CI Centre Press Room for the Media

Media/Press Room

Security Expert Ray Semko, “The D*I*C*E MAN,” Joins Counterintelligence Training Company.....(1 August 2006 Press Release)

We're sorry--we no longer do press interviews. Trying to meet all the requests was taking too much time away from our business.

CI Centre professors are no longer available for general media interviews through the CI Centre (unless it is about the CI Centre itself or our products). We are not able to provide phone numbers for our professors or suggest who else you can talk to.

The CI Centre is a private sector company that provides expert training, analysis and consulting on a contract basis. Since we are a business, our professors are only available as technical consults to projects.

We have provided expert technical consulting to numerous documentary productions, as well as to movies (such as the CBS movie on Robert Hanssen). For movies and TV series producers, we are represented by International Creative Management (ICM) in California.

We also have been technical consultants to a number of books on espionage.

If you are interested in having our staff as paid technical consultants to your project, please contact us via this form:

The Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (CI Centre)

www.cicentre.com

SpyTrek: Espionage-Themed Travel Excursions

www.SpyTrek.com

We provide innovative and advanced training, analysis and consulting on counterintelligence (CI), counterterrorism (CT), intelligence and security for the government and corporate sector.

Our professors are intelligence experts retired from the FBI, CIA, DoD, RCMP and KGB as well as well-known intelligence historians and authors. They can provide technical consulting on espionage, spy, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, intelligence and security issues, cases or events that are in the public domain.

Please note that we do not talk about past or present US Government sources and methods or any topic that is considered to be classified and not in the public domain. CI Centre professors always talk on the record, never as anonymous sources or on deep background.

Useful Terminology

Counterintelligence is identifying, penetrating and neutralizing the foreign intelligence activities directed against a country's national interests, values and objectives. How do you spell it? The official US Government spelling is all one word: counterintelligence.

Use of Term "Double Agent"

This is from a note CI Centre Professor Hayden Peake wrote to the Washington Times' "Inside the Beltway" column concerning their mention about a book about the Hanssen case:

"This morning's item about Adrian HAVILL's new book calls HANSSEN a double agent, and sadly I find, so does the subtitle of his book. Calling HANSSEN a double agent is no more correct than calling you a stringer. HANSSEN was an intelligence officer with the FBI, a Special Agent in Bureau terminology. When he served the GRU, KGB, and SVR, he was in turn their agent. As with AMES, no intelligence officer can be a double agent, though unfortunately, they can become agents of a foreign service. If a civilian had been recruited by the SVR and the FBI had found out about it and "requested" that he serve the FBI without telling the SVR, that would make him or her a double agent. I understand the common use of the term by the press and book authors is hard to ignore, but that does not make it correct usage. Mr. HAVILL's adoption of the term marks him as one who doesn't understand, or care to use, the basic terminology of profession about which he writes."

Use of Term "Agent"

It is inaccurate to call a CIA employee a CIA "agent". Agents are those who are recruited and run as sources/assets/informants by the CIA. Mike Spann was a CIA Officer, not an agent.

FBI officers are correctly known as Special Agents, not simply agents for the same above reasons.

And the same is true for KGB or SVR Officers. Spies like FBI Special Agent Bob Hanssen or CIA Officer Rick (Aldrich) Ames were KGB/SVR agents because they were sources/assets for KGB and SVR Officers.