Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying
January 4, 2010 Leave a comment
January 4, 2010 2 Comments
Chapman FOB
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Ever since I posted “The Meaning of the Suicide Attack on the CIA” on this blog, I have been telling reporters who contacted me that the attack at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Chapman was probably carried out by a double agent. I dismissed claims on other websites that the bomber had been just a “potential recruit” who was “not required to go through full security checks [at Chapman FOB] in order to help gain [his] trust”. Instead, as I wrote on Saturday, I suggested that “the bomber was able to evade safety search standards [at the US base] by relying on a long-term informant-handler relationship with CIA personnel stationed at the outpost. This would lead to the strong possibility that the informant-turned-bomber had been groomed as a double agent from the very start by local Taliban operatives”. A news report has just appeared on NBC, which appears to confirm just that: namely that the suicide bomber had been “an al-Qaeda double agent” who was “arrested by Jordanian intelligence more than a year ago”, and turned over to the Americans by his Jordanian handlers, who believed he “had been successfully reformed”. Read more of this post
January 2, 2010 2 Comments
Chapman FOB
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS* | intelNews.org |
The recent deaths of seven and the serious injury of another six CIA personnel in Afghanistan’s Khost province has undoubtedly shocked an Agency not used to mass casualties. But what exactly is the significance of Wednesday’s suicide attack at the Forward Operating Base (FOB) Chapman, and how will it affect the US military and intelligence presence at the Afghan-Pakistani border? Given that the CIA team at Chapman FOB could not have consisted of more than 15 to 20 agents, it would be logical to conclude that the attack virtually decimated the CIA presence in Khost. But the impact of this development on US operations in Afghanistan will be minimal, in contrast to operations inside Pakistan, which constituted the primary objective of the CIA team at Chapman FOB. Read article →
December 31, 2009 4 Comments
US Beirut mission
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Update: The CIA now says that seven, not eight, of the “Agency’s workforce” died in the Khost suicide attack. There is, however, some confusion as to the status of the bomber himself, with some Taliban sources in Afghanistan claiming he was already operating as a CIA informant.
Since it emerged last night that eight CIA agents were killed in a suicide bombing in Khost, Afghanistan, intelNews has received several emails asking whether the deaths marked a horrific record for the US spy agency. The unnamed agents were reportedly killed along with at least one Afghan civilian at the US-operated Forward Operating Base Chapman, close to the Pakistani border. The CIA is not known for forwarding details on its agents who perish while on missions around the world. But there is at least one other known instance when the Agency lost eight of its operatives in one day: Read more of this post
December 27, 2009 Leave a comment
December 25, 2009 Leave a comment
Predator drone
By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
American spies, but not combat troops, are active on Pakistani soil, according to Washington’s Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Speaking last Tuesday on PBS’ Charlie Rose, Richard Holbrooke said “there are no American troops in Pakistan”, but that the US has “members of our intelligence services in every country in the world”. Asked to clarify whether “[n]o members of the American military or CIA are in Pakistan”, the American diplomat responded: “I only said there are no American troops in Pakistan”. His comments appear to contradict several reports in Western media that US military forces are secretly operating in Pakistan, including a report last February in The New York Times, which stated that over 70 US “military advisers […] and technical specialists” were helping Pakistan’s armed forces fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the remote Pakistani areas bordering Afghanistan. Read more of this post
December 19, 2009 3 Comments
ISI HQ
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS* | intelNews.org |
Officially, the United States and Pakistan are allies in the so-called “war on terrorism”. But diplomats and intelligence agents on the ground tell a very different story. For several months now, Washington and Islamabad have engaged in a low-intensity intelligence war, with the Pakistanis accusing the Americans of failing to share actionable intelligence, and the Americans blaming Pakistani security services for maintaining clandestine links with Taliban groups. On at least one occasion, a senior advisor to the US-backed Afghan leadership has claimed that Pakistani intelligence services provide assistance to suicide bombers willing to strike targets in Kabul and other cities and towns in Afghanistan.
December 18, 2009 Leave a comment
December 11, 2009 3 Comments
RQ-170 Sentinel
By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
On December 6, we posted a link to a photo of what appeared to be a classified US drone aircraft, which was published on a blog belonging to French newspaper Libération. Then, unexpectedly, on December 8, the US Air Force admitted that the mystery aircraft, dubbed ‘the Beast of Kandahar’ by aviation spotters, is the RQ-170 Sentinel, an unmanned, unarmed surveillance and reconnaissance drone with stealth capabilities, that is officially still in production by US defense contractor Lockheed Martin. That’s all well and fine. But the question is: why would the US be using a stealth drone against the Taliban in Afghanistan, who have no known antiaircraft radar systems, and are therefore unable to track enemy surveillance planes? Read more of this post
December 4, 2009 2 Comments
Predator drone
By I. ALLEN & J. FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Obama Administration’s plan to increase US military presence in Afghanistan includes expanding the CIA’s work in neighboring Pakistan, a country with which the US is officially not at war. An article published yesterday in The New York Times notes that the President has authorized the CIA to expand its Predator drone assassination program to include strikes in places like Baluchistan, which are outside Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal areas and far from the Afghan-Pakistani border. This development represents a major policy victory for the hawkish wing in the Pentagon’s senior leadership, which has been pressing Obama’s advisors to expand CIA assassination operations deeper into Pakistan since November of 2008. It also further reveals the Obama Administration’s policy preference toward undercover operations with a strong deniability proponent. Read more of this post
December 3, 2009 1 Comment
JSOC logo
By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An obscure US military unit established in 1980 is gaining prominence in America’s “war on terrorism” and may be slowly replacing the CIA’s functions, according to a well-researched piece in The Atlantic magazine. The US Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was created soon after the fiasco of the attempted rescue of the hostages held at the US embassy in Tehran. Since 9/11, the unit has emerged from its relative obscurity to join the forefront of America’s so-called “global war on terrorism”. Gathering evidence from a variety of sources investigating the use of paramilitary operations in America’s post-9/11 wars, Max Fisher argues that, even under the Obama Administration, JSOC may in fact be “taking on greater responsibility, especially in areas traditionally covered by the CIA”. Read more of this post
November 30, 2009 Leave a comment
November 24, 2009 Leave a comment
A.S. Pasha
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
There is almost no coverage in the US media of CIA director Leon Panetta’s trip to Pakistan —in sharp contrast to the Pakistani and Indian press, where his visit made national headlines over the weekend. A scheduled meeting with Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was undoubtedly among Panetta’s most important engagements in Islamabad. According to Pakistani media accounts, the meeting between the two men —the second in less than two months— was confrontational and marred by serious differences between the ISI and the CIA —two agencies that rarely see eye-to-eye lately. Citing “well-placed sources”, Pakistani daily The Nation said that the ISI spymaster “expressed his disappointment” to Panetta about the CIA’s “dismal role in countering terrorism” in Pakistan and its “failure to provide concrete actionable information” to the Pakistani secret services. Read more of this post
November 17, 2009 1 Comment
ISI HQ
By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
As much as one third of the annual budget of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence has come from the CIA in the last eight years, according to a new report in The Los Angeles Times. The paper says that even more US dollars have been supplied to the ISI through a secret CIA monetary rewards program that pays for the arrest or assassination of militants wanted by Washington. The payments reportedly began during the early years of the George W. Bush administration, and are now continuing under the Obama administration, despite “long-standing suspicions” that the ISI and the Pakistani military maintain close links with the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and elsewhere. Read more of this post
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News you may have missed #0242
January 5, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, CIA, Egypt, financial aid, Israel, Jordan, News, news you may have missed, Obama Administration, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, suicide bombings, Taliban, United Arab Emirates, United States, weapons trade