My Washington Times Piece On Blue Lives Matter

The Washington Times published my piece on Philadelphia police cars getting getting bulletproof windows.

The good news is that Philadelphia police officers will soon be patrolling the city’s mean streets in 150 new patrol cars that have been equipped with bulletproof windows.

According to the Philadelphia Police Department, the patrol cars will have ballistic shields affixed to the front door panels and “‘transparent armor” in the front windows.

The bulletproof windows were ordered in light of two separate incidents in which two Philadelphia police officers were ambushed and shot while sitting in their patrol cars. Both were seriously wounded, but thankfully both survived.

In 2016 Philadelphia police officer Jesse Hartnett was shot while stopped at an intersection. A surveillance camera captured the moment that the gunman, wearing a long white tunic and shouting “Allah Akbar,” ran up to Officer Harnett’s patrol car and fired into the driver’s side window. Officer Harnett was shot three times in his left arm.

Incredibly, Officer Harnett got out of his car and returned fire, wounding the suspect, who was later captured by other officers.

Sgt. Sylvia Young, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, was also sitting in her patrol car when a gunman opened fire on her, hitting her in her left shoulder, arm and torso. The shooter, who also that night fired on a 25-year-old woman, killing her, and wounded a University of Pennsylvania police officer, was later shot and killed by other officers.

According to the Philadelphia Police Department, the bulletproof windows will cost around $1,300 dollars per patrol car. For those who believe “Blue Lives” matter, the cost is well worth it.

... Adding to the concerns of Philly cops is the belief that the newly elected District Attorney does not truly have their back. Larry Krasner, a lifelong civil rights lawyer who has sued the Philadelphia Police Department 75 times, was elected DA and recently took office. The new DA has represented pro-bono anti-police organizations such as Black Lives Matter, ACT-Up and Occupy Philly over the years. What he has never done is prosecute a criminal.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/9/philadelphia-police-armed-bulletproof-glass-patrol/  

The Future Of War: A History

Joshua Sinai offers a review of Lawrence Freedman’s The Future of War: A History at the Washington Times.

The nature of warfare is constantly changing and evolving. New technologies such as unmanned systems, whether militarized aerial drones, remote-controlled robotic tanks or sophisticated cyber weapons that can remotely destroy an adversary’s critical nodes in their infrastructure, directed-energy (e.g., laser) weapons, as well as anti-ballistic defensive systems that can intercept in mid-air an adversary’s offensive missiles, are all changing the tactics of warfare for the countries that possess them.

In a parallel development, if some non-state adversaries, such as terrorist groups, achieve the capability to employ miniaturized tactical nuclear weapons or cyberwarfare weapons, they could inflict catastrophic casualties on their more powerful adversaries.

With today’s state and non-state adversaries seeking to exploit these and other new military technologies, military planners are aware that new concepts of warfare policies, doctrine, operation and organizational structures are required to address the challenges presented by the constantly evolving revolution in military affairs.

It is not only in the current era that military thinkers are forecasting the future of warfare; they have done this throughout history. As Lawrence Freedman writes, the future of warfare has always been a matter of concern along with “the causes of war and their likely conduct and cause.” Mr. Freedman is emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College, London.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

 https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/8/book-review-the-future-of-war-a-history-by-lawrenc/ 

Attorney General Sessions Celebrates Law Enforcement Appreciation Day

Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued the below statement on National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, a day set aside to show support for the brave men and women who have dedicated themselves to protecting our communities:

“Serving as a law enforcement officer is an honorable profession that is demanding, dangerous, and all too often unappreciated. Those who have chosen law enforcement as a profession and who work selflessly day and night through the harshest of conditions are a special breed.  We owe them our undying gratitude.  And, while our gratitude should not be limited to a single day of the year, I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate my deep and sincere appreciation to all serving in tribal, local, state, and federal law enforcement across the country for the daily sacrifices they make to serve and protect our communities.”

Today Attorney General Sessions also visited the Washington, D.C. Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) Lodge with Metropolitan Police Department Auxiliary Police Officers to express his gratitude and support for them and their work.

CIA Director Seeks Stronger Counterintelligence Against Spies And Leakers

Veteran national security reporter Bill Gertz offers a piece at the freebeacon.com on CIA Director Mike Pompeo (seen in the above photo) and his reform of CIA counterintelligence.

British spy novelist John le Carre elegantly called it the oldest question of all: Who can spy on the spies? He was talking about counterintelligence—the often arcane business of finding foreign spies who try to penetrate intelligence services.

Counterintelligence at CIA today is a far cry from its Cold War world of Soviet moles or penetration agents and neutralizing them or turning them into double agents.

Current CIA Director Mike Pompeo is working to change all that. Pompeo has elevated the status of CIA's counterintelligence center, a dedicated unit within the agency's Langley, Va., headquarters that is devoted to identifying and countering foreign intelligence agents and their activities.

CIA counterintelligence efforts, however, remain limited by a lack of both qualified personnel and strategic vision needed to deal with a growing spy threat that today includes both cyber operations and influence activities, in addition to traditional spying by nations such as China and Russia. The foreign spying threat is increasing in both scale and sophistication, according to intelligence experts.

As part of the reform, Pompeo is stepping up internal security at CIA in a bid to better identify leakers—employees who may be politically motivated to conduct more non-traditional digital-age crimes—such as exposing secrets in a bid to undermine American intelligence, or overall U.S. national security.

"The director has made counterintelligence a priority at CIA because if we don’t achieve perfection in this realm, all our other efforts at the agency are at risk," said Dean Boyd, CIA director of public affairs. "The last thing CIA can tolerate is to have a secret we’ve stolen re-stolen."

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/cia-director-seeks-stronger-counterintelligence-spies-leakers/ 

A Look Back At Mass Murderer Stalin

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden reviewed Stephen Kotkin's Stalin for the Washington Times. 

What caused Joseph Stalin to become one of history’s most notorious mass murders? Unlike Adolph Hitler, whose victims were anonymous Jews and other “undesirables” whom he did not know, Stalin’s victims included persons from his inner circle, fellow leaders of the Soviet Communist party.

Such is the grisly story related by Stephen Kotkin, a Princeton University professor, in the second volume of a planned trilogy on the Soviet tyrant. Even readers acquainted with Stalin’s blood-stained career will find sickening details that Mr. Kotkin gleaned from previously secret files. His academic work at times is more terrifying than a Stephen King novel.

“Confessions” that the innocent were forced to sign with their own blood. High officials of Stalin’s “inner circle” watching their wives hauled into captivity for non-existent “crimes against the state.” Stalin scrawling “execute” on a list of thousands of “traitors” which he would review (supposedly) in several hours.

Insecurity apparently ruled Stalin’s psyche. The crown of Vladimir Lenin, who brought communism to Russia, rested uneasily on Stalin’s head. Lenin left a written legacy proclaiming Stalin to be his successor, then waffled somewhat in a later oral statement

Thus Stalin spent his first years as dictator with a slippery grasp on power. His solution: destroy contemporaries (even those who were close friends) who might challenge his right to authority.

Once a few thousand murders established his rule, continuation of the terror was reflexive. As Mr. Kotkin writes, “Tyranny has a circular logic: once a dictator has achieved supreme power, he becomes keener still to hold it, driving him to weed his own ranks of even potential challengers.”

Of the 1.58 million persons arrested 1936-1938, 683,000 were victims of extrajudicial killings. To Stalin, “murder was an administrative tool,” Mr. Kotkin writes. He viewed close associates as comprising a “nest of spies.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/4/how-stalin-treated-his-inner-circle/ 

Photo Of Aircraft Carrier USS Carl Vinson Sailing Out Of San Diego For WESTPAC

The U.S. Navy released a photo of sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) manning the rails as the ship departs its homeport of San Diego.

Carl Vinson departed San Diego for a regularly scheduled deployment to the Western Pacific, in support of maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts.

The above photo was taken by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Omar A. Dominquez.

Note: The photo brings back memories from 1970, when I too manned the rails as we departed San Diego on board an aircraft carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk, headed for the Western Pacific, or WESTPAC, as we called it.  

You can click on the photo to enlarge.

David Ignatius' 'The Quantum Spy' Is About Quantum Computing, The Chinese/American Technology Race And Espionage

I interviewed Washington Post columnist and best-selling spy novelist David Ignatius (seen in the above photo) yesterday morning. 

We discussed his latest thriller, The Quantum Spy, and quantum computing, espionage and the technology race between China and America.

My Q&A with David Ignatius will appear in the upcoming Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International, a quarterly magazine for government, law enforcement and military people worldwide. 

I’ll post the piece here when it comes out. (I’m also reviewing The Quantum Spy for the Washington Times).  

In addition to covering quantum computing, The Quantum Spy also takes the reader into the headquarters of Communist China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), an adversarial intelligence agency mush less known than the Russian SVR and the old Soviet KGB. 

His realistic, well-researched and well-written novel is informative, suspenseful and entertaining.      

Below is a description of the novel from www.davidignatius.com:  

From the best-selling author of The Director and Body of Lies comes a thrilling tale of global espionage, state-of-the-art technology, and unthinkable betrayal.

The Quantum Spy is a hyper-fast quantum computer is the digital equivalent of a nuclear bomb; whoever possesses one will be able to shred any encryption and break any code in existence. The winner of the race to build the world’s first quantum machine will attain global dominance for generations to come. The question is, who will cross the finish line first: the U.S. or China?

In this gripping cyber thriller, the United States’ top-secret quantum research labs are compromised by a suspected Chinese informant, inciting a mole hunt of history-altering proportions. CIA officer Harris Chang leads the charge, pursuing his target from the towering cityscape of Singapore to the lush hills of the Pacific Northwest, the mountains of Mexico, and beyond. The investigation is obsessive, destructive, and—above all—uncertain. Do the leaks expose real secrets, or are they false trails meant to deceive the Chinese? The answer forces Chang to question everything he thought he knew about loyalty, morality, and the primacy of truth.

Grounded in the real-world technological arms race, The Quantum Spy presents a sophisticated game of cat and mouse cloaked in an exhilarating and visionary thriller.

You can also read David Ignatius’ review of John le Carre’s spy novel, A Legacy of Spies, in the Atlantic via the below link:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/le-carre-goes-back-into-the-cold/534189/

And you can read my Washington Times review of A Legacy of Spies via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/31/book-review-a-legacy-of-spies/