NSA looking to build 5.8 million square feet by 2029

August 4, 2009 Leave a comment

NSA HQ

NSA HQ

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The US National Security Agency filed a notice in last month’s Federal Register, laying out a 20-year plan to construct 5.8 million square feet of new working and storage space on its Fort George G. Meade headquarters, and staff it with 11,000 people. The Baltimore Business Journal and The Baltimore Sun, which first spotted the notice, said the NSA will not say how many of the 11,000 jobs will be new. The Sun asked the gigantic agency, which already employs over 25,000 people around Baltimore alone, for more details on its plans. But the NSA, which is tasked by the US government with worldwide communications surveillance as well as communications security, merely repeated the information contained in the Federal Register, saying it needs new buildings to “meet mission growth requirements” and to “consolidate” its output. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0055

August 4, 2009 Leave a comment

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News you may have missed #0054

August 3, 2009 Leave a comment

  • Stasi files reveal covert war against Western musicians. Files kept by the former East German secret police indicate that they were worried about rock concerts held within listening distance of East Berlin neighborhoods by Michael Jackson, Pink Floyd and Bruce Springsteen, among others.
  • Greece arrests Muslim minority member for ‘spy photos’. The man was arrested last weekend on charges of spying for Turkey, following the confiscation of hundreds of photographs from his home, most of which depict Greek military facilities. Greece’s State Intelligence Service (EYP) had been monitoring his activities for nearly a year.
  • Head of Bulgaria’s national security agency resigns. Petko Sertov, director of Bulgaria’s State Agency for National Security (DANS) has handed his resignation, allegedly after Bulgaria’s “American partners were said to have lost faith” in him.

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Al-Qaeda may have infiltrated Britain’s MI5, says lawmaker

August 3, 2009 1 Comment

Patrick Mercer

Patrick Mercer

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The chairperson of Britain’s House of Commons subcommittee on counter-terrorism has raised the possibility that MI5, the country’s premier domestic intelligence agency, has been infiltrated by al-Qaeda operatives. MP Patrick Mercer (Con.) revealed on Saturday that he had been told MI5 had expelled as many as six British Muslim recruits after red flags were raised about their backgrounds. He has since called upon Home Secretary Alan Johnson “to detail how far down the recruitment process the men had got before they were weeded out” by MI5 vetting officers. There are allegations that some of the six potential recruits had been trained in al-Qaeda-run camps in Pakistan, while others had “unexplained gaps in their curricula vitae”. No response has so far been issued by the British government, but The Daily Telegraph has quoted an “unnamed senior security source”, who has denied the allegations.

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News you may have missed #0053

August 3, 2009 Leave a comment

  • [UNCONFIRMED] Saudi opposition group claims Prince Bandar under house arrest. Saad al-Faqih, head of the Saudi opposition group Islamic Reform Movement, claims that Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the kingdom’s former ambassador to the United States, and a close ally of the Bush family and former CIA leadership, is under house arrest after reportedly trying to “provoke 200 agents working for the Saudi security service to stage a coup against King Abdullah”.
  • Ukrainian diplomat expelled from Russia named. An Ukrainian source has named one of the two Ukrainian diplomats to be expelled by Russia as part of the tit-for-tat row as Igor Berezkin. The expulsions follow a similar move by Ukrainian authorities who requested that Russia’s consul general in Odessa, Alexander Grachev and a senior counselor at the Russian embassy, Vladimir Lysenko, leave Ukraine over accusations that they had been involved in work in violation of their diplomatic status (i.e. espionage).
  • Book claims Secret Service took psychic’s advice. Ronald Kessler claims in a new book that the US Secret Service changed a motorcade route for the first President George Bush based on a psychic’s vision that he would be assassinated.

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CIA director says Congress should let go of CIA’s past actions

August 3, 2009 Leave a comment

Leon Panetta

Leon Panetta

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
CIA director Leon Panetta has criticized Congress for its “focus on the past” that “threatens to distract the CIA from its crucial core missions”. In an editorial published last weekend in The Washington Post, Panetta says he is becoming “increasingly concerned” that “wrong judgments” made by the Bush Administration after 9/11 have damaged the broad agreement between the executive and legislative branches of the US government about the CIA’s role and activities. But the CIA director says the “sincerity or the patriotism” of Bush Administration officials should not be questioned, as they “were trying to respond as best they could” in the aftermath of 9/11. Instead, Panetta argues for learning “lessons from the past without getting stuck there”, and warns that “classified information that shapes […] conversations” between the CIA and Congress must be protected. Read more of this post

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Expert warns of generational gap in Western intelligence services

August 2, 2009 Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Security expert Kevin O’Brien has given an interview to Reuters news agency, in which he warns of “serious generational differences and disparities between [intelligence] managers’ and analysts’ cognitive outlooks”. The gap between older, “Generation Y” intelligence employees and the “digital generation”, is rapidly becoming apparent, as twenty-something spies and analysts are entering the intelligence job market in large numbers. O’Brien says the new generation of recruits features strong cyber skills and thinking habits shaped online. What is more, the way these new recruits process information poses “a generational test” for Western espionage organizations, which are desperately trying to deepen their knowledge and understanding of online-savvy and progressively more transnational militant groups. O’Brien’s interview, and his latest paper on the subject, can be accessed here.

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News you may have missed #0052

August 2, 2009 Leave a comment

  • Expert says US Army’s spying on activists was illegal. Eugene R. Fidell, a military law expert at Yale Law School, says the spying by the US Army against two activist groups in Washington state, which was revealed earlier this week, appears to violate the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that prohibits the use of the US Army for conventional law enforcement activities against civilians.
  • German court rules spy services withheld information –again. Germany’s highest court has concluded that the government illegally withheld information from investigators probing into alleged spying on parliamentarians by Germany’s intelligence services (BND). Last week the BND was found to have withheld information from a parliamentary inquiry into the BND’s role in the detention of two Muslims from Germany at a US prison in Afghanistan.
  • Nearly 2.5 million have US government security clearances. The US Government Accountability Office estimates that 2.4 persons currently hold security clearances for authorized access to classified information. This number does not include those “with clearances who work in areas of national intelligence”.

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News you may have missed #0051

August 1, 2009 Leave a comment

  • Instigator of Church committee hearings speaks about domestic intelligence. Christopher Pyle, the American whistleblower who in the 1970s sparked the Church Committee hearings on intelligence activities, has spoken about the recent revelations of US Army personnel spying on activist groups in Washington state. Pyle provided interesting historical context linking domestic espionage in the 1960s and 1970s with current developments in the so-called “war on terrorism”.
  • Declassified US President’s Daily Brief is reclassified. The CIA says that extracts of the President’s Daily Briefing (PDB) that were declassified in 2006, during the prosecution of former vice presidential aide Scooter Libby, are “currently and properly classified”. PDB declassifications occur extremely rarely.
  • Australian intelligence to focus on cybersecurity. David Irvine, the recently appointed director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, has identified cyberespionage as “a growing national security risk”.

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Newspaper publishes names of suspected Israeli spy ring members

August 1, 2009 Leave a comment

As-Safir

As-Safir

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A Lebanese newspaper has published the names of 22 Arabs arrested in conjunction with the Al-Alam spy ring affair, which intelNews has been monitoring since February, when it first erupted. The catalogue, aired by As-Safir newspaper, contains the arrestees’ address and employment details, and includes photographs of three of the suspects. Over 70 individuals have so far been arrested in connection with the Al-Alam spy ring, which Lebanese authorities allege was operated by Israel and operated predominantly in southern Lebanon. Detained suspects include two Palestinians, one Egyptian, and at least 37 Lebanese citizens, one of whom was a retired brigadier. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0050

July 31, 2009 Leave a comment

  • Cuban Five to be given new sentences in October. Washington accuses the Five of spying on the US for Cuba. But an appeals court has ruled that the sentences they received (ranging from life to 19 years) were too long. New sentences will be imposed on October 13. The Cuban government has said that it would be willing to swap jailed political dissidents for the Five.
  • CIA invests in web-based software company –again. The CIA’s venture-capital investment arm, In-Q-Tel, appears to be really fond of Lingotek, a tiny software company in Draper, Utah. Last month, In-Q-Tel funded another software start-up, Lucid Imagination.
  • Canada to investigate spy service’s role in Abdelrazik’s torture. Canada’s Security Intelligence Review Committee has agreed to probe the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik, who was renditioned to Sudan by Canada’s Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). He says he was severely tortured by Sudanese guards and interrogators.

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Hillary Clinton pressured UK government to conceal torture information

July 31, 2009 Leave a comment

Binyam Mohamed

B. Mohamed

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally threatened the British government that Washington would stop collaborating with London on intelligence matters if the latter allowed the release of evidence on an alleged torture case. This has been revealed in London’s high court during the ongoing trial of Binyam Mohamed, a resident of Britain, who is was until recently 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. Read more of this post

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Ex-DoD analyst accused of spying says he was FBI double spy

July 31, 2009 Leave a comment

Larry Franklin

Larry Franklin

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Lawrence Anthony Franklin, the former US Defense Department analyst whose 12-year prison sentence was suspended last month, now claims he was an FBI informant in a case of alleged spying by the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington. Franklin was accused by the US government of handing classified military information to Uzi Arad, Naor Gilon, an Israeli Embassy official in Washington, as well as to Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, both lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Besides Franklin, Rosen and Weissman were also taken to court by the FBI. Last May, however, US Justice Department prosecutors dropped all charges against the two former AIPAC members. It was just a matter of time before Franklin’s sentence was also suspended. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0049

July 31, 2009 Leave a comment

  • Return to court for ex-CIA station chief accused of rape. Andrew M. Warren has been free on bail since February of 2009, when he was unceremoniously recalled to the US from the CIA’s Algiers station. He is accused of having drugged and raped two Algerian women at his official residence. On Tuesday he was back at a federal courtroom in Washington for a status hearing.
  • Swedish spy threat at Cold War levels, claims report. A study by the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service (MUST), says spying on Sweden by “several countries, including those in our immediate surroundings” is “at the same level […] as during the Cold War”.
  • Former CIA station chief doubts Daniel Boyd story. Milt Bearden, former CIA station chief in Pakistan, doubts that Boyd, who was arrested along with seven others in North Carolina on domestic terrorism charges, ever saw action in Afghanistan, as stated by his prosecutors.

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Obama administration opposes release of Cheney records in Valerie Plame case

July 30, 2009 Leave a comment

Valerie Plame

Valerie Plame

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Obama administration officials are pressuring a US judge to stop the release of former US Vice President Dick Cheney’s records in the case of ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame. Plame sought compensation after she was publicly named as a secret CIA operative. Along with her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, she has fought a legal campaign, arguing that several Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, and even President George W. Bush himself, were behind the leak of her CIA role. Cheney had a lengthy interview with prosecutors pursuing the leak case, but the transcripts of the exchange have so far remained secret, on national security grounds. Read more of this post

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