Intelligence Reports

WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence reports indicate that Iran is buying at least two newly built Russian attack submarines with the apparent aim of controlling the narrow straits leading into the Persian Gulf.The prospect of Iran's trying to control the Strait of Hormuz and all shipping traffic entering the gulf has so alarmed U.S. officials that Secretary of State James A. Baker III raised the matter with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and other top Russian officials at a meeting in Moscow last week.

Straddling the divide between the chaos in Syria and the calm of the Galilee in northern Israel is a pastoral plateau known as the Golan Heights. Famous for its world-class vineyards, wandering cattle, and lush nature trails, the Golan has served as the disputed frontier between the two long-time adversaries since the aftermath of the Six-Day War in 1967. This small but strategic piece of land - negligible in size next to the vast territory of the entire Middle East - has been a point of contention on the Levant for over four decades.

WASHINGTON - While President Bush marshals congressional and international support for invading Iraq, a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in his own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war. These officials charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses, including distorting his links to...

MADISON, N.J. - The chairman of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks said that the White House was continuing to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents from the panel and that he was prepared to issue a subpoena for the documents if they were not turned over within weeks. The chairman, Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, also said in an interview he believed that the bipartisan 10-member commission would soon be forced to issue subpoenas to other executive branch agencies because of continuing delays by the Bush administration in providing documents and other evidence.

WASHINGTON - In the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations, according to a previously undisclosed report from the Sept. 11 commission. But aviation officials were "lulled into a false sense of security," and "intelligence that indicated a real and growing threat leading up to 9/11 did not stimulate significant increases in security procedures," the commission report concluded.

New York -- UNTIL LAST week, the national security club closed ranks behind Bob Gates' quest to be the top spymaster, some actively and most by public silence.Hardly anyone wanted to oppose a man so personally bonded to George Bush, a president known to settle personal scores. Neither was anyone eager to lock horns with a man still likely to be the next director of Central Intelligence and the chief keeper of information coveted by club members.Now, however, the Senate Intelligence Committee (a key part of the club)

WASHINGTON - Federal authorities have issued a secret alert to state and local law enforcement agencies warning them of the possibility of a terrorist attack in the United States around the Fourth of July holiday, senior government officials said. The message from the FBI, like others issued in recent weeks, was not made public because intelligence analysts concluded that the threat was too vague to justify a public warning, the officials said. "The FBI possesses no information indicating a specific and credible terrorist threat related to the July 4 Independence Day time frame," said the message, which was sent Wednesday.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush ordered U.S. intelligence agencies in May to take an intense look at conditions in Bosnia, and by June those agencies had uncovered widespread atrocities by Serbian forces, including summary executions and beatings that caused thousands of Muslim deaths, according to U.S. officials.But the administration has withheld details of its findings, portraying its reports from the Balkan conflict as anecdotal and inconclusive, often no more complete than press reports from the region.

WASHINGTON -- In this equal-opportunity war, both sides have achieved their objectives. And even bystanders, such as Russia, China, various U.S. corporations, Alaskan reindeer ranchers and others are benefiting.Slobodan Milosevic has irrevocably altered Kosovo's ethnic balance. Hillary Rodham Clinton greeted 453 ethnically cleansed Kosovars at Fort Dix in New Jersey. It will be a long trek home.NATO also has achieved its sovereign objective of largely avoiding NATO casualties. Of course, the three returned prisoners of war perhaps should count as casualties, considering they have been awarded Purple Hearts.

WASHINGTON -- Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin continued to reap the benefits of Aldrich Ames' treason against the United States long after the collapse of the Soviet Union by making it difficult for the United States to figure out the Russian leader's intentions on critical foreign policy issues, CIA Director John M. Deutch revealed yesterday.Offering newly declassified information from the CIA's internal damage assessment on the Ames spy scandal, Mr. Deutch disclosed that Ames' betrayal complicated the nation's ability to predict Mr. Yeltsin's intentions on such issues as nuclear proliferation and Moscow's role in other former Soviet republics.