Classic Review: Splinter Cell

A friend of mine got an Xbox for Christmas in 2002 and much like most other consoles the majority of games were uninteresting or too simplistic in scope to interest a pure PC gamer. There was one however that I did find incredibly interesting to the point where I was wondering why it was on a mere console; this was Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell. This was the only Xbox game I had really heard of other than Halo: Combat Evolved because of the incredible ratings it got from every game critic, online score generator or review publication at the time. It's marketing and promotion worked but it wasn't until I saw it in action myself that I understood why.

I had knowledge of, but obviously never played a Metal Gear Solid game, but its influence was clear here; (and confirmed by Ubisoft in every interview) this was certainly a Western attempt to capture the essence of the spy/stealth genre while jettisoning what I term "the confusing Jap shit" in favour of a Tom Clancyesque "prevent WWIII" scenario. As popular as Metal Gear Solid and Hitman: Codename 47 were and as well as Deus Ex and Thief: The Dark Project were lauded for establishing the stealth genre and breaking it away from the faster paced 3D shooters, it was clear that there was enough room for something like Splinter Cell to carve out it's own segment of the market and find it's niche from it's day one success to it's many sequels.

I was able to acquire Splinter Cell itself in early 2003 once Ubisoft ported it from the Xbox - an advantage of this was of course that the Xbox was built on a Windows kernel and most of the internal components of the console were standard PC ones, so it wasn't as much of a stretch nor did it suffer from the 'normal' issues that porting games designed for a 'primitive' form of technology to the superior majesty of the PC imposed. Hyperion, my machine at the time sported a P4 2.2GHz processor and the GeForce 3 Ti500 GPU which meant Splinter Cell ran with a graphical fidelity far in excess of it's Xbox cousin. The lighting and shadows alone were key to the way one must play the game and the immersion in the world was easily the reason I spent some 40 hours in it the first time. 

But on to today, now, 15 years later I reinstalled Splinter Cell to see how well it held up. Uplay gave me the game for free in 2016 in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Ubisoft so I had no need to go fiddling around with the original installation CDs. Once the game was installed I proceed to follow the instructions outlined in this thread on Steam which enable most users to get the game running in the highest settings possible and for me, in 4K resolution!

My first (new) impression was that the game certainly did not look as good as this in 2002. Advances in technology in the intervening time meant that there was a HD remaster for a PS3 version and some enterprising individual packed it up as a 64bit texture upgrade patch into the PC - and of course running in 4K with FSAA it can surely look no better than it does now. In comparison to today's games it does look dated but one must remember that this was one of the first games to use Unreal Engine 2 which allowed both light and dark gameplay and thus it's leaps ahead of games that were only out a couple of years before it. 

It had been quite some time since I had been in any Splinter Cell game so it was great to hear veteran actor Michael Ironside as Sam Fisher grunt his way through the script as well as the acrobatic posturing I put his character through on my quest to save the world. Not being a bog standard 3D shooter, instead focussing on a 3rd person perspective meant that most of the controls involved making Sam Fisher, jump, climb, crouch, shimmy, rappel or a hold of other activities and it took me a few tries to create a proper control key scheme in order to successfully retrain my mind to embody the ex CIA, ex Navy S.E.A.L. turned NSA operative once again.

Despite his name adorning the cover, Tom Clancy had little or no input into Splinter Cell (or any of Ubisoft's Tom Clancy brand games) even before his death in 2013. Ubisoft simply bought a 'brand' to represent the techno-futuristic, quasi-militaristic, pro-US jingoism found in Clancy's writings and create game worlds based these concepts. Needless to say the story on offer here is thin, involves a prelude to nuclear war and points to almost anyone with a Russian or Chinese accent as the bad guy, but your true enemy here is of course, light!

Splinter Cell was hard then, and it still is. You can't play it as a shooter because you literally never have enough ammunition to do so. You do have enough ammo to fire a few bullets into the individuals you're allowed to kill, but knocking them out is often worth the 15/20 minutes it takes you to get into a position to do so. You would do much better if you use what ammo you have to shoot security cameras and lightbulbs to remain hidden and undetected. If you raise any alarm and you're not hidden, you're likely to be shot at and you can only take about four hits before you're dead, so the game forces you into stealth, not like Deus Ex where it's a choice. It might not be everyone's cup of tea but it's the hallmark of the series, and if you don't do stealth than Splinter Cell or any of it's later iterations are not for you.

While the genre is stealth, the name of the game is espionage. Think of who you'd be if you're what would happen if you took away James Bond's tux, Jason Bourne's amnesia, if Jack Bauer followed orders and you were a ninja. The game creates tense situations were observation of searchlight patterns and guard's patrol routes and your timing between them is key to success. Sound plays a significant part because you my be relying on enemy footsteps to time your own movements and music will alert you to guard's alertness level. 

Don't underestimate the use of your own mind! Often puzzles are presented to you and there may be multiple ways of solving them. You are given objectives, such as find the server and collect the data, but no guidance on how you do it save a crude map and a picture of someone you're looking for. Exploration and your common sense are what you need to employ to get the job done in most situations. That said, don't confuse this with some latter day open world the-sky's-the-limit sandbox Ubisoft is known for today, this is even more linear than a standard 3D shooter and there's usually only a single available route to your objective, you just have some work to to to find it.

After 15 years I can say I remembered only the first couple of levels, breaking into the CIA HQ and an oil rig, but nothing about the rest of the game. I think that perhaps it's because the locations in Splinter Cell were pretty generic, office blocks, embassies, warehouses and the like in comparison to the later games in the series which put you in much more diverse weather environments and in different uniforms with more unique set-pieces like Chaos Theory's lighthouse. or Double Agent's Shanghai. Splinter Cell was the genesis for a franchise that spawned well received sequels with perhaps another on the way soon and cemented Ubisoft's Tom Clancy brand to continue indefinitely, and yes it still holds up today.

Splinter Cell is: €4.99 from  GOG, Ubi Store or Steam but found on sale on one or more of these platforms for €1.70 every few weeks.

Vaccinations no longer CIA cover operations

Lisa Monaco U.S. Homeland Security Advisor has announced a White House policy change and vowed that the CIA will no longer be using vaccination programs as a cover for intelligence gathering such as the one implemented prior to the neutralisation of Osama bin Laden. The agency has also agreed not to use genetic material obtained through such programs.

The deals of 13 public health schools had written to President Obama in protest over the use of immunisation as a front for espionage. One such program was run by Dr. Shakil Afridi, who offered hepatitis vaccinations in Abbottabad, Pakistan as cover for his CIA-backed effort to obtain DNA samples from children at a compound where bin Laden was later eliminated. Afridi was convicted and sentenced by Pakistan to 33 years for treason. While later overturned, he now faces retrial. Later in 2012 the UN suspended polio vaccinations Pakistan after gunmen killed several health workers. Taliban militants accused health workers of being U.S. spies.

CIA Director John Brennan said earlier that his agency would "make no operational use of vaccination programs, which includes vaccination workers." A CIA spokesman said Director Brennan "took seriously the concerns raised by the public health community, examined them closely and took decisive action." Neither The White House or the CIA have not acknowledged any error in the decision to use the Pakistan vaccine program as a spying cover. The White House statement came three days after Pakistan acted to quell a growing polio crisis within its borders. Pakistan's Health Ministry recently announced that it would require that all travellers leaving the country first get a polio vaccination following the WHO's declaration that polio's spread was an international public health emergency, and identifying Pakistan, Syria and Cameroon as nations that had allowed polio to spread beyond their borders.

SPEARHEAD’s Assistant Commander for Intelligence and Information, Brigadier General “Whopper” Creedon expressed dismay at the decision. The General explained to a closed UNSC session on Monday, that the U.S. programme was one of the easier ways to root out “those not of us”. He explained that because “their” leaders have told “them” to conform to all that humans do so as to blend in, they had unwittingly supplied UNETIDA, now SPEARHEAD with data used to track, monitor and if necessary eliminate “them” for years. “Some of ‘them’ are very good at concealing their outer identity, but advances in science have allowed us to track 'them' from things like vaccination samples later found to be ‘not human’,” he continued. SPEARHEAD’s current intelligence efforts piggybacked off the U.S. intelligence operation for years and now Creedon may be faced with using his own agents embedded with U.S. and WHO efforts to gather such intel unless the operation is scrapped in favour of more conventional intelligence gathering, which is unlikely to benefit those in need of medical care.

Argo

During the Iran Hostage crisis of 1979/80, six staff at the U.S. embassy escaped and hid at the Canadian Ambassador’s residence. The White House and the CIA had a number of different ideas to retrieve them from Iran but the extraction mission was given to Tony Mendez who would go into Iran posing as a Hollywood Movie producer doing a location scout for Argo, a middle-eastern themed science-fiction adventure film. The plan was that he would then leave with his “crew”, the Americans holed up at the Canadian embassy.

Unlike Matt Damon or Tom Cruise, Ben Affleck doesn’t have people running into the movie theatre to watch him act anymore but after his success behind the camera with The Town, I’d be one of the people running into said theatre to watch a movie he directed.  As the subject matter was very close to home [intelligence agent creates an elaborate and precarious plot to get the job done] and based on a practically unbelievable true story that only came to light many years after the fact [much as my own will I hope] this was something I was really looking forward to.

I doubt anyone was disappointed. Affleck’s attention to detail in recreating the period was staggering, even down to the old red-background Warner Brothers logo. Knowing what the story was may have prompted an idea that the film would drag a little. However, through Affleck’s superb direction and focusing on the significant events [with a few elements of creative licence near the end] in this dramatic tale meant that the tension was nail-biting from opening to climax. Affleck’s portrayal of Mendez was clinical yet empathic. Alan Arkin as Lester Siegel and John Goodman as John Chambers as were superb and gave the project the air of controlled levity preventing it from descending into farce.  Special mention for the usual stony-faced Victor Garber as Ambassador Taylor who even smiled during one scene.

I normally dislike true stories as often a directors ego or opinion [or in worse cases a studio’s political agenda] will get in the way of the truth, but I can’t find any evidence of deliberate mischaracterisation or misinterpretation here save for changes required for dramatic licence and to fit the movie into a reasonable run time [sorry Brits, New Zealanders you got the asshole stick due to pacing]. Thanks for being honest and true to the important facts Ben and for giving us this gem.

Colonel Creedon Rating: ****1/2

Your access code is invalid

When the head of a major intelligence organisation leaves the fold as it were, the top-tiers of all major security protocols are rewritten so only those in active service know what they are. As you can imagine this takes some time but as more often than not the people are political appointees that may or may not survive complete changes in government - individuals in my line of work know that we have lead time to get things done before the changing of the guard.

When the head of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States volunteers to resign suddenly however and it can't be confirmed by a reliable or 1st hand knowledge that there was no security breach in a very short window we have to burn the top seven tiers of protocols. The CIA has access only to three of UNPASID's and two of UNETIDA's, but I've always been more conservative when secrets are concerned. After all, the Director of the CIA has access to information beyond what the general public believe. This includes what happened at Roswell in 1947, the true ballistics report on the Kennedy assassination and of course the real Coca-Cola formula, not to mention several things we have a vested interest in keeping buried.

While King David's indiscretions are unlikely to have any ramifications to shared intelligence operations, they have basically had me on site permanently at HQ for the past few weeks supervising the largest UNETIDA/UNPASID security/intelligence protocol overhaul ever. It actually couldn't have come at a better time as our organisation[s] are in a state of transition following decisions made by the UN General Assembly in it's annual sitting recently as it reviewed our tumultuous year. Thankfully we're almost done and normal blog-posting should resume December 2nd.

OEF 10 years on

The factory-applied layer of silver polish had just about worn off my first set of eagles, when I was given command of Task Force Razor - not two weeks after the twin towers fell. Rummy gave me my orders in the executive bathroom of the White House of all places. There would be no records - I had to flush the orders after reading. The man stood there and watched as I did so. "We're not declaring war so anything goes" I was told. "Don't let torture, or the Geneva Convention stand in your way, but keep the civilian kill-count on the minimum because you never know who will be watching you, or if you will know who will be watching them watch you." Classic Rummy.

We deployed 'in country' on Sept 23rd 2001 and from then until mid '02 we did some crazy shit over there let me tell you. We took our commands from a company spook called "Smith" from the Special Activities Division. We marked the targets for the October 7th airstrikes, helped coordinate anti-Taliban forces on the ground with U.S. firepower from the air and generally eliminated anyone we found with a 'banana clip' at least until we found one that talked, or persuaded to do so later.

Some "influential" donkey senator got word that there was a rogue CIA op causing havoc in the Kandahar province and that their leader was called "د هغه سړي سره کوم روح" [the man with no soul]. We got shut down pretty quickly after that. Smith vanished and my team were absorbed into regular SpecOps forces under Col. Mulholland and I was sent stateside to assist the selection process fot MAR DET ONE. At that point the U.S. was trying to win the hearts and minds of the local populace to thwart the efforts of the insurgents and to be fair it wasn't helpful that we were accidentally shooting women and children every couple of months.

It's because I can remember it as yesterday is what makes it so hard to believe that President Obama marked the 10th anniversary of Operation Enduring Freedom on Friday, honouring those who have served and noting their efforts toward bringing the war to a responsible end from a position of strength. Despite the tremendous losses of almost 1,800 American patriots, he noted progress in taking the fight against violence extremism to the source. “In delivering justice to Osama bin Laden and many other al-Qaida leaders, we are closer than ever to defeating al-Qaida and its murderous network,” he said in an address.

Personally I think enormous challenges remain it's certainly worth noting that the Taliban have been pushed out of their key strongholds, Afghan security forces are growing stronger and the Afghan people are in a better position to craft their own destiny if they can manage to hold onto the freedom and hope that the U.S. and coalition allies have brought them over the subsequent years.

Mulholland the aforementioned colonel is now a Lieutenant General and ending a tour as commander of U.S. Army Special Operations Command. “We’re moving toward an increased special operations role,” together with U.S. intelligence, he said, “whether it’s counterterrorism-centric, or counterterrorism blended with counterinsurgency.”

So basically while most American troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014, the CIA and military special operations forces who were first to fight will also be the last to leave as they begin girding for the next great pivot of the campaign, as they continue to train and support the Afghans and closely observe if they have what it takes to keep their country above the mire of terrorism. That in itself is no small task and one that could stretch their war up to another decade.

Sources: U.S. Department of Defense / Marine Corps Times

Not off the hook yet!

After months of consideration, Attorney General Eric Holder plans to appoint a special prosecutor to examine allegations that terror suspects were abused at the hands of their CIA interrogators. The decision, comes as the Department of Justice releases a 2004 report from the CIA's inspector general detailing allegations of harsh interrogation practices. The report includes claims that interrogators threatened at least one prisoner with a power drill and also conducted mock executions to scare detainees.

The move would reverse the policy of the Bush administration and could expose CIA employees and agency contractors to criminal prosecution for the alleged mistreatment of terror suspects in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks. President Obama signed off on setting up a special interrogation team that would be placed at the FBI but report directly to the White House-based National Security Council.

Though such work typically falls to the CIA, one senior U.S. official told FOX News that the CIA did not want to house the new initiative. "They're glad to be out of the long-term detention business," the official said. The unit's structure would depart significantly from such work under the Bush administration, when the CIA had the lead and sometimes exclusive role in questioning Al Qaeda suspects.

Hrrrmph! I thought that Obama said that he wanted this issue left in the past? Now I have to get rid of perfectly good power tools...

Source: Fox News

Ryanair: Not Spy Friendly

Just a word of warning when travelling on Ryanair, they may print and thus reveal to all who it is you're contracted to when doing a "job" wherever you're going...

Probe launched into Cheney's CIA Hit-Squads

The House Intelligence Committee will launch an investigation to determine whether the CIA broke the law by not informing Congress earlier about a secret plan to train teams to kill Al Qaeda leaders abroad. Committee Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Tex., announced the investigation in a statement Friday, saying the inquiry "will focus on the core issue of how the congressional intelligence committees and Congress are kept fully and currently informed. As I have said in the past, the committee supports the efforts of the CIA workforce in its difficult mission to keep America safe. I intend to make this investigation fair and thorough, and it is my goal that it will not become a distraction to the men and women of the CIA."

The committee will determine whether the CIA violated the National Security Act, which requires, with rare exceptions, that Congress be informed of covert activities. But the top Republican on the House committee is skeptical that the investigation will be conducted in a bipartisan manner, claiming that Democrats are "putting their partisan conclusions ahead of facts" because the facts don't support the idea that the National Security Act was violated. "In the absence of substantiated facts, to even speculate on potential criminal behavior shows that this is little more than partisan, political theater and continues the politicization of important intelligence matters by Democrats," Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., said in a statement.

CIA Director Leon Panetta told the committee about the program on June 24, a day after he first learned of the program and canceled it himself. Panetta told the committee that as vice president Dick Cheney had directed the CIA not to inform Congress about the operation, sparking an outcry among Democrats. Republicans have dismissed Democratic outrage about the Panetta revelation as an attempt to provide political cover to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who in May accused the CIA of lying to her in 2002 about its use of waterboarding. Hoekstra echoed that argument in his statement Friday when he expressed hope that the committee can reach a bipartisan agreement on how to investigate the issue. "But at no time will the Republicans of this committee agree to or take part in congressional Democrats efforts to tear down the CIA to provide cover for Speaker Pelosi," he said.

There was also some speculation floated that UNETIDA Special Operations Commander, Colonel "Whopper" Creedon was asked to train the CIA assassins, but he was unavailable for comment at press time.

Source: FoxNews

The next Commander in Chief

In his first speech as victor, to more than 100,000 supporters at Grant Park in his home town of Chicago, President-Elect Barack Obama cataloged the challenges ahead. “The greatest of a lifetime,” he said, “two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can’t solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face.”

Senator John McCain called his former rival to concede defeat — and the end of his own 10-year quest for the White House. “The American people have spoken, and spoken clearly,” McCain told disappointed supporters in Arizona. McCain remains in the Senate. Governor Sarah Palin, returns to Alaska after a tumultuous debut on the national stage. In a congratulatory call to Obama Tuesday night, President Bush pledged to make a smooth transition and extended an invitation to the Obama family to visit their new home at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

In Washington, the Democratic leaders of Congress celebrated. “It is not a mandate for a party or ideology but a mandate for change,” said Senate Majority leader Harry Reid. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said “Tonight the American people have called for a new direction. They have called for change in America.”

Obama, in his speech, invoked the words of Lincoln and seemed to echo John F. Kennedy. “So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder,” he said. He and his running mate, Senator Joe Biden, will take their oaths of office as president and vice president on Jan. 20, 2009. He will move into the Oval Office as leader of a country that is almost certainly in recession, and fighting two long wars, one in Iraq, the other in Afghanistan.

Obama will begin receiving highly classified briefings from top intelligence officials tomorrow, as the rush of his campaign gives way to intensive preparations to take over as commander in chief and build a Democratic administration. The briefings typically last 45 minutes to an hour, but Obama’s initial one is expected to be longer. Vice President-Elect Biden will also begin receiving briefings this week.

The president’s daily brief that Obama will receive is mostly written by the Central Intelligence Agency and will include the most critical overnight intelligence for the president. They sometimes dig deeply into a specific topic to give the president an in-depth understanding. National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell will launch the intelligence briefings. CIA Intelligence Director Mike Morell will be Obama’s prime contact with the intelligence community throughout the transition.

Obama will have access to vastly more intelligence, including ongoing covert operations, than he was privy to as a senator, said CIA Director Mike Hayden. “Through expanded access, greater than what he had in his briefings as a candidate or as a Senator, he will see the full range of capabilities we deploy for the United States.”

It was not clear at this time when UNETIDA would read the president-elect into it's ongoing operations but it would be assumed to be some point early next week.

Source: AP

Bush all for Torture - This is a good thing!

It is with renewed admiration for the faultless policies of the Bush administration that I tell you that on Saturday President Bush vetoed a bill that would have banned the CIA from using simulated drowning and other coercive interrogation methods to gain information from suspected terrorists.

Bush said such tactics have helped foil terrorist plots such as the ones against a Marine camp in Djibouti, the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, and plans to fly passenger planes into a Los Angeles tower or London's Heathrow Airport and city buildings.

The bill would have limited the CIA to 19 interrogation techniques that are used by the military and spelled out in the Army Field Manual. Bush said he vetoed the measure because it is important for the CIA to have a separate and classified interrogation program for suspected terrorists who possess critical information about possible plots against the United States. "Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that al-Qaida and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland," the Commander in Chief said.

Bush said he did not veto the bill specifically over waterboarding, which the Army banned in 2006. The CIA, which also prohibited the practice in 2006, has acknowledged using waterboarding on three suspected terrorists in 2003. Waterboarding remains in the CIA's tool kit. The technique can be used, but it requires the consent of the attorney general and president on a case-by-case basis. Bush wants to keep that option open. "I cannot sign into law a bill that would prevent me, and future presidents, from authorizing the CIA to conduct a separate, lawful intelligence program, and from taking all lawful actions necessary to protect Americans from attack."

In a memo to CIA employees Saturday, CIA Director Michael Hayden said the Army Field Manual does not "exhaust the universe" of lawful interrogation techniques. "There are methods in the CIA's program that have been briefed to our oversight committees, are fully consistent with the Geneva Convention and current U.S. law and are most certainly not torture," Hayden wrote.

Lieutenant Colonel Creedon of the United Nations Extra Terrestrial Invasion Defense Agency said in an interview: "I remember being subjected to this at SERE school, I won't say it was great fun like the sensory deprivation test but the democrats and bleeding heart liberals only focus on the negative effects. They should try it and see why it's not all that bad." In a statement later The Colonel added that US forces working for UNETIDA are bound by US law only for the interrogation of homo-sapien prisoners and the majority of their work is unaffected by any such changes in law.

Source: Fox News

2IGTV Episode 54

In this, the first episode of 2008 we open with a high tech discussion about Apple, The Hi-Def format war and DRM.

We update you on the WGA strike, Wesley Snipes in court, South Korean pirates, Cruise and Scientology, the years upcoming movies and the US Presidential Election.

We also have exciting news on Star Trek and The A-Team and update you on some happenings in the 2IGTV forums.

All this and much more here.

I Spy With My Little Fly

The Telegraph recently reported that the United States was making insect spy robots and deploying them above liberal hippie anti-war wasters. No government agency has admitted to developing insect-size spy drones but various official and private organisations have admitted that they are trying.

Left: A mechanical fly being developed at Harvard College

The CIA secretly developed a petrol-powered dragonfly drone back in the 1970s but the "insectothopter" was considered a failure as it couldn't handle crosswinds. The CIA refused to discuss its subsequent work but it is known that the Defence Department has been funding research into inserting computer chips into moth pupae to create "cyborg moths" whose flight muscles can be controlled remotely.

Also denying the deployment of the miniscule spy devices is Lieutenant Colonel Creedon of the United Nations Extra-Terrestrial Invasion Defence Agency.

"Nonescence" he said after a meeting in Frankfurt this morning. "Pure science fiction. But hypothetically, if we did have them, they'd have explosive charges and they would be everywhere and there's nothing you could do to stop them. Muahahaha! Hypothetically..."

The full story is here.

Source: The Telegraph

Bourne Goes Out With A Bang!

Sorry this review is so late. I saw this last week when it came out, but I've been really busy and was unable to get the time to post.

Jason Bourne is back on the big screen for (what should be) the last time. In the excellent The Bourne Supremacy our hero found out more about himself including his real name David Webb and he achieves some measure of peace as he apologises to the daugher of his first victims.

However, in a bizarre, yet ingenious move by the creators of The Bourne Ultimatum- They start the film just after Supremacy's frenetic car chase before Bourne goes the US at all. While we do know some elements of what will happen there apparently there was quite a lot between Moscow and the time the was in New York. In fact we don't have Bourne set foot in the US until the last act of Ultimatum. Confusing? Until you see it perhaps, but it means that the movie is an adrenalin-fueled intercontinental thrill ride with all the staple Bourne action in interesting locales, this time round our amnesic hero clocks up air miles to Paris, London, Madrid, Tangier and finally New York.

Matt Damon was dubious about doing a sequel to The Bourne Identity. He had never done a sequel before, but he was wooed back to do Supremacy when he discovered that what the producers had in mind was bigger than Identity. I daresay that it was easier to get him back on board for the final time for Ultimatum as that too is even better than Supremacy. Damon is now quite comfortable with his character and it shows, needles to say he still practically the same emotionless brainwashed assassin in the field but in this one we see his barrier finally come down as he comes to terms with is past.

As this is more or less "The Bourne Supremacy 2", it was perfect to have Paul Greengrass return as director. Naturally as with all directors who do sequels to movies they originally directed, he tried to raise the bar - and suceeded. Joan Allen and Julia Styles' (right) return too and their characters are almost given the same development as Bourne which is a good thing. David Strathairn is brought on as the CIA deputy director who thinks he's going to eliminate Bourne this time and we also get cameos from Albert Finney and a now ancient Scott Glen. John Powell returns to score the final part of his inspired musical trilogy along with yet another new recording of Extreme Ways by Moby.

All in all it's impressive and well polished. A perfect book-end to a remarkable action-thriller trilogy. (Please Universal Pictures - Don't screw it up by even thinking of trying to make The Bourne Legacy)

Colonel Creedon Rating: *****+

Ze Germans want CIA arrested

This shit really annoys me: A court in Munich has issued warrants for the arrests of 13 suspected CIA agents who allegedly kidnapped and tortured a German citizen.

The men are accused of falsely imprisoning and causing grievous bodily harm to Khaled el Masri. Mr Masri was arrested in Macedonia in late 2003 and says he was handed over to the CIA. He was then flown to Afghanistan, where he was held until his release at the end of May 2004.

State prosecutors say the accused are thought to have been on board the plane which took him to Kabul. They were identified with the aid of intelligence provided by Spanish investigators.

"According to current findings, the particulars of the suspects listed in the arrest warrants suggest these could be cover identities of CIA agents," prosecutors said in a statement.

The case has increased speculation in Europe about so-called rendition flights, where US intelligence agencies allegedly used private planes to transport suspects from one legal jurisdiction to another.

As I said, this really annoys me. Just look at the guys name: Khaled el Masri it's not Hans so he can't be German and so he's obviously a terrorist. The CIA do not torture people, they "persuasively interview" people and if you co-operate with them then there no need for waterboarding. So why didn't this wog co-operate? Because he was a terrorist. Anyhow, it's pretty obvious Ze Germans are just looking for some excuse to get back at the US after having their ass kicked in WWII.

Source: Sky News

Hayden nominated as CIA Director

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, formerly the principal deputy director of National Intelligenc, has been nominated as the new Central Intelligence Agency director, replacing Porter Goss, who was unceremoniously sacked last Friday.

Hayden seems a highly-qualified candidate to lead the troubled CIA but is he up to the task as the nation's head spook?

He's a successful military intelligence officer who's reached his profession's top ranks and as a 4-Star, he's the most senior military intelligence officer in the U.S. armed forces today. Before becoming PDDNI last spring, he capably led the super-secret, high-tech NSA.

Equally important is Hayden's experience as a senior staff officer at theater commands in Europe and Asia wich is all-important considering how widespread US forces are today, so he knows what kind of intelligence support the likes of Generals Abizaid and Casey need in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hayden, also has the advantage of being seen as apolitical. Having been tapped for top jobs in both the Clinton and Bush administrations, he's likely to be considered a nonpartisan public servant.

Unfortunatly Hayden will face a number of challenges before assuming command at Langley.
Senate Democrats are going to target his involvement with the Terrorist Surveillance Program -- the NSA's controversial, counter-terror wire-tapping effort. In addition, those who revered Goss for the thankless job he was doing at Langley are not happy with his dismissal, so weather he played any part in that or not, Hayden may still take some blame. Hayden also lacks experience in human intelligence; the CIA's core mission area. Although he worked as a defense attaché (an overt intelligence collector) behind the Iron Curtain in Bulgaria, Hayden doesn't have Goss' more extensive clandestine spy creds.

On balance, despite some drawbacks, Hayden makes sense to succeed Goss. It's a vital job. With the United States at war overseas, Iran on the boil and the CIA embattled at home, Hayden -- and the agency -- must deliver the critical intelligence needed to ensure security without fail.