News you may have missed #0241

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Breaking news: CIA officers were killed by Jordanian double spy

Forward Operating Base Chapman

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

Analysis: The Meaning of the Suicide Attack on the CIA

Forward Operating Base Chapman

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 →

News you may have missed #0235

  • How the CIA was conned by a compulsive gambler. In 2003, the CIA took seriously the fabricated claims of Dennis Montgomery, co-owner of a software gaming company in Nevada, who claimed he could read messages hidden in barcodes listing international flights to the US, their positions and airports to be targeted by al-Qaeda.
  • Obama names intel advisory board members. The US President has appointed members to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB), a critical oversight group tasked with alerting the White House about US intelligence activities that may be illegal or may go beyond Presidential authorization. The appointees are Roel Campos, Lee Hamilton, Rita Hauser, Paul Kaminski, Ellen Laipson, Les Lyles, and Jami Miscik. For more on PIAB, see here.
  • Turkey arrests three on espionage charges. Turkish media won’t say which country the arrestees allegedly spied for, but one of them is said to have “often visited Greece”. A tit-for-tat?

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US media under-report US missile attack on Yemen

Airstrike site

Airstrike victims

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Last Friday, a handful of US websites reported “an airstrike” in Yemen against “a leading al-Qaeda figure there”. The incident, which made headline news along the Arab peninsular, was quickly forgotten in the US. But it now turns out that there were two airstrikes, not one; and they were not carried out by “Yemeni forces”, but rather by the US military, which fired cruise missiles at targets in Yemen on direct orders from US President Barack Obama. And yet the revelation, made by ABC News on Friday, appears to have failed to arouse the interest of US news outlets, the vast majority of which are blatantly ignoring this report. Read more of this post

Comment: Saudi Spies Take Over Yemen Border War

Saudi forces in Yemen

Saudis in Yemen

By IAN ALLEN* | intelNews.org |
Perceptive Middle East observers have been following the under-reported but escalating conflict along the Yemeni-Saudi border, in which Saudi and Yemeni government forces have joined forces in combating al-Qaeda-linked Yemeni rebels. It now appears that Saudi Arabia’s preeminent intelligence agency, the General Intelligence Presidency (GIP) has assumed direct command of the conflict. What exactly is going on?

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Lithuania’s spy chief resigns over secret CIA prison probe

Malakauskas

Malakauskas

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The director of Lithuania’s intelligence service unexpectedly resigned on Monday, reportedly in connection with a parliamentary investigation into a reputed CIA secret prison site in the country. IntelNews regulars will remember that last November ABC News cited CIA officials in alleging that the Lithuanian government provided the CIA with an unmarked building located in Lithuanian capital Vilnius, with the understanding that it would be used as a so-called black site for secretly detaining high-value al-Qaeda suspects. Lithuanian government officials denied the allegation, but promised to set up a high-level probe into the matter. But the members of the parliamentary committee that was established to examine the ABC News revelations soon found themselves shunned by Lithuanian intelligence officials. According to the committee head, Arvydas Anusauskas, the parliamentarians were offered ambiguous answers or no answers at all by Lithuanian secret service agencies. Read more of this post

One third of Pakistani spy budget comes from CIA, say officials

ISI HQ

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

News you may have missed #0151

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MI5 chief defends use of intelligence extracted through torture

Jonathan Evans

Jonathan Evans

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
In an unprecedented public speech, the director of MI5, Britain’s national counterintelligence agency, said the intelligence extracted by torturing suspects after 9/11 had stopped “many attacks” on Western and other targets. Last January, Jonathan Evans, who was named director of MI5 in April 2007, gave the first-ever media interview by an MI5 director in history. Last Thursday, he made history once again by giving the first-ever public speech by an MI5 chief. Speaking at the University of Bristol, England, Evans said MI5 was right to cooperate after 9/11 with US and other intelligence agencies, even if those agencies were known to routinely extract information from detainees through torture. In doing so, he revealed that MI5’s own knowledge of al-Qaeda was “inadequate” at the time of 9/11, and that the agency “had to get overseas help at the time”. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0146

  • RAND wants the US to abstain from cyberattacks. A new report by the US Pentagon’s research arm, RAND Corporation, suggests the US may be better off playing cyber-defense instead of resorting to cyberattacks. On offense, cyberwar might be better relegated to support roles, and then only “sparingly and precisely”, according to the report. The study comes as the US military fires up its new unified Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) program this month.
  • Turkey says it foiled al-Qaida plot against Israeli, US targets. Turkish security forces detained on Thursday 32 suspected members of al-Qaeda, believed to have been planning attacks on Israeli, US and NATO targets. The suspects, some of whom are said to have been trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, were detained in simultaneous raids across eight provinces.
  • South Korea arrests alleged Swedish-handled spy. A former South Korean air force major general, identified only as Kim, was arrested last Friday on charges of leaking classified military information to Swedish defense and aviation company Saab, between August 2008 and May this year.

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Russia accuses Georgian intelligence of aiding Islamists

A.V. Bortnikov

A.V. Bortnikov

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, has accused Georgian intelligence and security services of aiding anti-Moscow militants in Russia’s southern republics. Speaking before Russia’s National Antiterrorism Committee on Tuesday, Alexander V. Bortnikov said that the FSB’s counterintelligence department had seized a number of “audio reports” from Islamist militants active in the Russian Caucasus, which allegedly show that a number of “al-Qaeda emissaries” mediate between militants in Russia and “Georgian special services”. The latter, said Bortnikov, train militants from Chechnya, Dagestan and North Caucasus, and supply them with funds, weapons and explosives. But the Washington-based Radio Free Europe has quoted David Bakradze, the speaker of the Parliament of Georgia, as denying Bortnikov’s “groundless” allegations. Read more of this post

US wont’ share al-Qaeda intelligence, say Pakistani spies

Quetta, Pakistan

Quetta, Pakistan

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A number of senior Pakistani security officials have accused US spy agencies of systematically withholding from their Pakistani counterparts actionable intelligence on al-Qaeda and Taliban activities in Pakistan. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the officials complained to The Washington Times that the last time the CIA shared actionable intelligence on al-Qaeda with the government of Pakistan was in 2007. They also said that recent public assertions by US officials that senior al-Qaeda leaders are hiding in Quetta, Pakistan, have not been followed with corresponding actionable intelligence by US spy agencies. The allegations shed further light on the increasingly severed intelligence relationship between Washington and Islamabad, which began shortly before the 2008 ousting of American-supported Pakistani dictator General Pervez Musharraf. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0139

  • Pakistan tells US diplomat to be quiet. Perturbed by the recent remarks of US Deputy Chief of Mission in Islamabad, Gerald Feierstein, that top al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders are presently hiding in Quetta, Pakistan has summoned the US diplomat and demanded that he stops discussing intelligence issues in media. The move follows a closed-door meeting last week between the director of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Ahmed Shuja Pasha, and CIA director Leon Panetta.
  • Analysis: HUMINT worries al-Qaeda more than drone assassinations. The CIA-operated drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan get all the headlines. But what’s really worrying al Qaeda are the agents in their midst, says Adam Rawnsley of Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog.
  • Chinese spymaster complains about US news leak. It has emerged that Major General Yang Hui, China’s most senior military intelligence official, recently made a secret visit to the US and complained to the Pentagon over the US press leak on the Chinese submarine that secretly shadowed the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier in 2006. He said senior Chinese leaders suspect the Pentagon deliberately disclosed the encounter as part of an effort to send a “tough” message to China’s military.

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News you may have missed #0137

  • Colombian paramilitaries active in Honduras. United Nations human rights officials have voiced concern at reports that right-wing paramilitaries from the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia are active in Honduras following the military coup. Last September it was revealed that the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia also participated in the planning of the failed 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela.
  • Lawsuit probes US government spying on GTMO attorneys. In Wilner v. National Security Agency, the Washington DC-based Center for Constitutional Rights argued on Friday that the US government must disclose whether it has records related to wiretapping of Guantánamo attorney conversations without a warrant.
  • France arrests CERN worker with alleged al-Qaeda links. France has arrested a researcher at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) for suspected links with the al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb (al-Qaeda’s North African wing). CERN, Europe’s particle physics lab, is known for a particle collider that aims to recreate conditions of the Big Bang.

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