British assisted abduction of Iranian police officers, says senior official

December 13, 2008 Leave a comment

Last July, Jundullah, a separatist Sunni Islamic organization operating in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province, abducted and subsequently murdered 16 Iranian police officers stationed in Saravan, Iran. Now Iran’s First Deputy Judiciary Chief, Ebrahim Raisi Ghraib, has said the Islamic Republic has “obtained information” that British forces helped Jundullah fighters abduct the police officers by providing them with “critical intelligence” during the operation. Read more of this post

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Senate Committee report blames Bush Administration for detainee torture

December 13, 2008 Leave a comment

In 2004, after the eruption of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, the US Department of Defense dismissed the torture practices as the work “of a few bad apples”. Now a report by a bipartisan Senate committee concludes that the abuses conducted by CIA and US military guards and interrogators were direct results of the Bush Administration’s detention policies and “should not be dismissed as the work of bad guards or interrogators”. The report, detailing a two-year study by the US Senate Armed Services Committee, has yet to be made public and much of it will remain classified. This being the case, it is not expected to have any impact on the Bush administration, which “continues to delay and in some cases bar members of Congress from gaining access to key legal documents and memos about the detainee program”. [IA]

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Analysis: Should US cybersecurity be managed by the White House?

December 13, 2008 Leave a comment

Ars Technica has published a well-written analysis of the recent report on US cybersecurity by the Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency. It examines the question of whether it would be wise for US cybersecurity to be managed by the White House. It concludes that “[w]hile big-picture proposals for reorganizing US cybersecurity efforts tend to grab headlines, it’s likely to be easier to establish consensus around some […] more specific proposals […] such as merging ‘national security’ and ‘homeland security’ advisory functions that bear on network security”, and that “it may make more sense” at this point in time “to focus on these less sexy reforms first”. The article is available here. [IA]

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Candidates currently considered by Obama for top intelligence posts

December 13, 2008 Leave a comment

According to the Associated Press, some of the top candidates considered by US President-Elect Barack Obama’s transition team for Director of the CIA are: John Gannon (CIA’s Deputy Director of Intelligence during the Clinton Administration); Jami Miscik (CIA’s former chief analyst); Steve Kappes (current Deputy Director at the CIA); Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA, leader of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence); and John McLaughlin (former interim CIA chief). For the post of Director of National Intelligence, the top considerations are: Denny Blair (retired US Navy Admiral and former commander of the US Pacific Command); Don Kerr (currently Deputy Director of National Intelligence); Jami Miscik (see above); and former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-IN). IntelNews has previously reported on the possibility that Barack Obama may in fact retain the current CIA leadership “for a while”. [JF]

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Israeli Attorney-General asked to investigate extrajudicial assassinations

December 13, 2008 Leave a comment

Two Israeli attorneys representing the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel have sent a letter to Israel’s Attorney General, Menachem Mazuz, demanding that he launches a criminal investigation into extrajudicial killings of Palestinians by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet. In their letter, the attorneys, Avigdor Feldmand and Michael Sfard, request from Mazuz “to clearly and unconditionally prohibit assassinations when detention is an alternative and to prohibit giving advance approval to harming innocent bystanders”. The letter follows an investigation published last month in Israel’s most prominent newspaper, Ha’aretz, revealing that the IDF routinely assassinate wanted Palestinians in the West bank, even when detention “appears to be a viable alternative”. Read more of this post

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CIA holds symposium on Polish Cold War asset Col. Kuklinski

December 13, 2008 1 Comment

As intelNews reported on December 10, Dariusz Jablonski’s documentary War Games, about the life of Polish spy Ryszard Kuklinski, was shown at the CIA headquarters during a “Symposium on the Polish Martial Law” held on December 11. Kuklinski, a Polish Army Colonel who spied for the US and NATO from 1972 until 1981, supplied his handlers with microfilms of over 40,000 documents detailing Soviet tactical plans for Poland and the rest of Europe. Read more of this post

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Russian intelligence suspected in Chechen commander’s assassination in Turkey

December 12, 2008 Leave a comment

Another Chechen former commander has been assassinated abroad and the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is once again suspected of having carried out the assassination. This time it was Islam Dzhanibekov (Canibekof, in Turkish), who had lived in Istanbul, Turkey, since 2002. Dzhanibekov, who was killed on December 9, was reportedly shot from a close range with a single action 7.62 MSP pistol. This type of weapon has been traditionally favored by the KGB and its successor agencies since the early 1970s, mainly due to its small size and relatively silent operation. Read more of this post

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US silent about CIA asset’s cover-up of Afghan massacre

December 12, 2008 Leave a comment

During the US invasion of Afghanistan, local warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum was among the CIA’s most valuable assets. With the close cooperation of CIA agents and members of the US Special Forces, General Dostum and his army supported countless American operations in northern Afghanistan. In the process, Dostum and his men participated in a considerable number of documented war crimes. In one of those instances around 2,000 Taliban prisoners of war were locked in large metal containers and allowed to suffocate to death, or were massacred by bullets fired into the containers by Dostum’s troops. Their remains were buried in large mass graves in a desert north of Mazar-e-Sharif. Recently, large bulldozers and backhoes were used to exhume the remains of the murdered men and move them to an unknown location. Local authorities say this was the job of General Dostum, who has become alarmed by the impending change of guard in Washington. Read more of this post

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Letter suggests CIA destroyed torture tapes after damning report

December 12, 2008 Leave a comment

Almost exactly a year ago, the US Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into the destruction of two videotapes by the CIA, which reportedly showed acts of torture committed during interrogations of detainees in the so-called “war on terrorism”. After an initial interest in the case, the US media then forgot about it and moved on to other things. One person who chose not to forget this issue is investigative reporter Jason Leopold. In a new article, Leopold references new information showing that the CIA destroyed the videotapes in question after –not before, as the Agency has claimed– a spring 2004 report by the CIA’s inspector general, which described the interrogation methods employed against CIA prisoners as “constitut[ing] cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment”. Read the article here. [IA]

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Comment: Negroponte Carries US Message to India, Pakistan

December 12, 2008 1 Comment

In early December, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited India and Pakistan to spearhead Washington’s handling of the two countries’ response to the Mumbai attacks. Now the State Department has appointed Deputy Secretary John Negroponte to oversee the situation. The US government-affiliated Voice of America network reports that Negroponte’s main mission during his trip to India and Pakistan is “to advise […] political leaders on improving the[ir] intelligence agencies”. Now, Negroponte does many things, but “advising” is not one of them. Read more of this post

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Comment: Was Poland’s Lech Walesa an Intelligence Operative?

December 11, 2008 1 Comment

The Warsaw-based Polish Institute of National Remembrance (INP) is a government-affiliated organization, whose main mission is to investigate, expose and indict participants in criminal actions during the Nazi occupation of Poland, as well as during the country’s communist period. It also aims to expose clandestine agents and collaborators of Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB), Poland’s Security Service during the communist era. Earlier this year the INP published a book by historians Sławomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk, titled Secret services and Lech Walesa: A Contribution to the Biography (SB a Lech Wałęsa: Przyczynek do Biografii). Read more of this post

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New reports of nuclear spies arrested in Iran

December 11, 2008 Leave a comment

CNN and UPI report that three more workers in Iran’s nuclear research program have been arrested by the Iranian government on spying charges. The reports originated from an Iranian government-controlled news agency tied to the Revolutionary Guards of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Read more of this post

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Official history of Israeli spy services acknowledges US spying against Israel

December 11, 2008 Leave a comment

American espionage conducted against Israel is hardly news. It is rare, however, that such operations –which are routine in nature– are acknowledged in official histories of intelligence institutions. Yet this is exactly what will happen this coming January, when a new official history of Israel’s intelligence services is published in Israel. Read more of this post

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Comment: Bush blaming intelligence for Iraq debacle is cowardice

December 10, 2008 Leave a comment

US President George W. Bush commented on ABC News last week that the biggest regret of his Presidency is “the intelligence failure in Iraq” and that he “wish[es] the intelligence had been different, I guess”. This response by the President to a question concerning his Presidency’s “do-overs” represents the ultimate political cowardice. In blaming the intelligence services for the Iraq invasion debacle, George Bush knows that, as a matter of standard policy, the intelligence community is unable to respond to these allegations. Read Article →

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Article questions 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran

December 10, 2008 2 Comments

The International Herald Tribune has published an article by investigative journalist Dr. Edward J. Epstein (author of the 1989 book Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA) questioning the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate’s (NIE) view on Iran’s nuclear program. The NIE is an annual report produced cooperatively by all 16 agencies of the US intelligence community. The 2007 NIE caused controversy by marking a spectacular break from long-term US policy of warning that Iran is actively pursuing a nuclear program. It specifically asserted “with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program”.  Epstein now argues that the CIA got it wrong and that Iran did not terminate, but simply restructured, Project 1-11 -its clandestine nuclear armament research operation. He details developments in the past year and urges US President-Elect Barack Obama to “confront the reality that Iran now has the capability to change the balance of power in the Gulf, if it so elects to do, by building a nuclear weapon”. [IA]

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