News you may have missed #829
April 11, 2013 1 Comment
By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Irish police responds to claims of IRA collusion. For nearly two years, the Smithwick Tribunal in Dublin, Ireland, has been hearing allegations that the Provisional Irish Republican Army had supporters inside the Garda Síochána, Irealand’s police force. This past week, the Garda’s Crime and Security Branch gave the Tribunal a 51-page response to the allegations. The tribunal said it “needed time to read the response” before holding another open session next week.
►►How CIA spy Raymond Davis helped turn Pakistan against the US. The New York Times‘ Mark Mazzetti has penned an excellent retrospective analysis of Raymond Allen Davis imbroglio. In 2011, the CIA contractor was arrested in Lahore for shooting dead two men who allegedly tried to rob him. Davis was only released after the US government offered monetary compensation to the families of the dead men. Mazzetti argues that the furor over the Davis incident threatened to shut down most CIA operations in Pakistan and derail the intelligence-gathering operation in Abbottabad.
►►New book explains CIA shift from spying to killing. Speaking of Mark Mazzetti, he has a new book out called The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth. In it, he explores the post-9/11 transformation of the CIA from its original mission –spying– to a facilitator of targeted killings for the Pentagon. He told National Public Radio that “the CIA has become a machine for killing in many ways. The counterterrorism center has become […] the sort of beating heart of the agency that does man-hunting. And these question of ‘Should the CIA stay in the killing business?’ […] is something that is unresolved but is certainly being discussed”.






By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |











Growing number of US officials believe al-Qaeda is finished
April 15, 2013 by Ian Allen 15 Comments
An increasing number of government officials in the United States believe that al-Qaeda is no longer a serious threat to the homeland and are turning their attention to the next chapter of America’s security posture. Citing American defense and intelligence insiders, The Los Angeles Times claims that the militant Islamist group has been virtually decimated following more than a decade of relentless pursuit by Washington. So extensive is al-Qaeda’s operational devastation, they say, that US intelligence agencies can no longer discern any meaningful operational structure at the group’s core. Aside from its reputed leader, Egyptian physician Ayman al-Zawahiri, and a handful of others, no senior al-Qaeda lieutenant is believed to be alive. For over four years, the group’s commanders have been killed by the Central Intelligence Agency almost as soon as they have been identified, claims the paper. Al-Qaeda’s collapsing structure has led to an inevitable process of decentralization, which has rendered its surviving senior leadership virtually irrelevant to the global Islamist movement. Instead, a host of al-Qaeda-inspired factions have assumed the role of torchbearer, operating in far-flung locations such as Iraq, Syria, Mali, Yemen and Somalia. However, says The Times, these groups are motivated by strictly local issues and have neither the ability nor the will to mount large-scale attacks on American targets. The article quotes former US Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Rosa Brooks as saying: “to the best of our information, there is nobody out there with both the desire and the capabilities to cause any serious damage to the US in any way at this moment”. Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with al-Qaeda, CIA, News, Rosa Brooks, Shawn Brimley, United States, War on Terrorism