Intelligence Services

It did not end like cloak-and-dagger stories are supposed to, with briefcases exchanged on foggy bridges or midnight dashes across nameless borders. Instead, one of the most thrilling chapters in Cold War espionage closed with a German nursery rhyme sung by a lonely, drunken spy: "All my little duckies, swimming on the pond . . . heads deep in water, tails to the sky."

In the burgeoning field of intelligence contractors, an especially aggressive upstart is Abraxas Corp., a privately held company that has assembled a deep roster of CIA veterans to handle a wide range of clandestine assignments -- including secret work for an elite team of overseas case officers.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) on Tuesday joined those calling for an independent commission to investigate government intelligence failures preceding Sept. 11, but it seems increasingly unlikely that such a panel will get off the ground. The idea is resolutely opposed by President Bush and House Republican leaders, who have the power to keep the proposal from coming to a vote and who view it as a political ploy by ambitious Democrats.

Criticizing the counter-terrorism policies of the Clinton administration, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said Tuesday that the United States failed to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks "because for nearly a decade our government had blinded itself to its enemies." Ashcroft said that before the attacks, FBI agents "were isolated by government-imposed walls, handcuffed by government-imposed restrictions, and starved for information technology. The old national intelligence system in place on Sept.

The U.S. military commander in Afghanistan says he has evidence that factions of Pakistani and Iranian spy services are supporting insurgent groups that carry out attacks on coalition troops. Taliban fighters in Afghanistan are being aided by "elements of some intelligence agencies," Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal wrote in a detailed analysis of the military situation delivered to the White House earlier this month. McChrystal went on to single out Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency as well as the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as contributing to the external forces working to undermine U.S. interests and destabilize the government in Kabul.

A Newfoundland man has been charged with spying in a case involving classified U.S. military information that could have been useful to the Soviet Union, Canadian authorities said Monday. Stephen Joseph Ratkai, 25, believed to be a Canadian citizen, was charged with espionage under the Official Secrets Act after an investigation that spanned considerable time, Solicitor General James Kelleher told the House of Commons. Kelleher declined to give any but the barest details of the case. U.S.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has ordered an investigation of allegations that British intelligence agents tapped the telephones of union leaders, anti-nuclear protesters and left-wing politicians, says Home Secretary Leon Brittan. Brittan said last week in Parliament that Lord Bridge, chairman of the Security Commission created by Thatcher to investigate leaks in intelligence services, would investigate the allegations made in a television program that was to have been broadcast last week.

U.S. counterintelligence officials are increasingly concerned that Al Qaeda sympathizers or operatives may have tried to get jobs at the CIA and other U.S. agencies in an effort to spy on American counterterrorist efforts. So far, about 40 Americans who sought positions at U.S. intelligence agencies have been red-flagged and turned away for possible ties to terrorist groups, the officials said. Several such applicants have been detected at the CIA.

In April 1985, CIA officer Aldrich H. Ames walked into the Soviet Embassy in Washington and offered to spy for Moscow. Six months later, U.S. prosecutors allege, FBI counterintelligence officer Robert Philip Hanssen anonymously offered his services to the KGB. There is no reason to think that Ames or Hanssen had any idea of what the other was up to.