DNI John Negroponte is a career diplomat whose high-level diplomacy talent would best enhance U.S. foreign policy and security at State. Given the Iraqi shrapnel vortex, he may agree that his intelligence agencies have been repeating themselves to blueness, and he wants air.

Another question I might ask is whether Mr. Negroponte could agree with the apparent increase in U.S. military activity in North Central Africa while an Iraqi surge seems to contradict the surge of intel reports discouraging intervention as the shell-gaming of problems. I speculate that his loyalties to those above him versus the strong analyses against remaining in Iraq below him have him in a crossfire.

The surge, in my view, is not a bad idea to protect and cover U.S. troop withdrawal. I would expect a "surge" of attacks during such a withdrawal. To avoid a Tet offensive of sorts, it would make sense. For a last chance power-try, however, it does not appear to square with intelligence forecasts. Perhaps Mr. Negroponte knows this and fears that his agencies are not properly heeded in the Crawford plan.

The opposite would be true if he agrees with the Crawford plan, and it is what moves him to State. It would encourage me that balance is on the way which emphasizes more diplomacy in the Middle East, perhaps bestowed by the prayers of President Ford as he gets a better view on things from above. The election gong didn't hurt either.

At present, our memory of a great bi-partisan U.S. president has affected the soul of the Senate. Maybe Mr. Negroponte sees this as a chance for an easier confirmation as well. What we all hope is that it is not foggier where the ambassador is coming from than it is at Foggy Bottom. I doubt it.

I don't think that people should scoff at voluntary demotions, if that is what this is. A person who voluntarily leaves a position to make all things more productive is an asset versus someone who can't step down or change because of foolish pride. Also, if a person will be more productive elsewhere, and is not simply dodging adversity, that is a positive which should not be the subject of media gossip to penalize such a move as a "lesser" course. What does that imply about all of the hard working civil servants below the NDI position? It smacks of classism.

Mr. Negroponte likely found that at first his change-agent role was a magnet for collective frustrations of career intelligence pros most of whom were not at fault for 9-11 failures, but subject to the sweeping changes anyway.

We all know what it is like to be working on perfecting something on one's own desk, only to have new regulations freak it out. And in this case, it would be by someone who was not in one's field who carried a laundry list of changes in a diplomatic pouch. While Mr. Negroponte likely handled that job as well as anyone could, mending fences in a domestic family fight of highly educated egos isn't the same as mending fences among nations and groups in the foreign service. Still, I think political analyses of our intelligence services tend to over-generalize about the systemic problems, while neglecting the need for more stable, apolitical leadership.

Whatever happens, I hope that the Senate's confirmation is smooth for Mr. Negroponte, and very, very quiet and thorough for his replacement. I don't mean to sound a Red Scare, but the truth is that the Russian Federation is only just revealing its intended colors and capabilities in action while we ignored its rise, and the People's Republic of China has remained a doctrinaire Red under Hu, but we didn't care. Time to care. The two Shanghai Cooperators have been digging lots of tunnels to US resources, technology, smaller nations, and to information while we've been engaged in the WOT. We don't have to be offensive or unreasonable toward them, just thorough, polite and firm in changing the locks, the rules and the game.

As an opportunity for debate over national intelligence arises, it is especially important for the parties to heed President Ford's teamwork approach across the aisle. Security and civil liberties must be strong at once for America to succeed. The ingenuity to make that happen without compromising quality is there. Growing up is fundamental.

On one hand Jacques Chirac says this about Iraq as reported by the BBC today:

"This adventure exacerbated the divisions between communities and shook the very integrity of Iraq. It weakened the stability of the whole region where every country is now worried about its security."

Well Ok, Mr. Chirac. Surely even Barney and Miss Beazley are disclaiming that they are principal advisors on President Bush's latest decisions on Iraq, but what about the events in the former French colony, the Republic of Chad as reported at The Agonist?

Up to 30,000 refugees fleeing conflicts in Chad and the Central African Republic have crossed into east Cameroon prompting the United Nations Refugee Agency to open an office there to help them, a UNHCR official said on Thursday.

And this too, posted at the Agonist:

In the past two weeks, with minimal publicity, Mirage F1 jets have attacked and scattered a rebellion in north-eastern Central African Republic (CAR). But reports from the ground say the operation has had a devastating impact on civilians.

A French Defence Ministry spokesman said the action - which included regular Mirage sorties in neighbouring Chad where tens of thousands of refugees from Darfur are living - was in line with international calls to stabilise the region.

And what about your message to Mr. Putin regarding Chechnya, versus your take on the U.S. in Iraq? You said this according to Deutsche Welle 2-years back:

Jacques Chirac said he supported his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in seeking a political solution in Chechnya, provided that it preserves Russia's territorial integrity.

"A political solution is necessary and this is what Russia wants but a political solution has a limit," Chirac said at the press conference.

Why should the geographic difference matter? Is there proof that the pretext for invading Chechnya, bombing Grozny to the ground, and dominating a culturally and religiously distinct place and justifying it by past domination is warranted under principles of liberte and equalite?

Is banning Muslim dress in French schools the paragon of freedom and tolerance, or didn't that predate the riots in Muslim neighborhoods formed of Muslim immigrants from Muslim former-colonies of the sovereign adventures of France?

I'm just curious. Can we take the rhetoric down a notch and help each other out here?

There are reportedly about 3,000 of them. Somalian Islamic militants dug in at the seaside on the Somalian coast, surrounded by UN-backed Somali troops, who are themselves backed by Ethiopian military units.

Mr. Nice Guy, aka Ayman al-Zawahiri has given these misguided people his "support" via an internet message telling them to "wipe-out" the Somali "slaves" the way that the Mujahadeen supposedly drove out some superpower or another from Afghanistan. He encouraged them to martyr themselves, that is, he again enthuses about the expense of OPL, "Other Peoples' Lives."

And this got me to thinking. Why can't Ayman al-Zawahiri be more like Zamfir, the Master of the Pan Flute, loved by millions in Europe?

Some Europeans think that Americans have no culture, no sensibility, no class, and are basically earth-destroying hicks who would spit on Beethoven if he wasn't looking, well, even if he was, or maybe kick Kafka's butt and tell him to quit whining about his workplace concerns. "Geet up, you lil' roach, and quit that bellyaching." That's the impression I got from a German national and employee of a London office of a financial firm next to whom I had the pleasure of sitting on a flight to an undisclosed location.

What a pleasure it was to listen to him tell me how much Europeans didn't like our George W. Bush, and what a wreck "Cowboy Bush" was making of the Middle East. He never said a good thing about the United States during our entire trip. I said some very nice things about Europe. I was expecting some pleasant memories returned, or maybe some conciliatory understandings of our position over here in the land of contrasts: Samuel Barber and Rap; the Amish humility and WWF egopathy; NRA and ACLU; Supercolliders and tough-man fights etc. etc.. Not a word.

I tried to be diplomatic: "Look on the bright side. At least someone has taken the spotlight off of your homeland as the greatest violator of world peace, security and decency in the 20th Century. Isn't it nice to have some pressure removed? You can thank the U.S. for that, can't you?" He didn't seem amused. I didn't say, ". . even though the diversion isn't fair or comparable at all?" I recalled some cartoons of Bush in nazi garb I'd seen on the net a couple of years ago and wondered if people seriously made such comparisons in Europe.

The truth is, here is what I should have said: "Well, at least America loves Zamfir too. I've got his CD, and millions of us love him too." And if you think about it, while listening to Zamfir's music, you can imagine Europeans, Americans, Russians, Iraqis, Turks, Persians, Greeks, Mexicans, Canadians, and so on, and so forth walking down village pathways without surveillance cameras speaking freely with each other, each possessory of a home government that was stable, had a democratic leader, checks and balances, the corruption index count of Finland, sound work forces, and lots of attention on preventive, curative and palliative health care. That would be Zamfir's world. And really, I couldn't imagine a Wahhabist Militant joining the crowd without a large explosive package strapped to his body.

And that's why if Ayman was more like Zamfir, focusing his talents on something productive for other peoples' well being, like musical Islamic prayer for example, he'd only be wearing religious garb that disciplined his own soul, and not explosives that don't do anything to help others discipline theirs. His example would have impact on those around him if he could walk among them without controlling, harming or disturbing them. And yet, he does not seem to be able to do that. Rather, he is quick to condemn and damn to the point in which he stereotypes entire groups of Somalis, and without lifting a finger of his own except perhaps to type a few letters of hate, he encourages the expenditure of OPL, always OPL, never HOL, his own life.

Sorry Zamfir, if this comparison is freaking you out, but somehow I see you dropping your pan flute and rushing out into traffic to save an elderly Muslim man about to get hit by a bus, risking your own neck. So I just want you to know that Americans love you for that.

There is something else to remember. There are lots and lots of people who simply don't listen to Zamfir. When a Wahhabist strikes their country and kills their people, they don't think of composing a song to try to convert Ayman to a peaceful way of life. No, in New York, you are likely to find very different responses to that sort of thing.

So why do you have to go stirring up that kind of revenge among innocents who have done nothing to you? If you hadn't, tens of thousands of people would be alive today worshipping in mosques and working out their salvation in peaceful reliance on Allah, and not on you who have decided you are more important than Allah or Muhammed and should be sending orders over the internet. Does Allah need the internet? Does Muhammed? Wouldn't one earnest prayer to Allah resolve more than any bomb?

So long as you live by the sword, you are game to die from it.

For religious men and women, there is a better way that is more powerful for the good of mankind than defiling the faith with dependence on earthy violence.

The history of over-reactive U.S. responses and counter-responses to negative events in and related to the U.S. intelligence community and its difficult mission, has caused more division and bureaucratic instransigence within the agencies than the events themselves.

The intelligence community needs the right leadership, not purely systemic switches, to work as a disciplined unity. More congressional hearings and agendas that give the politicians grandstand credit while hurting morale among the people who work on the front lines of intelligence, counter- intelligence and counter-terror is the last thing we need as power in Congress shifts and Mr. Bush appears to be a lame-duck executive.

For example, one of the focus points for widespread reporting on the change of office of NDI John Negroponte is that it causes damage to the intelligence community's progress toward unity and coordination. This does not make sense given the current situation in Iraq, or in view of intelligence history.

However, in the same reports, Mr. Negroponte's chief skills as a diplomat, those which assumedly made him suitable to bring the intelligence agencies together, are not in question.

Also not in question is the extreme depth of resources dedicated to the Iraq problem, including those of intelligence agencies. If Negroponte's diplomacy skills have run their course in interagency cooperation building, hampered by dichotomies between professionals who hold views ranging from neocon to realist, and from defense intel to civilian subject orientation, then making a political issue of Mr. Negroponte's move is not rational any more than questioning Rumsfeld's departure. In the context of US intelligence history I disagree with Rand analyst Gregory Treverton's quoted view that Negroponte's departure alone will damage the intelligence community's movement toward unity.

Intelligence agencies have been put on a war footing and set under a diplomat's command. That has a short half-life. Until the war footing is drawn down, the leadership must focus accordingly. Neither should favoritism to Pentagon-related intelligence entities versus CIA and FBI be allowed by higher level leadership. That is the President's responsibility, and in his first term and a half, he favored SecDef Rumsfeld's intelligence agencies and failed to balance the post-9-11 resources, responsibility and morale.

However, to attack Mr. Negroponte or the Administration for making a change under current circumstances, especially one which tasks a highly seasoned diplomat with top diplomatic efforts to resolve Middle East issues that the same critics say requires more diplomacy than bombs, is deeply contradictory. What the intelligence agencies need, separately and for their umbrella National Director of Intelligence, is an excellent leader of people to send the intelligence community the message that they are not scapegoats, but respected professionals, differences and all.

Following a tumultous post-9-11 whipping of the entire intelligence community for a number of systemic intelligence communication disconnects between military intelligence (Able Danger), FBI, and CIA; a backlog of intercepted chatter translations at FBI not properly budgeted for; and the well-documented history of competition, distrust and rivalry between CIA and FBI, we do not need to continue the "whiplash effect" of continual debates and battles over intelligence decisions which serves mainly political ambition.

There seems to be a whiplash cycle that began with the CIA counter-intelligence zeal personified by James Angleton whose overzeal in purging the agency of suspected Cold War plants had resulted in another phase of sentiment against excessive Cold War zeal. The catastrophic betrayal of CIA agent Aldrich Ames that got many men killed, happened in this lax phase, and a flea market of secrets were sold to or stolen by the PRC and USSR-Russian Federation.

I can imagine an opposing intelligence agency not hampered by political debate, watching the pendulum of extreme reactions open its US intelligence rival to a new set of forced-mistake vulnerabilities. By applying pressure in one place, an opposing foreign agency could once predict by the reaction to it where to apply pressure next to keep the U.S. off-balance. Playing on Angleton's paranoia, a false-defector may have been the initial soft-pressure. That soft-pressure was easier to trust for a champion of caution like Angleton. One wonders: was there someone else acting in the agency as an antagonist to Angleton who could drive him toward confidence in the false defector?

During the anti-Angleton phase we saw ex-CIA Director John Deutch's sloppy security practices on his home computer, laptops taken from the State Department, nuetron bomb secrets away to the PRC, and FBI agent Hanssen's bizarre sell-out to the very same Soviet KGB agents now working for the current "post-Soviet" FSB. From 1985 to 2001, Hanssen bled the US intelligence community. Surely a fix for the rather extreme lack of zeal in internal security was needed.

Now, in the "War on Terror," we see a heavy reliance on private contractors, all the way down to hiring Wackenhut security guards to guard places like Fort Carson, from which burglaries of private ID information about troops, of emergency contingencies for the Fort, and sensitive legal information from its JAG office were possible.

Consider: after 9-11 hit the United States, suddenly all intelligence agencies were under attack for having focused too much on Cold War counter-intelligence and adjustments to the backfield motions of the morphing Cold War forces that were only changing, not disappearing. They were prosecuted for having "neglected" counter-terrorism and human intelligence. Let's examine that as to 9-11.

The human counterintelligence investigative skills of Minneapolis FBI Special Agent Harry Samit who tried but failed to get warrants approved by bureaucratic superiors to obtain greater contextual information about Moussaoui's flying lessons before 9-11, seemed in check. Same with the human counter-terror intelligence instincts of Phoenix FBI Special Agent Kenneth Williams, whose July 2001 memo warning that bin-Laden operatives may be training to fly in the US was never passed uphill.

Let's get this straight. Because the leadership at FBI and CIA tolerated mid-level bureaucratic arrogance, laziness, fear, logjams, underfunding, unclear thinking or whatever else plagued their respective agencies, a conclusion was made that the intelligence agencies have poor human counter-terror capabilities on the ground chiefly because of lack of inter-agency cooperation. However, the evidence just as much emphasizes bureaucratic intransigence within the agencies which required leadership that would kick bureaucratic lard-heads out of the way to clear connections between the street and the decision-makers.

We are not talking about a problem requiring a diplomat alone. It requires leadership by strong leaders who understand the life and death issues within intelligence information flow from the street agents to the decision-makers. It requires leadership that will candidly get from the White House what they need to do their job.

Instead, what we got after 9-11 was a commission and two polarized political parties taking advantage of the disaster to batter the opposing political party through systemic criticisms of the intelligence agencies, once again perpetuating the whiplash of the intelligence community as a whole rather than sufficiently connecting specific leadership issues to bureaucratic logjam tolerance.

It is the same whiplash reaction that concluded from the specific failure to stop the specific type of operation that bin-Laden's agents accomplished on 9-11, that a War on Terror needed to commence outside of a firm defeat of the Taliban, hunt-down of all of al-Qaeda (quietly, preferably) and a focus on making the U.S. more secure. Overreacting into bin-Laden's hands, American troops have been extended into a seige posture in Iraq, their departure predicated on the behavior of Iraqi factions. That is a severe leveraging disadvantage to the Armed Forces of the US as a whole. It also pins down intelligence resources.

From the top, the US needs leadership that does not care who gets the credit, but cares chiefly about the results. That is a leadership issue, and it starts with the president.

The right leadership must be in place to break the bureaucratic factors between the street agents of every intelligence agency and decision makers whose careers will live or die with hundreds, thousands or millions of people. Otherwise, we will suffer body blow after body blow from the manipulations by which both nation state and non-state opponents of the U.S. try to condition us to be reactionary.

Over at the Nixon Center's National Interest online, Prof. Dimitry Simes wrote an analysis of the Litvinenko case entitled, "Litvinenko: Kremlin Conspiracy or Blofeld Set-Up?"

The analysis centered on some very important points about the shady backgrounds of the involved parties, however, missed some reality checks arising from evidence not just in Litvinenko's case, but from the larger context, including that of a radiologic weapon incident. Among these realities: (1) Putin's plausible deniability defeats itself; (2) poisoning of Putin's former contract bodyguard and its implications; (3) likelihood that assassins were compartmentalized from information on the nature of their weapon so as to destroy them as witnesses while Kremlin stalls; (4) heavy conflicts of interest in Kremlin "investigations" including the Yukos diversion; (5) Litvinenko and the Chechen angle; (6) the evidence of increasingly aggressive, neo-Soviet Cold War behaviors in several venues, including murder in the U.K.; and (7) how Kremlin efforts at discrediting Litvinenko work against its avoidance of responsibility.

A good international relationship with Russia is key, however, it does not improve by not dealing with serious issues quickly and completely. The US nor the Russian Federation are as threatened by Islamic extremism that this incident should be buried to fight-off an emergent common enemy as happened in backing Stalin versus Hitler. This incident has to be carefully vetted for truth or else the misuse of weaponized radiation will have been glossed over.

1. Plausible Deniability

The very argument, echoed by Prof. Simes and others, that it would be illogically risky for Mr. Putin to approve of the use of Polonium-210 against Litvinenko in the U.K. is what increases the likelihood that he could get away with it. As such, the argument defeats itself. It also overlooks something about today's cadre of KGB veterans ruling Russia: they survived the gangster wars of the 90's not by chess-like calculation alone, but by brutality and risk-taking.

2. The Alleged Radiation Poisoning of Roman Tsepov

According to the December 31st Sunday Times report, Moscow prosecutors are investigating the similarities between the radiation poisoning death 2-years ago of Roman Tsepov, Vladimir V. Putin's former contract bodyguard, and Alexander Litvinenko's November 2006 murder. The Moscow Prosecutor General's office stresses Tsepov's intervention in Yukos business affairs after working for Putin when Putin was Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg.

However, there is a problem with plausible deniability if two years ago Mr. Putin's former bodyguard was murdered with Polonium-210 or another highly radioactive substance, dying like Mr. Litvinenko. It would have put the Russian Federation government on alert that its nuclear materials were not secure, and would make the 2006 theft of Polonium-210 without a Putin operative detecting it, highly unlikely. It also seems it would have led to a particularly aggressive all-agency investigation which would have resulted in the arrest of the assassin of Mr. Tsepov, and the conspirators.

The sort of animosity one would expect from one using Polonium-210 to send an excruciatingly painful message of horrific killing power and reach, would be from a person with much to lose by revelations from dossiers one is not sure exist, but which could politically destroy him. The level of paranoia possible in a country with tens of thousands of former secret service people and informants for hire should not be underestimated in its power to motivate pre-emptive assassination of someone known to be pursuing information or footage one is not sure exists.

There is one back-burner motive to consider for Tsepov's murder, and possibly Litvinenko's. Many Western press outlets have joked about an incident caught on video in which Mr. Putin strokes, lifts the shirt of, and kisses a young boy's stomach in public, later explaining it as the same as wanting to stroke a kitten. However, to a regime that has commandeered the leadership of a too-willing Moscow Patriarchate in nearly every aspect of government ministry to secure Russian popular support through the Church, the taped incident plus Alexander Litvinenko's averred kompromat that Putin was known by his KGB superiors to have problems with underage boys, could destroy Putin's public image on which both he and the Patriarch Alexei II have worked so hard to build. I don't know if these allegations are true, but to utterly ignore them and the clip would seem to be negligent for the sake of avoiding taboo subjects. For the record, I sure hope the kompromat is false. It's very creepy.

3. Likelihood Litvinenko Assassins Compartmentalized from Putin

The real and feigned ignorance of likely Litvinenko poisoner(s) Dmitri Kovtun and or Andrei Lugovoi is a sign of their compartmentalization from their orderer and supplier of the Polonium-210 used to murder Litvinenko. How many distancing compartments there were could only be investigated objectively in Russia by non-Russian or neutral Russian investigators with full power to enforce subpoenas and orders for complex medical examination; a snowball's chance.

It is likely that the poisoner was deceived about the true nature of what he was carrying, thinking it to be another poison that would not leave a trail leading back to Moscow. The poisoner's ignorance would be consistent with an operation that could wipe out all of the proximate witnesses even while the Kremlin slowed matters down by insisting on its own participation (intervention?) in the investigation, rather than cooperation with that of the British. Also, ignorance about the substance is consistent with the apparent sloppiness in handling the radioactive substance by the poisoners.

Why would Putin risk a trail of the substance leading to Moscow? Only if it was deniable enough that the link was not to him, but to his enemies, might he risk it. Why? The trail to Moscow would buy the benefit of a Russian takeover of any investigation on its sovereign territory. And it could also help throw off the building scrutiny on him as to so many other murders in Russia, the authoritarian issue, and other PR woes. It would provide him with a major incident that he would be able to blame on his enemies who would go so far as to frame him for murdering Litvinenko.

However, the capability of Putin's enemies obtaining Polonium-210 should also be investigated. This would require opening Russian nuclear security procedures, it seems. The Kremlin enemy theory has to be investigated in combination with the enemies' alleged capability and motive to frame Putin. However, I find it strange that if there is so much jockeying to replace Putin, the Kremlin would so quickly settle on its beaten enemies, the Yukos executives, as suspects in Litvinenko's death.

The unnecessarily expensive and risky method of using 10 million USD of Polonium-210 to kill someone seems a veiled message that a government's resources stand ready to kill anyone else who may try to compromise that regime. The painful, slow death it brings makes it also a weapon expressing a deep, yet sophisticated animosity.

4. Heavy Conflicts of Interest in Kremlin Investigation

Scotland Yard detectives seeking audiences with Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun discovered quickly that no audiences would be allowed with the men without Russian authorities present. Also, access to the men has been controlled while Russian authorities have insisted on control over the Russian investigation.

In addition, the Moscow Prosecutor General kicked off his office's involvement by advocating in defense of the Kremlin before adducing any evidence at all. And now that office seeks to go into an area in which it has had much experience, namely, the prosecution of Yukos executives. This was a prosecution in which the Kremlin had an immense interest, considering that it would enable the nationalization of Yukos through state-owned Gazrprom, and cut-off free-market associations through Sibneft. The Kremlin's interest in the Yukos prosecutions was so heavy that the Prosecutor General's shift in suspicion toward former Yukos executives in the Litvinenko case is predictable. It would be one more step in playing enemies off against each other while washing the Kremlin's hands. Is that what is happening? I don't know.

One thing is certain. By November 2006, Vladimir V. Putin's Administration, his own personal future and fortune, and his "partners" had more to lose than Yukos executives who had already lost Yukos to nationalization, fled the country or who now live in prison cells.

The conflicts of interest have a history in the many dampened investigations to find the murderers of the many critical businesspersons, journalists and dissidents of the Putin regime whose bodies have piled up in morgues.

Regarding these murders, who can prosecute a government? And does a government with so many resources, deserve the same burden of proof that an individual would receive if accused of murder? Here is where determinations for policy reasons and for prosecution purposes should diverge. An individual natural person normally does not have the resources to match a government, and that is why proof beyond a reasonable doubt for guilt is a must. With a government or its agent, the burden should be lesser, or it should carry a burden of disproof to some degree.

5. Litvinenko and the Chechen Angle

Much has been made by the Kremlin and its "partners" of Alexander Litvinenko's alleged deathbed conversion to Islam, his ties to Chechens, and the possibility that Litvinenko may have been trying to supply the Chechens with dirty bomb materials. The Chechen angle plays well with the Russian public, however, a question that remains unanswered is whether Litvinenko's knowledge, alleged in his book "Blowing Up Russia," that the FSB blew-up Russians to justify a war against Chechnya, is what drove him to sympathize with Chechens and seek protection under Berezovsky.

If Litvinenko didn't believe this to be true, why would he have risked writing the book when he could have simply earned pay as a Berezovsky body guard and kept a low profile?

Before assuming that Litvinenko was in bad faith toward Russia, it should be determined whether what he put in his book was true. Also, it would be wise to try to determine whether Litvinenko believed it, even if it were later determined not to be true. If true, Litvinenko's allegations would imply that countless innocent Russians and Chechens, both civilians and soldiers, had died needlessly for the sake of sending a violent message to other Republics considering further breaks from Russia's Federation and alliance with the EU or the US.

Finally, it is harder for Russian FSB to infiltrate the Chechen underground than it is for them to compromise other organized underground groups. That is why for people like Litvinenko and Berezovsky, who had already become a Kremlin target, there would be more safety with the Chechens. However corrupt Berezovsky may be, it has to be considered whether Litvinenko was fooled not only by the oligarch, but killed in a war between the oligarch and Putin in which there was no right side, but he believed he was on the best side.

6. Increasing Signs of Aggressive Neo-Soviet Cold War Behavior

Externally:

According to an in-depth report by Neil Mackay of the Sunday Herald (Scotland), an unnamed British counter-intelligence agent learned of a botched hit by a Russian intelligence operative on Judge Timothy Workman. The assassin shot Lt. Col. Robert Workman, an 83-year old British citizen who lived near Judge Workman. The Putin regime had been enraged by the denial of its requests to extradite both Boris Berezovsky and Chechan rebel Akhmed Zakayev from the United Kingdom, accusing the UK judge of "playing cold war politics."Here is an earlier press report of that incident. No doubt the Kremlin will claim that it was framed yet again by the grand conspiracy (presumably in the entire West) to bring Putin down. Are we seeing a pattern of strikes on those deemed insignificant by the Kremlin, to send messages to those with whom it has directly tangled? Was Politkovskaya a message to Litvinenko? And then Litvinenko a message to Berezovsky and all other exiled former FSB/KGB?

Additionally, the Putin regime's refusal to allow extradition of Russian citizens suspected in murders on the UK's soil seems to reveal a Cold War retaliatory policy. It seems aimed at intimidating the UK into cooperating with Putin's assertion of control over London's Russian emigre population. The implied threat: that a confrontation between the Kremlin by the U.K. could lead to retaliatory economic moves within Europe and on oil, gas and G8 commercial arrangements.

One cannot ignore the evidence of Russian intelligence spying on US command areas leading up to the invasion of Iraq, or the assistance of Saddam Hussein's regime in a way that could have ended in the death of American troops during the invasion. Some reports even suggested that it was Russian spetznatz that helped secret away so many of the Hussein munitions beyond the Syrian border that is being used to blow up 60 and 70 people at a time in Baghdad.

Internally:

Something less evident to the Russian people about their government's foreign policies of nostalgic USSR-like ascendancy abroad, has been its repeat of USSR-like neglect of the people's health and survival needs at home in the process. According to Rand and US Library of Congress studies, declining investment in health care and hospital rebuilding has remained the status quo during Yeltsin's and Putin's terms. Only just this year Putin announced a plan to spend heavily on heath care. It is a late amendment.

How much of the money otherwise expendable on health care has been spent on the wars in Chechnya, refugee management, or on central control policies to reel in current and former republics? And how much money supplies the reputedly high budget of the FSB, it's director seen here with Patriarch Alexei II at the founding of a joint-venture MP chapel in the FSB's (formerly KGB) Lubyanka HQ?

The Russian medical profession has among the highest talent treasury and potentials in the world. There is nothing wrong with the Russian intellect. However, saddled beneath a top-heavy, inefficient and corrupt Soviet regression, it cannot easily get up and realize its potential and save Russian lives.

7. Kremlin Tactics of Discrediting Dissidents Backfires

The talking points on Litvinenko have not only emphasized his conversion to Islam, they also emphasized his unimportance and insignificance, much like Putin's language about Anna Politkovskaya: "insignificant."

The Kremlin controlled press has also mentioned, and even Russian emigres I know have mentioned that Litvinenko was merely a prison guard who made it into the FSB anti-corruption branch. He was never a spy, they argue, and therefore seek to discredit western presses who refer to him as an ex-spy. Professor Simes also repeated this technical spycraft error about Litvinenko in the Western press to suggest that it was "frenzied." I am not so sure heavy press action on a nuclear terror incident story in a NATO country is rightfully called a frenzy, or that it is invalid for small technical errors. It is rather the press doing its job to help protect the public. Perhaps that wasn't always the emphasis of the "realist" perspective of Nixonian foreign policy, and it certainly is not Putin's priority, since he has a former Vympel assassin, Vladimir Kozlov, running his Media ministry anyway.

The realist line goes: why would the Kremlin, with so much important business at stake, harm such insignificant people as these?

However, if Litvinenko was so insignificant, why would anyone kill him? The Kremlin has pointed at Berezovsky also. Why would Berezovsky kill him if it would involve too much risk for someone too insignificant for others to believe as a legitimate target for the Kremlin?

Also, why would Litvinenko be insignificant if as the Kremlin has alleged, he was running radioactive materials to the Chechens to use in a bomb? Can you have it both ways? He is not an insignificant threat, but then he is?

Conclusion:

The case is not just about an emotionalized story of one man dying of radiation poisoning, or whether he was worthy of life or death. The case is also about whether a regime that allows the loose use of radioactive materials as weapons in and against the interests of NATO countries should be brought to the mat with a concerted world effort aimed at its international accountability. Perhaps the Western nations should have thought of this before granting the Kremlin so much clout in the G8 or with WTO status.

I am not saying that there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Vladimir V. Putin ordered Alexander Litvinenko's murder, or even an attempt on Judge Timothy Workman, killing instead an innocent elderly man. However, it is more than possible, and even in the realm of probability that he did. We should not rule it out, in part for the reasons stated above.

And, I do not think that proof needs to rise to the beyond a reasonable doubt standard to prove a government's involvement and proceed politically with a firm, measured, long-range adjustment in policy toward that country, whether written or unwritten.

The Russian Federation government of Vladimir Putin is not itself Russia, does not represent the character of the great plurality of Russians, and owes an immense debt to the Russian people for being loyal to a regime that has treated the bulk of Russians like expendable pawns in a game of USSR-reloaded.

KGB General Anatoly Trofimov, since gunned down with his wife in the presence of his 4-year old child in Russia, allegedly advised Alexander Litvinenko to avoid fleeing to Italy because Romano Prodi, once EU Commissioner and now Italian PM, was the KGB's own. Trofimov was killed April 10, 2005, having opposed Putin's election and the war in Chechnya.

Trofimov's assassination was blamed by the FSB (see same article linked to above) on his "commercial activity." Now Russian prosecutors investigate a former Yukos official in Litvinenko's murder. How can Russian prosecutors keep straight faces with such a conflict of interest working for one of the obvious suspects?

Since Mario Scaramella met with the late Alexander Litvinenko, murdered using 10 million dollars worth of Polonium-210 from a Russian nuclear reactor, Scaramella has reportedly been arrested by Prodi's government, initially for "aggravated slander" against Prodi. However, the allegations of Prodi's KGB involvement have been around since 1999, so why did he wait until after Litvinenko's death to press slander charges or file a private slander suit?

A benefit for the FSB would be if Scaramella's arrest discredited Litvinenko by association. It could also serve as a message that the FSB can reach anyone who would oppose its interests. How did Scaramella cross the Putin regime? Possibly by participation in an Italian Mitrokhin Commission finding that the Pope John Paul II's assassination attempt in 1981 was a Soviet KGB operation?

Tellingly, the current Russian Federation government took it upon itself to dismiss the Italian findings on John Paul II as if answering in continuity with the USSR.

The Putin regime, by its own law and its executive actions and inactions, appears to be exacting a policy of revenge on its enemies. It seems that it is done in the name of anti-terror or anti-corruption. Just ask the President of Ukraine, 12 dead journalists, scores of murdered businessmen and bankers, imprisoned industrialists, defecting former KGB agents, and all who could be deemed enemies of the Putin regime.

The study mill closely linked with Planned Parenthood, Inc., the Guttmacher Institute, recently came out with a survey study which concluded that 9/10 people in the US have had premarital sex. It was based on multi-phase, stratified cluster surveys, mostly of women and a late sample of men. These surveys use previous survey data as a correlative tool presumed to help predict the reliability of later findings. They are probability samplings, and in this study, different demographic groups of women were in focus in different phases.

The data used were from the last four phases of the National Survey of Family Growth NSFG in which some 33,000+ women were the plurality of respondents in the first three phases, with under 5,000 men surveyed in the last, 2002 survey. One problem with the data is that it did not indicate how many of the women's first intercourse experiences were voluntary, unwanted, wanted or involuntary, nor how many instances of abuse were included in the premarital sex category. Indeed, in the Guttmacher report by Lawrence B. Finer, PhD, the words voluntary, involuntary, incest, legal, illegal, illicit are not found. This is interesting, because another study published by the institute, Young Women's Degree of Control Over First Intercourse: An Exploratory Analysis, By Joyce Abma, Anne Driscoll and Kristin Moore indicates a much greater ambiguity of voluntariness in first intercourse for teenage females than the Finer report appears to want to deal with:

"Unwanted intercourse represents a more extreme form of negative sexual experience. A substantial proportion of young women apparently experience unwanted first or early sexual intercourse: In the 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS), 25% of women reported that while their first intercourse had not been forced, neither had it been wanted.⁵ Nonvoluntary or forced sexual intercourse, including rape, represents the most extreme category on the spectrum of negative sexual experiences. In the NHSLS, 4% of women aged 18-59 described their first intercourse as "forced."

A number of risk factors have been shown to be associated with these negative experiences among girls and young women. For unwanted intercourse, one group of factors involves individual behaviors and characteristics, sometimes interacting with peer influences. Adolescent girls who scored high in peer conformity were more vulnerable to unwanted intercourse initiated by their male peers.⁶ In the NHSLS, peer pressure was cited by women as the main reason for unwanted voluntary first intercourse.⁷

As is the case with less extreme forms of sexual abuse, younger women are at greater risk of experiencing nonvoluntary intercourse. Life-table estimates of data from the National Survey of Children suggest that women who experienced sex at younger ages were more likely to have experienced nonvoluntary sex than were those whose first intercourse occurred at older ages.⁸

 

And according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the NSFG's purpose is only to provide a "snapshot of U.S. fertility, family formation and reproductive health" information. The Guttmacher Institute appears to have taken it much further than a snapshot and has extrapolated the rate of premarital sex from varying demographics among women in different decades to be over 90 percent for all U.S. women now and yesteryear. That is much more than the "snaphot" foreseen by the National Center for Health Statistics.

This overstatement appears to highlight yet again the inherent conflict of interest that the advocacy organization Planned Parenthood, Inc.'s Guttmacher Institute has in delivering information to the mainstream media about reproductive health. The prime conflict: that PP's historic eugenic ideologies and current financial interest in abortion and contraceptive use skews its interpretations against abstinence before marriage. This is in part due to an historical bias from eugenics origins that blamed "overpopulation," and especially that of the poor, on religious peoples and religions. It is no surprise then, that the Finer study was used to criticize abstinence programs funded by the government.

Other types of seemingly intractable behavior, such as DWI and other behaviors that normative legal restrictions are meant to deter or educate out of a population, have successfully declined in cultures that remain consistent with the abstinence messages in law and in cultural education, which puts the burden on the individual in society to refrain from a certain conduct. Sweden is a good example of this. In a way it could be said that the individual cannot adapt to responsiblity until the individual is first tasked and not given loopholes and excuses over time to dilute that responsibility.

Ah, but responsibility is not "entertaining," is it? Motherhood, fatherhood and monogamy interrupt entertainment too much it would seem.

Perhaps the two parties should get on the same page and teach abstinence until marriage (ceremonial or common law) so that stable, committed parental relationships and family structures may make a comeback for the sake of better child rearing in the U.S..

As for contraceptives and sexual health issues, these need not be mutually exclusive from strong abstinence education. And as to abortion, both parties should obviate its need (Mother Teresa was correct about the evil impact of abortion on society at large). The "unwanted" degrees in sketchily-voluntary first intercourse for females discussed in the Abma, Driscoll and Moore study are themselves a good indicator for abstinence, and not an enabling message under such concerning circumstances for the young.

Notice which study hit the mainstream media: the Finer, not the Abma, Driscoll and Moore study in any significant circulation.

The notions of what it means to be a woman in U.S. pop-culture and media have not improved women's overall health, personal force of independence and satisfaction with their personal lives.

In other words, while pre-marital sex is celebrated as a norm by today's media, and childlessness is also celebrated, women find fewer dedicated men who are checked by moral conscience as the conditioning of lapsed morality continues under a constant barrage of programming that advertisers pay so much for to influence behavior. Study spinning reports such as the latest one by Finer, do not help to check these damaging false messages.

Perhaps the problem is that the U.S. is too much of a passive entertainment culture that reads and accepts reports of studies uncritically.