Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying
December 11, 2008 by intelNews 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
December 10, 2008 by intelNews 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 →
December 10, 2008 by intelNews 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]
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 2007 NIE, Analysis, Barack Obama, CIA, Iran, Iranian nuclear program, NIE, Project 1-11
December 10, 2008 by intelNews 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
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with CIA, Cold War, espionage, history, NATO, News, Poland, Ryszard Kuklinski, United States, walk-ins, Warsaw Pact
December 10, 2008 by intelNews 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].
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Chantilly, News, NRO
December 10, 2008 by intelNews 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
December 10, 2008 by intelNews 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
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Analysis, CIA, Garry Webb, Nicaragua, Reagan Administration, war on drugs
December 9, 2008 by intelNews 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 →
December 9, 2008 by intelNews 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
December 9, 2008 by intelNews 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
December 9, 2008 by intelNews 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
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 2008 Mumbai attacks, communications interception, India, Internet, Lashkar-e-Taiba, News, Pakistan, RAW, VOIP
December 8, 2008 by intelNews 2 Comments
In early November, US President-Elect Barack Obama appeared to be determined to install John Brennan, former head of the National Counterterrorism Center and supporter of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques”, to the post of Director of the CIA. The stir caused by Brennan’s support of torture techniques soon caused him to resign from the candidacy. The New York Times described Brennan’s resignation as “the biggest glitch so far in what has been an otherwise smooth transition for Mr. Obama”. On December 3, the paper warned that Obama’s decision to exclude Brennan from the CIA has “created anxiety in the ranks of the agency’s clandestine service”. It also quoted an unnamed intelligence official who cautioned the Obama transition team that Obama “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”. In other words, the Clandestine Service does not intend to co-operate with a progressive attempt to restructure the CIA along essentially democratic lines. The threat appears to have been received. US News and World Report has cited the usual anonymous “intelligence sources” in speculating that “it is possible that [the President-Elect] might ask CIA Director Mike Hayden to stay on for a while”. Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Barack Obama, CIA, John Brennan, Michael Hayden, News, torture, United States
December 8, 2008 by intelNews Leave a comment
Alexei Mikhailovich Ridiger, better known as Patriarch Alexy II of Russia, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, died in Peredelkino, Russia, on December 5, 2008. His death has been overshadowed by allegations that he was for years “a favorite of the KGB”, having been recruited by the Soviet intelligence agency in 1958, while still a junior priest in Tallinn, Estonia. British newspaper The Guardian quotes KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky, who states that Alexy “worked for the KGB for over 40 years […] and was mentioned in KGB archives under the codename Drozdov”. French press agency AFP cites Gleb Yakunin, a Soviet-era human rights activist who has examined church-related KGB files. Yakunin said that “[p]ractically all the bishops consecrated in Soviet times worked with the KGB […]. They were all informers […]. But Alexy stood out especially. He was very active in this profession”. Alexy’s funeral is to be held tomorrow in Moscow, Russia. [JF]
December 8, 2008 by intelNews Leave a comment
After the recent stir caused by purported cyber-attacks that struck the US Pentagon’s computers in October, news has emerged that the Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency has finally revealed its findings about the future of online governmental security. The Commission, whose panel “includes executives, high-ranking military officers and intelligence officials, leading specialists in computer security, and two members of Congress”, spent the last few months visiting computer labs at the National Security Agency as well as being briefed “in closed-door sessions by top officials from Pentagon, CIA, and British spy agency MI5”. Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Barack Obama, cyberwar, News, Russia, United Nations, United States, US DoD
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New reports of nuclear spies arrested in Iran
December 11, 2008 by intelNews 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
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Iran, Iranian nuclear program, Mossad, News, UK