Qal3ah was the forum that featured the first claim of responsibility for the London attacks in the name of Al-Qaida. In order to re-appear, Dr. Mohammed al-Massari and his assistants had to switch to a hosting company in East Asia--a region that often has few constraints on hosting such controversial web sites.

In my opinion, the most significant major obstacles to eliminating these sites are their usefulness in ongoing intelligence operations, the difficulty in shutting down web sites hosted in many foreign countries, and the lack of trained intelligence and law enforcement personnel capable of tracking Arabic-language web sites run by radical Islamists--not to mention the often formidable legal barriers involved.

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Evan Kohlmann: Thank you all for the great response, I hope I was able to answer most of your questions. Many of you also asked about Islamic charities and alleged Saudi financiers. On that subject, I would recommend reading my book, "Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe." I also regularly publish material dealing with terrorism and cyberterrorism directly on my web site, Global Terror Alert, and on the Counterterrorism Blog (The Counterterrorism Blog).