GlobalSecurity.org In the News

December 2001 News

1. Economy of 2001 in review CNBC News Business Center December 31, 2001 - Mr. JOHN PIKE (GlobalSecurity.org): We're never going to be safe. Terrorists will always be able to find targets in America that they can attack. All that we can do is make those attacks more difficult.
2. Kabul computer reveals files of top Al Qaeda officials By D. Ian Hopper Associated Press December 31, 2001 - The creation of the video "shows an intermediate level of technical sophistication," akin to a drug cartel, said analyst John Pike of Globalsecurity.org. But unlike a drug network that constantly pushes money and narcotics around, a terrorist group can be silent for months.
3. Sawset, Other Chemical Sensor Makers See Gains in Terror Plan By Alex Canizares and Jonathan Berr Bloomberg News December 27, 2001 - ``It's a lot easier to use chemical weapons in a closed system like a subway, said John Pike of Globalsecurity.org, a defense policy group based in Alexandria, Virginia. ``That's the standard scenario that people worry about.''
4. Pentagon budget changes slowly, but trend for area is up By Bruce V. Bigelow San Diego Union-Tribune December 26, 2001 - "Lifting the fog of battle has been the lesson learned for at least the past two decades," said John Pike, founder and director of GlobalSecurity.org, a national security Web site. "That was the lesson from Grenada and from Desert Storm."
5. Pentagon Continues Research in Nonlethal Weapons By Peter Barnes Tech TV Live Washington December 24, 2001 "The problem that all of these less-than-lethal technologies have had is that there is a fine line [between] being ineffective and being lethal," John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org told TechTV.
6. U.S. Weighs How to Best Redeploy Troops To Search for al Qaeda, Identify Prisoners By Chip Cummins The Wall Street Journal December 24, 2001 -- "As long as they're talking about hundreds, not thousands [going to Tora Bora], I think they have plenty of people already there," said John Pike, who runs GlobalSecurity.org (globalsecurity.org), an independent defense-analysis group.
7. Changes at the International Space Station upsets Canadians CBC TV Sunday Report (10:00 PM ET) December 23, 2001 -- JOHN PIKE (Space Policy Analyst, globalsecurity.org): The International Space Station, for the last fifteen years, has been one of the leading symbols of international cooperation and a faith and commitment to working together to make the world a better place in the future.
8. Mit neuer Bombe gegen einen Toten? Focus December 22, 2001 "Mit anderen Worten, man kann Menschen in Tunnels töten und rauskriegen, wen man getötet hat," sagte der Militärexperte John Pike.
9. Ist Bin Laden schon tot? Spiegel December 22, 2001 - "Der große Vorteil ist, dass man zerstören kann, was in einem Tunnel ist, ohne dass der Eingang zusammenstürzt", sagte der Militärexperte John Pike.
10. Ny bombe mot al-Qaida Av JON R. HAMMERFJELD Dagbladet.no December 22, 2001 - Den store fordelen med dette er at det gjør det mulig å ødelegge alt inni en tunnel, uten at den kollapser. Med andre ord kan du altså drepe personer i tunnelen og også kunne finne ut hvem du har drept, sier militærekspert John Pike i GlobalSecurity.org til CNN.
11. Pentagon to resume Osprey flight tests By DALE EISMAN The Virginian-Pilot December 22, 2001 - ``They are clearly far away from having this thing be something that you could routinely trust to do the job,'' said John Pike, an independent analyst who runs GlobalSecurity.org, a Web site that tracks weapons programs.
12. Pentagon Develops Bomb for Caves By Matt Kelley Associated Press December 21, 2001 -- Pike said the bomb is so new the military probably does not have very many of them. "I think they're rolling their own, so to speak," Pike said.
13. US weighs reinforcements as GIs search in mountains By Patrick Healy and Bryan Bender The Boston Globe December 21, 2001 - "The hard part now begins," said John Pike, director of the firm GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Va. He cited mines, booby traps, and remaining Qaeda fighters as some of the hazards the operation presents.
14. Hundreds of U.S. Troops to Search Al Qaeda Caves By PAUL RICHTER Los Angeles Times December 21, 2001 - Many of the caves that have been discovered since the beginning of the assault on Tora Bora are little more than small rooms where the Al Qaeda fighters crouched with their ammunition and supplies, said Patrick Garrett, an analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, a Virginia defense research concern.
15. Inside the Taliban - Did John Walker Beat the CIA at its Own Game? ABCNews.com December 20, 2001 U.S. intelligence has a "pull rather than push" recruitment strategy, which means that building spies in the form of Walker is rare to begin with, said Tim Brown, senior analyst at Washington thinktank globalsecurity.org.
16. Interrogations may be key in bin Laden hunt By Bryan Bender The Boston Globe December 20, 2001 - John Pike, a military and intelligence specialist at GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Va., agrees that the most effective way to find the top leadership of Al Qaeda and the Taliban is to get people to talk. ''This should be similar to any organized crime operation,'' he said. ''You grab the small fish to get the big fish.''
17. Spy Satellites CNN Lou Dobbs Moneyline 6:00 PM December 19, 2001 - TIM BROWN, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: These spy satellites have to be cued by other sensors or other intelligence sources. They can take a daily picture of a particular area, regularly, depending on cloud cover, and they can check to see if there's any changes
18. Military Uses High-Tech Gadgets CNN Live Today 10:00 AM December 19, 2001 - JOHN PIKE, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: You could be looking at carbon dioxide exhaled from breathing, ammonia and other chemicals from human waste.
19. War in Afghanistan demonstrates air power's new ability By NANCY BENAC The Associated Press December 19, 2001 - "The JDAMs are less accurate than laser-guided bombs but a heck of a lot cheaper and they can be dropped by a wider range of aircraft," said John Pike, a military analyst at GlobalSecurity.org.
20. OF ART, SCIENCE AND MYSTERIES Global News Wire December 19, 2001 - John Pike of Globalsecurity.org, "Measurement sensors are hard to hide from. As winter moves in, infra-red detection becomes easier - warm air from ventilation shafts in bunkers shows up real well. And how do you fool seismic sensors that can detect and distinguish vibrations from the movement of jeeps, people or horses?"
21. Missile Defense Fallout TechTV Silicon Spin December 18, 2001 - The following guests appear on "Silicon Spin" : John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, and Jeff Baxter, advisor to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization
22. Washington hawks get power boost Julian Borger Guardian (London) December 17, 2001 - "To the extent that the administration now can't tell the difference between a war and a firepower display, there is a greater temptation to resort to force" John Pike, the chief analyst at the online security newsletter GlobalSecurity.com, said.
23. Garneau protests U.S. cuts in space By TU THANH HA Globe and Mail December 17, 2001 - The Japanese and Europeans have even more to lose, said John Pike, the director of and an analyst at GlobalSecurity.org.
24. U.S. Cancels Navy Missile Defense Program Led by Raytheon Jonathan Berr Bloomberg News December 17, 2001 - ``This is not the first missile defense program that has been ``canceled,''' said John Pike, head of Globalsecurity.org, a defense policy group based in Washington.
25. Navy Missile Defense Plan Is Canceled by the Pentagon By JAMES DAO The New York Times December 16, 2001 - "If the easy things are this difficult," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military policy Web site, "the difficult things are going to be extraordinarily difficult." Mr. Pike has long been a critic of the Pentagon's missile defense programs.
26. Missile Defense System Canceled By Thomas E. Ricks and Steven Mufson The Washington Post Saturday, December 15, 2001; Page A01 - John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an independent consulting firm, said he expected the Navy to renegotiate its contracts with companies working on the Navy Wide Area program, which include Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, L-3 Communications, United Defense and Orbital Sciences.
27. U.S. BRAINS, AFGHAN KNOW-HOW BEAT AL QAEDA By NILES LATHEM New York Post December 15, 2001 - "The military uses a term of art called overmatch - your enemy brings a knife, you bring a pistol, he brings a pistol, you bring a machine gun. That's what's happening in Tora Bora," said military analyst Tim Brown of Globalsecurity.org.
28. Seoul Balks At U.S. Push To Link North To Terror By John Larkin Wall Street Journal December 14, 2001 - "My view continues to be that North Korea's missile program has essentially been a diplomatic negotiating chip," said John Pike. "It was basically a way for the North Koreans to engage the U.S. after the collapse of the Soviet Union."
29. Region braces after terror warning By David Fisher Seattle Post-Intelligencer December 14, 2001 - Even within the federal government, the results so far have been inconsistent, said John Pike, director of the defense policy group GlobalSecurity.Org in Alexandria, Va. A case in point: The U.S. Capitol is surrounded by a phalanx of concrete blocks and guards deep enough to protect against a truck bomb. But the Supreme Court building just up the mall is virtually unprotected, as are the Justice Department and the FBI.
30. A Setback for Missile Shield As Booster Rocket Fails Test By JAMES DAO The New York Times December 14, 2001 - "It's one of the minor mysteries of missile defense as to what the problem with this thing is," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity .org, a defense policy Web site. "It was originally considered one of the lowest risk parts of the system, and it has just turned out to have one problem after another."
31. FIA Outline Takes Shape By Michael A. Dornheim Aviation Week & Space Technology December 21, 2001 -- FIA appears to have become more of an evolution of the current system, says John Pike, a longtime observer of the classified satellite world and founder of GlobalSecurity.org.
32. Afghanistan War Seen as Model for U.S. Taking on Iraq's Hussein By Paul Basken Bloomberg News December 13, 2001 - ``If it were that easy, it would have been done a decade ago,'' said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington defense research group. ``Saddam Hussein has been perfecting his machinery of tyranny for a third of a century.''
33. New IPO Rallying Cry: This is War Joanna Glasner Wired.com December 13, 2001 - "It's a highly competitive market with very high barriers to entry," said John Pike, director of military research group GlobalSecurity.org, citing one of a number of reasons why military contractors have largely been absent from the IPO market.
34. Authenticity Can Be Easily Cleared by Forensics, Experts say By Lou Dolinar Newsday December 13, 2001 - Tim Brown, a former videocameraman who currently works for the national security think tank GlobalSecurity.org, said, the government took several days to release the tape to make sure it could deflect any questioning.
35. Concrete-Piercing Bombs Hammer Caves By Vernon Loeb The Washington Post December 13, 2001 - "I'm not on the ground and the war is not over," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense and intelligence think tank in Alexandria. "But all of this talk about tunnels and dugouts has been a lot more daunting to the television graphics people than it has been to the targeteers and weaponeers." The bottom line, Pike said: "Tunnels are not a good place to hide."
36. Crew is fine after U.S. B-1B crashes at sea St. Petersburg Times December 13, 2001 - John Pike, a veteran military analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, said the loss of the B-1B highlighted the workhorse role of a venerable warplane operating without fanfare.
37. Reports of ABM withdrawal spark controversy among observers By Jefferson Morris Aerospace Daily December 13, 2001 - John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, told The DAILY he was "disappointed, but not surprised" by the reports of America's withdrawal.
38. ABM Treaty Abrogation By John Pike -- President Bush has now joined the new American campaign against terrorism with the hawk's perennial campaign against arms control treaties. In the name of defending against terrorists, the Administration has announced its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972.
39. Success in Afghanistan Clouds Military Transformation Plan By Ronald Brownstein The Los Angeles Times December 12, 2001 -- "Militaries change because they lose wars or win them with difficulty," cautioned John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private defense analysis firm. "They do not change when they win wars without hardly even trying."
40. Maligned B-1 Bomber Now Proving Its Worth By Peter Pae The Los Angeles Times December 12, 2001 -- "B-1 bombers have been kind of the stealth bomber of this air campaign," Pike said. "You rarely hear it being mentioned."
41. Dirty Bombs, Dying Mules by James Ridgeway The Village Voice December 12, 2001 -- Patrick Garrett, a defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, says ... during the Gulf War, the armed forces used depleted-uranium bullets.
42. Powell loses power over Pentagon Julian Borger Guardian (London) December 11, 2001 - John Pike, a strategic analyst at the online intelligence newsletter, GlobalSecurity.com, believes "there's never been this sort of extreme polarisation that will play out over the next couple of months."
43. MEGABOMB HEADS OSAMA'S WAY By NILES LATHEM New York Post December 11, 2001 - "It's used not only to kill a lot of people, but also for sheer shock and horror," said Tim Brown, a Senior Analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington military think tank.
44. HUNT FOR BIN LADEN NARROWS AFGHAN COMMANDER SAYS AL QAEDA CUT OFF By John Donnelly and Michael Kranish The Boston Globe December 11, 2001 - Defense analyst John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, said bin Laden would be especially hard to track if he is traveling on foot, with few people, and if he avoids being near any heat-generating equipment that could be picked up by thermal imaging devices.
45. BUSH BLASTS BIN LADEN TAPE By Edward Epstein The San Francisco Chronicle December 11, 2001 - Intelligence expert John Pike said he expected Bush to release the tape. "I would assume they'd have to," said Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org. "It will be in their interest to do so. I assume all this talk now must be as a teaser to whet our appetite."
46. Afghan rebels bear brunt of fighting By SALLY BUZBEE The Associated Press December 11, 2001 - "They probably think that additional U.S. forces would not accelerate the good progress that's being made now," Pike said. "That assessment may change if time passes and we don't start showing visible results (of catching bin Laden or Omar)."
47. Boeing Co. JDAM Most Widely Used Precision Bomb In Afghanistan Bloomberg.com December 11, 2001 - ``These are very good odds,'' said John Pike, a defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington-based research group. ``It's an radical improvement in accuracy over previously unguided, or dumb bombs,'' he said of a weapon designed to fall within 30 feet to 40 feet of its intended aimpoint.
48. Avenger may play greater role in homeland defense, expert says Aerospace Daily December 10, 2001 - Defense analyst John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org says he would not be surprised to see the Boeing-made Avenger, a Humvee equipped with Stinger surface-to-air missiles, placed at such high-profile events as the Olympics and the Super Bowl.
49. IRAQ POSES CLEAR, GROWING PERIL -- BUT WHAT SHOULD BE DONE? By John Pike THE ORLANDO SENTINEL December 10, 2001 - Important questions are important precisely because they do not have easy, obvious answers. Iraq is one of the most important questions facing America today.
50. HIGH-TECH US ARSENAL PROVES ITS WORTH By Fred Kaplan The Boston Globe December 9, 2001 - "Have we seen the future and it works?" asked John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org. "Yeah, I think we're there."
51. Defense Web Sites By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. The National Journal December 8, 2001 - Since Pike's departure to form his own company, FAS has discarded some of this data-but much of it is resurfacing, piece by piece, on Pike's new Web site, globalsecurity.org.
52. Space Web Sites By Erin Heath The National Journal December 8, 2001 - Space policy expert John Pike calls this site's "Encyclopedia Astronautica" "extensive and comprehensive."
53. Strategy switch The Guardian (London) December 8, 2001 - Americans will start to "believe there is an instant formula for regime change", Mr Pike said, "you add air power and microwave for three minutes and hey, presto, you've got a new regime."
54. US forces use bombs to try to entomb enemy in caves By Jim Mannion Agence France Presse December 7, 2001 - Pike scoffed at other ideas such as pumping gas into caves or using fuel-air explosives to suck out the oxygen, saying "a lot of this cave fighting stuff is out of Superman movies rather than out of real war. ... The number of special effects and plot gimmicks that are available to movie producers is large relative to the number of things that American military forces are organized, trained and equipped to do," he said.
55. European Partners Threaten to Abandon Space Station By Tamara Lytle Knight-Ridder December 7, 2001 - "These other countries want to deal with countries that play by the rules and honor their commitments," said space analyst John Pike of globalsecurity.org. "There's going to be a widespread belief you can't trust the Americans if the U.S. doesn't come through. And I don't see any indication the U.S. is going to come through."
56. ERRANT BOMB KILLS 3 U.S. SOLDIERS By Craig Gordon The Orlando Sentinel December 6, 2001 - In its most accurate mode, the JDAM is designed to hit within 40 feet of its targets. But one weapons expert, John Pike, the director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense policy group in Washington, said those specifications are somewhat misleading. Roughly half of the bombs with that capability still would be expected to fall outside that 40-foot radius.
57. FIGHTING TERROR AMERICAN CASUALTIES By Bryan Bender The Boston Globe December 6, 2001 - While military officials continue to work to avoid such losses, John Pike, a military expert at GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Va., said they are a fact of war. "You can't eliminate fratricide any more than you can eliminate training accidents," he said. "Life is dangerous, and combat is more dangerous."
58. Hunting Osama Time December 10, 2001 - SOURCES: U.S. Defense Department; GlobalSecurity.org; news reports; East View Cartographic; www.cartographic.com; Jane's.
59. Killed by Friendly Fire By Craig Gordon Newsday (New York, NY) December 6, 2001 - "It's far more accurate than the sort of close air support that would have normally been done at any point in the 20th century," Pike said, but he added, "Nothing's perfect."
60. U.S. ground forces use lasers, satellites to guide air strikes By Matt Kelley The Associated Press December 6, 2001 - "Afghanistan is a dreadfully dusty country," Pike said. "If the laser light is reflecting off of a dust cloud, the laser-guided bomb will attempt to blow up the dust cloud."
61. War speeds up pace of change for military By Richard Whittle The Dallas Morning News December 5, 2001 - One task for the new Office of Force Transformation will be to help the services figure out what "transformation" means, for despite the innovations and trends visible in the Afghanistan campaign, a debate among Pentagon officials and defense experts continues. "Nobody knows," said John Pike, director of the defense policy group GlobalSecurity.org.
62. Americans Killed in "Friendly Fire" Incident PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer December 13, 2001 - JOHN PIKE: Figuring all how many people were killed in combat has always been difficult, even when it on our side. And in a situation where imagery isn't going to allow you to count bodies, when it's in an area that's not under your control, I think that the Pentagon is correct in saying that it would be very difficult for them to make estimates of it. But they are clearly averse to depicting this as being a war on the Afghan people.
63. US Sees N Korea As Target In War On Terrorism By JOHN LARKIN and MURRAY HIEBERT Far East Economic Review December 13, 2001 - "It's essentially impossible for George Bush to blow North Korea up," says John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a defence-policy think-tank. "But he can certainly embark on a policy of malign neglect in which Washington ignores North Korea's attention-getting gestures, like missile tests, forcing North Korea to escalate its attention-getters and having them misinterpreted as preparations for war."
64. US bombs capable of penetrating deep into mountains and caves ABC News World News Tonight December 5, 2001 - Mr. JOHN PIKE (Military Analyst): At some point you're going to need people on the ground to figure out who you've managed to kill and who's still at large.
65. Another Success Editorial Investor's Business Daily December 5, 2001 - Pike once said he would believe only if he were invited to a picnic on the Mall in Washington with the president, and a missile shield shot down a nuclear warhead that was aimed at their party.
66. US fears Stinger missiles can be used against its own in Afghanistan Agence France Presse December 4, 2001 - US technology has developed countermeasures to deflect missiles by dropping decoys to mask an aircraft's heat source, said John Pike, a weapons specialist at Globalsecurity.org.
67. A squeeze on Taliban, bin Laden By Scott Baldauf The Christian Science Monitor December 3, 2001 - The deflation of Taliban control has been remarkable, from 90 percent of the country to about 10 percent. But experts say the final 10 percent could be the bloodiest.
68. GUARDSMEN GET IT IN GEAR TO SERVE IN PERSIAN GULF By Kiley Russell Contra Costa Times December 2, 2001 - "(These are) units that can be mobilized for relatively short periods of time, and they give you a mobilization capacity that you can rely on when you need it, and you don't have to pay for full time when you don't need them," said John Pike of GlobalSecurity, a Washington-based military think tank.
69. Will Spyware Work? By Kevin Hogan Technology Review December 1, 2001 - In the end, computer-based surveillance technologies may be best employed after the fact, says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Web-based military and intelligence policy group headquartered in Alexandria, VA.
70. Everybody in - Fighting terrorism The Economist December 1, 2001 - Nobody is saying how long that will be. John Pike of Global Security, a Washington defence consultancy, reckons that the Pentagon is preparing to fight on until the spring.
71. Army trains for combat in a new kind of battlefield: Afghan caves By David Fisher Seattle Post-Intelligencer December 1, 2001 - "If every major news organization in the world is focusing on Tora Bora as bin Laden's hideout, then it's not a hideout at all," said John Pike, chief of the defense policy group GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Va.
72. A NATION CHALLENGED: THE SUPER BOWL By MIKE FREEMAN The New York Times December 1, 2001 - "It can be as simple as Army guys in Ninja suits, lurking on tall buildings with their Stingers, patrolling the skies," said John Pike, a defense analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org a military and intelligence policy group.