Toronto Star/Michelle Shephard, 20 Nov 2010: About 30 minutes into an interview on an outdoor deck aboard the “spy cruise,” the issue of Osama bin Laden arises.

“What can you do with him?” asks Porter Goss, the former head of the CIA, as he settles back in a padded lounge chair. “Are we going to sit him on a deckchair and ask him to cooperate? Or are we going to put him in a place where he can’t leave?”

Goss’s point is this: Now that the Obama administration has outlawed harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, shut the CIA covert “black sites” around the world and frowned upon renditions, what are the options open to America’s intelligence service?

He insists the CIA “enhanced” methods worked. “There are undeniable, provable, extraordinary successes,” Goss said when asked about waterboarding — an interrogation technique that U.S. President Barack Obama denounced as torture.

For the first time since his retirement from the agency in 2006, Goss has come together with the man who replaced him, Gen. Michael Hayden, to mix tourism and terrorism aboard the MS Eurodam as it cruised the Caribbean this week.

About 130 passengers paid up to $2,000 for this privilege of unprecedented access to the former spy chiefs.

In rare and blunt interviews with the Toronto Star, the two retired leaders vehemently defended their records, Bush-era practices, and condemned the present administration for delivering what they say is an ambiguous national security policy.

For some, it may seem incongruous to discuss waterboarding when seniors graze on buffets and younger, scantily clad passengers gyrate to a Cher tune nearby.

But not for the cruise participants — a mix of former intelligence officers, students, retirees and private security consultants — who relish the chance to talk national security on their vacation.

“In the intelligence service it is difficult to retire,” said John Candor, who worked for the NSA for 25 years and attended the spy cruise with his wife, also a veteran of the electronic eavesdropping agency.

“This is an opportunity to touch the surface again, talk to old friends, see what the current mood is and then we can go back and play tennis for another year.”

The current mood among this group seems to be frustration — with challenges by the media and civil rights advocates as to how intelligence is gathered.

“We are a clandestine intelligence service,” Goss said. “Clandestine intelligence. What about that is it that the media doesn’t get?”

As the cruise moved through the choppy Atlantic Ocean this week, two important national security stories broke in Washington and New York.

The U.S. Justice Department concluded that there would be no criminal charges for the CIA destruction of videotapes that showed the waterboarding of two “high value” detainees — an investigation that enraged both Goss and Hayden.

A day later in a New York courtroom, the first ex-Guantanamo detainee to be tried in a civilian court was acquitted of all but one of 286 charges in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

Tanzanian Ahmed Ghailani still faces a minimum of 20 years in prison for conspiracy, but the lack of a conviction on the murder charges has rekindled the debate on civilian trials versus indefinite detention, or military commission prosecutions for Guantanamo detainees.

The Obama administration has still not said publicly whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, would be tried in a civilian or military court, after a proposal to bring the case to New York created widespread outrage.

Hayden, who was the longest-serving director of the NSA and deputy director of the National Intelligence before he took the helm of the CIA from Goss in 2006, dismissed questions about whether the agency’s handling of terrorism suspects hindered chances of their prosecution.

“I don’t care. Why are you raising that with an intelligence officer? My job is to disrupt attacks against the homeland,” said Hayden, who retired from the CIA in February 2009.

“This is a war,” continued Hayden. “It’s about defence. It’s not about going through a judicial process.”

Hayden added that it was a “mistake” to immediately charge and read Miranda rights to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab after he failed to bomb a Detroit-bound plane in December.

“Within 50 minutes you treat him as a criminal? Not a prisoner of war and interrogate him? The first sentence is, ‘You have the right to remain silent,’ ” Hayden said of the Nigerian suspect with connections to Yemen.

“Does anyone believe the Detroit field office even had a map of Yemen with them in those first 50 minutes?”

Like Goss, Hayden supports indefinite detention — which Obama conceded may be the fate for some Guantanamo detainees despite his prior criticism of the practice.

When pressed on how the public can have confidence that they have detained guilty men, Hayden said in wartime there is the right to hold enemy combatants without trial.

“I have a moral obligation if I know this person is a combatant, if I have evidence he is a combatant, (and) if I would reveal information that deserves to be kept secret in order to prove to the Toronto Star or New York Times that he’s a combatant, I’m not going to reveal it.”

“I’ve had this question asked, ‘Well this war could go on for decades.’ My response is, ‘Yeah. Not my fault.’ ”

There are few participants sitting in the third-floor Hudson Room listening to the spy cruise sessions, who would disagree with the positions being presented.

This is a likeminded group. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s name is evoked often, disdainfully. So is the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been at the forefront of many of the successful challenges to Bush-era policies.

Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said he was surprised by Hayden’s candor.

“Some of these Bush-era officials had a really alarmingly narrow conception of their jobs,” said Jaffer in an interview following the cruise. “Actionable intelligence is valuable, of course. But so are democratic institutions, and democratic values, and international legitimacy, and the rule of law.”

“(These) security officials still don’t acknowledge the damage they caused to the country’s interests, and to its security.”

That’s not an argument that will get much traction among the spy cruise crew.

Hayden said he is tired of the criticism and doesn’t believe the CIA’s use of waterboarding or covert interrogation sites affected the U.S.’s reputation or fuelled Al Qaeda’s propaganda.

“I understand there are moral judgments to be made and honest men differ,” he said, before concluding the interview.

“What I’m saying, however, is that process resulted in valuable intelligence and made American and citizens of the West safe.”

Toronto Star/Michelle Shephard, National Security Reporter, 14 Nov 2010:

ABOARD THE MS EURODAM—The passengers sitting in a gently rocking conference room are enraptured by the man who, depending on your perspective, once held the easiest or most frustrating job.

Bill Harlow was the public face of the CIA during one of the agency’s most tumultuous times.

A spokesperson for a secret organization may sound like an oxymoron, Harlow concedes.

But this week, aboard the Caribbean “SpyCruise®” where former CIA agent and organizer Bart Bechtel is our “SpySkipper,” and speakers include former NSA director Michael Hayden and CIA director Porter Goss, the point is not about keeping secrets, but starting a discussion on national security.

It is an incongruous setting for talk about homegrown radicalism, drone attacks and whether the West has become complacent about terrorism.

While the presentations are officially “not for attribution,” speakers are happy to talk if tracked down poolside or standing in line at the Lido deck’s expanse of buffets.

The 130 participants — distinguished from the other hundreds of passengers by a little American flag with the U.S. secret service’s star embedded in it — spent all day Sunday in a third floor conference room as other passengers drank margaritas, had shoulders kneaded with hot stone massages or gazed down at the 20-foot swells from the sunny top deck.

“One thing I’ve learned is people learn best and retain things if they are enjoying themselves, if they’re comfortable and if they feel included in the whole process,” explains Bechtel.

So after Sunday’s heavy itinerary, participants are free to once again engage in tourism during Monday morning’s port stop — then it’s back to terrorism when at sea.

It might seem like a daunting prospect for former top intelligence officials to be trapped on a ship with eager participants.

But both Goss and Hayden (who also led the CIA after Goss’ retirement) said in interviews that they relish the opportunity to deliver their message and defend their records.

“For me to say, ‘Heck, I’ve got no place to hide for a week on a cruise ship.’ That’s ridiculous to compare to these people who have to survive every day of their lives,” Goss said of the members of the organization he once led, in an interview with the Toronto Star.

“So no, when you get to be my age and are no longer ready for the prime time front lines this is the best you can do to help.”

Oversimplified, the message includes a warning that terrorism is growing among what they believe is a complacent public, that agents are more “risk adverse,” which could hurt intelligence gathering and that lawyers who fight for the human rights of terrorism suspects and unfair criticism by the “left wing media” are putting the U.S. at risk.

Discussions could become animated, as neither intelligence leader was immune to controversy. Hayden, a retired Air Force general and longest serving director of the NSA, was at the heart of the warrantless surveillance controversy. Under Goss’s leadership in 2005, the CIA destroyed videos of the harsh interrogation techniques of terrorism suspects.

But most of the passengers — who range from retirees to former service members to students — ask question about the future risk, rather than concerns about past records.

“I am a groupie you might say of the spy cruise,” says Diane Jay Bouchard, a writer who is on her second spy cruise and currently working on a fiction book about terrorism.

“When you look at these gadgets that they show you, you never look at a hair brush the same again, or a tooth brush or a cell phone. It just blows your mind,” she says of a past cruise that focused on Cold War espionage.

Prices for this weeklong cruise ranged from $1,200 to $2,000 US.

There have been four cruises organized by Bechtel since 2001 although this one has drawn some of the most current and well-known names. A portion of the proceeds is donated to funds for the families of fallen CIA agents and armed forces veterans. The speakers volunteer their time.

For guests like Bouchard, and many here who own private security companies, the research and connections to former high-level players is invaluable.

And while topics may be serious, it does not dissuade spy jokes of both the participants and other cruise passengers.

At Sunday’s formal night dinner, all eyes were on the martinis, both shaken and stirred.

British Airways magazine, 11 November 2010: Espionage hasn’t been so hot since the Cold War and this month the first SpyCruise® sets sail. Tom Mangold gets on board.

Ten-strong Russian sleeper cells in suburban America, spy swaps in Vienna, a B2 engineer found guilty of selling US military secrets to China… If this has whetted your appetite for tales that could be straight out of an Ian Fleming novel, then how about embarking on a cruise with real-life Bonds and Smileys?

This month, the world’s first ever SpyCruise® sets sail. [SPYSKIPPER NOTE: Actually it is the 4th SpyCruise®] The Holland America Line MS Eurodam will cruise from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on a week’s Caribbean tour and the cabins will be filled with scores of ex-spooks.

On board, giving lectures to a breathless public (next cruise: 13 November) are such top spy names as Porter Goss, the former Director of Central Intelligence (CIA); General Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and the ultra-secret National Security Agency; and enough former CIA and FBI officers to overthrow a government or two. And these super-conspiratorial men and women will be revealing some of their secrets to an audience of fellow travellers and innocents.

And the subject matter? Current and future strategic threats, policies, problems, prescriptions and anecdotes – especially anecdotes.

If the spy-struck passengers want to avoid too many men in dark glasses with cigarettes dangling from their lips in the passageways (probably the ex-spook minders), then there is certainly enough space on this modern giant to get lost. She has 929 crew, 11 decks, a culinary arts centre, spa, saloon and enough restaurants and entertainments to cater for the 2,104 guests.

In Britain, you would never find an ex-spy popping up in public. ‘One just doesn’t do that kind of thing, old chap,’ my favourite ex-MI5 source tells me. But in the United States, it’s more of a case of Spies R Us. And you know something – I’m glad it is. It sure beats spending hours trapped on a liner with a fellow tourist explaining how they grow carrots in their backyard.

But if you miss the boat, head to Washington, the acknowledged global capital of espionage where the International Spy Museum, in a newly fashionable area 
of the capital’s downtown, is one of its biggest tourist attractions.

That man taking you round – that nice Russian chap – is Major-General Oleg Kalugin, former head of KGB counter-intelligence, who was deeply involved in the notorious umbrella murder of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978.

Look out for: the live `spy operation’, which engages groups in a simulated spy-hunt experience; the real Enigma, the legendary WW2 German cipher machine whose capture by the British altered the course of the war; a KGB shoe transmitter; and a through- the-wall camera used by the East German Stasi. Raincoats and dark glasses at the ready, everyone.

For SpyCruise® details, visit spycruise.com. For The International Spy Museum, go to spymuseum.org. Tom Mangold is a former intelligence correspondent and author of Cold Warrior.

Kristina Scholze is the Vice President for Business Development at the CI Centre in Alexandria, VA, with responsibility for managing global sales and marketing initiatives for the company as well as serving as the company’s major accounts manager.

Kristina has led the newly formed Sales and Marketing Department since 2006, and since then, her department has consistently brought in an increasing percentage of the company’s business. It now accounts for almost half of the company’s revenues.

Prior to joining the CI Centre, Kristina worked in various account management positions at several companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, and GMAC. Kristina’s education background includes an Associate’s Degree in Business Administration from Robert Morris College, Pittsburgh, PA. She is also a certified Personal Trainer and licensed Massage Therapist.

Kristina has lived in the Washington, DC area since 1985, and spends her free time cycling, running and playing racquetball, in which she previously held the title for Virginia State Champ.