News you may have missed #815 (analysis edition)

December 7, 2012 by 1 Comment

Polygraph testBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Should polygraph tests be trusted?  US federal polygraph programs have flourished, targeting a growing number of private contractors with more intensely personal questions than ever before. More than 70,000 people are now screened yearly in the US. Yet thousands of people a year could be identified as lying in polygraph screenings when they are not, according to statistical models by the National Academies, which advises the federal government on scientific matters. Under the current system, many of them would have no way to legally challenge polygraphists’ conclusions, especially in the intelligence world.
►►Why the US does not need another law against intelligence leaks. Leonard Downie Jr., vice president at large of The Washington Post, warns that the 2013 Intelligence Authorization Act “would make it a crime for career intelligence officers to provide almost any type of information to the news media, whether the information is classified or not”. He argues that the proposed legislation would “end contacts that often benefit both the government and the public by allowing the exchange of accurate information about vital national security issues and intelligence activities, including abuses requiring attention”.
►►The preventable decline of British defense intelligence. Defense intelligence refers to something rather different from ‘military intelligence’. It takes place at the topmost levels of defense coordination and decision-making and draws together participation from all of the armed services with civilian subject-matter and technical experts and produce consolidated assessments for senior civil servants, ministers and the service chiefs of staff. Philip Davies, director of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies in the United Kingdom, argues that, in Britain, defense and military intelligence remains “something of a poor cousin in the intelligence community, the eternal Peter robbed to pay the Paul of other, seemingly more urgent, defense expenditure and policy priorities”.

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Ex-intelligence official: cyber espionage more dangerous than terrorism

November 20, 2012 by 10 Comments

Raymond BoisvertBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A former senior member of Canada’s intelligence community has said that the threat of cyber espionage requires more resources that are currently being diverted to counterterrorism. Ray Boisvert, who retired last year from the post of Assistant Director of Intelligence for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), said in an assertive speech last week that cyber espionage is “fundamentally undermining [Canada’s] future prosperity as a nation”. Speaking on Friday in Ottawa, Boisvert compared cyber espionage to the climate-change debate, which has been marked by a series of ignored warnings, due to “some willful blindness on behalf of individuals”. As a result, he said, the need to establish essential security measures to protect worldwide electronic infrastructure is being neglected, while desperately needed resources are being diverted to counterterrorism. He explained the lack of action on three levels: first, the resistance emanating from technologically challenged decision-makers in the government and private sector, who simply do not understand the technical complexities of digital telecommunications security. Second, it is rooted in the government’s reluctance to invest the funds required to shield the nation’s communications infrastructure from espionage attacks. Finally, he placed the blame on the fragmentation and shortsightedness of the private sector, which owns and operates nearly 90 percent of Canada’s critical communications infrastructure and yet is too consumed by competition to sit around the same table on matters of security. In giving examples of the seriousness of the threat of cyber espionage, Boisvert cited the attacks last year on the computer systems of Canada’s Treasury Board and Finance Department, which compromised trade secrets of several national industries. He also mentioned the attacks on Nortel Networks Inc., which he said lasted for over a decade and may have contributed to the company’s 2009 demise. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Should the CIA kill less and spy more?

November 16, 2012 by 11 Comments

CIA headquartersBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Central Intelligence Agency’s awkward silence about the recent resignation of its Director, General David Petraeus, is indicative of an organization that remains distinctly uncomfortable with publicity. The added layer of the sexual nature of Petraeus’ impropriety has increased exponentially the degree of unease at Langley. Yet sooner or later the news media will move on to something else and General Petraeus will fade into the distance. For seasoned intelligence observers, however, the question of the CIA’s future will remain firmly in the foreground. In an interview earlier this week with Wired magazine, former CIA Director General Michael Hayden (ret.) opined that Petraeus’ resignation presents the Agency with the opportunity to return to its operational roots. Hayden, who led the CIA from 2006 to 2009, said that the Agency has been “laser-focused on terrorism” for many years. Consequently, much of its operational output “looks more like targeting than it does classical intelligence”, he said. His views were echoed by the CIA’s former Acting Director, John McLaughlin, who told Wired that the most significant challenge for the post-Petraeus CIA “may be the sheer volume of problems that require [good old-fashioned] intelligence input”. Yesterday, meanwhile, saw the publication of two opinion pieces by two of America’s most experienced intelligence watchers. In the first one, The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus urges United States President Barack Obama to pause and think about the role of America’s foremost external intelligence organization before appointing a successor to General Petraeus. For over a decade, argues Pincus, the CIA’s focus has been to fulfill covert-action tasks in the context of Washington’s so-called “war on terrorism”. But through this process, the Agency “has become too much of a paramilitary organization” and has neglected its primary institutional role, which is to be “the premier producer and analyst of intelligence for policymakers, using both open and clandestine sources”. Read more of this post

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Opinion: When Did Obama Know About CIA Director’s Affair?

November 12, 2012 by 8 Comments

David Petraeus and Paula BroadwellBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The standard reaction to last week’s resignation of Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus, following the revelation of his extramarital affair, has been stunned silence. Not so much because of the affair itself —what is one more affair in the slippery world of Washington politics?— but because it involved the eminent figure of Petraeus. Former aides to the retired General have been confiding to journalists that “never in a million years” would they have thought that the high-achieving CIA Director would have risked his career and reputation in such a reckless fashion. Many thought that the relationship between him and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, had grown suspiciously close in recent years; but Petraeus had a general way of seeming beyond reproach.

It is worth pointing out that much of this unfolding story is so far based on hearsay, as opposed to concrete, verifiable information. It is suggested that Petraeus’ extramarital tryst was accidentally discovered by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who were looking into a seemingly unrelated case. Some news outlets, mostly in the UK, suggest that a female employee of the US military’s Joint Special Operations Command contacted the FBI after receiving threatening messages from Broadwell, warning her to “stay away from [her] man” —allegedly Petraeus. While investigating the Gmail account from which the threatening messages were allegedly sent, the FBI allegedly discovered “thousands” of messages exchanged between the CIA Director and Broadwell, some of which were sexually explicit. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #809 (Obama-Iran edition)

November 8, 2012 by Leave a comment

Iran and its regionBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Will re-elected Obama take a new line on Iran? Barack Obama returns to office after an election campaign in which Iran’s nuclear program often dominated foreign-policy debates. Mitt Romney frequently accused him of taking too soft a line toward Tehran. Now, as Obama begins a second term, the question is how much he has been stung by such criticism. Will Obama retain confidence in his dual strategy of squeezing Iran with economic sanctions while also extending offers of rapprochement? Or will the fact that Iran keeps building centrifuges and enriching uranium despite Obama’s efforts persuade the White House it needs to try something new?
►►Obama’s victory vindicates his Iran policy. President Barack Obama’s re-election victory represents an important vindication of his approach to Iran and its potential nuclear ambitions —and, for the world, a new face of American policy in the Middle East that will relegate the aggressive policies of George W. Bush into the distant past. The election confirmed what polls have clearly shown, that while Americans are deeply concerned about the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon, they also view addressing the problem through vigorous diplomatic engagement and sanctions as the most appropriate exercise of American power and leadership.
►►Iranians see reduced risk of war in Obama’s reelection. In Iran, there is a sense of relief these days, as concerns of a military attack by US and Israeli forces over Iran’s nuclear energy program if Mitt Romney were elected, had become widespread. While there continues to be no official response from Iran’s leadership about US election results, Iranian media is still heavily focused on covering American polls. Commenting on one of Iran’s most popular political Web sites, Asriran, one reader wrote, “At least we know we won’t be going to war during the next four years”. And Iran’s state-run English language television channel, Press TV, carried a live and uninterrupted broadcast of President Barack Obama’s acceptance speech.

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News you may have missed #808 (Obama-Netanyahu edition)

November 8, 2012 by 3 Comments

Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack ObamaBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►The other concession speech: Netanyahu congratulates Obama. At least there was no pretending. In the language of diplomacy, the greeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu extended to Barack Obama on the occasion of his re-election was “correct” and nothing more. “Prime Minister Netanyahu congratulates US President Barack Obama on his election victory,” read the public statement issued early Wednesday in Jerusalem. The next word out of Balfour Street, where Netanyahu mulled the returns, was a warning to members of his Likud party to shut up about how they figure the premier might really feel. By then, the deputy speaker of the Knesset had already called Obama “naïve” and vowed Israel would not “surrender” to him.
►►Netanyahu rushes to repair damage with US President. Over the past several years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has on several occasions confronted or even undercut US President Barack Obama, taking his message directly to the Israel-friendly United States Congress, challenging Mr. Obama’s appeal to the Arab world, and seeming this fall to support his opponent, Mitt Romney. Mr. Netanyahu woke up Wednesday to find not only that his Republican friend had lost, but also that many Israelis were questioning whether he had risked their collective relationship with Washington.
►►Barack Obama victory spells trouble for Israel’s Netanyahu. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces an even more awkward time with Washington and re-energized critics at home who accused him on Wednesday of backing the loser in the US presidential election. With Iran topping his conservative agenda, Netanyahu will have to contend with a strengthened second-term Democratic president after four years of frosty dealings with Barack Obama and a rift over how to curb Tehran’s nuclear program.

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Analysis: Iranian-Israeli proxy war flares up in Sudan

November 1, 2012 by 1 Comment

Sudan and South SudanBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
While much of the world focuses on the effects of hurricane Sandy in the eastern United States, the proxy war between Israel and Iran continues to flare up, this time in Africa. Last week, the government of Sudan accused Israeli of being behind a surprise bombing of a weapons factory in the Sudanese capital Khartoum. According to Sudan’s Minister of Information, Ahmed Belal Osman, four Israeli Air Force jets invaded Sudanese airspace and struck the Yarmouk military complex in Khartoum, inflicting heavy damages. There are unconfirmed claims that the factory was operated by the Iranian government and produced weapons that were smuggled through the Sinai Peninsula into the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by Palestinian group Hamas. On Tuesday, almost exactly a week after the alleged Israeli bombing took place, two Iranian warships arrived in Port Sudan, the country’s most important harbor, located on the Red Sea. The arrival of the vessels was confirmed by Iranian news agency IRNA, which said a helicopter carrier and a destroyer had docked at Port Sudan. The news agency, which is owned by the Iranian government, said the arrival of the ships was meant to contribute to anti-piracy efforts in the Red Sea. But non-Iranian news media, including British newspaper The Independent, quote observers who view the ships’ arrival in Sudan as an Iranian “show of support” for the Sudanese government. According to this explanation, Tehran’s decision to send the ships to the East African country is part of an ongoing proxy war between Iran and Israel taking place throughout the region. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #805 (analysis edition)

October 31, 2012 by 2 Comments

US consulate in Benghazi, LibyaBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Should the US be wary of Huawei? Regular readers of intelNews know that this blog has been covering the subject of Chinese telecommunications hardware manufacturer Huawei for several years now. During the past few weeks, the United States Congress has flagged the company as being too closely associated with the Chinese intelligence establishment. Other countries have done so as well. But not everyone agrees. New York-based newspaper The Wall Street Journal said recently that “bashing Chinese companies on national security grounds seems like a risk-free strategy” for US politicians and added that, unlike Congress, American governors and mayors are eager to promote investment by Chinese companies. Moreover, Wired‘s Marcus Wohlsenemail suggests that, spies or no spies, US telecommunications companies should fear Huwaei, which is here to stay.
►►Should CIA share some of the blame for Benghazi? For the last month, the US media and Congress have been grilling the State Department for the security failures during the deadly assault on a US compound in Benghazi, Libya. But what if the State Department is the wrong target of scrutiny? According to a counter-theory advanced recently by The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank, the CIA, not the State Department, bears some responsibility for the security lapse that led to the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, but is flying under the radar due to the classified nature of its activities in Libya.
►►Could unmanned drones go rogue? Unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones, have been in the news a lot lately: the US Congress has given the green light for their use by state and local law enforcement, academic researchers, and the private sector. UAVs are rapidly becoming a new tool in patrolling US borders and in NATO military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But non-state actors, including organized criminal gangs and drug cartels, may also be seeing the benefits of UAVs before too long. Read an interesting analysis piece that includes comments by intelNews‘ own Joseph Fitsanakis.

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Comment: The Significance of the Killing of Lebanon’s Security Chief

October 22, 2012 by 2 Comments

The bombing that killed Wissam al-HassanBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS*| intelNews.org |
Perhaps the only concrete reality reflected in last week’s assassination of Lebanon’s security chief is the confusion that continues to dominate Western reporting about Lebanese politics. On Friday, Lebanese capital Beirut experienced its most powerful bombing in nearly four years, when a car laden with explosives detonated killing at least eight and injured nearly 100 people. Among the dead was Brigadier General Wissam al-Hassan, head of the intelligence section of Lebanon’s national police force, known as the Internal Security Forces (ISF).  Hassan, a career intelligence officer, was a Sunni Muslim strongly associated with Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Hariri, who was assassinated in Beirut in 2005, was openly anti-Syrian, as was Hassan. This political identification is extremely telling in a country like Lebanon, which has existed under near-complete Syrian political and military domination for the past three-and-a-half decades. Throughout this period, the position of different actors on the Syrian question has been the core defining parameter in Lebanese politics. The same applies to Lebanese institutions. As one such institution, the ISF is widely perceived as strongly anti-Syrian, and is often considered the main rival of the Security Organ of Hezbollah, the Shiite paramilitary group that controls most of southern Lebanon. Read more of this post

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Former CIA senior analyst argues in favor of US deal with Iran

October 9, 2012 by 7 Comments

Paul R. PillarBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A former senior analyst in the United States Central Intelligence Agency has come out in support of a bilateral compromise between Iran and the West on Tehran’s nuclear program. In an article published last week, Georgetown University professor Paul R. Pillar, who spent nearly three decades with the CIA, dismissed the widespread view that the differences between Iran, Israel, and the West are insurmountable. Commenting on news of a nine-step negotiation plan offered by Tehran in early October, but dismissed by Washington as “unworkable”, Pillar said the offer provided the initial steps of an “eminently achievable agreement” between the interested parties. The CIA veteran, who rose to be one of the Agency’s top analysts prior to his retirement in 2005, argued that a possible outcome of bilateral negotiations would be for Iran to curtail its enrichment of uranium to the 20 percent level in exchange for the lifting of most economic sanctions imposed on Iran by Western countries. “An agreement along these lines makes sense”, he added, “because it would meet the major concerns of each side” in the dispute. He cautioned, however, that, under such an agreement, Tehran would not only be prohibited from continuing its uranium enrichment process, but would also be required to surrender all quantities of uranium previously enriched to a level above 20 percent. Such an agreement, claimed Pillar, would mean that neither Iran nor Israel and the West would receive everything they wanted at once. Instead, the process would depend on a gradual implementation of several bilateral agreements in stages, “each side giving something and getting something at each stage”. Read more of this post

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Situation Report: Is DARPA’s Phoenix Program Intelligence-Related?

August 25, 2012 by 6 Comments

DARPA's Phoenix ProgramBy TIMOTHY W. COLEMAN| intelNews.org |
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the out-there research arm of the United States Department of Defense, is well known for it’s futuristic and bleeding-edge technology research projects. Often times, the Agency’s highflying efforts seem to protrude a motto of “failure is an option”. In fact, a 2003 article in The Los Angeles Times states that DARPA’s failure rates are between 85 and 90 percent. But this has not prevented the Agency from trying out new things, which sometimes help shape the future. It’s predecessor, Advanced Research Projects Agency, renamed DARPA in 1972, helped create what is today the Internet. Multiplexed Information and Computing Service (aka UNIX), Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface (Siri, that female voice on your iPhone —yup, she’s a spinout from a DARPA Artificial Intelligence project called CALO), and Onion Routing (core technique for anonymous communications over computer networks, i.e. the base technology underlying Tor), were all funded, in part, by DARPA. Unsurprisingly, DARPA is at it again. The question remains, though, can the hype become a reality or will the new effort find a home in the vast majority of DARPAs forward-looking failed adventures? Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #778 (analysis edition)

August 13, 2012 by 2 Comments

Lieutenant-General Zahir ul-IslamBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Some rules restrain Mossad’s work in Iran. It is widely believed that at least four assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists in Tehran were carried out in recent years by Mossad operatives. The perpetrators were part of an elite unit within Israeli intelligence, called Kidon, founded in 1972 to avenge the killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, by any means necessary. But veteran Israeli intelligence correspondents Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman argue that the Kidon is not technically a ‘lawless’ organization; it has to comply with a set of “unwritten regulations” adopted by Israel’s secret agencies fifty years ago.
►►Are US and Pakistani spy agencies starting to get along? The relationship between the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has been at the core of Washington and Islamabad’s alliance for over a decade now. But over the past two years, as suspicions have grown, the two sides had become near adversaries. After months of relations languishing at an all-time low, Pakistan and the US may now be opening up a fresh phase of engagement. Following US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent apology for the loss of 24 Pakistani soldiers at a border checkpoint last November, NATO supplies are rumbling through again. Washington has also released funds for Pakistani military operations it had previously withheld. And, perhaps most crucially, the two fractious allies’ top spies are said to be talking again. New ISI Director Zahir ul-Islam (pictured) visited Washington for talks earlier this month.
►►Why the US isn’t arming Syria’s opposition –yet. Up until this point, the only thing the US has owned up to is providing humanitarian assistance and communications equipment to Syrian opposition groups. A report earlier this month revealed that US President Barack Obama signed a secret “finding” in July, which allows the CIA to take action in Syria, but does not include lethal support. In other words, the US won’t be sending in Seal Team Six to take down Assad any time soon, but it is training certain groups to handle and gather intelligence. Why is that?

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Situation Report: Intel-on-Demand in a Web 2.0 World (Exclusive)

August 11, 2012 by 1 Comment

US President Barack Obama and his BlackBerry phoneBy TIMOTHY W. COLEMAN | intelNews.org |
In the United States, the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), “the highest-level intelligence analysis targeted at the key national security issues and concerns of the President”, is increasingly going digital. For that matter, so is much of the output produced by the US Intelligence Community at large. According to AOL Defense News, “The President and his top officials want and will get a single mobile device allowing them to access highly classified and unclassified data wherever they are”. The mobility feature is driven by a desire not to be tethered to a desk or a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). In addition to the obvious benefits of mobility, the digitized PDB allows for a more in-depth and interactive reading of intelligence matters. In the example of the PDB, as the President reviews the nation’s most sensitive intelligence information on a specialized tablet, he can jump back and forth, click on links to take a deeper dive, see follow-up briefings, review background materials for greater context, view videos, photographs, maps and other visual aids. In fact, the PDB has gone from a static page to an interactive assessment of top intelligence concerns, landing it squarely in a quasi Web 2.0 world for the Intelligence Community. That is not to say that the President is checking Twitter, Facebook or the Rasmussen Report’s daily Presidential Tracking Poll numbers. Instead, reports indicate the digitized hardware has been scaled way down. For obvious reasons, specific details regarding the hardware’s composition and features remain classified. Read more of this post

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Comment: Are US Authorities Ignoring Far-Right Terrorism?

August 7, 2012 by 6 Comments

Wade Michael PageBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last month I gave a radio interview on a show syndicated on National Public Radio stations in the United States, in which I warned that American far-right extremism is growing faster than any other time since the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. I specifically pointed the finger at an increasingly dangerous mix of gun culture, neo-Nazi ideology, and white-nationalist interpretations of Christianity, known collectively as Christian Identity. In the post-9/11 world, many in the West tend to be forgetful of incidents like the neo-Nazi-inspired 1995 Oklahoma City bombing —the largest terrorist attack on US soil prior to 9/11. Even recent high-profile cases, such as the 2011 Norway attacks by neo-Nazi Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in Oslo and Utøya, have proven unable to challenge that dangerous amnesia. It follows that last Sunday’s mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, which left seven people dead and three injured, including a police officer, poses a long-overdue opportunity for reflection.

The attacker has been identified as Wade Michael Page (pictured), 40, a former US Army soldier who had previously lived in Colorado and North Carolina. He appears to have acted alone, armed with a legally purchased 9-millimeter handgun. His record indicates that he had been issued permits in North Carolina to purchase five pistols in 2008, though he did not have permit to carry concealed weapons. It also appears that Page, who served in the US military from 1992 to 1998, was a committed neo-Nazi, who had an active role in white-power music —a bizarre subgenre of hardcore heavy metal. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Page led a racist white-power music band known as End Apathy, which he founded in North Carolina, after several years of playing in another band called Definite Hate. Others report that Page, who sported a shaved head in typical neo-Nazi fashion, had several Nazi-themed tattoos all over his body. Read more of this post

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Guest Comment: Radio Still Medium of Choice for Many Spies

August 2, 2012 by 7 Comments

Typical Cold-War-era advert of Radio Moscow By PAUL BEAUMONT* | intelNews.org |
In 1975 whilst the Cold War was still being fought, short wave listeners were treated nightly to whatever stations they chose to listen to from wherever, propagation permitting. These broadcast stations carried a catholic mix of information, political views and insights, propaganda, religious ideology (usually with a political point) and music and other cultural statements of the government of the day. Broadcast stations with good signals were the BBC World Service, Voice of America, and Radio Moscow. But not all was as it seemed. Radio Moscow used very high powers so that those furthest from their transmitters still received signals at good strength whilst the propagation conditions ensured the frequencies were selected for the most efficient transfer of radio programs. One could sit in one’s armchair with no more than a telescopic antenna raised from the radio set and hear news from a foreign station and quickly retuning, could hear the same news but with a totally different bent. Even the music was not what it seemed, especially for two particular British spies, one being Frank Clifton Bossard, an officer with Britain’s Ministry of Defence Missile Guidance Branch, the other John Symonds, an ex-Detective Sergeant wanted in connection with Operation COUNTRYMAN.  Bossard was strapped for cash and approached the KGB, whilst finding himself overseas with no funds Symonds found himself working for the KGB as a ‘Romeo Spy’ seducing wives of diplomats for information. Interestingly MI5 denied that Symonds acted as he did and suggested such actions were a figment of John Symonds’ imagination. Read more of this post

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