‘Enemies trying to create social crisis in Iran’

TEHRAN - Iranian Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi said on Sunday that the Western intelligence agencies that participated in the sedition of 2009 have carefully reviewed the factors behind their failure and are planning to create another type of instability, like a social crisis, in Iran. 
 
He said that the enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran are conducting a propaganda campaign against the country in order to give the impression that Iran’s system is ineffective and inefficient.
 
He went on to say that the enemies who have a problem with the system of velayat-e faqih (rule by the supreme jurisprudent) in Iran want to convince Iranian citizens that the country’s system is inefficient because it is the velayat-e faqih system. 

One of the enemies’ objectives is to foment discontent among the Iranian people, he said, adding that the enemies are now training some youths to spark street clashes in the country.

“The enemies intend to sow discord between the Iranian nation and government… however, we should comprehensively counter their plots,” he stated.  

Commenting on the Islamic Awakening wave rolling across the region, Moslehi said that the enemies do not want Iran to be a role model for regional countries, and hence they have invented “the phenomenon of Iranophobia.”

Former CIA spy advocates overthrow of Iranian regime

Reza Kahlili, living in the shadows with a fake name and disguise, worked from inside the Revolutionary Guard. He warns of terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S. and a plot to destroy Israel.

By David Zucchino

ARLINGTON, Va. — His disguise consists of a blue surgeon's mask, sunglasses and a baseball cap that reads "Free Iran." A small modulator distorts his voice. He uses a pseudonym, Reza Kahlili.
He lives in fear, he says, because his years as a paid spy for the CIA inside Iran have made him an assassination target of Iran's government. He worries about his wife and children, who live with him in California.

 At the same time, implausibly, he has become one of the most influential and outspoken voices in the U.S. advocating the overthrow of the Iranian government.

 For the last two years, Kahlili has gone semipublic with a memoir, a blog, op-ed pieces and invitation-only speeches at think tanks. He warns that Iran operates terrorist sleeper cells inside the United States and is determined to build nuclear weapons to destroy Israel. The U.S. should respond, he argues, by supporting the opposition inside Iran.

 He travels furtively between appearances, working as a Pentagon consultant and as a member of a domestic security task force.

 "There's probably nobody better on our side in explaining the mind-set of those in power in Iran," said Peter Vincent Pry, a former CIA military analyst who directs the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. "He understands the ideological sources of Iran's nuclear program."

 U.S. Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Kahlili has convinced him of the importance of supporting the opposition and hardening sanctions against Iran.
 "I thought I knew a lot about Iran until meeting with him," King said on a New York political radio program in January. At the time, Kahlili was a guest and King was a guest-host, but the two had previously met in the congressman's office.

 "If you're going to take this issue seriously, the one person you have to consult with and read his writings is Reza Kahlili," King said.

 In a quiet hotel lounge in Arlington, Kahlili is not wearing his disguise or using his voice modulator for a meeting with a reporter.

 "You'd be shocked by how easily agents from the Revolutionary Guard come and go inside the United States every day," Kahlili says in a near-whisper, bent over a table in a dark corner.
 A soft-spoken man in his mid-50s, Kahlili is wearing jeans, a sports shirt and a black coat. He's of average height and weight, with a smattering of facial hair.

He made certain he wasn't followed, he says, and performed a quick security check of the hotel.
 "They'd kill me if they could find me," he says of Iranian agents.

 Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer in Washington, D.C., said he had confirmed that Kahlili was a longtime operative of a U.S. intelligence agency, adding: "He has insights on Iran most people in the U.S. intelligence community don't have."

 For covert operatives, clearance agreements with the CIA often prohibit public acknowledgment of the agreement itself or of the CIA. A CIA spokesman, Todd D. Ebitz, said the agency had no comment on Kahlili.

 Brian Weidner, program coordinator for Iran instruction at the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy, confirmed that Kahlili is a paid lecturer for the Pentagon agency. Other instructors are videotaped, Kahlili says, but his lectures are audio-only to protect his identity.

 ***

 Kahlili says he lived a double life until the mid-1990s, passing along secrets to the CIA and recruiting Revolutionary Guards for the agency. In a sense, he resumed his double identity after publishing his 2010 memoir; he was now a former covert agent who had thrust himself into the public eye.

 He rarely leaves home — "my bunker," he jokes — and shuns social situations.

 For years, his mother in Iran berated him for working for a regime she despised; she died never knowing about his CIA spy work, he says. His children know nothing of his background. His Iranian wife was unaware of his spying for years, and was hurt, angry and terrified when he finally told her.
 "It took a long time for that to heal, and for her to understand why I did it," Kahlili says. Though his wife is pleased that he has publicized Iran's human rights abuses, he says, she has begged him to go back into hiding.

 He is pained by regrets. "I put my family in danger without giving it much thought," he says. "They didn't know what I'd done, but they were in as much danger as I was."

 The spy story Kahlili tells in his book, and in several interviews with The Times, features coded messages, disinformation, clandestine meetings and international intrigue.

 After graduating from USC, Kahlili returned to Iran just before the 1979 revolution toppled the Shah. A childhood friend recruited him into the Revolutionary Guard, where he gained an insider's access to the new Islamic government — and where he was to turn against the regime.

Is that really just a fly? Swarms of cyborg insect drones are the future of military surveillance

By Daily Mail Reporter

The kinds of drones making the headlines daily are the heavily armed CIA and U.S. Army vehicles which routinely strike targets in Pakistan - killing terrorists and innocents alike.

But the real high-tech story of surveillance drones is going on at a much smaller level, as tiny remote controlled vehicles based on insects are already likely being deployed.

Over recent years a range of miniature drones, or micro air vehicles (MAVs), based on the same physics used by flying insects, have been presented to the public.

The fear kicked off in 2007 when reports of bizarre flying objects hovering above anti-war protests sparked accusations that the U.S. government was accused of secretly developing robotic insect spies.

Official denials and suggestions from entomologists that they were actually dragonflies failed to quell speculation, and Tom Ehrhard, a retired Air Force colonel and expert on unmanned aerial craft, told the Daily Telegraph at the time that 'America can be pretty sneaky.'

The following year, the US Air Force unveiled insect-sized spies 'as tiny as bumblebees' that could not be detected and would be able to fly into buildings to 'photograph, record, and even attack insurgents and terrorists.'

Around the same time the Air Force also unveiled what it called 'lethal mini-drones' based on Leonardo da Vinci's blueprints for his Ornithopter flying machine, and claimed they would be ready for roll out by 2015.

That announcement was five years ago and, since the U.S. military is usually pretty cagey about its technological capabilities, it raises the question as to what it is keeping under wraps.

The University of Pennsylvania GRASP Lab recently showed off drones that swarm, a network of 20 nano quadrotors flying in synchronized formations.

The SWARMS goal is to combine swarm technology with bio-inspired drones to operate 'with little or no direct human supervision' in 'dynamic, resource-constrained, adversarial environments.'

However, it is most likely the future of hard-to-detect drone surveillance will mimic nature.

Research suggests that the mechanics of insects can be reverse-engineered to design midget machines to scout battlefields and search for victims trapped in rubble.

Scientists have taken their inspiration from animals which have evolved over millennia to the perfect conditions for flight.

Nano-biomimicry MAV design has long been studied by DARPA, and in 2008 the U.S. government's military research agency conducted a symposium discussing 'bugs, bots, borgs and bio-weapons.'

Researchers have now developed bio-inspired drones with bug eyes, bat ears, bird wings, and even honeybee-like hairs to sense biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

And the U.S. isn't the only country to have poured money into spy drone miniaturisation. France has developed flapping wing bio-inspired microdrones.

The Netherlands BioMAV (Biologically Inspired A.I. for Micro Aerial Vehicles) developed a Parrot AR Drone last year - which is now available in the U.S. as a 'flying video game'.

Not so tiny but a good spy: A ShadowHawk drone with SWAT team members

Zoologist Richard Bomphrey, of Oxford University, has conducted research to generate new insight into how insect wings have evolved over the last 350 million years.

He said last year: 'Nature has solved the problem of how to design miniature flying machines.

'By learning those lessons, our findings will make it possible to aerodynamically engineer a new breed of surveillance vehicles that, because they are as small as insects and also fly like them, completely blend into their surroundings.'

The insect manoeuvrability which allows flies the ability to land precisely and fly off again at speed may one day prove a crucial tactical advantage in wars and could even save lives in disasters.

The military would like to develop tiny robots that can fly inside caves and barricaded rooms to send back real-time intelligence about the people and weapons inside.

Dr Bomphrey said: 'Scary spider robots were featured in Michael Crichton's 1980s film Runaway - but our robots will be much more scaled down and look more like the quidditch ball in the Harry Potter films, because of its ability to hover and flutter.

'The problem for scientists at the moment is that aircrafts can't hover and helicopters can't go fast. And it is impossible to make them very small.

'With insects you get a combination of both these assets in miniature. And when you consider we have been flying for just over a hundred years as opposed to 350 million years, I would say it is they who have got it right, and not us!'

U.S., Israel developed Flame computer virus to slow Iranian nuclear efforts, officials say

By Ellen Nakashima, Greg Miller and Julie Tate

The United States and Israel jointly developed a sophisticated computer virus nicknamed Flame that collected intelligence in preparation for cyber-sabotage aimed at slowing Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, according to Western officials with knowledge of the effort.

The massive piece of malware secretly mapped and monitored Iran’s computer networks, sending back a steady stream of intelligence to prepare for a cyber­warfare campaign, according to the officials.

The effort, involving the National Security Agency, the CIA and Israel’s military, has included the use of destructive software such as the Stuxnet virus to cause malfunctions in Iran’s nuclear-enrichment equipment.

The emerging details about Flame provide new clues to what is thought to be the first sustained campaign of cyber-sabotage against an adversary of the United States.

“This is about preparing the battlefield for another type of covert action,” said one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official, who added that Flame and Stuxnet were elements of a broader assault that continues today. “Cyber-collection against the Iranian program is way further down the road than this.”

Flame came to light last month after Iran detected a series of cyberattacks on its oil industry. The disruption was directed by Israel in a unilateral operation that apparently caught its American partners off guard, according to several U.S. and Western officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

There has been speculation that Washington had a role in developing Flame, but the collaboration on the virus between the United States and Israel has not been previously confirmed. Commercial security researchers reported last week that Flame contained some of the same code as Stuxnet. Experts described the overlap as DNA-like evidence that the two sets of malware were parallel projects run by the same entity.

Spokesmen for the CIA, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as well as the Israeli Embassy in Washington, declined to comment.

The virus is among the most sophisticated and subversive pieces of malware to be exposed to date. Experts said the program was designed to replicate across even highly secure networks, then control everyday computer functions to send secrets back to its creators. The code could activate computer microphones and cameras, log keyboard strokes, take screen shots, extract geo­location data from images, and send and receive commands and data through Bluetooth wireless technology.

Flame was designed to do all this while masquerading as a routine Microsoft software update; it evaded detection for several years by using a sophisticated program to crack an encryption algorithm.

“This is not something that most security researchers have the skills or resources to do,” said Tom Parker, chief technology officer for FusionX, a security firm that specializes in simulating state-sponsored cyberattacks. He said he does not know who was behind the virus. “You’d expect that of only the most advanced cryptomathematicians, such as those working at NSA.”

Conventional plus cyber

Flame was developed at least five years ago as part of a classified effort code-named Olympic Games, according to officials familiar with U.S. cyber-operations and experts who have scrutinized its code. The U.S.-Israeli collaboration was intended to slow Iran’s nuclear program, reduce the pressure for a conventional military attack and extend the timetable for diplomacy and sanctions.

The cyberattacks augmented conventional sabotage efforts by both countries, including inserting flawed centrifuge parts and other components into Iran’s nuclear supply chain.

The best-known cyberweapon let loose on Iran was Stuxnet, a name coined by researchers in the antivirus industry who discovered it two years ago. It infected a specific type of industrial controller at Iran’s uranium-

enrichment plant in Natanz, causing almost 1,000 centrifuges to spin out of control. The damage occurred gradually, over months, and Iranian officials initially thought it was the result of incompetence.

The scale of the espionage and sabotage effort “is proportionate to the problem that’s trying to be resolved,” the former intelligence official said, referring to the Iranian nuclear program. Although Stuxnet and Flame infections can be countered, “it doesn’t mean that other tools aren’t in play or performing effectively,” he said.

To develop these tools, the United States relies on two of its elite spy agencies. The NSA, known mainly for its electronic eavesdropping and code-breaking capabilities, has extensive expertise in developing malicious code that can be aimed at U.S. adversaries, including Iran. The CIA lacks the NSA’s sophistication in building malware but is deeply involved in the cyber-campaign.

The CIA’s Information Operations Center is second only to the agency’s Counterterrorism Center in size. The IOC, as it is known, performs an array of espionage functions, including extracting data from laptops seized in counter­terrorism raids. But the center specializes in computer penetrations that require closer contact with the target, such as using spies or unwitting contractors to spread a contagion via a thumb drive.

Both agencies analyze the intelligence obtained through malware such as Flame and have continued to develop new weapons even as recent attacks have been exposed.

Flame’s discovery shows the importance of mapping networks and collecting intelligence on targets as the prelude to an attack, especially in closed computer networks. Officials say gaining and keeping access to a network is 99 percent of the challenge.

“It is far more difficult to penetrate a network, learn about it, reside on it forever and extract information from it without being detected than it is to go in and stomp around inside the network causing damage,” said Michael V. Hayden, a former NSA director and CIA director who left office in 2009. He declined to discuss any operations he was involved with during his time in government.

Years in the making

The effort to delay Iran’s nuclear program using cyber-techniques began in the mid-2000s, during President George W. Bush’s second term. At that point it consisted mainly of gathering intelligence to identify potential targets and create tools to disrupt them. In 2008, the program went operational and shifted from military to CIA control, former officials said.

Despite their collaboration on developing the malicious code, the United States and Israel have not always coordinated their attacks. Israel’s April assaults on Iran’s Oil Ministry and oil-export facilities caused only minor disruptions. The episode led Iran to investigate and ultimately discover Flame.

“The virus penetrated some fields — one of them was the oil sector,” Gholam Reza Jalali, an Iranian military cyber official, told Iranian state radio in May. “Fortunately, we detected and controlled this single incident.”

Some U.S. intelligence officials were dismayed that Israel’s unilateral incursion led to the discovery of the virus, prompting counter­measures.

The disruptions led Iran to ask a Russian security firm and a Hungarian cyber-lab for help, according to U.S. and international officials familiar with the incident.

Last week, researchers with Kaspersky Lab, the Russian security firm, reported their conclusion that Flame — a name they came up with — was created by the same group or groups that built Stuxnet. Kaspersky declined to comment on whether it was approached by Iran.

“We are now 100 percent sure that the Stuxnet and Flame groups worked together,” said Roel Schouwenberg, a Boston-based senior researcher with Kaspersky Lab.

The firm also determined that the Flame malware predates Stuxnet. “It looks like the Flame platform was used as a kickstarter of sorts to get the Stuxnet project going,” Schouwenberg said.

Researcher: CIA, NSA may have infiltrated Microsoft to write malware

Did spies posing as Microsofties write malware in Redmond? How do you spell 'phooey' in C#? 0 32 0Reddit1Submit2Email

By Kevin Fogarty

A leading security researcher has suggested Microsoft's core Windows and application development programming teams have been infiltrated by covert programmer/operatives from U.S. intelligence agencies.

If it were true it would be another exciting twist to the stories of international espionage, sabotage and murder that surround Stuxnet, Duqu and Flame, the most successful cyberwar weapons deployed so far, with the possible exception of Windows itself.

Nevertheless, according to Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of antivirus and security software vendor F-Secure, the scenario that would make it simplest for programmers employed by U.S. intelligence agencies to create the Stuxnet, Duqu and Flame viruses and compromise Microsoft protocols to the extent they could disguise downloads to Flame as patches through Windows Update is that Microsoft has been infiltrated by members of the U.S. intelligence community.

Having programmers, spies and spy-supervisors from the NSA, CIA or other secret government agencies infiltrate Microsoft in order to turn its technology to their own evil uses (rather than Microsoft's) is the kind of premise that would get any writer thrown out of a movie producer's office for pitching an idea that would put the audience to sleep halfway through the first act.

Not only is it unlikely, the "action" most likely to take place on the Microsoft campus would be the kind with lots of tense, acronymically dense debates in beige conference rooms and bland corporate offices.

The three remarkable bits of malware that attacked Iranian nuclear-fuel development facilities and stole data from its top-secret computer systems – Flame Duqu and Stuxnet – show clear signs of having been built by the same teams of developers, over a long period of time, Hypponen told PC Pro in the U.K.

Flame used a counterfeit Microsoft security certificates to verify its trustworthiness to Iranian users, primarily because Microsoft is among the most widely recognized and trusted computer companies in the world, Hypponen said.

Faking credentials from Microsoft would give the malware far more credibility than using certificates from other vendors, as would hiding updates in Windows Update, Hypponen said.

The damage to Microsoft's reputation and suspicion from international customers that it is a puppet of the CIA would be enough to keep Microsoft itself from participating in the operation, even if it were asked.

That doesn't mean it didn't happen.

"It's plausible that if there is an operation under way and being run by a US intelligence agency it would make perfect sense for them to plant moles inside Microsoft to assist in pulling it off, just as they would in any other undercover operation,” Hypponen told PC Pro. "It's not certain, but it would be common sense to expect they would do that."

The suggestion piqued the imaginations of conspiracy theorists, but doesn't have a shred of evidence to support it.

It does have a common-sense appeal, however. Planting operatives inside Microsoft would probably be illegal, would certainly be unethical and could have a long-range disadvantage by making Microsofties look like tools of the CIA rather than simply tools.

"No-one has broken into Microsoft, but by repurposing the certificate and modifying it with unknown hash collision technologies, and with the power of a supercomputer, they were able to start signing any program they wanted as if it was from Microsoft," Hypponen said. "If you combine that with the mechanism they were using to spoof MS Update server they had the crown jewels."

Hypponen is one of a number of security experts who have said Stuxnet and Duqu have the hallmarks of software written by traditionally minded software engineers accustomed to working in large, well-coordinated teams.

After studying the code for Duqu, security researchers at Kaspersky Labs said the malware was most similar to the kind of work done by old-school programmers able to write code for more than one platform at a time, do good quality control to make sure the modules were able to install themselves and update in real time, and that the command-and-control components ahd been re-used from previous editions.

"All the conclusions indicate a rather professional team of developers, which appear to be reusing older code written by top “old school” developers," according to Kaspersky's analysis. "Such techniques are normally seen in professional software and almost never in today’s malware. Once again, these indicate that Duqu, just like Stuxnet, is a 'one of a kind' piece of malware which stands out like a gem from the large mass of “dumb” malicious program we normally see."

Earlier this month the NYT ran a story detailing two years worth of investigations during which a range of U.S. officials, including, eventually, President Obama, confirmed the U.S. had been involved in writing the Stuxnet and Flame malware and siccing them on Iran.

That's far from conclusive proof that the NSA has moved its nonexistent offices to Redmond, Wash. It doesn't rule it out either, however.

Very few malware writers are able to write such clean code that can install on a variety of hardware systems, assess their new environments and download the modules they need to successfully compromise a new network, Kaspersky researchers said.

Stuxnet and Flame are able to do all these things and to get their own updates through Windows Update using a faked Windows Update security certificate.

No other malware writer, hacker or end user has been able to do that before. Knowing it happened this time makes it more apparent that the malware writers know what they are doing and know Microsoft code inside and out.

That's still no evidence that Microsoft could be or has been infiltrated by spies from the U.S. or from other countries.

It does make sense, but so do a lot of conspiracy theories.

Until there's some solid indication Flame came from inside Microsoft, not outside, it's probably safer to write off this string of associative evidence.

Even in his own blog, Hypponen makes fun of those who make fun of Flame as ineffective and unremarkable, but doesn't actually suggest moles at Microsoft are to blame.

In the end it doesn't really matter. The faked certificates and ride-along on Windows Update demonstrate the malware writers have compromised the core software development operations at Microsoft. They don't have to live there to do it; virtual compromise on the code itself would do the job more effectively than putting warm bodied programmers in the middle of highly competitive, highly intelligent, socially awkward Microsofties with a habit of asking the wrong question and insisting on an answer.

The risk of having any such infiltration discovered is far too high to expose the cyberwar version of Seal Team Six to the perils of Redmond.

Ehud Barak refuses to rule out military strike against Iran

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, refused to rule out military action against Iran yesterday, heightening expectations that his government is preparing to authorise an attack on Tehran's nuclear facilities.

By Adrian Blomfield, Jerusalem

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Barak said that sanctions and international diplomacy had so far failed to deter Iran from seeking to build a nuclear bomb, a prospect that would, he warned, threaten the stability of the "whole world".

"We strongly believe that sanctions are effective or could be effective if they are ... paralysing enough, that diplomacy could work if enough unity could be synchronised between the major players, but that no option should be removed from the table," he told the Andrew Marr Show.

The minister's comments come after a week of increasingly insistent claims in the Israeli press that Mr Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, his prime minister, are lobbying cabinet colleagues to support military strikes against Iran.

The two men, considered Israel's chief political hawks when it comes to Iran, are hoping that a report to be submitted by the UN's nuclear watchdog this week will provide justification for military action, observers and officials have suggested.

Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency are expected to present the most compelling evidence yet that Iran is exploring ways to build a nuclear weapon, although European diplomats say the report will not amount to "a smoking gun".

Even so, the Israeli government will seize on its findings to urge the international community to take more decisive action.

The Netanyahu administration tasked Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, with mounting a diplomatic offensive over the weekend in the belief that his dovish credentials will make its case even more compelling.

In a series of interviews, Mr Peres warned that time was running out to prevent Iran from fulfilling its perceived nuclear ambitions and appeared to urge the international community to consider the military option.

"The possibility of a military attack against Iran is now closer to being applied than the application of a diplomatic option," he told the Israel Hayom newspaper.

The key conclusions of the IAEA report will inevitably refocus international attention on Iran. It is expected to confirm that Iran has enough fissile material to build four nuclear bombs if it were further to enrich the uranium in its stockpiles. But it is an appendix, already partly leaked, that concentrates of the military aspect of Iran's nuclear programme which will garner most interest.

Satellite images will show a large steel container at the Parchin base near Tehran that appears to be designed for nuclear-related explosive testing.

Documentary evidence will also be provided to flesh out earlier IAEA suspicions that Iran is researching the construction of an atomic bomb trigger, has carried out computer simulations on building a nuclear device and is experimenting with the neutron technology needed to ignite a nuclear chain reaction.

The report is likely to conclude that Iran is researching how to construct a nuclear weapon but is not actively building one. Iran's foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, said the report was based on "counterfeit" claims.

As alarming as the findings are, European states are still likely to countenance against military action and call instead for a fifth round of sanctions.

"We gave imposed sanctions that continue to expand," Alain Juppe (ED: Acute on e please), the French foreign minister, said yesterday. "We can toughen them to put pressure on Iran. We will continue on this path because a military intervention could create a situation that completely destabilises the region."

Some observers have suggested that the bellicose rhetoric emerging from Israel is recent days is intended to alarm the international community into imposing tougher sanctions that it might otherwise ensue.

But there is also concern in the West that Israel could pursue unilateral military action.

US intelligence agencies have reportedly stepped up their monitoring of Israel to glean clues of a surprise attack after allegedly failing to win sufficiently concrete assurances from Mr Netanyahu that he would confer with Washington before taking military action.

Israeli intelligence has concluded that Iran intends to move the bulk of its nuclear production to a heavily fortified underground facility near the hold city of Qom by the end of the year, increasing the pressure to strike before it does so.

But Israel is thought only to have a window of only a few weeks if it wants to launch military action before the onset of winter, when heavy cloud would hamper aircraft targeting systems, making an attack impracticable. Some military experts predict that if an attack does come it will take place either in the spring, or, more likely, next summer.

As Billy Graham prepares for his 93rd birthday, America’s most famous preacher mulls mortality

By Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. — For the Rev. Billy Graham, America’s most famous evangelist across a career that lasted some six decades, the prospect of old age and death was for a long time something he tried not to think about, despite his convictions about the eternity that awaits human beings.

 “I fought growing old in every way,” Graham, who turns 93 on Monday, writes in the newly-published “Nearing Home,” a book that ranges from Scripture quotations about the end of life to brass tacks advice on financial planning. “I faithfully exercised and was careful to pace myself as I began to feel the grasp of Old Man Time. This was not a transition that I welcomed, and I began to dread what I knew would follow.”

Graham’s book, his 30th, comes not only as he reaches another year, but as America’s huge Baby Boom generation moves into old age, its senior members now eligible for Social Security and retirement. And although in recent years Graham has stepped away from active public ministry, his willingness to be frank about the trials as well as the pleasures of growing old may still have an effect on the millions of Americans whose lives coincided with his time as the country’s most famous preacher.

 “I find that, talking to students and a lot of younger people, many of them don’t know who Billy Graham is,” said William Martin, author of “A Prophet With Honor: The Billy Graham Story” and a professor at Rice University. “But the people who will be most interested in this are older, and they do remember and adore Billy Graham.”

Graham has said he wants to preach one last sermon before he dies, and while the new book is not quite that, it has a similar set of themes. Pondering Bible passages on aging and death, exhorting his readers to make sensible changes in their lives (”Take full advantage of your company’s retirement plan, and borrow from it only in an extreme emergency”) in down-to-earth language, Graham’s ultimate focus is always on Jesus Christ.

 “We were not meant for this world alone,” he writes. “We were meant for Heaven, our final home.”
All together, it’s a set of advice that youth-fixated Boomers might not be immediately eager to hear, but coming from Graham it may have more influence. After all, Graham first rose to national prominence with a huge Los Angeles revival in 1949, just as the first Boomers were old enough to notice. Swiftly, Graham — who at the time was just 31 years old — became virtually synonymous with American Protestant Christianity, leading massive crusades at sports stadiums, traveling the globe, and meeting with presidents from Eisenhower to Obama.

Graham’s appeal has not only been durable, it’s extended far beyond the world of evangelical Christianity, according to Grant Wacker, a professor at the Duke University Divinity School, who’s working on a biography of the evangelist.

 “It’s his influence on the broader public that’s intriguing,” Wacker said. “There are a lot of people who are not evangelicals who really admire him.”

Partly that’s because of longevity, Wacker said, and partly because Graham has a reputation for personal integrity that’s in marked contrast with other prominent evangelical leaders tarnished by moral or financial scandal. Primarily, though, Wacker said people outside the world of evangelical Christianity respect the evolution of Graham over his long career as someone who, for example, went from strident anti-Communism in his early days to advocating nuclear arms control in the 1970s, a position scorned by Cold War hawks.

 “He’s acquired first a national and then an international vision over the years,” Wacker said.

“Whether or not they like his theology, people admire anybody who can grow into a wider vision.”
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Is the CIA "following" you on Twitter, Facebook?

By Edecio Martinez

(CBS/AP) - In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, the CIA is following tweets - up to 5 million a day.

Now don't panic, chances are they're not "following" you.

But the idea is that when rebels, militants, activists or diplomats broadcast information on Twitter or elsewhere, America's spies scoop it up.

At the agency's Open Source Center, the analysts the CIA affectionately calls its "vengeful librarians" pore over all forms of social media in many different languages, from all over the world.

The CIA studies and cross-references the material with clandestinely intercepted information to form a snapshot of anything from the mood in Pakistan after the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden to whether a Mideast nation seems ripe for revolt.