News you may have missed #0113

September 22, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • US intelligence caused change in missile shield plans, says Gates. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that the Obama administration’s decision to abandon the previous administration’s plans for a land-based missile defense system in Eastern Europe came about because of a change of the alleged threat posed by Iran in US intelligence reports. But he also said that the Bush administration plans will not be scrapped. The land-based missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic will be replaced by missile interceptors aboard US naval ships.
  • Canada preparing big balloon (?) to spy on Taliban. The Canadian armed forces are testing a large white balloon equipped with an on-board spy camera, which will be used in Afghanistan to detect improvised explosive devices. Depending on the exact camera used, the system could have a surveillance range of five to twenty kilometers.
  • Portugal’s secret services deny spying on president. Portugal’s SIS secret service agency was forced to issue a rare public statement last week, denying having spied on the country’s president, Anibal Cavaco Silva, of the Social Democratic Party, just 10 days before a closely-fought parliamentary election. Silva is Portugal’s first right-wing head of state since the end of the dictatorship in April 1974.

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Analysis: Is Afghanistan really important in the “war on terrorism”?

September 22, 2009 by 1 Comment

Paul P. Pillar

Paul P. Pillar

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Deputy Chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center from 1997 to 1999, Paul Pillar, has authored an interesting editorial in which he asks “how important are physical havens to terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda?”. The answer: not very. Writing in The Washington Post, Pillar points out that the main unstated assumption behind the US invasion of Afghanistan, namely that the country must not be allowed to again become a haven for terrorist groups, is incompatible with what we know about how such groups organize. If they are offered a haven, groups such as al-Qaeda will use it for basic training of recruits, says Pillar. But operations planning and training does not require such a base, nor is such a center crucial for successful execution of operations. Read more of this post

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CIA to deploy in record numbers in Afghanistan

September 21, 2009 by 1 Comment

CIA HQ

CIA HQ

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The CIA is preparing to deploy record numbers of operatives and analysts to Afghanistan, according to US officials with access to classified documents, who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Los Angeles Times. Some said that once the intelligence surge is over the CIA’s station at the US embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, which coordinates CIA activity in the country, will be “among the largest in the agency’s history”, rivaling and perhaps even surpassing those in Iraq, and even in Vietnam in the late 1960s. By the end of 2001, the Agency’s presence in Afghanistan was limited to about 150 agents. This number had doubled by 2005, and current estimates place the CIA’s force in the country to about 700, a number which may double again, once the intelligence surge has reached its peak. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0108

September 17, 2009 by 1 Comment

  • Fatah dismisses spy chief in West Bank. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has dismissed Palestinian General Intelligence Chief Mohammad Abu Assam. The dismissal appears to be part of a broader plan to unify the Palestinian Preventive Security Service and the General Intelligence Service, who have been fighting a notorious turf war for several years.
  • Indian Intelligence Bureau wants to block all VOIP Services. India’s Intelligence Bureau has instructed the country’s communications ministry to block all VOIP (internet-based) calls in the country until it figures out a mechanism to track them. It has also said it wants access to the content of all mobile phone calls in the country. Indian security agencies have been struggling with this issue since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, after it emerged that the attackers used VOIP software to communicate with the their handlers.
  • Is Afghan President’s brother a US informant? There is speculation that Ahmed Wali Karzai, notorious drug lord and younger brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, is in fact an informant for US intelligence agencies. It true, this would explain why he has been allowed by US agencies to operate freely in the country.

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Former agent reveals aspects of CIA’s bin Laden hunt

September 10, 2009 by 1 Comment

Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Arthur “Art” Keller, a retired CIA agent who spent several years looking for Osama bin Laden in the Afghan-Pakistani border areas has given a rare interview to The London Times. Until his recent retirement, Keller participated in the 50- to 100-strong covert CIA force in the region, whose primary task since 9/11 has been to capture or kill senior al-Qaeda commanders. He told the paper that the failure to find bin Laden has led the agency to start bringing back retired members of “The Cadre”, a close-knit group of Pashto- and Dari-speaking CIA agents, who spent many years in Afghanistan in the 1980s, during America’s proxy war with the Soviet Union. Read more of this post

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Diplomat sees Pakistani spies behind Afghan intel chief’s killing

September 5, 2009 by Leave a comment

Bhadrakumar

Bhadrakumar

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An Indian diplomat has authored an editorial suggesting that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) may be behind the recent assassination of an Afghan senior intelligence official. Abdullah Laghmani, who headed Afghanistan’s National Directorate for Security (NDS), appears to have been specifically targeted earlier this week in a suicide attack that killed 23 people in the town of Mehtarlam. The Taliban have formally assumed responsibility for the attack. But M.K. Bhadrakumar, a longtime Indian diplomat who has served as India’s ambassador to Afghanistan, suggests that Laghmani may have been targeted by the ISI. The diplomat says that the ISI, whose deep links with the Afghan Taliban have long been established, has been “stalking” Laghmani ever since the late 1990s, when he was active in Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0095

September 5, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • New revelations about Bulgarian domestic spying case. It appears that Operation GALLERY (a.k.a. Operation GALERIA), by the Bulgarian State Agency for National Security (DANS), was primarily aimed at the Bulgarian tabloid newspaper Weekend and journalist Dimitar Zlatkov. Journalist Ognyan Stefanov, who was nearly beaten to death after authoring an article implicating DANS officials in illicit trafficking activities (see previous intelNews coverage), appears to have been simply collateral damage.
  • Taliban use CIA-supplied mines against US-led forces in Afghanistan. Evidence from the US Defense Department, Canadian forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban itself suggest that the increased damage to NATO tanks by Taliban forces has come from anti-tank mines provided by the US to the jihadi movement in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
  • Massive domestic spying revealed in Russia. From January to June this year, Russian intelligence agents surreptitiously opened 115,000 letters, listened in on 64,000 personal phone conversations, and broke into 11,000 private homes according to information from Russia’s Supreme Court.

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CIA deployed agents disguised as journalists, says ex-NSA analyst

September 4, 2009 by 1 Comment

Wayne Madsen

Wayne Madsen

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Former NSA analyst and US Navy intelligence officer Wayne Madsen has said that the CIA deployed at least two operatives posing as journalists in several world hotspots after 9/11. The two operatives, both US Special Forces veterans, were subcontracted to the CIA by private mercenary company Blackwater, and were accredited as journalists by Korean-owned United Press International (UPI). Madsen, who authors the daily Wayne Madsen Report, says the two operatives were active in Uzbekistan shortly after 9/11. One of them secured a travel visa to enter Iran in 2003, where he allegedly “engaged in target analysis and spotting for a planned US attack on Iran” (this was presumably before Washington decided to axe the rumored plan to launch a direct military attack on Iran in favor of an intensive plan of covert sabotage, as detailed by The New York Times last January). Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0091

September 2, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • McCain denies private agreement with CIA torture tactic. A recently released memo suggests that Republican US Senator John McCain, famous for his stance against torture, privately agreed with a CIA six-day sleep-deprivation technique.
  • CIA rejects further declassifications on torture-related material. The CIA said on Monday that it would release no more documents related to the Bush administration’s torture and detention policies, because disclosing the information “will threaten national security”. The ACLU called this an affront to the Obama Administration’s policies.
  • Taliban kill Afghan intelligence chief. Abdullah Laghmani, who headed the National Directorate for Security (NDS) was among at least 23 people, including a number of senior officials, killed in the suicide attack. This was one of the few times that the Taliban specifically targeted intelligence officials.

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Ex-CIA agent says Cheney “damaged the CIA more than anybody has”

September 2, 2009 by Leave a comment

Robert Baer

Robert Baer

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Robert Baer, the retired CIA field officer whose bestselling memoir, See No Evil, formed the basis of the 2005 motion picture Syriana, has said that former Vice President’ Dick Cheney “damaged the CIA more than anybody has, including the press or the Department of Justice”. Speaking on PBS’ The Tavis Smiley Show, Baer claimed that Cheney was the leading proponent of the CIA’s torture program, which the Bush Administration “invented as we went along”, and which never provided any critical intelligence. Baer said that in some cases FBI interrogators resorting to torture tactics extracted false leads from detainees. Read more of this post

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Comment: Blackwater’s role in CIA ops runs deep

August 21, 2009 by 3 Comments

Blackwater/Xe HQ

Blackwater/Xe

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
North Carolina-based military and intelligence contractor Xe had a major role in the CIA’s rumored post-9/11 assassination program and is active today in the Agency’s Predator drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The New York Times and The Washington Post cited “government officials and current and former [Xe] employees” in revealing that the CIA worked briefly with Xe –formerly known as Blackwater– in the context of a top-secret program to locate and murder senior al-Qaeda leaders. According to The Washington Post, Blackwater’s role in the operation was far from consultative, and included “operational responsibility for targeting terrorist commanders [and awards worth] millions of dollars for training and weaponry”.  The New York Times alleges that Blackwater’s central role in the operation was “a major reason” in CIA director Leon Panetta’s decision last June to inform Congress about the program, which CIA had kept hidden from Congressional oversight for seven years. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0071

August 19, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Botched CIA mission in Siberia revealed

August 18, 2009 by Leave a comment

Ulan Ude

Ulan Ude

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Five American “tourists” temporarily detained in 2001 by Russian border agents were in fact CIA agents on a covert mission to Siberia, court documents have revealed. The five were among thirteen agents traveling to Siberia on a chartered CIA flight. They were detained in the far-eastern Russian city of Petropavlovsk by Russian authorities, because Langley had failed to secure visas for them in time for their departure. The Americans’ CIA cover was revealed last week during a court case involving alleged fraud by a US government contractor involved in the operation. The CIA group was apparently traveling to Ulan Ude, Siberia in order to purchase two Russian helicopters for use in CIA missions in Afghanistan. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0066

August 12, 2009 by Leave a comment

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DNI responses to Senate questions declassified

August 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

Dennis Blair

Dennis Blair

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Don’t bother reading through the 40 pages (.pdf) of responses given last February by the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to questions by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. There’s not that much new information in it, and it turns out DNI Dennis C. Blair even resorted to plagiarizing part of an article on an alleged Russian attack on US satellites originally printed in Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, with no attribution. Instead, you can save time by taking a look at the observations made on the 40-page document by Steven Aftergood, editor of the Federation of American Scientists’ Secrecy News bulletin. It was, in fact, a Freedom of Information Act request by Aftergood that prompted the release of the document in the first place. Read more of this post

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