Private companies to help NSA monitor US government networks

July 9, 2009 Leave a comment

NSA HQ

NSA HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
We have already mentioned on this blog that US President Barack Obama has decided to proceed with a Bush administration plan to use National Security Agency (NSA) assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks. NSA is America’s largest intelligence agency, which is tasked with worldwide communications surveillance, as well as communications security. Critics of the program suspect it may include EINSTEIN 3, a rumored joint project between the NSA and US telecommunication service providers, which requires the latter to route government data carried through their networks to the NSA, via secret rooms installed in exchange sites. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0022

July 9, 2009 Leave a comment

  • Australian detained on espionage charge in China. The arrest of Stern Hu, who heads Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto’s iron ore operations in China, comes right after the company backed out of a deal to sell China’s state-owned Chinalco a big stake in Rio Tinto.
  • US diplomat implicated in CIA abduction in Italy requests immunity. Days after the wife of a of Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who in 2003 was kidnapped by the CIA in Milan, Italy, announced plans to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, a CIA agent involved in the affair has come forward requesting immunity. Sabrina De Sousa, who was listed as a “diplomat” at the US consulate in Milan at the time of Nasr’s kidnapping, has made the request through her lawyer. Last week, Robert Seldon Lady, who was the CIA station chief in Milan at the time, came forward making a similar case.
  • CIA won’t release torture interrogation contracts. The CIA has denied a Freedom of Information Act request for post-9/11 contracts signed between the CIA and Mitchell Jessen & Associates. As intelNews explained last May, Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were the psychologists hired by the CIA to design an elaborate ten-stage interrogation program of “war on terrorism” detainees, which apparently culminated in waterboarding.

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Israel directs cyberwar resources against Iranian nuclear program

July 8, 2009 1 Comment

Ahmedinejad

Ahmadinejad

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An Israeli cyberwarfare project that began in the late 1990s is a major tool in the Jewish state’s covert war on the Iranian nuclear program. A former member of the Israeli Knesset has anonymously confirmed the program’s existence to the Reuters news agency, while US experts said they view the clandestine project as “the likely new vanguard” in Israel’s attempts to hamper Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Israel’s cyberwarfare program is apparently encouraged by Washington’s resistance to an all-out military confrontation with Tehran, which includes US President Barack Obama’s rumored reluctance to endorse conventional air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. As intelNews has reported before, the Israeli cyberwarfare project is probably part of a wider Israeli operation, which British newspaper The Daily Telegraph has described as a covert “decapitation program”. The operation, which involves assassinations, front companies and bribing, among other tactics, is supplemented by an extensive CIA operation approved by President George W. Bush in early 2008 and “hand[ed] off to President […] Barack Obama”, according to The New York Times.

 

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News you may have missed #0021

July 8, 2009 Leave a comment

  • US Vice President refuses comment on CIA-DNI dispute. Speaking to ABC’s This Week, Biden refused to take sides on the ongoing turf battle between CIA director Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, over who should have a say in appointing CIA station chiefs around the world. Biden simply said he preferred to “comment on that next week”.
  • Lebanese officer suspected of spying flees to Israel. A Lebanese army colonel, who was about to join the nearly 40 individuals who have been arrested in southern Lebanon in connection to an alleged Israeli spy ring, managed to escape to Israel last week, sources say. 
  • Did former CIA director George Tenet get drunk at the palatial house of Prince Bandar, former Saudi ambassador to the US? Tenet is apparently disputing it, but he is not disputing that he spent the night there. 
  • Analysis: The history of CIA-ISI relations. In this well-researched article, Mark Mazzetti argues that US-Pakistani intelligence interactions show there is no such thing as a friendly intelligence service.

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US House Intelligence Committee says routinely misled by CIA

July 8, 2009 Leave a comment

Reyes

Reyes

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On June 23, intelNews reported on the endorsement by key lawmakers in Washington of a proposed bill that would force US intelligence agencies to make full disclosure of covert spy programs to all members of Congress’ intelligence oversight panels. Yesterday, US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), came out once again in support of the proposed legislation, saying that he has evidence that the Committee he chairs has been routinely “misled […] and […] affirmatively lied to” by the CIA. Reyes’ allegations were included in a letter to the committee’s Republican members, in which he urged them to support the proposed bill. According to the National Security Act of 1947, Congressional intelligence committees must be “fully and currently” informed about the activities of US intelligence agencies. In recent years, however, military and intelligence officials routinely make use of a classification label called Operational Preparation of the Environment (OPE), which allows them to shield certain activities from Congressional oversight. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Al-Qaeda dumps phones, making interception impossible

July 7, 2009 Leave a comment

Secret Sentry

Secret Sentry

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
In his brief but perceptive review of Matthew M. Aid’s new book, The Secret Sentry: The Untold Story of the National Security Agency, Craig Seligman, critic for Bloomberg News, refers to an argument made in the book, which in my opinion deserves attention. Namely, in discussing the NSA’s activities in the so-called “war on terrorism”, Aid points out that, not only are Iran and North Korea increasingly converting their analog communications networks into fiber-optic cables, thus making their internal communications virtually impossible to intercept, but al-Qaeda and other militant groups are now “practically cut[ing] out the use of telephones and radios”. All of this is gradually turning the NSA, an agency that receives over $9 billion a year in US taxpayers’ money, into a gargantuan organization whose daily tasks are becoming “maddeningly difficult” –indeed, almost irrelevant. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0020

July 7, 2009 Leave a comment

  • Social media is ruining spy industry, says IT security group. IT security consultancy NCC Group says that intelligence “agencies are concerned that Facebook and other social networking tools are ruining the spy industry”. The comments come just hours after British newspaper The Mail on Sunday revealed that personal details about the future head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, had been accessible to 200 million online users through his wife’s Facebook account.
  • Pakistan’s nukes face insider threat, says ex-CIA official. Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a 23-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, argues in Arms Control Today that “[t]he greatest threat of a loose nuke scenario stems from insiders in the nuclear establishment working with outsiders, people seeking a bomb or material to make a bomb […]. Nowhere in the world is this threat greater than in Pakistan. Pakistani authorities have a dismal track record in thwarting insider threats”, claims the retired US intelligence agent.
  • Hamas says Israeli spy cell in Ramallah busted. Hamas says it has dismantled an Israeli spy network, which served through the West Bank-based administration of Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas. The group claims that the network “channeled […] false information to Ramallah [in the Fatah-dominated West Bank] and then to the Israeli occupation”, in order to create “target bank” in Gaza.

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Facebook reveals personal details of future MI6 chief

July 7, 2009 Leave a comment

Sir John Sawers

Sir John Sawers

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Facebook, the Internet social networking site with over 200 million registered users worldwide, has made intelligence headlines once again. Last April, intelNews reported on revelations by Sweden’s armed forces that Swedish soldiers serving with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan were approached on Facebook and asked to provide details on NATO’s military presence in the country. Last weekend, Facebook did it again: British newspaper The Mail on Sunday argued that “potentially compromising” personal details about Sir John Sawers, who has been appointed to the post of Director of MI6, Britain’s primary external intelligence agency, were revealed by his wife on her Facebook account. The paper accused Lady Shelley Sawers of “a major personal security breach” upon discovering that “she had put virtually no privacy protection on her account”, which made it accessible to all of Facebook’s 200 million users. Read more of this post

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Larry Franklin, implicated in Israeli spy affair, breaks silence

July 6, 2009 Leave a comment

Franklin

Franklin

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Lawrence Anthony Franklin, the former US Defense Department analyst whose 12-year prison sentence was suspended last month, has finally broken his silence. Franklin, who was accused by the US government of handing classified US military information to two American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbyists, has told Jeff Stein of SpyTalk that he handed out the secret information “in hopes that it would be passed on to the White House”. He said he was “worried” the Bush administration pursued a schizophrenic policy on Iran and had not calculated the Iranian reaction to a possible US invasion of Iraq. He therefore decided to pass on the classified information, which included “the names and locations of Iran’s secret agents and safe houses in Iraq”, to AIPAC lobbyists Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, who claimed they had senior contacts in the Bush administration. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0019

July 6, 2009 Leave a comment

  • More interesting podcasts on Afghanistan at Electric Politics. George Kenney, of Electric News, has posted a full transcript of last month’s interesting interview with Graham E. Fuller, CIA’s former station chief in Kabul, Afghanistan. Also, a new highly interesting interview on Afghanistan has been posted on the Electric News website, this time with George Wilson. A veteran reporter who covered the Vietnam and Iraq wars, Wilson makes some noteworthy comparisons between Vietnam and Afghanistan.
  • Panetta, not Blair, should name CIA station chiefs, says ex-CIA agent. Haviland Smith, former CIA agent in Europe and the Middle East, has penned an editorial for The Baltimore Sun, in which he denounces as “simple insanity” efforts by Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, to have a say at who gets appointed as CIA station chief in Kabul, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.  This is the second ex-CIA agent to issue the same warning in recent days.
  • Two more people arrested in Lebanon for spying for Israel. This raises the number of those arrested for belonging to an alleged Israeli spy ring in southern Lebanon to nearly 40. The latest arrestees include Ziad al Homsi, who in 1969 was photographed with Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat.

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Secret meetings reported between CIA and Saddam loyalists

July 6, 2009 2 Comments

Al-Douri

Al-Douri

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The CIA is reportedly participating in a series of secret meetings with the two main leaders of the Ba’athist insurgency in Iraq. According to Intelligence Online and United Press International, CIA agents have entered truce negotiations with Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri (photo) and Mohammed Yunis al-Ahmad, who head most of the armed Sunni groups in Iraq. Until the 2003 US invasion, Al-Ahmad was an army general during the latter part of Saddam’s reign, while al-Douri was vice-president and deputy chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council. The US has put out a reward of $1 million for Al-Ahmad, who is reportedly operating out of Syria. Al-Douri, who is said to be in Syria as well, is also wanted by the US in exchange for a $10 million reward. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0018

July 4, 2009 Leave a comment

  • Retired Romanian football star now admits being a spy. Earlier this week, Gheorghe Popescu, whose international career included playing for British teams, denied reports that he was an informer for Romania’s Securitate, the secret service of communist Romania. But on Thursday morning, the former Tottenham Hotspurs defender admitted that he did inform on teammates and other colleagues while playing for Universitatea Craiova. 
  • Grand jury hears from top CIA officers on destruction of tapes. A federal courtroom in Virginia has become the latest frontline in the Justice Department’s effort to uncover who at the CIA ordered in November of 2005 the incineration of 92 videotapes containing footage of torture applied on several “war on terrorism” detainees. Apparently, the tapes were kept for a long time in a safe at the CIA station in Thailand, where the interrogations took place. 
  • NSA to help defend civilian agency networks. The Obama administration is said to have decided to proceed with a Bush-era plan to use National Security Agency assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks. The decision, which had been rumored since last spring, was one of the reasons behind the March 2009 resignation of Rod Beckstrom, who headed the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Center.

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News you may have missed #0017

July 3, 2009 Leave a comment

  • Spain’s chief spy resigns in financial scandal. Alberto Saiz, who headed Spain’s National Intelligence Center, was accused by the daily newspaper El Mundo of using public money for diving and hunting trips in Mexico, Senegal, Mali and Morocco. He denied the accusations, but on July 2, he resigned “to prevent further damage to the reputation of the intelligence agency and the government”. 
  • FBI declassifies reports on agents’ interviews with Saddam. Just-declassified FBI reports reveal that FBI special agents carried out 20 formal interviews and at least 5 “casual conversations” with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after his capture by US troops in December 2003. Interestingly, the declassified reports include nothing about “Iraq’s complicated relationship with the US”, especially the alleged role of the CIA in facilitating the Ba’ath party’s rise to power in the 1960s. 
  • Release of CIA report on detention, interrogation, delayed (again). Like many others, we at intelNews were eagerly expecting this previously classified CIA report on detention and interrogation under the Bush administration to be released last Wednesday. It was initially going to be released in mid-June, but was then delayed until July 1. Now the CIA says it won’t be able to release the report until the end of August. The ACLU says it will wait for as long as it has to.

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News you may have missed #0016

July 3, 2009 1 Comment

  • Wife of cleric kidnapped by CIA seeks European Court trial. Nabila Ghali, the second wife of Hassan Mustafa Omar Nasr, who was kidnapped by the CIA from a street in Milan, Italy, in 2003, announced plans to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against the Italian government’s state secrecy clauses that are hampering the Italian trial on Nasr’s abduction. 
  • NSA to build huge facility in Utah. The National Security Agency, which is tasked with worldwide communications surveillance, as well as communications security, is in the process of renovating its soon-to-be-unveiled 470,000-square-foot Texas Cryptology Center, which will cost upwards of $130 million and be used primarily to store intercepted communications data. This is now to be coupled with another, 1-million-square-foot data center, to be built at Utah’s Camp Williams. 
  • US government to keep CIA black sites open, for now. A government prosecutor has disclosed during the ongoing trial of former Guantanamo detainee Ahmed Galani that the CIA does not plan to close down its black sites “for now”.

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News you may have missed #0015

July 3, 2009 Leave a comment

  • Recession woes prompt rise in CIA applications. CIA recruiters point to the deep economic recession currently experienced in the US to explain the record numbers of applications for the Agency’s relatively few job openings this year. CIA recruiters say they have so far received “90,000 resumes and  […] will probably get close to 180,000 resumes” by the end of the year. The Agency employs around 20,000 people. The final number of job applications received in 2009 could be the largest number of job applications the Agency has ever received.
  • Ex-CIA analyst says only a new strike on US soil can help increase US security. Michael Scheuer, former chief of the Osama bin Laden unit at the CIA said during an interview with Fox News that “the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States”.

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