New spy tech agency developing advanced biometrics systems

February 8, 2009 Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which was developed by the US Pentagon in 1958, following the shock caused by the successful launch of Soviet satellite Sputnik, is well known. What is much less well known is the corresponding agency for the US intelligence community: IARPA. Its initials stand for Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, and its mission is to work under the Director of National Intelligence to create hi-tech applications for America’s intelligence agencies. Established quietly in 2007, IARPA is currently located at the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL), but is projected to move to a new facility at the University’s College Park before the end of 2009. Read more of this post

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Another CIA agent gone wild, denied bail

February 7, 2009 Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Just hours after intelNews examined the growing number of cases of out-of-control CIA agents, another incident has been added to the long list. Steven J. Levan, a 16-year CIA veteran, pleaded guilty last Thursday to fraud charges, after he was caught using CIA credit cards to pay for over $75,000 in personal expenses, which included pricey hotel stays and a $700 Raymond Weil watch. Levan was a high-paid CIA case agent residing in Virginia, and participated in several overseas CIA tours in the 1980s and 1990s. Recently, however, he was arrested and terminated from the Agency on January 12, after he was caught using credit card accounts customarily used by the CIA for undercover purposes, to fund unauthorized expenses. Interestingly, Levan has been refused bail since his arrest, to prevent him from “peddling national security secrets to foreign powers to raise more money”. Read more of this post

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Analysis: US may lose its most important base in Afghan war

February 6, 2009 Leave a comment

Bakiyev

Bakiyev

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
US Pentagon officials routinely describe the US Air Force base in Manas, Kyrgyzstan, as “hugely important”. It became even more so in 2005, after the government of Uzbekistan shut down the US Air Force base in Karshi-Khanabad, under Russian pressure. Since then, the Manas airbase has become the “primary logistics hub” for the US military’s Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, as it offers US forces a vital northern supply line to Afghanistan “in the face of ongoing insurgent attacks along the Khyber Pass route through Pakistan”. Pentagon officials were therefore stunned when Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced last Tuesday that his government “has made the decision on ending the term for the American base on the territory of Kyrgyzstan and in the near future, this decision will be announced”. Read more of this post

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Suspicious FSB inquiries preceded Politkovskaya assassination

February 6, 2009 2 Comments

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) filed several inquiries about journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s place of residence in the days before she was gunned down in the elevator of her apartment block, a Moscow district court heard yesterday. The allegation, made several days ago by former FSB officer Lt. Col. Pavel Ryaguzov, appeared to corroborate information discovered in an archived written request by the FSB to Russia’s Federal Migration Service, inquiring as to Mrs. Politkovskaya’s residence address in Moscow. The FSB request, dated September 18, 2006, 19 days prior to the journalist’s assassination, sought to clarify an apparent discrepancy between Mrs. Politkovskaya’s registered address and actual residence in the Russian capital. Read more of this post

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Panetta uses Senate hearing to send message to CIA

February 6, 2009 Leave a comment

Leon Panetta

Leon Panetta

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Reassuring CIA’s rank-and-file that he does not represent a coup d’état from the “left flank” of the Democratic Party appeared to be at the top of Leon Panetta’s agenda in yesterday’s Senate hearing. Barack Obama’s nominee for the post of CIA Director emphasized that he does not intend to replace officials currently at senior positions in the Agency, including Deputy Director Stephen Kappes, who was favored by CIA hawks to lead the Agency. He also confirmed earlier rumors, reported by intelNews on January 15, that the Obama Administration has no intention to punish CIA officers involved in torturing terrorism detainees. Read more of this post

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Former CIA Director stripped of security clearance asked to join panel

February 5, 2009 Leave a comment

John Deutch

John Deutch

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
John M. Deutch was Director of Central Intelligence (CIA) from 1995 to 1996, under US President Bill Clinton. In 1997, the CIA initiated an internal security investigation over Deutch’s handling of classified material and discovered that he routinely stored and worked on hundreds of CIA top-secret files on his unprotected home laptop computer. This was allegedly the same computer that Deutch’s wife and children used to view their email and browse the Internet. Following the results of the CIA investigation, Deutch was stripped of his top-secret security clearances by George Tenet, who in 1996 had succeeded him as DCI. In January 2001, shortly before leaving office, President Clinton pardoned Deutch, sparing him from prosecution by the Justice Department. It has now emerged, however, that the Obama Administration’s new National Intelligence Director, Admiral Dennis Blair, has asked the former DCI to join a National Reconnaissance Office advisory panel on surveillance satellites. President Barack Obama’s CIA Director nominee, Leon Panetta, was asked about this during his Congressional hearing earlier today, but refused to comment before having an opportunity to “sit down and talk with Admiral Blair about just exactly what he had in mind” when he asked Deutch to join the panel.

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Analysis: Rare film on National Security Agency aired

February 5, 2009 1 Comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Nova documentary series on PBS has aired a rare look at the National Security Agency (NSA), America’s signals intelligence and cryptological organization that rarely releases information to outsiders. The ultra-secret Agency is said to be the world’s largest intelligence institution, employing tens of thousands of technicians, analysts and mathematicians. The PBS film, titled The Spy Factory, features veteran author James Bamford, who has authored books on NSA for nearly 30 years. The primary focus of the documentary is on NSA’s share of the intelligence failure in detecting and preventing the 9/11 attacks. The film also examines NSA’s STELLAR WIND program, a warrantless eavesdropping scheme targeting communications of American citizens, which the Bush Administration authorized shortly after 9/11. Read more of this post

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US threatened to end UK spy cooperation, say judges

February 5, 2009 1 Comment

David Miliband

David Miliband

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Two British judges published scathing criticism yesterday of the British government’s decision to withhold documents on the case of a Guantánamo detainee who says he was tortured, thus giving in to alleged pressure by the US to keep the information secret. The two high court judges, Justice Lloyd Jones and Lord Justice Thomas, accused the British government of keeping “powerful evidence” secret after being threatened by Washington that it would “stop sharing intelligence about terrorism with the UK”. The judges also dismissed claims by the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, that “the public of the United Kingdom would be put at risk” if the American threats were to materialize. The court case involves allegations of torture by Binyam Mohamed, a resident of Britain, who is currently imprisoned by US authorities at the Guantánamo Bay camp. Mr. Mohamed was abducted in 2002 by Pakistani authorities, who delivered him to US intelligence agents. The latter employed the controversial practice of extraordinary rendition and had Mr. Mohamed secretly imprisoned in Morocco and Afghanistan before taking him to Guantánamo. The Ethiopian-born Mohamed says he was brutally tortured while in Moroccan and US custody. Read more of this post

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France’s former spy chief refuses to testify in Angolagate trial

February 4, 2009 Leave a comment

Yves Bertrand

Yves Bertrand

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
France’s former spy chief has refused to testify as a defense witness in the infamous Angolagate trial, which probes illegal arms shipments from France to Angola in the early 1990s. The arms scandal, which was uncovered in 1995 by the French authorities, involved unauthorized shipments of over $600 million-worth of weapons to the MPLA-dominated government in post-civil-war Angola. Forty-two people are implicated in the case, some of whom are facing charges of money laundering, tax evasion, as well as bribery of French government officials responsible for overseeing commercial shipments to Angola. The 42 include Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of the late French President Francois Mitterrand, former Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, and two businessmen, Pierre Falcone, from France, and Israeli-Russian tycoon Arkady Gaydamak. Interestingly, Falcone and Gaydamak stated during the trial that they planned the illegal weapons shipments to Angola with the secret approval of the French government, which was hoping to gain access to Angolan oil in return for the weapons handout. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Are CIA Agents out of Control (Again)?

February 4, 2009 Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
What’s going on at the CIA? As the corruption trial of Kyle “Dysty” Foggo, the Agency’s no. 3 under former CIA Director Porter Goss, continues this week, news has emerged that the Agency’s station chief in Algeria has been unceremoniously recalled back to Washington after being accused of drugging and raping two Algerian women at his residence. Meanwhile, an unidentified “former CIA station chief in Baghdad, allegedly ‘notorious’ for womanizing and the licentious behavior of his aides, is in line to become chief of the spy agency’s powerful Counterterrorism Center”. One might be excused for wondering what’s next for the troubled agency. Read article→

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Obama insiders already in secret talks with Iran, Syria

February 3, 2009 Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
French news agency AFP is reporting that individuals associated with the Administration of US President Barack Obama have held several secret meetings with Iranian and Syrian officials during the past several months. The Agency describes the clandestine meetings as “high-level” and notes that the Obama team approved them “even before winning the November 4 election”. Some of the meetings appear to have been coordinated by the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, a Nobel Prize-winning anti-nuclear proliferation group. The Executive Director of the group’s US branch, Jeffrey Boutwell, describes the US-Iranian contacts, which took place in The Hague and in Vienna, as “”very, very high-level”, and notes that they covered issues beyond Iran’s nuclear program, including “the Middle East peace process [and] Persian Gulf issues”. Read more of this post

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Belgian intelligence concerned about increasing spy presence

February 3, 2009 Leave a comment

Alain Winants

Alain Winants

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Despite Belgium’s strategic location and central role in the Cold War, the Belgian secret services have historically had a very limited presence in the country. Their postwar function has been primarily one of information analysis, and it was not until 2006 that they were given powers to intercept communications, conduct authorized breaking-and-entry operations, or detain and question suspects. This situation is changing, however, as the Belgian Federal Parliament prepares to consider a bill on “special intelligence methods” that will further expand the powers of Belgian intelligence services. Last week, Alain Winants, 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. Read more of this post

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British MPs to consider torture allegations of MI5 detainees

February 2, 2009 Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
In 2007, British newspaper The Guardian disclosed that several Pakistani “war on terror” detainees in Pakistan were severely tortured by Pakistani intelligence agents before being interrogated by British security officers. Nearly two years after the revelations, a joint British Parliament committee has agreed to consider the allegations. On Tuesday, February 3, the British Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights will hear evidence that interrogators with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) brutally tortured a number of prisoners before handing them over to interrogators working for MI5, Britain’s foremost counterintelligence agency. In exposing the story in 2007, The Guardian suggested that the MI5 agents were aware of the torture, which involved severe beatings, fingernail extractions, and even physical threats with electric drills. Read more of this post

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South Korea military intelligence caught spying on citizens

February 2, 2009 Leave a comment

Yongsan

Yongsan

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Since last December, a residential building scheduled for redevelopment in the Yongsan district of South Korean capital Seoul had been the site of a mass occupation campaign. Dozens of protesters, all building residents, were refusing to leave unless they were offered improved compensation and relocation packages. On January 20, however, Seoul’s riot police and SWAT units stormed the building using tear gas and water cannons. During the operation, parts of the building were engulfed in a huge blaze, which caused the deaths of five protestors and one police officer, and injured 23 people, one of whom is reportedly in a coma. On the evening of Saturday, January 31, protestors who had gathered in and around Seoul’s Myeongdong Cathedral for a candlelight memorial service for the victims of the fire spotted a group of plainclothes military intelligence officers with South Korea’s Capital Defense Command (CDC) clandestinely observing the vigil. The six-member group appeared to be directed by a number of commanding officers who were also in the proximity of the vigil, though detached from the crowd. Organizers of the vigil isolated the six intelligence officers and proceeded to search them, but discovered no surveillance equipment. Witnesses said, however, that one of the intelligence officers appeared to be reporting on the movements of vigil participants on his cell phone. Read more of this post

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Confirmed: CIA extraordinary renditions to continue under Panetta

February 2, 2009 2 Comments

Leon Panetta

Leon Panetta

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On January 22, I examined the possibility that Leon Panetta, Barack Obama’s nominee for CIA Director, may favor the controversial practice of extraordinary rendition. The Los Angeles Times has now confirmed that the new US President has authorized the CIA to continue its policy on renditions under Mr. Panetta –a Clinton-era administrator who has publicly come out against the use of torture in interrogations. Extraordinary rendition involves extrajudicial kidnappings of wanted terrorism suspects by CIA or FBI paramilitaries, often abroad, followed by extrajudicial transfers of same suspects to third countries, such as Egypt or Syria, where they are usually tortured. The extracted information is then utilized by US law enforcement and intelligence agencies in their pursuit of the “war on terrorism”. This notorious practice became widespread under the first George W. Bush Administration, but it was first implemented under former US President Bill Clinton. As White House aide to Mr. Clinton at the time, Leon Panetta was reportedly  “a consumer of intelligence at the highest level”. It follows that he must have known about the practice, though he apparently failed to speak out against it. Read more of this post

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