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US intel wants to automate analysis of online videos

June 18, 2010 Leave a comment

IARPA logo

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A new project funded by the US intelligence community’s research unit aims to automate the collection and analysis of videos from YouTube and other popular online platforms, with the intent of unearthing “valuable intelligence”. The program is called Automated Low-Level Analysis and Description of Diverse Intelligence Video (ALADDIN). It is directed by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), whose mission is to work under the Director of National Intelligence to create hi-tech applications for America’s intelligence agencies. Few people are aware of the existence of IARPA, which was quietly established in 2007, is based at the University of Maryland, and is staffed mostly by CIA personnel. The research body’s latest project apparently aims to equip the US intelligence community with the ability to scan “for the occurrence of specific events of interest” embedded in online video files, and then “rapidly and automatically produce a textual English-language recounting [and] describing the particular scene, actors, objects and activities involved”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #375 (analysis edition)

June 17, 2010 1 Comment

Analysis: Israel worried by new Turkey spy chief’s defense of Iran. Israel’s defense establishment, which maintains ties with Turkey’s national intelligence organization (MİT), is concerned over the recent appointment of Hakan Fidan as head of that organization, and the implications of that appointment vis-a-vis Turkish relations with Israel and Iran.
Analysis: How the CIA bolstered radical Islam during Cold War. The CIA’s battle with communism during the Cold War allowed radical Islamists to gain a foothold in Europe, according to a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ian Johnson, entitled A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West.

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US agencies still lack basic language skills, says new report

June 16, 2010 3 Comments

GAO report

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A major US government audit into the performance of national security departments and agencies has once again criticized the substantial absence of skilled foreign-language speakers. According to the Government Accountability Office’s latest assessment (.pdf) of the US Department of Defense and the Department of State, not only has the availability of foreign language fluency not improved, but has actually deteriorated during the past few years. The situation is especially desperate in the State Department, says the report, where the percentage of “generalists and specialists in language-designated positions” who fail to meet essential language criteria increased from 29 percent in 2005 to 31 percent last year. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #374

June 15, 2010 Leave a comment

South Korean general arrested for spying for North. South Korea’s military is investigating an army general, identified only as Major-Gen. Kim, suspected of leaking secrets to a former spy for Seoul who then sold the information to North Korea. The leaked information is reportedly related to Operational Plan 5027, formulated by the Korea-US Combined Forces Command (CFC) in preparation for a possible war on the Korean Peninsula.
A shared glimpse of CIA officer’s secret life. The family of the late Darren James LaBonte, who was among the seven CIA officers killed in Khost, Afghanistan, last December, decided recently to acknowledge that he was among the dead, and to tell the world a bit about the man behind the name. Meanwhile, the CIA has announced that 12 new stars will be added to the wall in the lobby of the agency’s headquarters building –the most in one year since the agency’s founding.

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Alleged Mossad agent arrested in Poland

June 14, 2010 6 Comments

"Uri Brodsky"

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Authorities in Poland have detained an alleged Israeli agent who may be connected with the assassination of a senior Hamas operative last January. German newsmagazine Der Spiegel quoted anonymous government prosecutors in Berlin, who said the man works for Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, and was arrested upon arriving in Poland on June 4. The alleged agent, whose travel documents identify him as “Uri Brodsky”, is wanted by German prosecutors for using a forged German passport to enter Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in January of this year. He then joined a team of Mossad assassins to kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas weapons procurer, who was found dead in his luxury hotel room on January 20. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Israel Suffers Strategic Blowback in Flotilla Raid

June 12, 2010 4 Comments

Flotilla raid

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Speaking before a parliamentary committee about last month’s Israeli raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which killed nine and injured over 60 international volunteers, a senior Israeli intelligence official warned that “[e]vents [like this] are likely to go out of control and the situation could deteriorate to extreme scenarios”. The official was no other than Meir Dagan, director of the Mossad, Israel’s foremost external intelligence agency. As I explain in an article published yesterday in Daily News Corner, to some extent, Dagan’s “extreme scenario” has already materialized. The raid’s outrageous death toll has further-worsened Israel’s deteriorating relations with Australia and has caused the outright termination of the Jewish state’s diplomatic contacts with several non-Western countries that used to be among its closest international friends, such as Turkey, South Africa, Ecuador and Nicaragua. More importantly, the flotilla attack has even stigmatized Israel’s relations with the United States, a development that fits into the broader pattern of steadily worsening US-Israeli relations in recent years. It is no coincidence that, on the day after the raid, Mossad chief Dagan said that “Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden”. Read article →

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News you may have missed #373 (CIA edition)

June 11, 2010 2 Comments

CIA forerunner’s sabotage manual released. Here is the Simple Sabotage Field Manual (.pdf) of the Office of Strategic Services (wartime forerunner of the CIA), dating from 1944. Via Bruce Schneier’s blog.
CIA misread South Korea signs, documents show. Declassified CIA documents on South Korea show that the US spy agency was surprised by the 1979 assassination of dictator Pak Chung Hee, by his intelligence chief, did not anticipate the ensuring military coup d’etat, and dismissed the growing unrest that eventually led to a near-civil war in the country.
Ex-CIA top official’s op-ed supports Miranda rights. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Philip Mudd, a former senior official at the CIA and the FBI, argues that reading terrorist suspects their Miranda rights has never impeded an intelligence investigation.

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News you may have missed #372

June 10, 2010 Leave a comment

Afghan interior minister and spy chief removed. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has removed interior minister Hanif Atmar and national security director Amrullah Saleh, after accusing them of failing to prevent last week’s Taliban attack on the country’s parliament. It is worth noting that both officials have close ties to Washington.
Analysis: Fight looms over new US intelligence chief. Warring opinions are emerging about James R. Clapper, after US President Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate the Pentagon’s current intelligence chief to serve as director of national intelligence.
Analysis: The dangers of turning spies into generals. The CIA’s controversial Predator-drone targeted killings program blends Title 10 of the US code, which governs the military, and Title 50, which covers intelligence operations. This unnerves a number of scholars, who recall that the last time this was done on such a large scale was in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

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Israeli Navy insiders deplore Gaza flotilla raid

June 10, 2010 Leave a comment

Mike Eldar

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A day after a former Mossad officer described last week’s Israeli raid on a fleet of Gaza-bound aid ships as “stupid”, former and current Israeli Navy insiders have strongly criticized the bloody operation. Speaking from Israel, Mike Eldar, a 20-year veteran of an elite Israeli Navy special missions unit, said the only explanation for the Israel Defense Forces’ attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was “stupidity [and] super egos”. He was echoing the words of former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky, who last week described the raid as an act that was “so stupid it is stupefying”. The operation, carried by the IDF’s elite Shayetet 13 amphibious unit, resulted in the deaths of nine and the injuries of over 60 flotilla passengers. Elgar added that the botched raid’s result “made no sense”, considering that there must have been Mossad agents on board the ships, and that the IDF “had at least two weeks to prepare, with lots of practice”. Read more of this post

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US Army intel analyst arrested over Wikileaks probe

June 9, 2010 3 Comments

Bradley Manning

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Speaking last Thursday at the annual Personal Democracy Conference in New York, Daniel Ellsberg said he was amazed that the US National Security Agency “can’t crack” Wikileaks. The former Pentagon employee, who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers, was referring to the activist website that anonymously publishes secret governmental and corporate documents from around the world. But Ellsberg may have been talking too soon. On Sunday, Wired magazine’s Threat Level blog revealed that a US Army intelligence analyst had been detained for allegedly giving Wikileaks secret video footage and “hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records”. Specialist Bradley Manning, 22, was reportedly detained two weeks ago by the US Army’s Criminal Investigation Division while stationed in Forward Operating Base Hammer, near Baghdad, Iraq. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Israel’s Flotilla Raid Involved Espionage, Sabotage

June 8, 2010 Leave a comment

Mavi Marmara

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The intense worldwide debate about last Monday’s Israeli raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla has concentrated relatively little on the operation’s intelligence facets. As I explain in an article published yesterday at Daily News Corner, this is puzzling, considering that the intelligence aspects of the attack are largely responsible for its bloody outcome. The Gaza-bound ships had drawn minor international attention prior to the first media reports of the raid in international waters by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). But the effort by the Israeli security services to prevent the flotilla from reaching its intended destination did not begin in the Mediterranean Sea. It started several months before the fleet of ten vessels was even chartered by the Humanitarian Aid Foundation (ÍHH). Indeed, despite the revered image that is often projected by the Israeli security services, faulty intelligence may be at the root of the debacle on the MV Mavi Marmara, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla’s largest ship, where IDF commandos killed nine and injured over 60 passengers and crew. Read article →

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News you may have missed #371

June 7, 2010 Leave a comment

ASIO tip led to jailing of female Muslim convert in Yemen. Information provided by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation led to the jailing of Australian mother-of-three Shyloh Giddins, 30, who moved to Yemen after converting to Islam. She is suspected of having links to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
New Operation Condor trial starts in Argentina. Five former intelligence and military officials in Argentina have gone on trial on charges of murdering 65 people. They are accused of kidnapping, torturing, and killing left-wing activists under the country’s military rule between 1976 and 1983.
Ex-CIA station chief to plead guilty to rape charges. Andrew M. Warren, the CIA’s former Algiers station chief, who is accused of drugging and raping two Algerian women in his official residence, will plead guilty to the charges, according to court papers.

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Turkey, Iran, offer warship protection for Gaza flotillas

June 7, 2010 4 Comments

Tayyip Erdoğan

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Close aides to the Turkish Prime Minister’s office have disclosed that Ankara is funding a new fleet of ships to sail to Gaza under protection by Turkish warships. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps have also offered warship protection. The office of Turkey’s Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, is now actively assisting the Turkish-based Humanitarian Aid Foundation (ÍHH) in fundraising for the acquisition of a new fleet of ships to carry humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Last Monday, an ÍHH-funded flotilla bound for Gaza was raided in international waters by the Israeli Navy, which diverted the ships to Israel after killing nine and injuring over 60 passengers. According to reports from The Associated Press and Agence France Presse, Mr. Erdogan plans to be among the passengers of the new flotilla, which will be escorted en route to Gaza by Turkish warships. Meanwhile, reports from Iran’s government-aligned Mehr News Agency indicate that the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have offered their warships as protection for future aid ship convoys to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #370

June 6, 2010 1 Comment

Ukrainians ‘not spying any more’ on Russian FSB. Ukrainian counterintelligence services have stopped monitoring Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officials stationed in Ukraine, according to a leading Ukrainian weekly. Ukrainian-Russian relations have dramatically improved since February, when Ukraine’s pro-Moscow leader Viktor Yanukovych was elected President.
US House votes to allow auditing of spy agencies. Despite several veto threats from the White House, the US House of Representatives has adopted an amendment to defense authorization bill HR 5136, which would give the Government Accountability Office the power to audit intelligence agencies.
Leading Turkish daily wiretapped. Turkish former deputy police chief Emin Aslan, who was arrested in 2009 in a drug trafficking investigation, says he was told in 2008 that the phone lines at Turkey’s leading daily Milliyet were wiretapped. The wiretapping appears to be connected to the notorious Ergenekon affair.

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Comment: Aussie ex-spies comment on Israeli forged passports affair

June 5, 2010 7 Comments

Australia passport

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Regular IntelNews readers are aware of the current crisis in Israeli-Australian relations, which broke out as a result of the use of several forged Australian passports by the Israeli intelligence services. The passports were among several Western identity documents employed by Israeli Mossad agents in targeting Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was assassinated in a luxury Dubai hotel last January. The revelation prompted Canberra to announce the expulsion of Israel’s senior Mossad representative in the country. The dust has yet to settle, and the recent shooting of an Australian citizen onboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla during last Monday’s bloody raid by the Israeli Defense Forces has the potential to worsen Australian-Israeli relations even further. What is the view of all this from Australia? IntelNews asked two Australian former intelligence officers, who offered their input on an anonymous basis. Read more of this post