Did CIA engage in non-consensual human experimentation?

CIA HQ

CIA HQ

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Late last month, I warned that it would take several weeks before journalists, academics, historians, lawyers, and other interested parties comb through the recently declassified report on torture by the CIA inspector general, as well as several other newly available documents pertaining to the CIA’s interrogation program. The search continues. Meanwhile, several observers are focusing on the CIA’s Office of Medical Services, as well as on Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) a secretive US Army unit, whose work appears to have informed the CIA’s torture program. Read more of this post

CIA censored me to avoid embarrassment, says ex-οfficer

V.L. Montesinos

V.L. Montesinos

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
More than a month after Secrecy News reported the legal victory of a former CIA agent, who managed to have a censored report he wrote about the CIA’s dirty dealings in Peru declassified, a US news outlet has finally given some attention to the story. On August 4 (see previous intelNews reporting), Secrecy News revealed that a memorandum drafted in 2001 by CIA officer Franz Boening, detailing assistance illegally provided by the CIA to the then chief of Peruvian intelligence, had finally been declassified following an eight-year court battle. In the censored memorandum, Boening argued that the Agency violated US law by providing material and political assistance to Vladimiro Lenin Montesinos Torres, a graduate of the US Army’s School of the Americas and longtime CIA operative, who headed Peru’s Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (SIN) under the corrupt administration of President Alberto Fujimori. Fujimori is now in prison, as is Montesinos himself. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0104

  • Pro-secrecy ex-NSA/CIA director joins declassification board. Michael V. Hayden is not exactly an advocate of declassifying US government records. But he is the latest appointee to the Public Interest Declassification Board, an official body that advises the President on declassification policies, priorities and potential reforms.
  • CIA agent who headed plan to lift sunken Soviet submarine dies. CIA agent Christopher Fitzgerald led a 1974 CIA project to recover a Soviet submarine that had sunk in 17,000 feet of water about 750 miles northwest of Hawaii in 1968. But the recovery team nearly caused a nuclear explosion when the submarine split while being raised, and its body hit the ocean floor.
  • CIA director heads agency recruiting drive of US Muslims. CIA chief Leon Panetta is to meet with Arab-Americans in Michigan, in an effort “to promote diversity within the intelligence agency”. But, as intelNews has noted before, this will not be easy, especially in Michigan.

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News you may have missed #0103

  • Iran deliberately delaying nuclear bomb plans. US intelligence agencies believe that Iran “has deliberately stopped short of the critical last steps to make a bomb”, claim The New York Times. Could the recent political violence in the country have something to do with this delay?
  • CIA sets up new External Advisory Board. Panetta says the new Board the Board will serve as “informal advisors to me and other senior leaders of our Agency”. Interestingly the group includes lots of business representation (Lazard Frères, Scowcroft Group, Bell Labs, Computer Sciences Corporation, Arnold & Porter).
  • Is the CIA’s Excessive Secrecy Near an End? Although stopping short of pre-election promises, Barack Obama’s plans for administrative transparency will mark an “unprecedented level of openness” in US government agencies, especially the CIA, argue former US House Government Operations Committee spokesman Robert Weiner, and policy analyst Jordan Osserman.

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Former agent reveals aspects of CIA’s bin Laden hunt

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

News you may have missed #0102

  • NSA helped UK arrest convicted bomb plotters. Email correspondence intercepted by the US National Security Agency in 2006 helped lead to the arrest and conviction of three Muslim militants, who were planning attacks in Britain. IntelNews learns that this case was brought up by American intelligence officials who recently threatened to terminate all intelligence cooperation with the UK, in reaction to the release from a Scottish prison of convicted Libyan bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
  • Bush Administration tried to alter “enforced disappearances” international treaty standards. The aim of the global treaty, long supported by the United States, was to end official kidnappings, detentions and killings like those that plagued Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, and that allegedly still occur in Russia, China, Iran, Colombia, Sri Lanka and elsewhere. But the documents suggest that initial US support for the negotiations collided head-on with the then-undisclosed goal of seizing suspected terrorists anywhere in the world for questioning by CIA interrogators or indefinite detention by the US military at foreign sites. So the Bush Administration tried to alter the language of the treaty from 2003 to 2006, reveals The Washington Post.

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CIA furious over UK-Libyan bomber release deal

Al-Megrahi

Al-Megrahi

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The CIA has threatened to stop sharing intelligence with UK spy services in protest over the recent release from a Scottish prison of a Libyan intelligence agent convicted for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, according to a British newspaper. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who is now back home in Tripoli, was released by British authorities on August 19 on compassionate grounds, after medical tests allegedly showed he is suffering from terminal cancer. Many observers, including former CIA agent Robert Baer, voiced suspicion about the reasons behind al-Megrahi’s release, while several British newspapers, including The London Times, alleged that the release was part of a lucrative oil exploration deal between British Petroleum (BP) and the Libyan government. Now an article in British newspaper The News of the World claims that the CIA leadership has vowed to terminate intelligence cooperation with the UK over the Libyan’s release. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0099

  • Who killed London Times reported David Holden, in 1977, and what was the involvement of American, British and Egyptian intelligence services in the mysterious case?
  • Iran denies bodyguard’s arrest on spying charges. Iranian authorities deny earlier reports that a man belonging to a “senior official security squad” was arrested on suspicion of “espionage and anti-security activities”.
  • Profile of South Africa’s next spy chief. Moe Shaik, former member of ANC’s intelligence wing and a close friend of South African President Jacob Zuma will most likely head the country’s spy services. During ANC’s underground period, he was involved in Operation VULA, which involved smuggling large quantities of weapons into South Africa. He will be heading the nation’s intelligence establishment during one of the most challenging periods in its history.

Ex-MI6 spy at center of Lockerbie prisoner release deal

Sir Mark Allan

Sir Mark Allan

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A British former intelligence official has been identified as having had a major role in the recent release from a Scottish prison of a Libyan intelligence agent convicted for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103.  Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who is now back home in Tripoli, was released by British authorities on August 19 on compassionate grounds, after medical tests allegedly showed he is suffering from terminal cancer. Many observers, including former CIA agent Robert Baer, voiced suspicion about the reasons behind al-Megrahi’s release, while several British newspapers, including The London Times, alleged that the release was part of a lucrative oil exploration deal between British Petroleum (BP) and the Libyan government. Now The Sunday Mail has identified Sir Mark Allen, a former senior intelligence official who works for BP, as “the driving force” behind al-Megrahi’s release. Read more of this post

Software startup supplying CIA, FBI, DoD, with analytical tools

Palantir Tech

Palantir Tech

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
CIA and Pentagon insiders are crediting a virtually unknown software startup with having designed the most effective analytical tool to date. The Wall Street Journal reports that Palantir Technologies, headquartered in Silicon Valley, has created a new, user-friendly search engine whose name has not been disclosed. Allegedly, it has the ability to fuse countless separate data banks at once, thus making complex investigative connections in intelligence operations with a regional or global scope. The paper says the software is already in use at the CIA, FBI and Department of Defense, and has already “uncovered details of Syrian suicide bombing networks in Iraq” and “discovered a spy infiltration of an allied government”, among other things. The Wall Street Journal also says that rival software contractors are not happy about Palantir’s growth, dismiss it as “the new sexy thing”, and argue that it won’t be able to make it in the government contracting business.

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News you may have missed #0097

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News you may have missed #0096

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News you may have missed #0095

  • 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

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

News you may have missed #0093

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