Economist, 27 January 1995 Licence to make a killing Spies and fund managers seem to be cut from the same cloth. Both take calculated risks, are fickle when it comes to allegiances and have an annoying tendency to speak in code. More important, however, they both thrive on inside information. This may be why, in the headlong rush to exploit new emerging-market opportunities, a growing number of investment funds are turning to former spooks for some help. The latest fund to tap the know-how of the intelligence community is the Scottish American Investment Company, based in Edinburgh, which invests heavily in international equities. On January 17th it announced that Sir Colin McColl, the former head of M16, Britain's foreign-intelligence service, is joining its board of directors. The fund hopes that Sir Colin's experience in gauging political risks -- he has worked in Eastern Europe and SouthEast Asia -- will improve the quality of its investment decisions. Another ex-spy turned fund manager is Harry Fitzgibbons, a former American agent and now managing director of Top Technology Limited, a fund-management group based in London. Last year, he teamed up with Alexey Vlasov, a former Soviet agent, to launch a new high-technology fund for investment in Russia. It employs three other former Soviet agents in its St Petersburg office. Why are spooks so sought after by international investors? The reason, says Mr Fitzgibbons, is that spying is the ideal training ground for a career in emerging-market investing. Not only are intelligence agents good at spotting when someone is lying, but they are also experts at building relationships and waiting patiently for them to develop: two essential traits for successful long-term investors. Mr Fitzgibbons argues that it is these general skills, rather than any specific local knowledge, that makes former spies such attractive partners. Unfortunately, old adversaries do not always get on as swimmingly as Messrs Fitzgibbons and Vlasov. In 1994, for example, the Vietnam Frontier Fund invited William Colby, a former director of America's Central Intelligence Agency, who headed the agency's Vietnam station during the Vietnam War, to join its board of directors. His appointment prompted the fund's chairman, Nguyen Xuan Oanh, a former deputy prime minister of South Vietnam, to quit. Not only did the fund lose its chairman, but it was unable to take advantage of Mr Colby's experience: he left the board in December 1994 after Hanoi refused him a visa. Despite such drawbacks, the demand for former spooks is rumoured to be growing. One such hint comes from Parvus, a consultancy (with offices in Moscow and Silver Spring, Maryland) that employs a number of ex-spies. The firm claims that it has just been contacted by a headhunter looking for recruits. The mission, should anyone choose to accept it, is to head up a new intelligence unit for a big New York mutual fund. Unfortunately for potential applicants, the headhunters say that the fund's name is still top secret. ------------------- For more on Parvus (not the Utah corp) and its stable of ex-spooks see: URL: http://www2.indigo-net.com/Indigo/INT/INTpublic/1995/ INT275/INT275-a3.html and other AltaVista links to globalization of OPSEC. ------------------- URL: http://www.cais.com/zhi/OPSHomePage.html OPERATIONS SECURITY PROFESSIONALS SOCIETY The OPSEC Professionals Society was established in March 1990 to further the practice of Operations Security as a profession and to foster the highest quality of professionalism and competence among its members. OPSEC is a process used to deny to potential adversaries information about capabilities and/or intentions by identifying, controlling and protecting evidence of the planning and executing of sensitive activities. This process is equally applicable to government, its contractors, and to private enterprise in the protection of their trade secrets and other proprietary information. While military strength and capability still are required during the next years of uncertainty, we must likewise protect our critical economic information and technologies from those who seek to exploit them to their benefit and to our disadvantage. -------------------- URL: http://www.cais.com/zhi/OPSCIND1.html COUNTERINTELLIGENCE NEWS & DEVELOPMENTS Issue No. 1 Letter from the Director, National Counterintelligence Center I am pleased to present the inaugural issue of the National Counterintelligence Center's (NACIC) Counterintelligence News and Developments (CIND). This periodic publication is designed to meet the information needs of US private industry by communicating important, yet unclassified information on the threat posed by foreign countries against US interests. The CIND is part of the NACIC's effort to develop a more effective mechanism to disseminate information on foreign intelligence targeting activities against both the US Government and private industry. This initial issue includes some information you may have already seen in our Annual Report to Congress on Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage and the Survey of the Counterintelligence Needs of Private Industry. From time to time, we will republish or extract information from such key publications to highlight data we perceive to be of interest to private industry. Furthermore, we will solicit additional information from all sources in order to better understand and support private industry through this unclassified forum. The NACIC will not generally republish information readily available to the general public. Our goal is to make the CIND's contents substantive and relevant to customer needs. Therefore, I cannot overemphasize the importance of receiving feedback from each of you. Future issues will respond to the requirements of industry as a whole and will be driven by your needs and interests. The responses received from you, the customer, will determine the future content, format, and frequency of the CIND. The final page of the current edition provides information on how to forward responses to the CIND Editor. Michael J. Waguespack Director, National Counterintelligence Center _________________________________________________________________ What Is the NACIC? The National Counterintelligence Center (NACIC) was established in 1994 by Presidential Decision Directive/NSC-24. The NACIC's creation was one of the recommendations made by PDD-24 to improve US counterintelligence (CI) effectiveness by enhancing coordination and cooperation among various US CI agencies. An interagency organization staffed with CI and security professionals from the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, and the Departments of Defense and State, the NACIC is primarily responsible for coordinating national-level CI activities, and reports to the National Security Council through the National Counterintelligence Policy Board (NACIPB).