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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Film on spy Col. Kuklinski premiered in Poland

December 10, 2008 Leave a comment

Dariusz Jablonski’s eagerly awaited War Games documentary, about the life of Polish spy Ryszard Kuklinski, has been shown for the first time at the Warsaw Philharmonic Hall in Poland. The film, whose first official screening was attended by a number of Polish government ministers, will be shown at the CIA headquarters on Thursday, Polskie Radio reports. Kuklinski, a Polish Army Colonel, was an instrumental US and NATO asset during the Cold War, thanks to his crucial post as Polish General Staff’s liaison to the Warsaw Pact. Read more of this post

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NRO leases new office facility in Chantilly

December 10, 2008 Leave a comment

Yesterday we reported on the National Security Agency’s ongoing renovation of a huge building in San Antonio, TX, which is soon to serve as a data-mining warehouse. Now another secretive member-organization of the US intelligence community is looking to expand its facilities. The Washington Business Journal reports that an “unnamed” US intelligence agency has leased an entire 100,000-square foot office building located at 14151 Meadow Drive, along Route 28, in Chantilly, VA. According to Cryptome, the “unnamed” organization is no other than the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency that designs, builds, operates and maintains the spy satellites used by the US government. The NRO is headquartered in Chantilly. [IA].

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Rift between CIA and Obama transition team continues

December 10, 2008 Leave a comment

During the past several weeks we have been reporting that US President-Elect Barack Obama’s plans for the CIA have “created anxiety in the ranks of the agency’s clandestine service”, as the The New York Times put it. The Agency has effectively warned Obama a that he “may have difficulty finding a candidate who can be embraced by both veteran officials at the agency and the left flank of the Democratic Party”. It is believed that Obama is trying to alleviate the agency’s “anxiety” by proposing to retain the CIA’s current leadership. On Tuesday the Democratic Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Silvestre Rees of Texas, was enlisted by the CIA to pressure Obama to “keep the country’s current national intelligence director and CIA chief in place for some time to ensure continuity in US intelligence programs”. Read more of this post

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Reporter who helped expose CIA drugs scandal remembered

December 10, 2008 Leave a comment

In August 1996, Garry Webb, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The San Jose Mercury News, published a trilogy of articles under the title “Dark Alliance”. In it, he openly alleged that the Reagan Administration, along with the active support of the CIA’s leadership, had allowed the Nicaraguan Contras to fund some of their operations against the Sandinistas by illegally trafficking cocaine into the United States. What followed Webb’s allegations was a barrage of demonization by virtually the entire US media industry, which discredited his professionalism and effectively ended his career. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Is Latvia Turning into a Security State?

December 9, 2008 Leave a comment

Seventeen years after gaining its formal independence from the USSR, Latvia has been admitted to the Council of Europe, NATO and the European Union. It has even joined Washington’s visa waiver program, which gives all Latvians the right to travel to the US without a visa. George W. Bush says he “love[s] the fact that [Latvia is] a free nation and willing to speak out so clearly for freedom”. And yet last month a law-abiding Latvian economist and a pop singer were summarily arrested by the Latvian Security Service, an agency normally responsible for counterespionage and antiterrorism operations. Their crime? Daring to publicly express doubts about the Latvian government’s handling of the economy. Joseph Fitsanakis explains some strange goings on in the tiny Baltic state. Read article →

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A rare look at the new NSA center in Texas

December 9, 2008 Leave a comment

Based on revelations in James Bamford’s new book, The Shadow Factory, Greg Schwartz has produced a rare piece on the new National Security Agency (NSA) data mining facility San Antonio, TX. The gigantic Agency, which is tasked with worldwide communications surveillance, as well as communications security, is in the process of renovating its soon-to-be-unveiled Texas Cryptology Center. The 470,000-square-foot facility will cost “upwards of $130 million” and be used primarily to store intercepted communications data. Bamford speculates that “[c]onsidering how much data can now be squeezed onto a small flash drive, the new NSA building may eventually be able to hold all the information in the world”. Read more of this post

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Corporate intelligence firms seeing business boom

December 9, 2008 Leave a comment

Fortune magazine reports that corporate intelligence firms, such as Control Risks in London and Kroll in New York, represent a sector of the economy that “stand[s] to gain from the financial crisis”. In fact, such “specialized consultancy” firms, largely staffed by former MI6 and CIA agents, are already “seeing a dramatic uptick in business from a surge of banks, private equity firms, and hedge funds that need to make sure those pesky multimillion-dollar investments they made when times were good will hold up”. Read more of this post

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Hi-tech Mumbai attacks pose forensics problems for intel agencies

December 9, 2008 Leave a comment

The barriers to government-authorized communications interception posed by the increasing use of Internet-based communications systems by militants or criminals are nothing new. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been struggling with this issue since the late 1990s, when audio-enabled instant messenger services began to rise in popularity. In 2005, a brief report in Time magazine correctly described Internet-based audio communications as a “massive technological blind spot” troubling FBI wiretap experts. It has now emerged that last month the Pakistani militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, used voice-over-Internet-protocol (VOIP) software to communicate with the Mumbai attackers on the ground and direct the large scale operation on a real-time basis. Read more of this post

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