CIA deployed agents disguised as journalists, says ex-NSA analyst

Wayne Madsen

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Former NSA analyst and US Navy intelligence officer Wayne Madsen has said that the CIA deployed at least two operatives posing as journalists in several world hotspots after 9/11. The two operatives, both US Special Forces veterans, were subcontracted to the CIA by private mercenary company Blackwater, and were accredited as journalists by Korean-owned United Press International (UPI). Madsen, who authors the daily Wayne Madsen Report, says the two operatives were active in Uzbekistan shortly after 9/11. One of them secured a travel visa to enter Iran in 2003, where he allegedly “engaged in target analysis and spotting for a planned US attack on Iran” (this was presumably before Washington decided to axe the rumored plan to launch a direct military attack on Iran in favor of an intensive plan of covert sabotage, as detailed by The New York Times last January). After leaving Iran, the CIA agent allegedly used his journalistic cover to engage in intelligence activities in northwestern Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, says Madsen. The other operative worked primarily in Afghanistan, where he used a UPI-issued cell phone to communicate with his superiors in Washington. Reporter and journalist associations around the world routinely condemn the use of journalistic covers by intelligence agencies, which they say makes the job of real journalists difficult and turns them into targets. The CIA and other intelligence organizations around the world have in the past denied disguising intelligence operatives as journalists. But the recent record shows that this is not so. Last February, the Director of Belgium’s State Security Service (SV/SE) said his agents required expanded investigative powers to combat the increasing presence of foreign spies in the country, many of whom operate under journalistic cover around the EU’s headquarters. And last July, two French intelligence agents posing as journalists were abducted by Somali militants in Mogadishu.