CIA veteran reveals agency’s operations in Tibet
March 14, 2009 1 Comment
Gyalo Thondup
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
A former CIA officer, who supervised the Agency’s covert operations in the Chinese region of Tibet, says he is working on a new book on the subject. John Kenneth Klaus, who, while stationed in India in the 1960s, directed the CIA’s support of Tibetan independence paramilitaries, has given a rare interview to Canadian newspaper The Toronto Star. In it, he admits that the CIA supplied weapons to Tibetan monks, who are widely known for their non-violent philosophy. According to 85-year-old Klaus, the origins of the CIA’s covert assistance to Tibetan monks date back to at least 1957, when Gyalo Thondup, older brother of the 14th (and current) Dalai Lama, sent the CIA five Tibetan recruits, whom the Agency trained in paramilitary tactics on the island of Saipan, in the Northern Marianas. Shortly afterwards the five men were covertly returned to Tibet “to assess and organize the resistance”. In the process, they recruited another 300 Tibetans who were secretly transported to Colorado and trained by Klaus and other US intelligence and military officers. Read more of this post
intelNews.org 
Analysis: Can US intelligence help with economic crisis?
March 14, 2009 1 Comment
By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
Last month, US Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, warned that the ongoing global economic crisis should be Washington’s “primary near-term security concern”. Although it is unclear whether Blair’s statement represents a grass roots shift in the US intelligence community’s analytical and operational focus, his comments were seen as an attempt to raise economic intelligence to the top of Washington’s intelligence priorities. Observers have described such a potential transformation as “a sea change” and “a new prism” for analyzing global developments from an intelligence standpoint. But do Blair’s remarks represent a concrete change in US intelligence attitudes? Is the economic crisis really a more important intelligence concern than transnational terrorist networks? Read more of this post
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