The feminist media court decided the fates of the coroner and the general practitioner

The da Costa case: Feminist media court deciding fate of two doctors.

Published by Dispatch International March 21, 2013. Second part in a series.

After a scandalously poor police investigation and six months of solitary confinement, it was time for the two doctors Teet Härm and Thomas Allgén to face justice in the District Court of Stockholm. But there was not to be any justice in the Catrine da Costa case, merely two show trials with false witnesses, changing information and a prosecutor who was not even convinced of his own indictment. Dispatch International continues the story of a legal process controlled by an ultra-feminist mob and the media.

When the two doctors were led from the jail to the courtroom on January 22nd 1988, they attempted to conceal their faces from the press photographers and journalists who tried to catch a glimpses of the two monstrous dismembering killers. For that was how they had been described in enormous headlines on the newspaper placards.

They had simply been convicted in advance. The responsibility for that rested heavily on the ultra-feminist mob which for many months had conducted a campaign against the woman-hating monsters, the killers, the rapists and the body dismemberers.

Evening newspapers joined the fray to an unprecedented extent. When the news Director at public broadcaster Sveriges Radio, Erik Fichtelius, decided to publish the names of the two doctors, Everyone else was free to do the same. The decision by Fichtelius gave each of the two men their mark of Cain. It became a first in Swedish legal history that the media along with an external group managed to control a legal process.

The entire first trial became a race between media and the court, where the media won each round. Witnesses appeared in newspapers before they were interrogated in court, or the media speculated extensively in what they would say, to such an extent that it could hardly be missed by members of the court.

Outside the courtroom, the curious and the feminists would line up for hours seeking to get one of the few seats available to the public. The entire process was initiated by the public prosecutor, Anders Helin, who in front of the sitting court was forced to change the date that the murder was supposed to have been committed – because Allgén had an alibi for the original date. So the prosecutor simply pushed the murder date one day ahead in time.

The prosecutorial tactic was to prove that the two had dismembered the body of Catrine da Costas, and that this constituted evidence that they had also committed the murder during barbaric and grotesque sex play at the medical investigators’ center, in the presence of the 18-month-old daughter of Thomas Allgén.

Over the course of two hours, the doctors were supposed to have had time to pick up da Costa, take her to the medical center, have sex with her, murder her, dismember the body, clean up the autopsy room, remove the body bags, and make it back home again. A scenario with impossible timing.

For that reason, the autopsy report of the medical investigator Jovan Rajs became vital for the prosecution. He was also Teet Härm’s boss and four years before the trial had already pointed out his apprentice Teet Härm in a letter to the criminal police. That such claims did not fit to his role as an expert witness was of no concern to the police. Eventually, Rajs said in his testimony that it was not possible to ascertain the cause of death, a severe blow to the whole chain of evidence. His statement was later torn to shreds by the legal council of the Swedish social authorities.

A couple who owned a photography shop testified that Thomas Allgén had submitted a film with images of a dismembered body. But their identification of Allgén was of significantly worse quality than the rejected identification that Lisbet Palme had made of Christer Pettersson.

Christina, Allgén’s ex-wife, testified what their daughter Karin was said to have told her. That ”the lady head ended up in a trashcan” and ”one can cut up ladies like the garden and daddy”, or that ”they grilled eyes and drank blood”. A police officer claimed to have seen Härm and da Costa  in the subway, and one woman erroneously claimed to have seen the two doctors outside the medical investigation clinic on the day in question. All of these witnesses had contacted the investigators only years after the death of da Costa.

Towards the end of the trial, the media changed tack in their extensive speculations. They now believed in an acquittal, after stubbornly having said the opposite earlier. But the verdict was a conviction, published on the international women’s day March 8th, along with a decision for a forensic psychiatric investigation.

Then came the turnaround. The daily Aftonbladet had managed to interview the jurymen while anticipating the final verdict. Their chatter triggered a legal avalanche. The jury members and the judge jumped the gun. The lawyers appealed the decision and continued the case at the high court. Nineteen days later, Thomas Allgén and Teet Härm were set free after a decision at the Svea high court, which also wrote that procedural errors had been committed, and that if the case was taken to the high court, the two were likely to be acquitted.

But there was a political undercurrent around the case, led by a former investigator of prostitution in Sweden, the ultra-feminist Hanna Olsson. She had followed the case closely and written several articles about it. Olsson contacted the prosecutor, which became her starting point for obtaining a retrial.

From out of nowhere suddenly appeared a prostitute with a diary. The woman claimed that da Costa knew the two perverse doctors, and that one of them had a small daughter. The prosecutor Helin decided to take the woman in for an interrogation, while at the same time declaring that he had no intentions of bringing fresh charges.

But he wanted that decision anchored by the National Prosecutor Magnus Sjöberg. On the same day as that meeting took place, on March 29th 1988, the cultural pages of the newspaper Dagens Nyheter published a major article by Hanna Olsson, who with strong moralistic and feminist indignation criticized the prosecutor for not letting prostitutes be witnesses in court. She also claimed that the doctors had sadistic and necrophiliac tendencies. The case had to be taken up again, she wrote.

On the same day, Hanna Olsson also provided Sveriges Radio with a new testimony from a prostitute who claimed that Teet Härm had been a customer of da Costa. Also on the same day, Anders Helin received an express letter from an anonymous woman, claiming that Härm in tears had admitted his guilt to her. The sender of the letter was never found.

A mere two days later, prosecutor Anders Helin decided that there was to be a retrial. It took only a one-day media campaign by Hanna Olsson, and one anonymous letter, for Helin to change his mind and decide for a new prosecution. As of today, it is unknown which role the National Prosecutor played in the spectacle.

In the next installment, we will explain the verdict that acquitted the doctors of murder, but forever marked them as corpse desecrators.

Link to Dispatch International: http://www.d-intl.com/

By Anders Carlgren

Miscarriage of justice: The da Costa case

A thirty year old miscarriage of justice

Published by Dispatch International March 14, 2013. First in a series.

The case of Catrine da Costa must be described as the worst case of corrupted justice in Swedish criminal history. Two young doctors were charged with murdering and dismembering the prostitute in 1984. Four years after her death, the two doctors were acquitted of the murder itself, but were still accused of having dismembered the body. After this a marathon of 18 court cases was brought before various Swedish courts in order to obtain justice. But in each case the doctors have lost, most recently in the Supreme Court last year. This in spite of the fact that everyone aware of the case knows that they are innocent. Nobody knows with certainty how da Costa died. Now, Dispatch International reveals in a series of articles how the law turned into the enemy of justice.

On a warm summer night in the middle of July 1984, a janitor was walking his dog near an exercise park at the Karlberg canal in Solna, a small urban municipality just north of the Stockholm city center. The dog discovered a collection of black plastic bags that were hidden under a shrubbery out of view from the road. The stench of decay was clear from far away, so the man chose to stop a police car he met on the road.

The police officer brought forth the bags and opened up the plastic, but was unable to ascertain if the contents was remains from an animal or a human. The bags were transported to the medical investigation clinic in Solna a couple of miles away, where they turned out to contain the lower parts of a woman’s torso and the upper parts of both thighs. The area was searched in vain for the remaining body parts.

Three weeks later, the police received a tip about an additional two bags some miles away from the first finding place. Those bags contained the upper part of the woman’s torso, her arms and the lower parts of her legs. But the head and the inner organs were never recovered.

The two autopsies of the findings were conducted by the medical investigator Jovan Rajs, who later was to become a key figure as the corruption of justice spread like a prairie fire. At the second autopsy, the junior doctor Teet Härm (30) was also present. His parents had moved from Estonia in 1944 during the Soviet oppression, and Teet was their only child. During the autopsy, Jovan Rajs was in good mood and jokingly said that it must have been a matron who had conducted the dismembering, as the arms had been cut away in such an unusual fashion.

Having found the hands of the dead woman, police files revealed that her name was Catrine da Costa, a prostitute and drug addict aged 28, convicted a few times for minor offenses. The police now pieced together the last days of da Costa’s life by means of her date book. On Pentecost Sunday, June 10th, she had been visiting an architect in Östermalm, Stockholm, where she had injected heroin and afterwards slept for some hours. After that, she and the architect left the house, and he drove her by car to Kungsträdgården, a park in central Stockholm. The clues ended there, although it was later reported that she had been seen after Pentecost as well.

Police now started to walk through the red light districts of Stockholm by night, carrying a photo album. It contained pictures of twelve men, including the architect, a car mechanic whom da Costa used to spend the night with, and several doctors known to be customers of prostitutes.

Some weeks later came what was considered the great breakthrough. A man in his 50s turned up at the police station. His name was Rolf, and he falsely claimed to be working for the military intelligence services. In fact, however, he was the father of the first wife of the medical investigator Teet Härm, who two years before had committed suicide in the couple’s home.

Rolf handed over a long memorandum concluding that the police should take a close look at Teet Härm. That led to the addition of a photo of Härm to the album carried by the police during their nighttime walks. Eventually one prostitute pointed out Härm as a violence-prone customer, while others called him stingy, shy and nervous. None of the 200 women interviewed indicated any connection between da Costa and Teet Härm.

In spite of the weakness of the suspicions, Teet Härm was arrested and jailed in the beginning of December, five months after the first parts of the body had been found. But interrogations turned up nothing, apart from his admission that he had visited prostitutes a couple of times, and Härm was released five days later. An important consequence, however, was that the promising young medical investigator had lost his job. Stigmatized as a murderous monster and easily identifiable in the evening newspapers, he moved to the countryside. Teet Härm later attempted suicide with an overdose of Methadone, which caused him severe hearing impairment.

At the same time that the medical investigator Härm had been disgraced in the media, a huge panic about incest was spreading in Sweden. Fathers were accused of raping their daughters and many were convicted based on flimsy or no evidence. One of the women targeted by the panic was Christina Allgén. She was married to the doctor Thomas Allgén, who was working as a general practitioner in Alingsås, in western Sweden. The couple had a daughter Karin who was merely 18 months old. Christina went from clinic to clinic for a long time with the small girl, falsely convinced that Thomas had violated their daughter. But in spite of extensive investigations, she found no support for her panic.

The Allgén couple had previously had superficial contact with Teet Härm after Härm had helped Thomas Allgén at a study visit to the clinic for medical investigation as part of his training. When Christina Allgén became aware that Härm was appointed a monster by the media, she forebade Thomas from even mentioning the name Härm.

Concurrently, Christina Allgén interviewed her daughter about what the mother thought the daughter had been subjected to. On scraps of paper, the mother wrote “the head of the lady was thrown into a trashcan”. Or ”they were eating eyes and drinking blood ”, and further that ”you can cut ladies like the garden and daddy”. Much of what the 18-month-old girl was made to say by her mother was recorded, and came to play a decisive role in the early processes, along with the testimony of Christina Allgén herself. No one took notice of the young age of the girl, or the leading questions posed to her by her mother. Nobody questioned what a child of that age would really be able to remember.

Thomas Allgén was interrogated about the statements from the daughter for many hours, inquired about incest and his contacts with Teet Härm, but police got nowhere. Then came the assassination of prime minister Olof Palme in 1986, which led to the murder investigation against Härm and Allgén being closed down.

A bit over a year later the investigation was resumed, now led by a police officer who had no experience with investigating homicide cases. That gave Christina Allgén ample playing room, and the new investigator took all she said at face value. The garden of the Allgén vacation house was dug up, just as the Härm’s garden in Täby had been dug up previously, without yielding any piece of evidence.

At this point, all the police really had was the information from Christina Allgén, and the claim from the coroner Jovan Rajs that Härm had buried the head of da Costa. Rajs was technically disqualified due to his being Härm’s boss but the police didn’t mind that. Nevertheless, Thomas Allgén was arrested and jailed in the beginning of October 1987, and by the end of the month, Härm was jailed as well.

The Swedish daily Expressen got wind of the affair, and presented the child testimony of Karin as indisputable truth, set in type otherwise reserved for the outbreak of war, and in the media, the three-year-old accusations against Teet Härm reinforced the image of the two monstrous murderers and dismemberers.

The prelude to the 30-year miscarriage of justice, where law was to stand in the way of justice, had now been carved into stone.

In the next part: The tale of the ultra-feminist mob who, along with outrageously lying and biased media, made sure that the two doctors had their lives destroyed.

Link to Dispatch International: http://www.d-intl.com/

By Anders Carlgren

Lockerbie - Yet Again the Clues Lead to a Palestinian Terrorist Group

Skriver idag i senaste numret av Dispatch International. Länk längst ner.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack over Lockerbie in Scotland. 270 persons were killed by a bomb aboard Pan Am Flight 103 in transit between London Heathrow and New York, just a few days before Christmas 1988. Today everyone involved knows that the conviction of Libyan Abdelbaset Al Megrahi was based on a fraudulent mock trial. Thus, the investigators are now back to looking at the original suspects, the Palestinian terrorist organization PFLP-GC. That involves two Palestinians serving lifetime sentences in Sweden. But the trail has never been properly investigated, explains journalist Anders Carlgren, who has followed the scandal since it first began.

 

On the shortest day of the year, December 21^st 1988, at 6:30 PM, the giant Pan Am jumbo jet took off from London Heathrow, destination New York. The plane, which had suffered an 18 minute delay, reached its cruise altitude of 10,000 meters over the tiny Scottish town of Lockerbie.

Then it blew up. Half a kilo of Semtex placed in a suitcase located in the front portside luggage compartment blew a hole of several square meters in the fuselage. 175,000 liters of jet fuel exploded, and tore Flight 103 to shreds. Only a dull bang was heard in the skies over Lockerbie, but soon afterwards 259 tattered bodies, Christmas presents and wreckage rained on the town, distributed over several square kilometers. The cockpit landed fairly intact on the ground. Eleven persons on the ground were killed as their houses were destroyed. A crater in the middle of town threw up around an estimated 1,500 tons of earth and building materials. Two Swedes were among those killed, the diplomat Bernt Carlsson and flight hostess Siv Engström.

It was the worst terrorist attack to date. Investigators spent a lot of time piecing together the wreckage in a makeshift hangar, and they soon found the remains of the bomb. A brown Samsonite suitcase had contained the bomb, which had been built into a Toshiba radio, detonated by a timer. The suitcase also contained clothes, which were traced to a shop in Malta.

The intention had been to blow up the airplane over the Atlantic, so that it would be buried there forever, but due to the delay at Heathrow, the bomb exploded over land.

Authorities soon pointed towards the Palestinian terrorist organization PFLP-GC, based in Syria, and its leader Ahmed Jibril. The attack on Pan Am was meant as revenge by Iran after the American warship USS Vincennes had mistakenly shot down an Iranian Airbus with 290 pilgrims on their way to Mecca. Ayatollah Khomeini said after the shooting that ”the sky must be raining blood”.

Just two months before the Lockerbie bombing, West German police had cracked down on a terrorist cell outside of Düsseldorf, apprehending 17 members of none other than PFLP-GC. The most important find was four Semtex bombs build into Toshiba radios.

But a fifth bomb had gone missing, and it turned out that it had been hidden by the bomb builder of the terrorist cell, Marwan Kreeshat. The legendary European correspondent for ABC News Pierre Salinger later interviewed Kreeshat in prison. In that interview Kreeshat said that he was convinced that it was precisely his bomb that had brought down Pan Am Flight 103. It is also documented that during the fall of 1988, great sums were transferred from Iran to the German terrorist cell, in several batches via a variety of Middle Eastern banks.

But the Palestinian-Iranian trail sudden went cold and non-existent in August 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. That invasion and the first Gulf war entirely changed the direction of the investigation, documentably at American request. During the preparation for the war, it was important to keep both Syria and Iran calm. The PFLP-GC was now entirely uninteresting and – unexpectedly – the rogue state Libya was pointed to as responsible for the act. The United Nations complied with a request to impose extensive sanctions against Libya.

One of the persons no longer under investigation was the Swedish-Palestinian Mohammed Abu Talb, then a resident of Uppsala. He had entered Sweden on a false passport. Abu Talb probably had ties to the German terrorist cell, as he and three other Swedish-Palestinians repeatedly traveled to places like Frankfurt and Munich. Abu Talb had a background as chief of bodyguard forces in Lebanon and in Syria, and in the Soviet Union he had received training in handling targeting robots.

Today many investigators and relatives of victims are convinced that Abu Talb obtained the fifth Semtex bomb and had it loaded onto the airplane in Frankfurt, where Pan Am 103 had begun its route. It was determined that the bomb-containing suitcase had been loaded without belonging to any passenger.

Three years before the Lockerbie bombing, in 1985, Abu Talb along with three Palestinian co-conspirators were behind the bombing of a synagogue in Copenhagen and similar bombs against airplane companies in Copenhagen and Amsterdam, both of which caused much death and destruction.

In May 1989 the four terrorists were apprehended in Sweden, and December 21^st, one year after Lockerbie, Mohammed Abu Talb and Marten Imandi were sentenced to life prison. The two others received significantly milder punishments.

Investigations showed that Abu Talb had been in Malta during the fall of 1988, and that Marten Imandi had stayed in Malta for a longer period. In the Uppsala home of Abu Talb, police also found a calendar with a circle around December 21^st. And in a recorded wiretap , the Abu Talb’s wife was heard saying to someone else: ”get rid of the clothes immediately.” A suitcase similar to the one holding the bomb was found at that person’s residence.

Both Abu Talb and Marten Imandi are now free after having had their life sentences converted. Abu Talb was also sentenced to deportation, but is nevertheless still in Sweden, as the government cannot decide which country he is to be deported to – Egypt, Syria or Lebanon. He has repeatedly applied to have his deportation cancelled, most recently last year, but his application was turned down every time. Marten Imandi, however, cannot be deported, as he is a Swedish citizen.

But this Swedish trail to the Lockerbie bombing has never been followed to the end, after the US and Great Britain surprisingly pointed to Libya as the guilty party. After many long and hard negotiations, Moammar Gadaffi agreed to turn over two Libyans to a special Scottish court located at an old military base in the Netherlands. After two rounds of mock trial, one of them, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, was convicted to 27 years of prison. Gadaffi paid 2.7 billion dollars to the relatives of the victims. The sanctions were lifted, and in return, Great Britain obtained profitable oil contracts. Al Megrahi was returned to Libya in 2009, where he died later from prostate cancer.

We know today that the owner of the shop in Malta, Tony Gauci, who sold the clothes found in the bomber’s suitcase, lied when he pointed out Al Megrahi in a confrontation; he had been shown a picture of Al Megrahi in advance. We also know that Tony Gauci received two million dollars from the US for testifying in the two mock trials. There are many other errors and repeatedly changing explanations in his testimony.

Abu Talb was also forced to testify during the trials, but he denied any kind of involvement, and claimed that he had been babysitting in Uppsala at the time. That alibi, however, has never been verified.

A year ago, Scottish newspapers published an 800-page report of he investigation from the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which had been classified since 2007. The report pointed out extensive lying, fraud, perjury, bought witnesses and other mistakes during the legal process.

Mohammed Abu Talb and his terrorist associates in Sweden and Germany do not enjoy immunity from the Scottish authorities. Therefore there are good reasons to resume investigation of the Swedish-Palestinian trail.

Länk till Dispatch International, där artikeln finns i både svensk och engelsk version. http://www.d-intl.com/?lang=sv

Uppdatering den 17 februari 2013: Den skotske professorn i juridik, Robert Black, har på sin sajt lagt upp större delen av denna artikel. http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.se/

Professsor Black är en av de mest vederhäftiga kritikerna av hela Lockerbieskandalen. Ironiskt nog var han en av arkitekterna bakom upprättandet av domstolen i Kamp van den Zeist i Holland som dömde Abdelbaset Al Megrahi. Därefter tog Robert Black kraftigt avstånd från hur de båda rättegångarna genomfördes. Han har också skrivit en lång rad artiklar om fallet.

Här är mannen bakom Stay Behind i Sverige

Skriver idag på Newsmill om Stay Behind, en av de tre svenska motståndsrörelser som bildades under kalla krigets dagar, och som existerade långt in på 1980-talet. Efter andra världskrigets slut inrättades sådana paramilitära nätverk över hela Västeuropa med det hemliga namnet Stay Behind. I debatten om eventuella kopplingar till mordet på Olof Palme kallas samtliga av de paramilitära nätverken för Stay Behind, vilket är missvisande. Det var enbart de av USA initierade nätverken som hade det namnet.

I de skandinaviska länderna hette organisatören William Colby och med Stockholm som bas. Många år senare var han en lika uppskattad, alternativt avskydd CIA-chef. Jag är den ende journalist som två gånger mötte Colby, utsänd av SR respektive SVT, för att intervjua honom om hans två år i Sverige.

Detta är en betydligt längre artikel, jämfört med vad jag tidigare skrivit om mina möten med Bill Colby.

 

En regnig novembermorgon 1950 klev den då blott 30-årige krigsveteranen William Colby av en lokalbuss på Constitution Avenue i Washington. Bill, som han kallades, tog några varv runt kvarteret för att kontrollera att ingen följde efter honom. Så styrde han stegen mot de nedslitna baracker, mitt emot The Mall, som vid den här tiden var CIAs första högkvarter. Spionorganisationen var då bara tre år gammal och hade efterträtt OSS, som verkat under kriget. Under nästan hela kriget hade Bill Colby jobbat för OSS bakom fiendens linjer i Tyskland, Frankrike och mot slutskedet sprängt järnvägar i Norge för att hindra de tyska ockupanternas framfart.

Själv trodde Colby att CIA kanske ville värva honom till Koreakriget, men i själva verket ville man ha honom till ett jobb som var rakt motsatt den vågade operatörens nattliga fallskärmshopp över ett Europa som stod i brand. Operatören Bill Colby var erkänt skicklig, framför allt när det gällde sabotageverksamhet, med sprängningar av vägar och broar som specialitet.

Nu ville man att han skulle organisera motståndsrörelser i de skandinaviska länderna. Det var kalla krigets dagar och Stalin satt fortfarande i Kreml. De flesta ledarna i väst var livrädda för att ryssarna skulle vända hungriga blickar väster om järnridån och i så fall skulle motståndsrörelserna stanna kvar - Stay Behind. Just de skandinaviska länderna hade av CIA fått högsta prioritet.

Bill Colby skrev på alla hemliga papper, fick ett skrivbord i en av barackerna som var överfullt med diverse dokument och spionrapporter från de skandinaviska länderna. Bakom sig på väggen nålade han upp en detaljerad karta över området. Han gjorde långa listor över materiel som skulle placeras ut i framtiden. Det var vapen, mängder med ammunition, klädförråd, matförråd, kommunikationsutrustning, plus allt annat som en motståndsgrupp kan tänkas behöva.

Sin fritid ägnade Colby åt hustrun Barbara och de två barnen, samtidigt som han grubblade över sin omvandling från fallskärmsjägare med sabotage i blicken till någon sorts stillsam korgosse bakom ett skrivbord. Till de vänner som frågade vad han sysslade med nu för tiden sa han bara att han jobbade för the government. För de som lyssnade var det svaret detsamma som CIA.

Det dröjde inte länge förrän han kallades till sin gamle OSS-boss från tiden som sabotör i Norge, Gerry Miller.

“All right, Bill, get on with it then”, Miller said. “What we want is a good solid intelligence and resistance network that we can count on if the Russkis ever take over those countries. We have some initial planning, but it needs to be filled out and implemented. You will work for Lou Scherer until we see what more needs to be done.”

Lou Scherer var vid den tiden chef för den västeuropeiska divisionens skandinaviska avdelning inom CIA. Gerry Miller och Scherer ville stationera honom i Stockholm för att på plats organisera verksamheten. Colby diskuterade saken hemma med Barbara innan han accepterade. Och redan i april 1951 landade hela familjen i Stockholm. Hans cover var som politisk attaché vid USAs ambassad. Det var en något innovativ titel för en diplomat som i själva verket hörde till avdelningen OPC inom CIA. Inom den avdelningen sköttes ekonomisk och psykologisk krigföring, plus paramilitära operationer.

Han var nu hemlig agent som arbetade under cover i fredstid, vilket krävde nya kunskaper som hemliga brevlådor ute i det fria, plantera avlyssningsutrustning, hemliga mötesplatser, hantera osynligt bläck och mikropunkter, miniatyrkameror och allt annat som hörde till den tidens spionage.

Familjen fann sig snart väl tillrätta i Stockholm och Barbara Colby var mästerlig i konsten att skaffa svenska vänner. Och i den kretsen fanns snabbt allt från medlemmar av hovet till skilda politiker. Bill Colby intresserade sig särskilt för socialdemokraten Sven Aspling, som vid den här tiden var partisekreterare och därmed också nära medarbetare till statsminister Erlander. Han umgicks också med en del personer inom den svenska underrättelsetjänsten, eftersom de mycket väl visste vad Colby egentligen sysslade med.

I två av de skandinaviska länderna ville de lokala underrättelsetjänsterna inte samarbeta med Colby, eftersom han tillhörde CIA. Men i de två andra länderna var samarbetet gott. Ett av de mera vänligt sinnade länderna var med stor sannolikhet Sverige, då det finns en del spår av möten mellan högt uppsatta tjänstemän inom CIA och den svenska underrättelsetjänsten. Och här fanns också amerikanska medborgare verksamma. På några håll i Skandinavien fanns till och med så kallade assets, agenter som kunde agera helt på egen hand men utan diplomatiskt skydd, till exempel med så kallade våta jobb, vilket oftast innebar att helt undanröja någon person. Mötena med dessa personer var särskilt hemliga och skedde alltid i säkra våningar eller hus, efter kontakter via telefonautomater och speciella koder. Trots säkerhetsåtgärderna var sådana mötet ganska grå och handlade oftast om att lämna pengar som skulle föras över gränsen till ett grannland.

I Sverige kultiverade han också politiska flyktingar och dissidenter från Östblocket, särskilt från de baltiska staterna, Polen, Ungern, Rumänien och Ukraina. Den vägen fick han många gånger värdefull underrättelseinformation.

Bill Colby var nu i full gång med att rekrytera inhemskt folk till sina fyra skandinaviska nätverk och reste flitigt mellan länderna. Resorna gick nästan alltid med bil, eftersom han oftast hade någon utrustning med sig för att leverera. Utrustningen kom ursprungligen från USA, Västtyskland och Storbritannien och till England skickade han också både ledare och rekryter för att utbildas av brittiska SAS-befäl i någon sorts elementär gerillateknik och taktik. Antalet i de enskilda nätverken varierade i antal mellan 100 och 200 män. Inför varje rekrytering spanade Colby själv eller någon av hans män på och noga undersökte bakgrunden hos personer som kunde tänkas ingå i det hemliga nätverket. Han skaffade sig också ”mellanmän”, som kunde styra och träna medlemmar av nätverken utan att Colbys egen identitet blev avslöjad.

Inför en leverans av utrustning från Sverige hade Bill Colby lastat bakluckan på sin bil så full med utrustning att den nästan gick på fälgen. Med hustru och barn som cover i bilen for sällskapet mot ett färjeläge, där man stoppades av tullen eftersom bilen var så tungt lastad. Men med sitt diplomatpass klarade han sig igenom. Det var en av få gånger han visade upp sin riktiga identitet för någon okänd svensk. I vanliga fall rörde han sig med skilda alias. Att man skulle passera ett färjeläge skvallrar om att man var på väg antingen till Finland eller till Danmark.

På så sätt byggdes sakta men säkert hemliga förråd upp i de olika länderna. I andra fall kunde det röra sig om att gömma undan särskilt värdefull militär kommunikationsutrustning på någon avlägsen lantgård.

Till uppgifterna hörde också att flytta stora mängder svensk litteratur och inspelad musik utomlands inför risken av en sovjetisk ockupation. Det var material som i så fall skulle användas i exil och riktat mot ett ockuperat Sverige.

Det fanns även långtgående planer på att sätta upp hemliga tryckerier som skulle kunna användas för antisovjetisk propaganda. Men de planerna blev aldrig verklighet, därför att kring årsskiftet 1952-1953 började CIAs intresse för Sverige och övriga Skandinavien svalna. Istället var det Wien och Berlin som var de huvudsakliga attraktionerna på den europeiska kartan. Och samtidigt var de skandinaviska nätverken närmast färdiga, så långt man nu kunde komma i fredstid.

Bill Colby blev sommaren 1953 erbjuden att flytta till ambassaden i Rom och där fortsatte han ungefär samma arbete, att bygga upp en motståndsrörelse. I Italien gick nätverket under namnet Gladio och förblev hemligt ända fram till 1990.

Ganska exakt 35 år efter hans flytt till Italien var jag hösten 1988 utsänd av Sveriges Radio till Washington för att bevaka valrörelsen mellan Michael Dukakis och George Bush d. ä. Vid ett tillfälle fick jag ett tips om att den gamle CIA-chefen Bill Colby kanske var beredd att berätta om sin tid i Stockholm och den svenska motståndsrörelsen.

Han bodde i Georgetowns norra utkanter, på Dent Place. Och i telefon var det en mycket vänlig och korrekt man som välkomnade mig till sitt hem påföljande dag.

Aningen förbluffad över lättheten att nå den gamle spionchefen promenerade jag upp längs 30th Street. När jag svängde vänster in på Dent Place i höstsolen hade jag den gången ingen aning om att ministern vid svenska ambassaden, Ulf Hjertonsson, bodde mindre än 100 meter bort, på Avon Place. De båda herrarna var så gott som grannar.

Dörren öppnades av den då 68-årige Colby. Lätt grånad med strikt bakåtstruket hår och klädd i en enkel slipover över en skjorta uppknäppt i halsen. Han visade mig in i ett hem fyllt av bilder från sin karriär. Jag fastnade särskilt framför en bild tagen inne i ett transportplan strax innan Colby skulle hoppa ut bakom fiendens linjer någonstans i Europa under andra världskriget.

Längs en vägg hängde säkert ett 30-tal minnesbilder från andra världskriget, vidare bilder som CIAs hårt kritiserade stationschef i Saigon under Vietnamkriget och lite längre bort bilder från CIAs högkvarter i Langley som spionorganisationens omstridde chef. Där fanns också bilder från Ovala rummet i Vita huset tillsammans med både Richard Nixon och Gerald Ford, plus ett antal snapshots från olika kongressförhör med Bill Colby själv i huvudrollen.  Längst bort hängde en revolver, en silverfärgad Smith & Wesson med lång pipa.

“Jodå”, svarade han på min första fråga, “visst var det jag som startade Stay Behind i början av 1950-talet och inte bara i Sverige, utan över hela Skandinavien.”

Genom hela intervjun undvek han noga att röja vad han exakt gjorde i de olika länderna. Han talade bara i ganska allmänna ordalag vad han hade gjort, utan att nämna något specifikt land. Han berättade om metoder som hämtade ur en spionroman, men som i vissa fall används än idag. Till exempel hemliga brevlådor utomhus, eller säkra hus och lägenheter för hemliga möten.

Vi satt i trädgården på baksidan av hans lilla men eleganta townhouse och jag frågade om han verkligen trodde att dessa motståndets nätverk skulle fungera i händelse av en sovjetisk ockupation.

”Jag har alltid undrat över om det verkligen skulle ha fungerat under sovjetiskt styre i ett eller flera av de skandinaviska länderna. Vi vet från andra länder att det inte fungerade.” Här nämnde Bill Colby Kina och Albanien som främsta exempel och pekade också ut Polen och Nordvietnam.

”De uppbyggda moståndsnätet i alla de länderna fungerade inte, de penetrerades från utsidan. Så det är helt möjligt att mina nätverk skulle ha förlorats vid en verklig rysk invasion. Men jag trodde då och tror fortfarande att en del av arbetet och den materiel vi skeppade över skulle klara sig. Det skulle alltid finnas ett antal människor som skulle slåss för sin frihet.”

När min bandspelare slutat snurra gick vi igenom en rad detaljer i verksamheten, för så var villkoren, inga detaljer på band. Utan namns nämnande berättade han då om hur han kultiverade socialdemokraternas Sven Aspling, ett namn som senare ändå var lätt att identifiera. Vidare om hur han ett oräkneligt antal gånger kört en fullastad bil med hemlig utrustning över till ett annat land.

Colby berättade också om sitt högkvarter på amerikanska ambassaden och att ambassadören aldrig fick veta vad han egentligen höll på med. På så sätt skulle ambassadören helt sanningsenligt kunna säga att han ingenting visste om nu Bill Colby och hans nätverk skulle avslöjas. På samma sätt förblev han hemlig för de flesta av nätverkens fotfolk, den kommunikationen sköttes helt av ett fåtal män som fanns i hans närhet.

Vidare fanns det amerikansk kommunikationsutrustning och diverse förråd på ganska många platser runt om och över snart sagt hela Skandinavien. Förråden bestod av allt från köttkonserver till vapen och ammunition.

Bill Colby betonade särskilt betydelsen av hur han kom till insikt om värdet av utbyte av information mellan olika skandinaviska länders underrättelsetjänster och USA. Det hade han inte haft en aning om under sin tid som operatör under andra världskriget. Det var också nu han förstod värdet av avhoppare som lyckats ta sig över järnridån och på skandinavisk mark lämna detaljerade informationer om militära förhållanden på andra sidan.

Efter vårt långa samtal lämnade jag Bill Colby och Dent Place, helt övertygad om att jag hade ett scoop i mina händer. Men ack, vad jag hade bedragit mig själv.

Långt senare lärde jag mig nämligen att den gamle spionchefen hade berättat hela sin story i sina memoarer hela tio år tidigare, alltså redan 1978 och med titeln “Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA”.

Mitt enda försvar är att det fanns inget internet och inte ens i min vildaste fantasi kunde jag föreställa mig att en före detta chef för CIA skulle publicera någon memoarbok. Och den okunskapen hindrade mig inte från att några år senare göra om min intervju med Colby.

Den här gången var jag Aktuellts korrespondent i Washington och svaren på mina frågor blev ungefär desamma. Jag är dessutom ganska säker på att denna andra intervju drunknade antingen i det pågående första Irak-kriget eller i Sovjetunionens sönderfall.

Bill Colby avled i april 1996 i en kanotolycka, längs oändligt vackra Potomac River uppströms i Maryland, och som också flyter genom Washington och mynnar i Chesapeake Bay. Då hans kropp återfanns några dagar senare fanns det personer som hävdade att han mördats som hämnd för sina gärningar i CIAs namn. Andra pekade i riktning mot drunkning, hjärtinfarkt eller stroke. Den verkliga dödsorsaken har aldrig offentliggjorts.

William Bill Colby var starkt troende katolik och som sådan kallades han ibland gemenligen för krigsprästen under sina 32 år inom först OSS och därefter CIA. När den döda kroppen hade hittats sa en av Colbys äldsta vänner ”Han hade väl fått nog av sitt liv”.

 

Länk till artikeln på Newsmill: http://www.newsmill.se/artikel/2013/01/29/h-r-r-mannen-bakom-stay-behind-i-sverige

Gruppen Stay behind kopplas till Palmemordet

Den frispråkiga förra revisorn i FN, Inga Britt Ahlenius kopplar i en DN-artikel idag den svenska delen av den så kallade Stay behind–rörelsen till Palmemordet och kräver att det spåret utreds ordentligt. Vi är flera journalister som skrivit om Stay behind, men så vitt jag vet är jag den ende som intervjuat rörelsens organisatör i Sverige och hela Skandinavien, nämligen Bill Colby.

Han var vid tiden amerikansk resident på USAs ambassad i Stockholm och blev 20 år senare chef för hela CIA, mitt under brinnande Vietnamkrig. Därför väljer jag nu att än en gång publicera vad jag skrev om de mötena med Colby vid slutet av 80-talet och i början av 90-talet. Artikeln publicerade jag första gången 25 mars 2011.

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CIA-chefen Bill Colby startade svenska motståndsrörelsen

Slag i slag presenteras nu detaljer ur SvD-reporten Miakel Holmströms bok, “Den dolda alliansen – Sveriges hemliga Nato-förbindelser”. Det handlar om svenskar som under kalla kriget organiserade en hemlig motståndsrörelse som i händelse av en sovjetisk ockupation skulle träda i aktion. Den som initierade de hemliga grupperna över hela Skandinavien 1951 var William Bill Colby, som då var en av CIAs residenter på ambassaden i Stockholm. Drygt tjugo år senare blev han chef för CIA, med fortsatt insyn i de skandinaviska hemliga paramilitära grupperna. Hela operationen kallades Stay Behind.

Under hösten 1988 var jag tillfälligt stationerad i Washington DC, utsänd av Sveriges Radio för att följa valkampanjen mellan George Bush och Michael Dukakis. Helt överraskande nåddes jag en dag av ett tips om att den gamle CIA-chefen Bill Colby kanske var beredd att berätta om sin tid i Stockholm mellan 1951 och 1953 och den svenska motståndsrörelsen.

Lika överraskande fann jag att hans nummer var helt öppet i telefonkatalogen och att han bodde i Georgetowns norra utkanter, på Dent Place, bara några kvarter från mitt hotell. Och i telefon var det en mycket vänlig och korrekt man som välkomnade mig till sitt hem påföljande dag.

Aningen förbluffad över lättheten att nå den gamle spionchefen för en intervju promenerade jag upp längs 30th Street. När jag svängde vänster in på Dent Place i höstsolen hade jag den gången ingen aning om att ministern vid Svenska ambassaden, Ulf Hjertonsson, bodde mindre än 100 meter bort, på Avon Place. De båda herrarna var så gott som grannar.

På yttertrappan till hans townhouse stod en frankerad brevbunt med gummisnodd runt om. Bunten skulle hämtas av brevbäraren, för så fungerade US Mail på den tiden.

Dörren öppnades av den då 68-årige Colby. Lätt grånad med strikt bakåtstruket hår och klädd i en enkel slipover över en skjorta uppknäppt i halsen. Han visade mig in i ett hem fyllt av bilder från sin karriär. Jag fastnade särskilt framför en bild tagen inne i ett transportplan strax innan Colby skulle hoppa ut bakom fiendens linjer någonstans i Europa under andra världskriget för att arbeta med någon av motståndsrörelserna och störa tyskarna.

Han gjorde om samma sak en gång till innan han i krigets slutskede förflyttades till Norge med sabotageoperationer, mot de tyska ockupanterna, som uppdrag.

Längs en vägg hängde säkert ett 30-tal minnesbilder från andra världskriget, vidare bilder som CIAs hårt kritiserade stationschef i Saigon under Vietnamkriget och lite längre bort bilder från CIAs högkvarter i Langley som spionorganisationens omstridde chef. Där fanns också bilder från Ovala rummet i Vita huset tillsammans med både Richard Nixon och Gerald Ford, plus ett antal snapshots från olika kongressförhör med Bill Colby själv i huvudrollen.  Längst bort hängde en revolver, en silverfärgad Smith & Wesson med lång pipa.

“Jodå”, svarade han på min första fråga, “visst var det jag som startade operation stay behind i början av 1950-talet och inte bara i Sverige, utan över hela Skandinavien.”

Colby berättade vidare hur han spanade på och noga undersökte bakgrunden hos personer som kunde tänkas ingå i den hemliga organisationen. Från USA och från västtyska förråd levererades utrustning, allt från konserver till hemliga radioapparater som skulle placeras i olika förråd i de skandinaviska länderna.

Lojaliteten förbjöd honom genom hela intervjun, som tyvärr bara delvis fick bandas, att röja något specifikt land, men vid ett tillfälle förstod jag att det rörde sig antingen om Danmark eller Finland.

Bill Colby berättade att han inför en leverans hade lastat bakluckan på sin bil så full med utrustning att den nästan gick på fälgen. Med hustru och barn som cover i bilen for sällskapet mot ett färjeläge, där man stoppades av tullen eftersom bilen var så tungt lastad. Men med sitt diplomatpass klarade han sig igenom. Det var en av få gånger han visade upp sin riktiga identitet för någon okänd svensk. I vanliga fall rörde han sig med skilda alias.

När banden på min Nagra definitivt hade slutat snurra, berättade Colby också att han nästan vanemässigt sökte kontakt med ledande socialdemokrater, inte minst i Sverige. Först flera år senare förstod jag att den han främst försökt kultivera var dåvarande partisekreteraren, Sven Aspling. Både svenska och utländska medier har vid flera tillfällen rapporterat att 1950, året innan Colby kom till Stockholm ska amerikanska ambassaden ha försökt värva Olof Palme, men resultatet av det värvningsförsöket är än idag höljt i dunkel.

Efter bara två år i Stockholm hade Bill Colby skapat ett helt skandinaviskt “stay behind network”, med utbildat manskap, hemliga förråd och utrustning. Där fanns också amerikanska civila medborgare som bodde i Skandinavien och som utförde enklare tjänster. Till detta kom också vad som kallades för “assets”, vilket är ett klassiskt kodord för operatörer som agerar utan diplomatiskt skydd, till deras uppgifter hörde så kallade våta jobb.

1953 var Colby färdig med Stockholm, det var inte längre den spioncentral staden hade varit under kriget och han accepterade ett erbjudande att flytta till Rom, som tillsammans med Berlin, Wien och Hongkong var de nya spionstäderna på modet.

Efter en dryg timmes samtal och bandad intervju lämnade jag Bill Colby och Dent Place, helt övertygad om att jag hade ett scoop i mina händer. Men ack, vad jag hade bedragit mig själv. Långt senare lärde jag mig nämligen att den gamle spionchefen hade berättat hela sin story i sina memoarer hela tio år tidigare, alltså redan 1978 och med titeln “Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA”. Kapitlet om de två åren i Stockholm är 30 sidor och bär rubriken “A Skandinavian Spy”.

Mitt enda försvar är att det fanns inget internet och inte ens i min vildaste fantasi kunde jag föreställa mig att en före detta chef för CIA skulle publicera någon memoarbok. Men det hindrade mig inte från att några år senare göra om min bravado interview med Colby.

Den här gången var jag Aktuellts korrespondent i Washington och svaren på mina frågor blev ungefär desamma. Jag är dessutom ganska säker på att denna andra intervju drunknade antingen i det pågående första Irak-kriget eller i Sovjetunionens sönderfall.

När jag nu 23 år efter den första intervjun bläddrar i hans memoarer faller mina ögon på det avsnitt som handlar om hur Colby hamnade i Stockholm efter att ha startat den hemliga operationen redan i högkvarteret i Langley. Han blev inkallad till sin gamle OSS-boss från tiden som sabotör i Norge, Gerry Miller.

“All right, Bill, get on with it then”, Miller said. “What we want is a good solid intelligence and resistance network that we can count on if the Russkis ever take over those countries. We have some initial planning, but it needs to be filled out and implemented. You will work for Lou Scherer until we see what more needs to be done.”

Lou Scherer var vid den tiden chef för den västeuropeiska divisionens skandinaviska avdelning inom CIA.

Efter de så hårt kritiserade åren som CIAs stationschef i Saigon, mitt under brinnande Vietnamkrig, blev Bill Colby 1973 CIAs högste chef. Han efterträddes 1976 av ingen mindre än George Herbert Walker Bush, men han i sin tur, stannade bara på den posten under 357 dagar fram till dess Jimmy Carter tillträdde som president.

Svenskhuset på Avon Place, som låg så nära Colbys townhouse på Dent Place, förblev svenskt. Kort tid efter att Ulf Hjertonsson blivit ambassadör i Madrid, flyttade Svenska Dagbladets korrespondent, Lars Christiansson in. Och efter honom hette hyresgästen Ingmar Björkstén, som kom från tjänsten som kulturchef på Svenska Dagbladet och nu hade utsetts till svensk kulturattaché. Alla tre tillhörde mina vänner i Washington och Ingmar förblev min outtröttlige mentor och kritiker ända fram till sin död 2002.

Bill Colby avled den 27 april 1996 i en kanotolycka, längs den oändligt vackra Potomac River, uppströms i Maryland, och som också flyter genom Washington DC och mynnar i Chesapeake Bay. Då hans kropp återfanns nio dagar senare fanns det personer som hävdade att han mördats som hämnd för sina gärningar i CIAs namn. Andra pekade i riktning mot drunkning, hjärtinfarkt eller stroke. Såvitt jag vet har den verkliga dödsorsaken aldrig offentliggjorts.

William Bill Colby var starkt troende katolik och som sådan kallades han ibland gemenligen för krigsprästen under sina 32 år inom först OSS och därefter CIA. Han blev 76 år.

Länk till Inga Britt Ahlenius artikel på DN/Debatt:

http://www.dn.se/debatt/hemlig-motstandsrorelse-kopplas-till-palmemordet

Lockerbie bombing: Libyan government set to release files

 

21 December 2012 Last updated at 06:33 GMT

 

The new Libyan government in Tripoli is prepared to open all files relating to the Lockerbie bombing, the country's ambassador to the UK has confirmed.

However, Mahmud Nacua said it would be at least another year before Libya was in a position to release whatever information it holds.

The move comes on the 24th anniversary of the of bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland, which killed 270 people.

Bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi died this year after being released in 2009.

Megrahi, a Libyan agent, was released by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds, suffering from terminal prostate cancer.

He remains the only person ever convicted of the bombing, but Scottish police hope to pursue other suspects in Libya following the country's revolution and downfall of Colonel Gaddafi in 2011.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison suffering from cancer

Scotland's top prosecutor recently wrote to the new Libyan prime minister for help and the UK government has said it was pressing Tripoli "for swift progress and co-operation" on the Lockerbie case.

Mr Nacua told the BBC no formal agreement had yet been reached, but that Libya would open the files it holds on the case.

He said that would only come when his government had fully established security and stability - a process he believes will take at least a year.

In April of this year, Scotland's Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland travelled to Tripoli with the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, requesting co-operation after the fall of Gaddafi.

This was followed in May by a meeting with Libya's interim prime minister in London to discuss further inquires into the bombing.

At the time, a Crown Office spokesman said: "The prime minister asked for clarification on a number of issues relating to the conduct of the proposed investigation in Libya and the lord advocate has undertaken to provide this.

"The prime minister made it clear that he recognised the seriousness of this crime and following the clarification he would take this forward as a priority."

Did Iran’s Cyber-Army Hack Into the IAEA’s computers?

Amateur hackers or Iranian pros? Clues suggest the most recent cyber-attack on the International Atomic Energy Agency may be more than a prank.

by Eli Lake | December 5, 2012 Newsweek/The Daily Beast 

The latest hack against the computer servers of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that culminated with the posting of a smattering of blueprints, charts, and other data online in late November could be a bunch of kids on the Internet having fun, as is often the case with many small-time hacks. But some early signs suggest it may be the latest assault from Iran’s shadowy cyber-army formed in early 2011 to respond to the nasty worms and trojans launched by Israel and the United States against the country’s nuclear centrifuges. A group calling itself by the Persian name Parastoo claimed responsibility for the hacking. Some experts are saying the previously unknown group appeared to have ties, or at least common goals, with the Iranian government.

IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria. (Hans Punz, dapd / AP Photo)

Assigning responsibility for cyber attacks is a persistent problem for governments. A hacker in one country could route his malicious code through servers in a third country. There are often steps taken by hackers to use sophisticated mathematical formulas to encrypt their communications. For instance, in October, U.S. officials anonymously told reporters that a hack that disabled the servers of Saudi Arabia’s national oil company was the work of Iran. But Mohsen Kazemeini, the commander of the Greater Tehran division of the Iran Revolutionary Guard, not surprisingly denied any role in those attacks. Even if a U.S. intelligence agency had evidence the attack was from Iran, public disclosure of that evidence would provide hackers with handy road map as to how to make sure the next illicit cyber-intrusion would not be detected.

“It’s very hard to know who is behind the clickety clack of the keyboard at the time of a breach,” said Frank Cilluffo, the director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. But regarding the most recent hacking, he said there were clues. “[C]learly whoever was behind the IAEA incident shares the intentions of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, and if not them directly, this could be a cyber-assassin, a hired gun Iran has enlisted to do their bidding.”

James Lewis, a senior fellow and cyber expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, would not say he knew for sure Iran was responsible for the IAEA hack. But he did say that the attack “serves Iranian purposes. It’s similar to earlier Iranian actions and it’s within their capabilities.”

The latest attack is from a group called Parastoo, which is the Persian word for the small bird, the swallow. Last Friday, Parastoo published what it said were sensitive diagrams, satellite photos, and other documents it had pilfered from the IAEA servers on a website devoted to exposing state secrets called Cryptome.

In a message that included downloadable images, email addresses of IAEA officials, and other IAEA data, Parastoo issued an open letter demanding the IAEA “start an INVESTIGATION into activities at Israel’s secret nuclear facilities.” Unlike Iran, Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which requires member states to allow IAEA inspections of nuclear facilities.

“This could be a cyber assassin, a hired gun Iran has enlisted to do their bidding.”

IAEA officials have confirmed the hack, but also downplayed its damage, saying the new group managed to get inside an older server. IAEA spokesperson Gill Tudor said Monday, “The IAEA deeply regrets this publication of information stolen from an old server that was shut down some time ago. In fact, measures had already been taken to address concern over possible vulnerability in this server." One of the items published by Parastoo was a blueprint for a substation at a proposed nuclear plant in South Carolina. A spokesman for Duke Energy, the company building the nuclear plant, said the item that was published was already publicly available on the website of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “This schematic is not sensitive,” the spokesman, Jason Walls, said.

Efforts to contact Parastoo and Iranian government spokespeople were not successful. But John Young, a proprietor of Cryptome, the website that published the IAEA data, said he received the information through anonymizer software that hides the IP address of the sender of a message.

“I know nothing about the source except what is in the messages,” Young said. “The two hacks came from via anonymizer and may not be a single source—the second one could have adopted and phished the features of the first.”

Young said that most hacks are either from governments or are hackers he believes are “hoping to be hired or contracted as a result of preening hacks.” Bob Gourley, the former chief technology officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency and the editor of CTOvision, said it would be unwise to underestimate Iran’s cyber capabilities. “The Iranians have great universities, a lot of computer scientists, and savvy technical teams. I believe they do have the capabilities to hit our banks and infrastructure,” he said.

Cilluffo said one of the key challenges for analysts of Iran's cyber army is determining the extent of cooperation between independent hackers based in Iran and the country’s security services like the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

On the IAEA hack, Gourley said he did not know that it was Iran, but he also said he didn’t think it was just a prank either. “I would caution everyone away from saying the IAEA hack was a just a bunch of kids,” he said. “It could be teams of hackers working in coordination with more sophisticated teams, the open attacks and obvious intrusions might be covering more sophisticated intrusions at the same time.”

Morsi’s Moment

Time Magazine’s cover denna vecka om Egyptens Mohammed Morsi. Säkert Mellanösterns mest betydelsefulle man just nu, trots hans halsstarriga dekret om sin egen makt. Eller kanske just därför.

By Bobby Ghosh / Cairo Nov. 28, 2012

The most important man in the Middle East started 2012 as much a stranger to the people he now rules as he was to the rest of the world. Although Mohamed Morsi had long been part of the core leadership of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, he was viewed as a back-room operator, largely unnoticed among the Islamic party’s more charismatic political and religious figures. Not many outside of a handful of State Department Arabists in Washington had even heard his name.

And yet the year’s end finds Morsi instantly identifiable worldwide, even as his intentions in Egypt and the region remain very much unclear. In recent weeks, he has been hailed as a peacemaker by the U.S. and Israel, a savior by the Palestinians, a statesman by much of the Arab world—and branded a tyrant by the tens of thousands who have jammed Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square since Nov. 22 to denounce him. Whether you think him a hero or a villain, the short, stocky Islamist with the professional air is navigating some of the world’s trickiest political waters.

(MORE: An Interview with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi: ‘We’re Learning How to Be Free’)

Morsi doesn’t pretend his tenure has been perfect and argues it can’t be. Speaking with TIME in his first interview with the international media since the Gaza crisis, he points out that his government is Egypt’s first experience of real democracy. “So what do you expect. Things to go very smooth? No. It has to be rough, at least,” he says. But he also gives the impression of a man having a year to remember. “2012 is the best year for the Egyptians in their lives, in their history,” he says. “We’re suffering, but always a new birth is not easy, especially if it’s the birth of a nation.”

When the interview was scheduled, Morsi was riding high. His successful brokering of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas had given him widening international and domestic support, a feat unmatched by any other Arab leader in the modern era, and offered the prospect that Egypt might again lead the region as it did under Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s. Morsi had already displayed unexpectedly nimble political skills to pry executive power away from the Egyptian military. For a moment, there was even the possibility that Morsi had amassed just the right proportion of international credibility and domestic political capital to start delivering on the promise of the Arab Spring. But then he overreached. Instead of consolidating the power he had amassed in service of his country’s emerging democracy, he grabbed for more.

(MORE: Washington’s Two Opinions of Egypt’s Islamist President)

As Morsi spoke with TIME at the presidential palace in Cairo’s Heliopolis suburb, most of Egypt’s major cities were again ringing with the chant that had been the Arab Spring’s rallying cry: “The people want the fall of the regime.” The slogan that helped bring down Hosni Mubarak is now being hurled at the country’s first democratically elected civilian President by both cronies of Mubarak and the revolutionaries who toppled him. In Tahrir Square, judges appointed by the old dictator, many of whom enabled his decades-long repression of political dissent, joined their voices with liberal and secular activists. The most popular joke in Egypt these days is that Morsi has done the impossible: he has united the opposition.

Morsi achieved that by issuing an emergency decree on Nov. 22 appropriating for himself sweeping new powers, including immunity for his decisions from judicial challenge. The President insists his decree is a temporary measure designed to prevent politically motivated judges from undermining the process of creating a new constitution. But to critics, one particular provision, giving him “power to take all necessary measures” against threats to national security and to last year’s revolution, smells of dictatorship. Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace laureate and liberal politician, dubbed Morsi the new pharaoh.

For the rest of the world, however, and especially the U.S., the stakes are even higher. Whether Morsi proves to be a reformer or an autocrat will play an outsize role in the prospects for continued peace with Israel, the fate of democracy in the Middle East and the balance of power in the world’s most unstable region. “We will soon learn what kind of leader he is,” says a White House official, “because this current episode is very much a test of his capacity to work effectively with all the various interests in Egypt.”

POLL: Should Mohamed Morsi Be TIME’s Person of the Year 2012?

To the Top via Los Angeles
Morsi’s path to the presidency is unique, not only for Egypt but also for a region where leaders tend to come from royalty or the military. Born into modest means in a village north of Cairo, Morsi escaped the dreary fate of millions of his impoverished countrymen by excelling at academics. An engineering degree in Cairo was followed by a seven-year stint in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s, when he got a Ph.D. in materials science at the University of Southern California and then worked as an assistant professor at California State University at Northridge. His California years left Morsi with an abiding fondness for the Trojans, USC’s football team, and the nickname Mo, an old friend said. Two of his five children were born in the U.S. and are American citizens; he laughs at the suggestion that they will one day be qualified to run for the U.S. presidency.

When he returned to Egypt in 1985, he became active in the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group known for its strong anti-American positions. But Morsi retains a warm nostalgia for his former home. “I don’t like it when people in my country say, ‘America is against us,’ because I know [the situation] is different,” he says, citing the friendliness he encountered in California.

Back in Egypt, while teaching at an Egyptian university, Morsi rose swiftly in the ranks of the Brotherhood: he would serve in parliament, then become something of a political enforcer within the group. After Mubarak’s fall last year made the prospect of a President from the Brotherhood almost inevitable, Morsi’s name was rarely mentioned. When he emerged this year as the candidate of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, Morsi was mocked by rivals as “the spare tire,” an unsubtle allusion to the fact that he was not his party’s preferred standard bearer. But the party’s first choice, Khairat al-Shater, a millionaire businessman and Morsi’s mentor, was disqualified because of a criminal record stemming from charges, likely fabricated, during the Mubarak years. When attempts to reinstate al-Shater failed, Morsi filed his nomination papers on the last possible day.

(PHOTOS: Thousands in Cairo Protest Morsi’s Decree)

Although he is avuncular up close, Morsi proved a colorless campaigner: his stump speeches were dull, he skipped the sole televised debate, and even his own commercials seemed designed to hide him from view. He won less than a quarter of the vote in May’s first round of balloting, and it was only the Brotherhood’s disciplined political organization that allowed him to squeak through the runoff election on June 16 and 17 with 51.7%.

Lacking a ringing mandate, much discernible charisma or experience in political combat, Morsi seemed poorly equipped to take on either the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the cabal of generals that had run the country since Mubarak’s ouster, or the judiciary made up mostly of judges appointed by the former dictator. After the runoff vote but before the results were announced, the Constitutional Court declared Egypt’s first free parliamentary elections illegal, empowering SCAF to dissolve the body where Morsi’s party had a plurality of seats. The generals also announced an interim decree that insulated the military from civilian control and effectively gave the generals veto rights over any new constitution. If SCAF was determined to undermine Morsi’s authority, he was unlikely to get any help from liberal and secular parties, which have long feared the Brotherhood’s Islamist agenda. Morsi looked like a lame duck even before he had been sworn in. “My expectations from him could not have been lower,” says Heba Morayef, Egypt director of Human Rights Watch. “His hands seemed completely tied.”

But they were not. On assuming the presidency, he displayed a previously hidden talent for deft public stagecraft: during his inaugural speech in Tahrir Square, he opened his jacket to reveal that he, unlike Mubarak, didn’t need a bulletproof vest, suggesting he was a man of the people, Then, less than two months after his swearing-in, he astonished both his allies and his critics by replacing several top generals and making himself SCAF’s chairman. How he pulled this off remains something of a mystery: some Egyptians suspect Morsi made a Faustian pact with the top brass. Others speculate he found some incriminating evidence against them. It’s more likely he did an end run around the old guard and appealed to the second-tier officers who were weary of waiting for their turn to rule.

MORE: Egypt’s Morsi: Has He Started Something He Can’t Finish?

Still, the worst fears of Egyptian liberals and some American observers seemed to have come to pass: an Islamist now had practically absolute legislative power in the most populous Arab nation. There was a chorus of “told you so”s when an American-made anti-Islam video on YouTube led to an angry mob bursting into the grounds of the U.S. embassy in Cairo—and Morsi took two days to condemn the attack. His first few foreign trips, to China and Iran, were quickly interpreted as an effort to pull Egypt out of the American orbit.

But Morsi has shown restraint. He has so far declined to adopt the harshest interpretations of Shari‘a law, has not imposed dress codes on women and tourists, and whatever his rhetoric has not torn up Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel or flung open the border with Gaza to take pressure off Hamas. His trip to China was not, it turned out, about finding an alternative patron to the U.S., and the Obama Administration was delighted when Morsi gave a speech in Tehran condemning Iran’s ally, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. (The Iranians struggled to control their embarrassment.) Although Morsi failed in his effort, with Turkey and Qatar, to broker an end to the Assad regime’s slaughter of civilians, the attempt showed that Egypt’s goal in Syria was complementary, not contradictory, to that of other nations. Then came Gaza.

Peace—and Then Protests
Maybe it was inevitable that Morsi’s presidential credentials would be tested in the tiny enclave on the Egyptian border that is home to 1.6 million Palestinians. The Muslim Brotherhood has deep ties to Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, and Morsi has a history of anti-Israel rhetoric. Although he had preserved the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty, he was never going to look the other way, as Mubarak was wont to do, when Israel battled Hamas.

(MORE: How the Gaza Truce Makes Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood a Peace Player)

When Israel launched its military campaign against Hamas on Nov. 14, Morsi condemned the attack in robust terms, but didn’t go nearly as far as Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who described Israel as a “terrorist state.” He withdrew Egypt’s ambassador to Israel but kept open channels of communication between Egyptian and Israeli intelligence agencies. To show solidarity with Hamas, he sent his Prime Minister to Gaza during the thick of the bombardment but didn’t unseal the border to allow the militants an escape route—or an open resupply line.

Meanwhile, Morsi spoke six times over several days with President Obama. Events in Gaza moved the two men closer: when they had spoken on the phone in the wake of the attack on the U.S. embassy in October, Obama had been reproachful of Morsi’s inaction. Now their conversations grew more personal: Morsi called Obama at 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 20, apologizing for the lateness of the hour. Obama responded by encouraging Morsi to call whenever he needed, regardless of the time. A few hours later, when Morsi called again, Obama offered his condolences to Morsi, whose sister had died the day before, after a long battle with cancer. Obama told Morsi he knew firsthand the difficulty of dealing with personal setbacks under the public glare. “Obama,” Morsi says, “has been very helpful, very helpful.”

Although the cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas were moderated by Egyptian intelligence officials, Morsi was the whip hand. He spent 75 minutes with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton going over the terms of the proposed cease-fire, reading it out loud in English and offering his opinion on each issue, where he agreed and where he felt edits were needed, a U.S. official reported. His national security adviser took notes as Morsi and Clinton worked out the details. “Our intelligence people were talking to Israel and Hamas during the Mubarak years, but that didn’t help,” says Amr Darrag, who heads the Freedom and Justice Party’s foreign-relations committee. “What was different this time is that you had Morsi, who has genuine legitimacy as an elected leader and real credibility with Hamas.” If there was some grumbling from Islamists at home that Morsi hadn’t helped Hamas enough—by opening the border, for one—it was silenced when Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal declared, “Egypt did not sell out the resistance.”

The applause hadn’t died down when Egypt announced another big win: a preliminary deal with the International Monetary Fund for a $4.8 billion loan, a crucial shot in the arm for an economy that was already slowing when Mubarak was ousted and has only gone downhill since. Analysts said the IMF deal, predicated on Egypt’s commitment to reduce its budget deficit, would reassure private interests that the nation was a safe bet for investors. That, in turn, would help to start paring down unemployment, the root of so much of the discontent displayed in Tahrir Square over the past two years.

MORE: After the Power Play in Egypt: Morsi and the Islamists vs. Everyone Else

But the very next day, Morsi gave Egyptians a new reason to protest. He and his aides insist the Nov. 22 emergency decree putting his decisions beyond legal challenge was not a power grab, just a desperate attempt to preserve the democratic process. Their argument: the Mubarak-appointed judges of the Constitutional Court, having already declared the elected parliament illegitimate, were about to do the same with the Constituent Assembly. (The court had dissolved the first Constituent Assembly in April.) Far from seeking absolute power, say Morsi aides, the President is seeking to swiftly empower the legislative branch of government: a new constitution and elections for parliament will allow him to hand off authority. “If he was a new pharaoh, he wouldn’t be so keen on a new constitution and parliament,” says Darrag, who is also secretary general of the Constituent Assembly. “You can’t call a man a dictator when he’s trying to give up power.”

Darrag allows that the announcement of the emergency decree could have been more skillfully handled. “[Morsi] could have communicated his motivations better,” he says. “He made it too easy for his enemies to turn this into a weapon against him.” But he maintains that the new powers will be strictly temporary, expiring when the Constituent Assembly produces a constitution and a new parliament is elected.

The trouble with that argument is that the constitution-drafting process Morsi claims to be trying to save is, in the eyes of many liberals and religious minorities, not worth saving. Already more than 20 members of the Constituent Assembly— including those representing the Coptic churches and several liberal, secular parties—have resigned, most citing disagreements over the extent to which Islamic law should guide legislation. Many liberals would rather scrap the process and start again.

(MORE: The Document That May Define the New Egypt: Why the Constitution Matters)

And then there’s the darker possibility. Some Western experts believe Morsi’s power grab shows that he is playing a longer game with the ultimate goal of a rigid Islamic state no longer open to democratic freedoms or aligned with Western interests. “He’s not, and never has been, a moderate,” says Eric Trager of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who interviewed Morsi repeatedly as an academic starting in 2010. “His function inside the Muslim Brotherhood was that of an enforcer [who] would weed out anyone who didn’t agree with [its] strict doctrine or tactics.”

Even the Cairo street seems a bit unsure of Morsi’s ultimate direction. In some pockets of Tahrir Square, it is hard to tell the protesters from the casual pedestrians. Vendors hawk roasted corn and yams, popcorn and Egyptian candy. On one corner, riot police toss tear gas at gangs of young men wearing handkerchiefs over their faces, and spectators look on with no sense of fear. In other sections, the anger at Morsi is palpable. “This is a blatant attempt to get himself the powers of Mubarak, and we won’t agree to it,” says Shaadi Mohammed, 23, who described himself as a “former fan” of the new President. “We united to kick Mubarak out. If Morsi isn’t careful, we will do the same to him.”

Which Way Next?
In his conversation with TIME, Morsi didn’t seem concerned by the street protests. “Egyptians are free. They are raising their voices when they are opposing the President,” he said. “We have a new Egypt now.” But do they? After the first spasm of outrage at the decree, some aides hinted that he would announce a compromise. That hasn’t happened. Once Tahrir Square filled up, it made a retraction harder: it might make him look weak. The other way out is to be true to his word and use the emergency powers to quickly deliver a new constitution, one that distributes power more evenly among the presidency, legislature and judiciary. This will first require him to bring back to the assembly the members who quit. Not easy, but not impossible for a man who persuaded Egypt’s top generals to walk away from power.

Yet with crowds back in the streets and the unpredictable forces of change at work once again, even Morsi may no longer know where he is leading his new country.

—with reporting by Ashraf Khalil And Karl Vick / Cairo And Jay Newton-Small / Washington

VIDEO: Egyptians Gather Together (but Not United) in Tahrir Square

How Hillary Clinton’s choices predict her future

Här är en megalång, men mycket intressant artikel från Washington Post om framtiden för Hillary Clinton.

By Stephanie McCrummen

On a recent Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton walked with her husband onto a stage at the New York Sheraton to cheers and whoops and a standing ovation that only got louder as she tried to quiet things down.

It was a friendly crowd — the annual meeting of her husband’s foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative — and people may have been eager to hear her speech about using U.S. aid to target investment barriers such as old land tenure laws. But really, they were there to see her.

“She’s just looked so sad and so tired,” said Ritu Sharma, a women’s rights activist, referring to Clinton’s appearances in the days after the attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

They wanted to defend her, to rave about her, to say how sick they were of people talking about her hair, and then to talk about her hair, which, several men and women offered, definitely looked best in a simple chignon.

Mostly, though, people wondered what the woman walking across the stage — now smiling as a soaring, presidential-sounding score began playing — would choose to do next. Maybe now, in her final months in office, she would provide a clue.

Bill and Hillary Clinton looked at each other and laughed. He rolled his eyes.

Then she began talking about how effective development can advance global peace and prosperity — the sort of long, detail-laden speech that Clinton has given a thousand times, the kind that says exactly nothing and everything about her future.

In recent weeks, Hillary Clinton has reiterated that she will not stay on for President Obama’s second term, unleashing fresh waves of speculation about her plans.

There is hypothesizing that she is merely entering a hibernation period before a 2016 presidential bid. There is talk that she will start her own women’s rights initiative. There is the prospect, too, that this might really be it for one of the most iconic figures in American political history.

What is clear is that despite lingering questions about Benghazi, Clinton is more beloved than at any point in her long and at times controversial career, commanding soaring approval ratings, a vast fundraising machine and supporters who gush more than ever that she should run for president again.

The truth is, though, that no one is sure what Hillary Clinton will do, possibly not even Clinton herself, who has said her plans include sleeping and watching the home-improvement show “Love It or List It,” which she finds calming.

But there is one way to figure out what Clinton may ultimately decide, and that is to examine what she has already done: not the obligatory things such as jetting to the Middle East as she did last week, but those things that as a first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state she has chosen to do.

Beyond carrying out the Obama administration’s foreign policy and troubleshooting global crises, Clinton has deliberately carved out her own agenda during her four years as secretary of state, making an array of choices that reflect who she is after more than 30 years in public service.

Of these, the first was her decision to sublimate any resentment that had come between her and Obama during their fight for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. The most controversial may be her push for “expeditionary diplomacy,” the idea that diplomats should engage more with people beyond embassy walls, which Stevens, the ambassador to Libya, exemplified.

The rest are more obscure. They include promoting a milk cooperative in Malawi and low-pollution “clean” cookstoves in China and attending an environmental summit in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk. They include decidedly unglamorous events, such as a conference devoted to gender-specific data collection, and thousands of miles traveled to often-overlooked places.

“I’m very happy that my 100th country was Latvia,” Clinton told students in Riga in June.

From the start, Clinton has explained her agenda as part of a new “21st-century diplomacy” that demands the United States be more attuned to the grass roots of the world and relies on development and civilian power as much as military might, an approach foreign policy gurus will debate for years to come.

Some say that Clinton diluted her energy and failed to achieve any signature triumphs, such as an end to the Syrian crisis. Others argue that through a thousand lesser-known efforts and initiatives, she has achieved nothing less than a transformative shift toward a more effective and modern American diplomacy.

What is certain is that Clinton’s choices tell a story about who she is, how she thinks and perhaps what she will decide to do in the future. And so the answer to the question of whether she will run for president in 2016 might begin on a trans-Atlantic flight this summer, the first leg of one of her longest trips as secretary.

As is her habit, Clinton walked to the back of the cabin to chat with the traveling press. It was early, and she seemed relaxed in a track suit and dark sunglasses.

The 12-day odyssey would include meetings in Paris, Kabul, Tokyo, Hanoi, Cairo and Jerusalem. But the stop Clinton was really looking forward to was Ulan Bator, Mongolia, where she once downed a glass of yak milk in the spirit of diplomacy.

A reporter mentioned that she was scheduled to visit with the Mongolian president in his ceremonial yurt, the traditional Mongol dwelling. Clinton smiled.

“It’s not a yurt,” she corrected, noting that Mongolians prefer not to use the Turkic term. “It’s a ger.”

Off the beaten path

By the time Clinton’s plane landed at Genghis Khan International Airport, she had already grabbed international headlines.

In Paris, she had blasted Russia and China for “blockading” a solution to the Syrian crisis. In Kabul, she had declared Afghanistan a “non-NATO ally.” In Tokyo, she announced U.S. aid to the Afghan government. There had been red carpets, photos with presidents and dinners under chandeliers.

Now it was a gray Monday in Mongolia, a country on China’s doorstep booming with coal, copper and gold mines, and because Clinton had decided it was important to be there, her motorcade was zipping along a potholed highway past grazing cows and construction cranes.

In the capital, she trotted up the marble stairs of a government building, greeted Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj and ducked into his ger. Like so many things Clinton did during the trip, this was not something she was obliged to do.

After that, she gave a speech to an international women’s group about political liberalization that was clearly aimed at China, but which also emphasized the role of women in politics, words she did not have to utter.

And after that, Clinton moved to a beige conference room for an event that was decidedly unnecessary to attend, but for which she had traveled more than 6,000 miles.

“It’s a pleasure to be with all of you this afternoon to help launch the LEND Network, a new tool that will help countries navigate the transition to sustainable democracy,” she began.

Her aides started checking their BlackBerrys. Some reporters took a breather. Yet Clinton, sitting at a table full of officials, seemed more energized than ever.

She spoke enthusiastically about the new online forum and how exciting it was to be able to provide “on-demand democracy support” to new leaders in places such as Kyrgyzstan.

“And in a minute,” said Clinton, uttering words that would make no headlines, “we’ll get to see the network in action when the foreign minister of Moldova conducts a live video chat with his former counterpart from Slovakia.”

Clinton listened and watched a computer screen as the faces of the Slovakian and Moldovan participants were beamed in, the latter from his vacation house.

“I’m so happy to be part of this launch,” Clinton told them.

And it was clear from her expression that she was, that this was the kind of thing that mattered to Clinton, who considered it a tiny step toward the larger goal of promoting democratic leadership, and thus a tiny step toward global peace and prosperity.

Asked about it in an interview later, she lit up.

“It’s really one of the big gaps I see around the world,” Clinton said. “I mean, who do these people have to talk to? I mean, one day they’re a political prisoner or they’re in exile or minding their own business in their job or at the university they teach at and the next minute they’re a president or a prime minister or a foreign minister? I mean, imagine!”

She continued:

“And there’s no real opportunity for them to feel comfortable because they don’t want to show weakness, don’t want to show ignorance — to say, ‘How does this work? What am I supposed to do?’ It’s fascinating to me.”

The Clinton character

Of all the things that Clinton’s friends say about her, opinions bend toward two essential facets of her character.

The first is that in the time they have known her — as a student leader in the 1960s, as a first lady, as a U.S. senator or now — Clinton has not really changed except to become more of the person she has always been: a deeply optimistic Methodist who believes that government can advance human progress and a hopeless wonk who knows her yurts from her gers.

The second is that while Clinton is a famously shrewd political operator, she is never more energized or relentless as when she is pursuing a cause that she believes will improve people’s lives, however incrementally.

This has often been Clinton’s most polarizing quality. It is what her detractors have at times interpreted as self-righteousness and a precursor to classic big-government liberalism. It is what her admirers have viewed as the doggedly pragmatic, in-the-trenches quality that makes Clinton an almost heroic, if also at times tragic, figure.

“This job has just amplified things that have always been there,” said Betsy Ebeling, a friend of Clinton’s since their childhood in Chicago, when they read novels about knights in shining armor, heard the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speak, and canvassed Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. “It’s given her a great stage for the many things she’s always cared about, only now she has the whole world.”

At the State Department, Clinton has used her power to create an array of new offices and positions devoted to long-standing causes: for civil society and emerging democracies; for global youth issues; and for the one for which she is most often noted, global women’s issues. She is widely credited with changing how the department thinks about women.

In March, Clinton issued a document titled “Promoting Gender Equality to Achieve Our National Security and Foreign Policy Objectives,” which directs the entire department to include women in everything from budget plans to peace negotiations. Naturally, she backed up the decision with data showing that doing so can advance conflict resolution and unlock economic potential.

“Now, I am sure when you received an invitation to a conference on data you probably thought, ‘Oh, boy, how exciting!’ ” Clinton said to an audience this summer. “But I think you would agree — this really is an exciting time for data.”

While Clinton’s initiatives have not led to major foreign policy shifts, they have resulted in project after project.

“People roll their eyes when she talks about clean cookstoves,” said Anne-Marie Slaughter, Clinton’s policy planning chief until last year. “But if the Alliance for Clean Cookstoves succeeds” — an initiative Clinton launched to get 100 million homes to ditch toxic fires for clean-burning stoves — “we will have reduced carbon, improved women’s security and saved millions of lives, and that is enormous.”

Clinton has cast her choices as a response to a changing world where power and threats are more diffuse, requiring the United States to pay more attention to jobless youths in North Africa and grinding poverty across the globe.

“We cannot assume that we are going to be understood and appreciated when so much of the world is young, without much of a sense of the historical antecedents of who we are, where we came from, what we did,” she said in the interview. “So we have to be everywhere.”

A more personal explanation for Clinton’s choices relates to her own struggle to be understood, she said, and “how important it was for me as a young woman to truly feel I had a place at the table.”

Another has to do with the faith she has embraced since she was a girl.

“As a Christian, part of my obligation is to take action to alleviate suffering,” she told the United Methodist News Service in 1992. “Explicit recognition of that in the Methodist tradition is one reason I’m comfortable in this church.”

Sitting in her office two decades later, Clinton said her faith still drives her.

“It is very much fundamental as to who I am and how I see myself,” she said.

Grass-roots diplomacy

Afew days after Mongolia, Clinton’s plane touched down in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, a country that saw more than 580,000 bombing runs by the United States during the Vietnam War, a war that Clinton protested in college.

Although she met with the prime minister on matters related to the U.S. “pivot” toward Asia, Laos was another unnecessary stop, so unnecessary that no U.S. secretary of state had visited in 57 years.

Clinton motorcaded down a road past palm trees and monks in bright-orange robes and a countryside still haunted by unexploded American bombs.

She had wanted to see a local prosthetics center that had become a sort of museum of the unresolved horrors of the war, and now she walked inside.

She looked up at crude wooden and metal limbs dangling from the ceiling and maps dotted with locations of bombs. She asked why there isn’t better technology to remove them.

Then she made her way to Phongsavath Sonilya, who lost his forearms and eyesight to a bomb on his 16th birthday. He had been sitting in a chair in a far corner waiting for her. Clinton reached out and touched his shoulder.

“Hello,” she said, keeping her hand there as they spoke for a few minutes. “It’s so nice to meet you.”

Later, Clinton flew to Siem Reap, Cambodia, where she met with a group of women who were trying to unionize the hotels and textile factories where they work. Clinton looked particularly regal in a purple dress and sparkling necklace, and some of the women called her “Your Highness,” although she ignored it.

She was becoming slightly irritated, in fact, because she was having trouble understanding a young woman who was describing her brutal working conditions but was getting confused by the voice of the translator in her headset. She kept starting and stopping. No one was helping her.

“Tell her to take off her earphones when she’s talking so she doesn’t hear the sound,” Clinton said. “It’s confusing her.”

Someone whispered to the young woman, who still did not understand what to do and now looked more nervous.

Clinton smiled at her. She gestured for her to take her headphones off, which she finally did. Then the woman continued with her horrifying story, saying at the end that she was not sure she had the courage to face the perils of union organizing.

“Thank you,” one of the most powerful women in the world said to one of the least. “But I disagree. You are very courageous. I want you to know that.”

Clinton’s choices, Clinton’s future

In small rooms, it is often easy to read what Hillary Clinton is thinking. But the fact is that most of her adult life has been lived on public stages where she has often seemed harder to figure out.

Two days after the attack on the U.S. post in Benghazi, for example, Clinton stood in the State Department’s ornate Franklin room, having decided to go ahead with an evening reception marking Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday. After hours of comforting employees and calling relatives of the dead, Clinton faced the Washington diplomatic corps and talked about another one of her choices.

“I’m the one who sent Chris to Benghazi during the revolution,” she said in a deliberate tone.

There would be questions about whether Clinton’s department had failed to provide adequate security for the diplomatic mission, whether procedures were followed and whether politics had entered into explanations of the attack.

But for now, Clinton had to listen as a colleague said nice things about her, about all the great work she had done, about how inspiring she was, how good.

Clinton looked out at the crowd. She smiled vaguely. Then she stared up at the ceiling and tried to keep her composure.

Another example came at the New York Sheraton this fall, when Bill Clinton introduced his wife as a “walking NGO” and explained her choices as secretary of state in simple terms. She had not just tried to defuse crises and stop bad things from happening, he said, “she tries to make good things happen.”

As Hillary Clinton moved to the podium, the audience cheered and whooped. She smiled and gave her speech, a Clinton classic touching on evidence-based analysis, building capacity in poor nations, women as economic agents, self-sufficiency and throwing out old development orthodoxies.

It was a speech she did not have to give, one filled with the kind of in-the-weeds detail that only a wonky Methodist who believes she is supposed to make good things happen would spend an hour giving. Clinton barely looked at her notes. She seemed to be having a blast.

“Thank you for devoting your energy, your efforts and your resources to improving our world one day at a time,” she said before heading off.

All of which explained that the answer to the question of whether Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2016 — whether she will seek the job with the most power to do the most good of all — is another question: whether she can keep herself from it.

© The Washington Post Company